Blog moved to wordpress

ramakrishnankrk.wordpress.com

Days Gone By

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

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 !!

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

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

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

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..

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.