Spicy Tales of My Life

Random Writing

2011-10-30T22:03:00.000-07:00

I cannot precisely define what it is, the feeling that I go through when I try to write something. It is sort of a pain, definitely not pleasure and requires a lot of effort. But the result that it gives is worth whatever suffering I go through. Finally I decided to be back at the thing that rejuvenates my mind, writing. Though I do not consider myself one of those great writers who are born in this world to create a difference in this world, I more or less only write to create a difference in my life. Writing gives my mind, clarity. I always faced this barrier when I try to communicate my thoughts through voice. For me the precise degree of intelligence behind an idea is very difficult to express. Writing on the other hand is a very seasoned approach where thoughts are moulded and laid down very rationally. This is the reason why I prefer written form of communication over any other.

Though I do not consider myself bad, my writing skills take a plunge when it comes to writing the academic/ professional stuff. I face an utter lack of vocabulary, comprehension and imagination when I have to write something with the very purpose of getting the approval of my professors. Also it may be that it is very difficult to write something that you are not exactly aware of. That is right, I suck at academic stuff. Only if the knowledge is between the ears will it come out. Though not very proud of the fact, I am not one of those who constantly put effort to fill the space between their ears with all the useless information in this world under the illusion of knowledge. Hardly had I found any application of the knowledge that I have acquired over the years since the beginning of my college days in industry or anywhere else in my life. So I stopped acquiring any more of it unless I find any immediate use of it.

Anyways, I am still not sure what message I am trying to convey through this piece of writing. This is the first time that have I ever written something so haphazard. When I started I did not know how it will end but it has to end as I cannot continue to write something aimlessly. The only purpose of writing this piece is only to rejuvenate my habit of writing which I did not encourage for a long time. I hope my next article would have more meaning and would take less of effort to read..

A Glimpse into MBA.

2011-07-09T10:12:00.000-07:00

When I was asked by Kshitiz to write an article for the newsletter I was shocked and elated at the same time. I was in doubt whether my style of writing is apt for a newsletter. I have experience of writing goofy stuff on a personal blog but a Newsletter sounded far too serious an activity. But the idea of getting published for the first time was scintillating.

Out of habit I started my task with googling “How to write a newsletter” and was appalled at the complexity of the task. Then I real- ised sometimes conventions should be given amiss to make room for creativity. I decided to follow my heart, so here comes my first ever article that should hopefully appear in a newsletter.

"What are you doing these days?"

"MBA‟

"Ohh Good. Which institute?"

"Goa Institute of Management"

"From Goa?"

"No dude it‟s in Himachal Pradesh. What do you expect?"

" mean how can you study in a place like Goa? I am sure you are having more fun than study there, right?"

"No Man. I am having more study that is fun.”

I am quite sure many of us have had conversations like this which are always irritating. Infact, when I first heard of our college, Goa Institute of Management, my initial focus was only on the first word „GOA‟. I was far too excited about the place than anything else. It seemed more like a place for vacation than education, but a bit of research on the credentials of GIM changed my perception that it actually can be a place for both.

When you land in Goa, the first thing you realize is the air about the place. Your adrenaline levels fall down and the first thing you feel like doing is to hit a beach and chill down. They particularly use a term to define this state; it‟s called “Susegaad”. I think for first few days in GIM you will be akin to it but it‟s more like a silence before the storm. Adding to it the serenity of GIM Sanquilem campus is something unique and makes you realise the beauty of GOA is not just about its beaches.

You will be introduced to different concepts that are unique to a PGDM course. Class Participation is one such concept. You are supposed to contribute to the discussion in the class, of course in a productive manner and marks are given for the same. You may find it a bit difficult to understand the concept if you are from the science background. You are generally used to learning the fun- damentals in class which are not supposed to be questioned and you have the tendency to take the word of the professor on any concept. But MBA is not just a science. Every concept/fundamental you learn here is based on assumptions and the situation in which you apply them. You should be able to thoroughly understand, analyse and preconceive every possible scenario to be able to apply a concept. Also there is ample scope of discovering new ideas in each class which are not taught in books. So this necessitates CP.

Many find it difficult to do CP at least initially. You will have a clear thought lingering in your mind and as soon as it comes out of your mouth it turns into gibberish. Give it time you‟ll get better at it. For beginners, I suggest you ask rational doubts that might clear your head instead of trying to give great ideas in the class. Most importantly, first pay attention in class, CP is definitely secon- dary.

Do not ever attempt DCP (Desperate Class Participation) for the sake of marks like stating the obvious pretending you have dis- covered a radically fresh perspective. Such people use their mastery of English language to create rational sounding B.S which is devoid of any logic. Your batch mates will be merciless in crushing you for wasting their time and it rarely happens inside the class. There are some subjects in which you do not have marks for CP which are mostly technical in nature. Understand the hint, the time of the Prof is extremely valuable in such classes, the more you waste time the less you learn.

You‟ll then be introduced to the concept of Group Work. This is definitely going to be one of the worst experiences that will teach you some great lessons. I initially thought group work was easier because I have the experience of handing a small team for a few months at my earlier organization. But here it is a different ball game. Everyone here is an equal to you. You cannot expect every- body to listen to you and do what you want them to unless you convince them with inscrutable (sounding) logic. What is common sense to you is sometimes Greek and Latin to the other person.

Once in a group, you will discover some destructive characteristics (i.e. some might be extremely egoistic, some may be extremely lazy) in every person you considered normal before which will affect the output of the group. I myself have such characteristics (obviously I am not going to mention them here), but you need to understand each person and figure out the best way to work with him. This kind of stuff cannot be learned through gyaan but practice.

Then there are Presentations, Student committee Work (If you become a JCC fortunately or unfortunately), Pro- jects, open/closed book exams and then there is Goa. You need to figure out a way to balance all this and please don‟t drop Goa out of the equation. Try to make the two years you spend here the best time of your life both in terms of learning and fun.

P.S: The views I expressed in this article are based on my experiences. I do not intend to force any of my views on anybody and you might very well form counter ones. In whichever way I just hope it betters your perspective on the Life @ a Management institute.

My Soul Speaking..

2011-07-09T06:48:00.001-07:00

Dear Zabi..

This is your soul speaking. Since you have totally lost the sense of rationality i have decided to impart you with some gyaan in attempt to wake you up into the world of reality so that you can see things with clarity.

You are suffering from a disease called Mediocrity... That is what surrounds most of the people unless you are an exceptional creature with extraordinary merit. It is ubiquitous. There are many who get used to it. It is not really bad but it is not really good either especially if you are a dreamer. If you have hopes of making it big. If want to stand apart from the crowd. Mediocrity to such people seems like a sickness with no cure. It imparts a deadly suffering onto the soul. Many a time the cause of your suffering ought to be this sick disease of mediocrity. How to get rid of it.? I have put much thought and seem to come up with a reasonable explanation.

Is there a panacea. Some say, one needs talent to beat mediocrity but the worst part about talent is you are either born with it or without it. It cannot be inculcated no matter how much one tries seems to be the universal accepted belief. Or is it really?

Hmmmmm.. Let us think it this way, is every talented person exceptional?Can every talented person beat mediocrity
Well.. Have you ever seen a person with loads of talent wasting his life doing things far below his abilities. Well if you did then it goes to proves that Talent cannot be the only factor that can make some one exceptional.So one can easily understand that it is not just talent that can get you out of mediocrity.

Then is it hard work that can get you out of mediocrity? well, look around you. Consider a few hardworking persons u know. How many of them are successful in their careers or life? In a minute you will realize all of them are. Even if you find an exception here and there I'd bet u'd never notice a failure in the hardworking lot.

A radical mind amongst you might think of an example of a laborer working in fields who might work harder than most of us but still leads less than a mediocre life. Well laborer's effort goes into training his body not mind. when I say hard work I talk about stressing the intellectual abilities of your mind. Simply put your success in today's world is judged by the might of your intellect not physical strength and a laborer by any measure is way too short of it.

Then what is it that can beat mediocrity?

Since talent cannot be inculcated it clearly leaves us with hard work. But where do you direct you hardwork. Every person in this world is awarded with some talent or the other, many times a mix of various talents. If you direct your hard work on honing that talent to develop some necessary skill which you can sell in this world.. Bingo.. you have made it out of the gutter of mediocrity.

But there is a catch. Talent has a small role to play here if not crucial. The more talented you are the sooner you'll make it out of the gutter. If you are not one of those gifted with loads of talent, well you need one extra ingredient along with talent to make it big. Lots of patience. you might make it slow but be damn sure you'll make it big. perseverance should be the magic word for you.

By now you must have realized that I am preaching the benefits of perseverance and hard work. Everyone know this out of their common sense. But when it comes to implementing this commonsensical thing one will realize common sense is not so common. Well there is a very simple way,

In your life, all things that you do, every choice that you make can simply be divided into two categories,

1.The things that add value to your life.
2.The things that deprive the value of your life.

when i say value i don't mean something that is entirely materialistic. things like love, friendship, happiness also add value to your life. It will not take an Aristotle to understand which thing is what sort.

Just stop things like procrastinating, hesitating etc. which just don't add any value, rather take the value out of your life. Any task you do from the start to the end of your day can be realized in terms of value added to your life. Just follow the simple principle and you shall be on the right path.

P.S: Next time you are doing face book.. just think how much of value it is taking out of your life. Does reading every stupid status update adding to your happiness or frustration? Does checking out a random chick with a perverse eye gives you the warmth of love? Does a stupid FB application which says some thing like 'find out with whom you are gonna have sex with' is really doing you any good.. hmmmm think.. damn it..

Oh Dearest.. smile..

2011-07-09T04:59:00.001-07:00

You know it, don’t you; the mystery about your eyes, there is something very special about them. Your eyes are exceptionally beautiful no doubt, but it is in the expression of those eyes lies the real charm.

When you look at me, which you do very rarely, it feels as if you touch my heart through your eyes. I feel the strength of your stare simulating a reaction so strong from the bottom of my heart that it is just irresistible. I love the inquisitiveness of your look. You must know that it is impossible not to fall for the kind of look you give sometimes but it takes great strength to pretend not to have fallen for your look.

There is one other thing about you which deserves a special mention, your smile. O god that is one heck of a charming smile. It is the kind of smile that can make the day of any desperate soul. When I look at you I always hope to instigate that charming smile of yours which has got the potential to light up any heart. But rarely do I get lucky enough to experience the charm of it.

When I saw you for the very first time, I knew you are one gal who had the full potential to make or break my heart. Wishing for the former I tried every measure to seek the least of your attention but it was of no avail. Over the days I realised that the inquisitive stare and the charming smile you held and every bit your soul was reserved for certain somebody. I did not want to believe it first but my infatuation failed to hide the truth for long. Though it was not exactly a heart break it caused a bit of pain. I moved on, thinking whatever makes you happy should not make me feel worse if there is any truth to my feelings. I was a gratified soul as long as I got to see you smile.

Your image in my heart did not fade for years and it always the held the expression of that charming smile until recently. Now my soul failed to remain at ease for the reasons that you are acutely aware of. The steadiness in your stare which I so much admired once is now replaced by a desperate longing. The beautiful smile of yours does now seem like a mere effort of your lips. Where is that charming gal with the cheerful smile that I once very much admired?

I want to see you out of the pain but only person who knows how to come of it is you. I wish I could be there to help but I am too far away and there is so less I know about you. Relieve your eyes of the longing and let the charm of your smile return.

Adios Ribandar

2011-07-07T07:12:00.001-07:00

Year: 2007
Month: June
Route: Panjim to St Xavier’s Basallica

6 toursits from hyderabad on 3 rented bikes and.on one of the bikes,

Rider: Wow. Dude what a ride
Pillion: Seriously what a ride!!
Rider: Reminds me of the lanes of the game Road Rash.. Look at those smooth curves man. No other curves gave me better riding pleasure than these.
Pillion: haha. Dude! For a minute Take your eyes off the road and look around you. This river along the road, the artistic beauty of the houses, and the whole environment around here is just breath taking. People living here are on an a eternal vacation. Imagine living in a place like this. Seems fantastic, Isn’t it
Rider: Ya right..In your dreams.

Year:2010
Month: July

The pillion got placed in GIM. with the previous notions of goan beauty, He Came to Sanquilem (pronounced saankh-lee in local accent). He got a shock of his life to see the bare minimum campus at saank-lee amidst the worst of monsoon season. Felt terrible when he was denied a place at the hostel due to the pending construction work and was one of the few who were directed to stay at the old campus at a place called Ribandar. Feeling wet and cheated he packed his bags to move on to his new temporary destination. On the way back he realised that the lanes seemed vaguely familiar. He knew the old campus was on the banks of Mandovi River but he never thought it would be the very same place he admired 3 years back. His depression faded and mood turned better. Finally his dream was realised.

Ribandar campus, a heritage site, atypical of Portugal style construction painted in yellow. It was maternity hospital for decades where many goans, infact some of my class mates were born. It must have felt really spooky to study at a place where you were actually born in. I wonder if some of them actually knew the very rooms they were born in. Different sections of ribandar campus still retain their old names. Boys used to stay in hostels called OT-1(operation theatre) and Morgue.

I really wondered how people staying in morgue must have felt, I heard some rumours of ghosts but they hardly seemed credible. I think if you die in a place as beautiful as this your soul should remain at peace and there is hardly any reason to haunt people.

(to be continued.. This is my last day at ribandar and this article is my tribute to the place and the wonderful experiences this place has left me with, I want to finsh this off badly but there is hardly anytime left to pack my bags. Can’t wait to write the rest of the article..)
'
Image Courtesy: Kalpak Iyer (The Photographer.)

Tale of a Dancer

2011-02-09T11:00:00.000-08:00

I am feeling satisfied, calm. It is the happiness in its purest form. Not the one which causes unrest in the mind by filling it with excitement but the kind which relives you of a perpetual longing. I just satisfied one of my eternal yearnings. It has given me pain for so long that I learned to succumb to it. I just thought I will never be able to overcome that pain. I thought of it to be a sickness that I have to suffer for the rest of my life. To know my pain you should know my tale, here it goes,

It was a Thursday night and we all were sitting before the T.V. It was Chitrahaar (Chitra-lahari in telugu) time. All kids from neighborhood assembled in my house, for we were one of the very few privileged owners of a black and white TV in my neighborhood. I was only hoping for two things, First I did not want the power to go off at any cost and I just wanted to see one song of chiranjeevi with lots of dance.. He was one of the best dancers south has got. He was my idol. As I was eagerly waiting, the program made a disappointing start with an old song of NTR as usual. All kids including me moaned in unison.

My mom shouted,

“You children have no respect for classical music. This is 100 times better than your chiranjeevi song”

“I can sing better than this,”

I stood up and made a mocking of NTR with his body language which evoked a surge of laughter from everyone including my mother. Then I sat down and just started counting numbers. This was my technique to get past the boring songs of chitrhaar. By the time you count 300 any song must get over. Song after song I saw the entire generation of old telugu actors. My luck really seemed bad that day. I just prayed that I might at least get to listen to one new song of either Nagarjuna or Balakrishna who can dance but not where close to the level of my favorite actor. There were only 5 mins of chitrahaar remaining and then it happened.

“Chikubaku chikubaku raile…”

I looked for chirnajeevi in the song but I couldn’t find him. Suddenly a guy jumps out of nowhere and starts shaking his body. He was twisting, contorting his body sending convulsions through it and was jumping and shaking at the same time. The best part of it all was that the movements were in sync with the rhythm. His movements were fast, faster than Chiranjeevi, faster than anybody else I have ever seen. had I known Michael Jackson I would have thought differently. Actually I had not seen the legend moon walk before 96, when he came to India for a tour. I only happen to see a glimpse of his moonwalk when it was shown in the news.

I was observing all his moves. Generally I start imitating the steps of chirnajeevi as soon as the song starts but this was different, I was just enjoying it. A great dance is like a great song. No matter how good a singer you are you just want to listen to a great song than hum it, and no matter how good a dancer you are you’d just like to watch a great dance than dance it. The song reached its crescendo. I just could not control myself and jumped. By body picked up steps at an amazing rate. I felt as if I was not doing it but as if it was all happening. I suddenly heard everybody around me wooing, cheering. For the First time in my life I felt the real dancer in me. It was the charm of A.R Rehman melodious music and Prabhudeva’s dance that has gotten onto me. When he shaked his leg I shaked mine, when he bent his spine I bent mine. It was like magic. Everybody started clapping and I was lost.

“T.V Bandh karo

(Shut down the TV.)

It was a roar that I am acutely aware of, My dad. He was not supposed to be home that early, he always comes 15 minutes after chitrahar. Nobody moved and he went ahead and switched off the T.V.

“You don’t do homework and watch T.V all the time. Now you are so spoilt that you are dancing like a loafer.”

I knew there was at least 2 mins of the song left. I went ahead and switched on the T.V which seem to offend him but I begged,

“It is a good song. I’ll do my homework after the song”

I was slapped and the T.V was shut down.

“If I ever saw you dancing I’ll break your legs.”

That was an end an end to a life I never got to have. Since that day I only danced in closed spaces where I never heard any cheering or applause but only danced for myself. I went to the weddings of my relatives and watched my self-proclaimed dancer of a cousin’s pathetic dance steps and clapped in silence(Sorry munna. No offense, You are but a dancer.). I always missed annual days of my school as I wanted to excuse myself of the cheap imitations of Michael Jackson’s moon walk which made celebrities out of losers. When a gal I had crush on asked what I am really good at, I said anything but dance. When my dad said he likes this new guy hritik cuz he dances well, I got so frustrated that I broke the bathroom tap.

I should have lost it, my passion for dancing. I do not know what kept it alive all this while. I am still not a complete dancer. I cannot dance in a group nor can I synchronize steps for a duet as I keep forgetting them and make unrehearsed steps of my own on stage sometimes. I make a face of an ass while dancing because in my life I rarely danced with the intention of pleasing the crowd. Sometimes my right leg moves instead of my left but that hardly matters if I am doing a solo.

I danced again when I was out of home for the first time in the fresher’s party during my graduation days. It was not a performance though; just shaking a bit of leg in disco. In fact I went to the disco for the very first time. Encouraged by the response, Next year I gave my first performance on stage. It was an amazing experience. When you are on stage, it is a feeling you cannot describe in words. When people cheer at you, holler your name, your soul gets elated by the intensity of a power, which did not emanate within you but outside you. It just feels like each soul in the crowd has powered your soul with a bit of their energy. I am very lucky to have that heavenly experience which is definitely an out of the world feeling. One of the most interesting things is my dad’s response when I showed him my video. He liked it, he kept it in his mobile and showed it to his colleagues and boasted many times that he has got an artist of a son.

Later to improve my dancing I tried learning salsa but without much avail. The guy in most of the Latin dance forms has to be solid and female who has to flow like fluid. Whenever I did it, I could not constrain myself and overdid whatever I was supposed to. Finally, I gave it up and started doing whatever I did best.

So far I have given 5 performances on stage but never did a prabhudeva. I was afraid that I could not match the legend. When ever I saw his songs on T.V I changed the channel as it gave me some sort of suffering, the reason of which i did not not understand. I always wanted to dance to his songs like the way he did but cudn't make my mind to give an attempt.

Thanks to my reincarnation as a student in GIM I got a chance to do it. It is still a cheap imitation and the result is not what exactly I had in mind but when the crowd supported my act I got to satisfy my eternal yearnings.It just felt like that same 9 years old kid I once was, dancing to the tune of “chikubaku chikkubaku raile” but this time with nobody to stop me. I am thankful to the crowd for being a part of my dream and for making it come true this time. The pain is now gone and i feel like a free soul.

The Fallacies of Mind

2010-12-03T11:56:00.000-08:00

Mind’s got mysterious ways of working. It refuses to see things the way they are. It chooses to create illusions, and it chooses to create perceptions. Hope is one such illusion, Despair is another. The fallacy or fantasy it gets you in can be for your good or bad. Before one can know the nature of the illusion one must be able to distinguish the illusion from reality.

Look at the Illusion called Hope. By the tone of it the word sounds great. It is the fundamental instrument of any kind of creed. Every faith, ideology or cult that is devoid of reason and logic plants itself into the mind of an individual under the illusion called hope and nurtures. A religion gives the hope of afterlife or reincarnation, as a cult gives the hope of nirvana. It is hope that gives perseverance and strength to pursue one’s mindless pursuits. Hope can either lead to a miracle or a disaster. It all depends on the object of hope. Put in simple words, hope is a gamble for miracle at the risk of disaster.

Hope might not always lead to the result one desires but hope is not at fault here. Hope is just a ship that drives you towards the destination in the storms of life. The consequences of such a journey are more or less to be blamed upon your decision to embark upon such a voyage. This is the only risk that is associated with hope. Without hope life stagnates. When all reasons to live life run out and gloom prevails, hope is the only beacon of light that can guide you in the dark.

But as I mentioned earlier, hope by the nature of it is still an illusion. It is flawed and cannot survive inscrutable logic. But again pure logic can never justify a miracle. When there is a dearth of inspiration and abundance of desperation, find hope and stick to it. It might not always lead to the desired consequences but it will definitely get you out of some undesirable situations.

(I wanted to throw some light on other illusions of mind but I lost track,,,,, philosophy, I guess, is not my cup of tea. From now on, I have decided to stick to fiction. I will never bother you again with a mind torturing piece like this.)

Pretty

2010-10-24T03:29:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: Purely a work of fiction. A figment of my imagination.

When I first saw her I noticed she was pretty but I felt,

“aaawh, I have seen pretty.”

But perceptions don’t possess the quality of perpetuity so can be easily changed when exposed to reality. I knew not then that mine was bound to change in due course of time. I didn’t notice her in detail except for her smile. The most radiant one I have seen lately. Her smile might have been the reason why my eyes took notice of her. I must confess my eyes have high regard for beauty even though my brain sometimes fails to realize it.

The next time I saw her, the radiance of her smile was even more striking. But it’s not just the smile this time. As she came closer I saw what a real beauty she was.

“aaawh. She is pretty.”

Innocence in her eyes, bounce of her hair, appearance of her figure, her majestic yet feminine walk, the smell of her perfume and the air with which carries herself around. Every feature of her caught my attention and she deserved it. She noticed me as I was looking at her agape, and put her smile off to give me a contemptuous look as if to imply that my eyes didn’t deserve her beauty. Uncertain of the implication of her stare I hesitantly turned my eyes off her.

The next time I got lucky in the sense that I not only got to see her but to meet her. It was through a common friend. She was still wearing the radiant smile from which I couldn’t keep my eyes off. The look of contempt in her eyes was now replaced by amiability which I think is for the sake of maintaining the decorum of out meet or for the sake of our friend. Whatever it may be, the radiance of her smile grew more elegant as the look in her eyes now complimented her smile.

She greeted us cordially and my friend returned her greetings with profuse amiability. I was mesmerized by the sweetness of her voice. It couldn’t have suited her better. She looked at me inquisitively as if something was expected out of me. My friend broke the awkward silence by restoring the conversation. It was too late by the time I realized I didn’t returned her greetings and kept mum like a dork.

She is one hell of a speaker, I realized, when my attention slowly diverted from the sweetness of her voice to the meaning of words that she was speaking. Though it was a small talk the eloquence of her dialogue, her quick-wit impressed me. I said to myself,

“Awwwh, She is pretty intelligent.”

Wait a second. I was enough impressed by her already, her impressing me more isn’t going to do any good. It is my turn now to impress her if anything has to happen between us. I decided to contribute to the conversation between her and my friend. I made up few lines in my head on the subject they were discussing. I repeated those in my head and they felt intelligent and witty enough to create an impression in her towards me. I seized the opportunity when they both took a pause and blurted out my rehearsed dialogues.

Intelligent and witty I thought but rather I sounded lame and stupid. The expression in her eyes instantly got converted to contempt. But this time it was like her look poked my heart through my eyes. I kept mum for the rest of conversation and flew-off at the first chance I got by giving a lame excuse.

The next time I met her she was walking all alone. The lack of her radiant smile created a gloomy air about her. I thought she would remember me from last conversation and a smile of my greeting, might light up her radiant smile. I tried to get hold of her attention. She looked in every directon but mine. May be she is not in a good mood today. I thought of using a good pickup line to grab her attention but before anything could occur to me she already walked past by leaving a trail of her florid perfume in the air.

The next time I saw her, it was not the radiant smile that caught my attention. It was the caress of her feminine back by a masculine hand. The sight of it added to her radiant smile which seemed fluctuating with the movement of the hand on her back, burned my heart. Anger, dismay and helplessness all stuck me at once. To avoid any further embarrassment of the situation I took my steps backward.

The next time I saw her, I still noticed the radiance of her smile. I was afraid to imagine the reason behind it but I realized a stark change in my perception. It’s her beauty, it seemed faded. I start noticing the features of her which were far from beautiful and which I haven’t noticed earlier. As she same close her radiant smile grew and our eyes met. She raised her eyebrows to greet me.

At that very instant, I turned my eyes off her, forever.

Beauty in Oblivion

2010-09-15T05:57:00.000-07:00

My college is located in one of the most beautiful places i.e. on a hill surrounded by picturesque landscape of a mountain range. I can talk to clouds every day. I have seen this kind of beauty only in movies or in the large posters like the one that is hung in my neighbour’s house. On the very first day I thought, well if this is the view that I am going to saviour for next two years then each day will be as magnificent as the last. But alas!! That was the last day on which my magnificent feeling lasted.

When you see one of those solitary, beautiful places on the earth you feel how wonderful it would be if you get to stay there for the rest of your lives. Well, as long as it’s just a feeling, it may feel nice. Only when you get a chance to realize the feeling, you will realize that places like these are meant to spend a vacation, not a lifetime. We are too used to a civilization to do without it, nor am I able to. But I knew I’ll learn to survive this place in due course of time as long as I get to see the beautiful view of sun rising above the magnificent mountains, every day from my window.

But Alas again!! What use is this beautiful sunrise, if I either lack the mood or time to view it? Every day I wake up from the nightmare of nearing deadlines and unfinished assignments. All I need is 5 seconds time to turn east towards my window but my irate mood denies it. It is not that the beauty does not astonish me anymore, it does. If at all, by sheer chance, I look at those mountains, I feel bad for denying myself the serenity of captivating nature that is only at one turn of my head.

Random Blabber

2010-09-11T11:22:00.000-07:00

Blabber is random. The word random in the title is redundant I know, but cannot think of any thing better at the moment. So you might have to bear with it.I was wondering when was the last time I updated my blog. Couldn’t remember exactly but It was such a long time back that the instance of it faded out of my memory. I had to refer to my blog archive to know that it was about 3 months back. I want to write but cannot think of any good tale in particular. I have decided to blabber some thing.

So much has changed in last three months. My admission into MBA program has changed my life in a way I have never imagined before. Going back to the class room is tough after a hiatus of 4 years and especially for a guy like me who is on the other side of 25, it is definitely not a piece of cake. You are no longer a kid, and to sit in a classroom listening to a lecture is the last thing you’d like to do. But it’s no use cribbing as I have already made the choice to do things the hard way.

So many things happened in my college in such a short span of time. I have met a lot of people of so many different kinds. It was interesting to get to know all of them. I can say I haven’t met these many during the last four years at my work place. Last 3 months were eventful but all of it happened in the blink of an eye. Once these moments passed it felt like three months were too short a time for so much to happen in it.

These events created a paradigm shift in my approach towards life. It was so easy to survive the life of a software engineer but to survive an MBA is to survive a cyclone that will uproot many of your beliefs. Never has been my life so tough rather felt so tough. So far there has never been a dearth of foolish people around me whom I could easily surpass to win a race. But here, I realized, there has never been a dearth of smart ass people to compete with. It is a challenge every day to stand apart from the crowd.

Some might call what I experienced initially as inferiority complex but it seemed a necessity around this place to constantly thrive along to survive the competition. I guess this is where people go wrong. Things like inferiority complex, jealousy etc. can bring bad things onto somebody but never anything good. People forget that their aim is to succeed but not to surpass some body. One should focus on things that one is good at and try to put his best efforts irrespective of how better others are at the same task. This is how real learning happens. A bit of envy is necessary in the competitive world but it must not release the negative energy inside. Why the hell am I giving this bloody lecture. I Just wanted to reiterate a few things to get everything straight in my head. Might not be an interesting read for you but just to drive away my writers block, this is the beginning.

On The Last Day a New Beginning.

2010-06-08T11:13:00.000-07:00

“Can I help you Sir?”

“My last day, today. Are all my exit formalities complete?”

“Yes, except for one sir. You have to handover your ID card. “

“I want to keep it. Can I? “

“No sir, you can’t. “

“What if it’s lost and I don’t have it right now.”

“Well, in that case sir, you have to pay a fine of 1000 RS and also if we ever find you using it, you will be prosecuted. I suggest you don’t take that risk Sir.”

“Well here it is. take it. Wait! Can I at least keep the tag with me or you will fine me for that as well”

“Sure sir, you can. The tag contains the old logo. It is no value to us whatsoever, as the brand satyam has changed to Mahindra Satyam. But sir may I ask why you want to keep that.”

“My four years here in Satyam...”

“To correct you Sir, Mahindra Satyam!!”

I don’t’ understand why HR has to be politically correct all the time. Also I know I can’t argue with them for the very same reason. So I replied,

“Thanks for correcting my huge mistake Madam. Mahindra satyam it is. So my 3 years in Satyam and 1 year in Mahindra satyam this tag is the only thing that was there with me all the time. When I was nervous and sweating in the air conditioned conference rooms, it was this tag that soaked my sweat. When I worked 16 hours straight, it was by revolving this tag around my finger that I relieved my stress. When I was struck solving a programmatic errors it was by biting this tag I got the solutions in my mind. It was this tag that…”
“Sir, Thanks for letting me know. As I said you can keep it for free but submit the card. I think you can write a poem about you love for this tag.”

“Not just a poem but I think I should write a book about my experiences at this place.’

“Can I get it Sir?”

“When I have it written, I’ll send you a copy.”

“Sir! I mean the tag.”

I took the ID card out of the tag and gave it to her. She gave me a weird smile to suggest either me or my idea is stupid. I smiled back at her to suggest I was just kidding.

I came out of the HR block. I was exactly in the place from where I can see the entire campus. There was no one around to walk me till the gate for the very last steps that I am going to take in this campus. All my friends bid me farewell already and got back to their work to meet their respective deadlines. I took one good look around the campus.

I started walking towards the gate. With each step my head felt heavier and my thoughts became emotional. I saw the word SATYAM painted on one of the tallest buildings in the campus and at that moment the entire 4 years I spent in this company flashed before my eyes.

An Odyssey on Iron Track.

2010-03-18T03:37:00.000-07:00

The idea of traveling always creates an enthusiasm in me especially when it is long and when done by train. If you are a lazy south Indian, you rarely get a chance to travel by rail routes. You need to book at least a month in advance to get a confirmed ticket and you generally don’t tend to be so over enthusiastic to reserve a train ticket when you have all the major cities well connected by roads and quality state/private transport system.

The idea of a long train journey is never a deterrent for me as it is the case with many other people, except for one irritating factor i.e. the cleanliness or rather clean less ness of bogie toilets due to the poor maintenance of Indian railways. But still, one of the ways by which I attain peace of mind is by sitting near the window of a train, sipping hot tasteless tea, gorging my mouth with the cheap samosas, resonating my body to the rhythmical beats of the tracks made against the wheels of the bogie and savoring my eyes with the picturesque landscape of Indian country side.

In spite of my love for train travel I never got a chance to do it in last two years. My eager wait ended last week when I had to travel back and forth to Hyderabad from Kolkata for some personal work. I could have chosen to travel by air, but giving myself the excuse of saving the extra buck I chose to book the train in advance for one way trip to reach Hyderabad and then decided to come back by air.

The train from Kolkata to Hyderabad starts in the morning and will reach hyderbad in the morning of the next day. On the day of journey, I got up early, shaved to look particularly good for any pretty gals that might sit in my bogie and reached the station, an hour early, just to catch a glimpse of the Howrah Bridge and incredible cacophony at Howrah station. I was not disappointed as the Howrah bridge stood as majestic as it always stood on the banks of the Hoogly river and the crowd was just as noisy as I expected with many pretty faces dispersed among it.

I tried to enter into the iconic Victorian structure called Howrah station and saw huge crowds coming out of it. With some difficulty I pushed through the crowd to make way into the station. A pungent smell of mustard oil hit my nose indicating a lot of biharis coming out. A train from bihar must have just reached the Howrah station. Just as I reached my platform I saw a dark, short man, very enthusiastic, selling idlis. By his atypical white lungi and a horizontal mark on his forehead. I knew it was a tamialian. Not him but his tasty looking idlis drew me to him. Three months in kolkata, and not once did I eat a tasty idly. This was my chance to wallow the taste of some real South Indian idlis. I devoured half a dozen idlis in spite of not being hungry. Thought about paying the man a tip but people on platforms are not accustomed to it so just payed happily whatever amount he asked for.

Train came soon and the first thing that I did was to check the reservation chart. Not check the confirmation of my seat number but to check the seat numbers of all the gals seated around me. There was one padma mukherjee right next to me. I happily entered into the compartment and eagerly waited for a beutiful mukherjee to arrive, thinking of ways to provoke a conversation with her before the other male counter parts sitting around me. Soon all the seats surrounding me started filling up with guys but with nothing that can be called a Padma Mukherjee. After some impatient waiting I came out to check the chart again. I saw this

Padma Mukherjee Male 24 years.

What a sham? I felt like cursing the naming sense of Bengalis but realized fault is mine in getting over enthusiastic. I still had 24 hours of the enjoyable train journey left. I came back and stuck to my window seat. Within a few minutes I started sweating like a pig thanks to the incredible summer season of Kolkata. After almost wetting my Tshirt the train started. Then came along the track, the slums of Kolkata. As the train drove past the dingy shanties I made a point to observe as many as I can to get an insight into lives of people living in there. I saw emaciated kids running along the tracks and waving their hands so very happily. I felt a little lucky that my life is better provided with than theirs but soon realized that the happiness and the carefree ness with which they are living theirs is not something I have experienced in my life in a long time. I wanted to wave my hand to those kids but got scared of embarrassing myself among the fellow passengers.

Strange it is but what was I really scared of? The strangers, whose opinions are in no manner going to affect my life? I should have waved my hand because the happiness that am I going to give to the kids, if they see me, is incomparable to the embarrassment that I am going to create, if any, to my fellow passengers. I swore that next time I am not going to do the same.

As the train crossed the slums and streets, the city slowly faded away into lush green paddy fields of the country side.

(To be continued..)

Got a New One

2010-02-24T10:38:00.000-08:00

I have gotten jealous so many times when I saw my friends’ blogs. Not because of the content of their blog but the way their blog used to look. Most of the blogs on net just look amazing. It is because of the templates applied to the blog. Not just that, they have super cool widgets(non bloggers never mind..), and super cool formatting. After seeing such blogs, when I see my own, I always felt like spitting on it. My blog used to look so bad. The reason is I used to have a basic template provided by blogger.

If you are not a blogger you may not understand what a template is.For your better understanding and for no logical reason lets compare a blog with a cow. Lets say, If blog is a cow then template is the color you apply to the cow(Thinkin why the hell I would color a cow? just carry on reading.) and the udder of the cow is like the content of your blog.(Udder??!!@# don't know what it is? google it..) Not understanding a word of what I am saying. Just carry on reading this nonsense.

I knew I had to change the template. I wanted the best template in the world. I searched every nook and corner of the net for it. Not even one suited my requirement. Not matter how good the template was I could always find some kind of a defect. I rejected templates because of the following reasons,

1) The blog template should not contain pink color.

Pink color is girly and I hate it from the core of my masculine heart.A pink blog gives the same feeling that you are getting now by watching this pink cow. If you are a reader would you lilke to touch the udder of such blog? A dot of pink color is sufficient to reject the blog templarte.

2) The blog should not look girly.

No flowers, no delicate designs, no yellow, no fluorescent, no rainbow colors. If the blog looked remotely girly, it should be rejected. Look at the cows below(Still looking at the gal above? sexy ain't ahe?). you'll hate them the moment you see them and touching the udder is out of question.

3) No Dark colors either

Dark colors are best suited for punks’ and weirdos’ blogs.What is the use of such blogs if you cant even see the content of the blog propely like the udder of this cow in the above image. I could never read a dark colored blog more than 10 mins because it is very stressful to read. Also I write very long posts to give enough pain,so I did not want to stress my reader with the additional pain of seeing a dark background.

4) A blog should not contain too many decorative items.

A teddy bear on the top, a pussy cat on the side and a flower at the bottom. If a blog contains so many stupid things in it then the reader just can’t concentrate on the content of the blog properly. Tell me seriously, If you see such blog like this cow, Where will you focus? The ship at the top or the udder at the bottom.All I wanted is a nice header to catch the attention and a plain body to maintain the attention to the content.

5) Finally should look good.

Even if all the above criteria are satisfied, the blog on the whole, should finally look good to me. It should contain some X factor which I cannot explain here in words. Only if it has that then it would be selected.

With all the above conditions in my mind, I searched for about 2 years and browsed at least 10,000 templates to finally select the present one. Even with this one I found a number of faults after applying it. Here, I applied my knowledge of software engineering. I edited the HTML to change a couple of colors in the header and footer, changed font sizes of various texts and finally…finally……finally accepted it.

Phew.. What a tough job. Finding a right template is an art like finding a gal friend. After all this I am wondering did I apply the similar approach while hunting for a girl friend. No wonder I didn't get one but I managed to get template to my satisfaction. Finally, there is one thing that I
should not forget, content is what matters the most at the end of the day. I hope I dont forget that. So tell me me guys how is my new template.

Stop Sucking... Start Rocking...

2010-02-22T00:42:00.000-08:00

I am feeling totally miserable these days. Every aspect of my life has become a reason of my misery. For instance let’s focus on a few important reasons of my misery.

1) My Job sux!!

With my job life has become stagnant. My office is a boring place. I got no interesting work in office to do. I got no interesting company in office to spare my time for. All guys in my office floor suck. All gals in my office think I suck. There cannot be any growth in my career. Even If there is, I cannot grow along with it. I can’t do any thing about any thing. I feel totally helpless.

2) My Social life sux!!

What is social life? I have forgotten the answer to this question for a long time now. I work like 24*7 for 5 days and after that no energy is left to do anything on the weekend. A thing like gal friend could have given me some respite but that space in my life has been void for ages and I have become hopeless now. There is no color or vigor in my life.

3) My life is full of defects

I am full of Defects like,

I am not 6 feet tall.
I don’t have 6 pack abs.
I haven’t got Einstein’s brain.
I can’t talk as effectively as harsha bhogle.
I have earned a lot less than a million dollars.
I don’t have many good friends.

Everything about my present seems wrong. Even my past seems no better. When I close my eyes to think of things that influenced me in past, all I can recollect are the days that I have had failures, the days which could have been better, the chances I missed and the opportunities I lost. The extent of negativity in my life is astounding. For instance, when I think of the person who affected me the most during my teenage, it is not the gal I loved, not the guy with whom I was best friends with, but surprisingly, a guy who used to bully me in school.

To cut the long story short, I am an utter pessimist. If you show me a glass half full with water, I am bound to see that it’s not only half empty but also has a crack on its top and a dirt grain at its bottom. Finding imperfections all around and especially within me has become a well developed habit of mine. For so long, I have not only been finding void spaces within me and but also accruing them together to create a vast emptiness. So vast has this emptiness had grown into that I now feel absolutely hollow from within.
I held pessimism in every perspective of life till now.

Yes. I wrote it correctly and you read exactly what I wrote, ‘Till now’ is the last word of the above sentence. Some event happened that affected me greatly this morning. I saw a video on one of the social networking sites this morning. It is a about a physically challenged guy who has no limbs whatsoever. It was a story not about his disability but his regarding ability to do things in spite of his disability. I may fall short of words if I try to explain what exactly I saw in that video, so I am adding a link below so that you can see it for yourself.

Overwhelming isn’t it. Even after applying the most optimistic approach I was not able to give a single realistic reason as to why that kind of a disabled life is worth living. He has every reason to plunge into an abyss of depression and never to get up. After seeing this guy’s optimistic attitude I felt shameful of my own pessimistic approach towards life. He has every reason to be miserable but he is not. I have every reason to be happy but I am miserable. There may be many others like me.

I know I have to change. It sounds dramatic but I have to. And I also know it’s not easy. Situations like the above happen every now and then in our life which affect us but fail to produce any real effect out of our life. An event cannot change one’s life but can only give us the inspiration to change. This time I do not want this influence to be lost but a lasting one.

To begin with I have to change my perspective. Pessimism is something that comes naturally to me. I have adopted pessimism at a very early stage in my life when I was a child to make sense of failures that were happening in my life. Actually I have mistaken pessimism for realism. For every 100 times one tries, success can be achieved only once. To alleviate the disappointment of failure for the rest of 99 times, pessimists like me develop a natural mechanism to think that success cannot be achieved at all, and its not worth giving a try to taste failure every time. What pessimists fail to realize is that the happiness that success gives one time long lasts disappointment the failure gives hundreds of times. Everyone in this world who is successful has had his share of failures.

The first step I need to do is stop bickering at things I don’t have and look at things that I can be proud to have. I have never really looked at reasons that make my life worth living even when there are plenty. Let me see all the positive things of my life. Not that I don’t know them but I just fail to remember them at times when needed. Lets have a optimistic perspective and look back at things that I have discussed earlier.

1) My Job Rocks.

I am working in a technology that is highly paid and in most demand at the moment. Even though at rimes I don’t appreciate what I do, my boss is in complete love with my work and I am my boss’s favorite employee. On my job I am visiting new places and meeting new people and having plenty of occasions where I am having fun.

2) My social life rocks.

A few of the major problems that I face in my social life are,

1. I do not have a gal friend

2. I do not have a gal friend

3. I do not have a gal friend

4. I do not have a gal friend

It would be very unfair for me to bicker on this part. Actually I have never sincerely made an attempt to love anyone. Since the kind of utter pessimist I was, I always had tried to find some defect in every gal that came close to me and repelled her before she can lend her heart. It’s absolutely true that I haven’t loved any one till now but I have surely crushed a few hearts that wanted my love. I am not as innocent as I pretend to be on this blog in so many various posts.

Apart from this fact I do not think there is any other problem. I make friends very fast and get along with them very well in no time. Except my worry that I do not have a gal friend my social life absolutely rock with parties and hangouts. I have some problem keeping in touch with my old friends. I have so many old friends who valued my friend ship but I haven’t equally valued theirs for a long time. I hope they all forgive me for being such an ass. I haven’t realized their value until now as I have come on the verge of losing many of them. Still I have a chance as lot of my old friends can still take me back as not one of them is such a big ass as I am.

3) I have no defects but all virtues.

I am an inch taller than aamir khan.
I haven’t got Einstein’s brain, neither did Einstein had a brain like that of mine.
Harsha bhogle may not dance as well as I do
I feel I am worth earning a million dollars some day.
I have got a few best friends who can do anything for me.
Etc.

Now I will see how I can be miserable any longer. I am learning to look at the right reasons to rock my life and ignore those that make my life suck. I realized that not until I write things down somewhere, I do not actually do them. For example, I wanted to give-up smoking for a long time and not until I wrote that in this blog, I never seriously tried to give smoking up. Now I have almost lost the urge to smoke and have become a non smoker for life hope fully. Let’s also hope I will become the kind of optimist that I always wanted to become and start rocking

The day that changed my life.

2010-02-05T10:54:00.000-08:00

Today when I was debating with my friends on the current hot topics of regionalism and religion I rememberd a tale that happened in some part of life which changed my point of view. It happened almost a decade back when I was studying in a boys hostel. Let me narrate this tale to you,

The boys hostel in which I was studying in had a very strict schedule. We were hardly given any time for ourselves. It was so strict that we were not allowed to do even things like playing cricket or watching T.V. We had no communication whatsoever with the outside world except that we had a small chance of glancing at the news paper at 8 AM in the morning only for 1/2 hr. There were at least 200 people in the building and there was only one copy of news paper. Everyone's main area of concern in the news paper was only the movie and sports section unless there was some major news.Rarely once in a month do I used to get the chance of glancing at the paper for a few minutes.

One day after breakfast when I went near the room where news paper kept I saw at least 50 people grouped around the Newspaper and one guy was loudly reading the news for every one. Some thing like is not bound to happen in the hostel since we were not allowed to be in groups for long time. I knew it was a very major news. I heard the guy shouting about a burned train, kar sevaks, Godhar, 50 people killed. Without understanding I asked a friend of mine standing there as to what has happened. He replied in a burst of rage,

"Muslims killed Hindus".
I asked in a shocking tone, "Where?".
He was silent and did not care to reply back.Some one else replied,

"Muslims killed 50 hindus in godhra, gujarat. They burned them in a train."

I did not under stand when some stupid people killed some people why the religion was dragged in. Not able to tolerate the looks the people were giving I immediately left the place and went back to the classroom.

The next day when I was passing through the newspaper section there were same number of people as there were yesterday. I saw the same friend of mine. He stopped and asked me,
"Have you read the news paper today?".
"No. Why?"
"Hindus killed 100 muslims yesterday."

There was an expression of evil and contentment in his eyes. I knew what he meant. Yesterday it felt like people killing some people but now it felt very different. I looked at the news paper. I saw charred dead bodies. It moved me in a way I cannot explain and the especially the rejoinder felt rather hurtful. I immediately stared leaving the place. This friend of mine started shouting to other guy so loud that I can hear,

"You know yesterday they killed 50, today we killed 100."

(To be continued..)

I am in doubt, whether continuing this story is a good idea. I feel I should not discuss religious things on this humor blog sine it can hurt sentiments. If atleast 5 people agree or disagree first, through commenting to this post. I'll either delete or continue the post

I give up. Finally...

2010-02-03T10:22:00.000-08:00

Last night my parents dropped a bomb shell through their phone call, yet again.

“Beta! Send one recent and a bit decent photo graph of yours. Not that monkey posed sleazy photographs from one of your social networking sites”

Not their first attempt though, but they were never successfully in striking the target. But this time I feel they struck the target right at its core. Not that their aim was any better than their previous attempts but this time the target moved itself to be struck by their bombshell. Can’t decipher a word of what I am saying? My parents want a photograph of mine for the bride search to get me married.

The first time they asked me, I couldn’t believe I was old enough to get married. Actually I don’t know if it were the order or disorder of my genes that I look much younger than I actually am. Looking at my face in my mirror I wondered, if I get married now, could some one sue me for child marriage? Also I felt, I had a great way ahead of me to advance in my career. I thwarted their proposals, point blank.

Very soon they asked me a second time. That time I no longer looked like a child any more. But still, I wanted to enjoy my youth. I perceived the marriage to be a destroyer of youth like any other bachelor would and strongly believed that one should surrender to it only when there is not enough youth left in one. So I decided to enjoy my youth in as many ways as I can.

Rarely do my decisions materialize into actual reality. To understand my plight, one must dig down into the flash back a bit deeper. Let me present you with some data to interpret.

Age Status Reason

Age	Status	Reason
5	Single	Did not know how to get committed
10	Single	Hated gals. Did not want to get committed.
15	Single	Loved gals. But gals hated me for hating them earlier.
20	Single	Thought career is more important to gals.
2 months to 25	Still Single.	Still do not know how to get committed.

Until fifteen, I did not feel the need to get love from some somebody. Once I entered into the adulthood and understood that a man’s sole purpose is to win a women’s heart, since that day I have been searching for love. I longed for the first first kiss and wanted sleepless nights but I got only the later for the lack of the former. What a terrible life it has been.

Added to the misery when I was in my teens where guys and gals are supposed to understand the equations of love, I was thrown up in an all boys hostel to under stand the equations of arithmetic. Worse still, in engineering where guys and gals practice the mechanics of love, I choose Mechanical engineering and was romancing the machines instead due to the lack of gals in this stream. My idea of love was only to look at the gals of other branches and get my heart beating. I saw and saw but did nothing worthwhile all my engineering.

Then came a chance to change my life. My job; I was placed in two companies, one mechanical and the other software. Frustrated as I was with my branch I choose to leave it and get a colorful life of a software engineer. Such a big mistake it was, I did not realize it until then. Earlier I was just frustrated with my personal life but after getting into software I also started getting frustrated with my professional life.

What happened to love one might ask? I fell in love a lot of times but the funny thing nobody fell in love with me. Failing completely on personal front I concentrated on professional career. I started moving forward but my life started moving backwards. I started condoling myself by telling that love is a pain even though I knew life is a pain without it. Even if it is, I am sure it would be a pain so sweet that I would be more than happy endure it. Devoid of love I searched for happiness in various things, smoking being one of them. I may have got pleasure at times and a thrill at another but nothing lasted so long as to give me happiness that I wanted.

I am frustrated, annoyed and dejected with my bachelor life. People say that some of the happiest moment that they have ever spent was during their bachelor life. I will not say that I did not have my share of fun moments as bachelor but they were not worth the misery I had to undergo due to the lack of love. And the call I got last night seems to me the only way to change the things around. I accepted their proposal to get married.

I always dreamt of doing alove marriage and it’s a bit ironic if I will not be able to do so. But the good thing is I am prepared to tie the knot not because I got enough of love but to give enough of it to somebody. I am still not sure if this decision of mine will give me all the happiness that I ever expected but I’ll be pleased to give someone the happiness that they never expected.

A few of you might be thinking If I am not being practical in my decision to get married at such an young age since it might affect my career. But it is the only practical thing for to do for a person of my kind.

So I now give up any hopes of falling in love any more and am preparing myself to get engaged soon so that I can at least embrace this chance to make someone fall in love with me. I hope some one that is going to come in my life very soon might change it only for good. Kindly pray for me.

P.S(Only for a beautiful gal): I know it cannot be, but in case you are deeply in love with me and do not want to lose me at any rate, kindly contact my parents with you recent photograph and biodata. Hoping to see you on our marriage.

P.P.S: I might be kidding all the way through. Haha.

Tomar Shonar Bangla

2010-02-01T11:06:00.000-08:00

After my last article you must now very be curious to know of what has become of my habit. No cigarettes yet. Really!! I can swear on the thing that is of utmost importance to me and that is ‘you’, the reader of my blog. So I cannot lie. Really yaar!

Do you wonder sometimes, why you are reading this blog in spite of all its stupidity? Is it me or is it the way I write. When I asked this question to one of my friend he said, “It’s obviously you, stupid! You under stand how stupid you are and can write it very well”. After this I tried to understand why do people love to know about the stupidity going in others life? Because it is fun to laugh at the stupidity of others than at one’s own. If I can make others laugh with what I write, what more I can expect from my blog. (You flattered eh?)

I have not informed most of you that I am presently in kolkata for a short trip of 3 months. What a city it is! Beautiful! Can you guess the reason? Haha. Gals. Since I came from south, where the ratio of pretty gals to not so pretty gals is 1: infinite, I was dumbstruck to find the ratio here being the reciprocal of the quantity that is prevalent in the south. I also came to know that all the major beauty product companies use fair gals from north for their ad campaigns, who do not use any fairness creams owing to their natural fairness to lure the gals in the south to use the same. Gals here never get dark and the gals in south never get fair and the beauty products kept on selling. What a concept of management!! In spite of this understanding, I always wonder why I can’t crack CAT.

People in the city are much disciplined I must say. Every one follows the traffic rules or any rules for that matter. For the very first time I understood that zebra crossing is meant for people to walk and not for your bike to stop between the stripes. People are so disciplined that they stand in a queue even at liquor shops to buy alcohol.

People here are foodies. Southies eat non-veg food only on Sunday but here people eat non veg food on all days except any one day(on which they do puja) in the whole week. People go to fish market instead of vegetable market every day. They know more varieties of fish than the varieties of vegetable. And the food is dead cheap here. A good meal will cost you not more than 25 bucks given you do not care for the ambience. This is the one place where I found that food at street vendors is better than the food mutlicusine restaurant in all respects.

I also found the people of kolkata very friendly. But beware of one thing, if a Bengali is shouting at you, don’t take any offence; it means he is actually trying to be friendly. It’s just that they express the candor of their feelings in their voice. To express your gratitude you must have to shout back even louder, other wise they think you are being hostile. I did that mistake and I suggest you to never do the same to any Bengali. Like a Bengali? Blow his ears with your gratitude before he can blow yours.

Friendliness of the Bengalis is irrespective of their sex. In south, if an unknown beautiful stranger of a gal starts a conversation with you at a bus stop, it can only be in your dream. If the same happens here, it means you could be talking to a bengali. Initially when it happened to me I could not understand whether it were my looks or my hairstyle but when I looked myself in the mirror, I knew my smartness had no role to play.

I have been here only for two weeks and it is very less a time to understand the city and its people. I tried to pen down my funny experience as a South Indian in the city of kolkata and hope my bengali friends take it casually as no offence is meant.

Tale of a Smoker 2.

2010-01-31T11:10:00.000-08:00

Inspired by my own tale (Or rather sacred), I prepared to give up smoking finally. It’s just my 11th day but it really seems like eleven years since I gave up. It’s a torture I am going through. My brain is now divided into two parts. I know it’s already divided into two but each part is acting in conflict with the other part. The right part of my brain says, “Zabi!! Don’t dare smoke” and the wrong part of my brain says “Do hell with everything. Go for it. Pleasure should all be yours.”

A long time back I read this alchemist quote “when you really want something, the entire universe conspires in helping you achieve it.” But in case of a cigarette it is the other way around and it forces me to correct Paulo with, “when you really, really don’t want something, the entire universe conspires in forcing you achieve it.” Everything around me, in someway, puts a thought of smoking a cigarette in my mind. Earlier the only thing that caught my attention when walking on the road was a gal with a nice ass. Now it’s a piece of cigarette, beedi or any thing that is made of, or related to tobacco. No matter where a smoker is standing, he becomes the only thing that my eyes can see, and when I see him smoke, I get this irresistible feeling to do the same. Disgusted by my weakness I resolved not to look anywhere but down towards the road. Even so, the only thing that I see on the road are ‘the butts of smoked cigarettes’ and they too tend to cause the same feeling.

This craziness was not just confined to outside environment. Even in the office or in home the feelings struck me with same intensity. When I am reading a book at home, if any character of the story in the book smokes a cigarette, my mouth opens up and throat dries up for the want of a puff. In office, when a colleagues goes out to smoke and comes back, my nose starts to work like dog’s nose, and with expanded nostrils, try to extract any minute fragrance (to a smoker it is) in the air surrounding the colleague. One colleague wondered if it is his axe spray and retorted that he is going to sue the company as it was not attracting gals as claimed but guys.

My troubles were just beginning. To put an end to this I felt I should come up with different ideas. My initial ideas were pretty stupid. I thought I should try drinking for a change to keep my mind off smoking and once the addiction for smoking lessens I can stop drinking. But very soon I realized, I might then get addicted to drinking, and again to suppress the addiction of drinking I might try doping or worse. I understood the extent of stupidity in it and the dropped the whole idea altogether.

After that I came up with something sane of an idea like studying the hazards of smoking in detail to scare myself off the habit. I visited a website and found following to be the hazard of smoking,

1. High Blood Pressure

2. Heart Disease

3. Pulmonary Disease

4. Vascular Diseases

5. Stroke

6. Laryngeal Polyps

7. Impotence

8. Wrinkling of Skin

9. Mouth Disease

10. Respiratory Infections

11. Smoking and Ulcer

After casually glancing it once I realized some change in the list. The list suddenly changed like this,

1. High Blood Pressure

2. Heart Disease

3. Pulmonary Disease

4. Vascular Diseases

5. Stroke

6. Laryngeal Polyps

7. Impotence!!!! #%&*

8. Wrinkling of Skin

9. Mouth Disease

10. Respiratory Infections

11. Smoking and Ulcer

After seeing this, I immediately took a printout and stuck it my hall. I want to stuck this in office to but there are a lot of smokers who might take offence. No matter how unstable I get with the thought of smoke the moment I see that, my heart pounds and every thought of smoking cigarette just stops. I now think that this can only work.

I still go through torture, but I have to. All I wanted was to become the master of my life but became a slave of this habit. It cannot be so any more. I have to stop it and I know I can. For all those, who support my cause leave ur comment for this post. It can supportive, sarcastic, humorous or careless but in some way should support my determination. Please guys!! Help me.

Tale of a Smoker….

2010-01-28T11:13:00.000-08:00

DisClaimer: Don't personify all the things mentioned . Contains fiction at a few places.

I distinctly remember when I smoked the cigarette for the first time. The reason for it being very stupid and it’s not exactly a reason but more of an excuse, I might say. It was just to prove a point that I now have became the master of my life (I felt then that I was leading my life rather by circumstances and not in a way that I wanted) and am able enough to do whatever I want. I might have tried any thing sane to prove the point but me being insane choose the stupidest thing that I ever could. Also It was a desperate moment in my stressful life of a software engineer, and I had this weirdest imagination that by doing so I might somehow become able enough to evade the helplessness of the life that I was in. But all it has ever done to me, was to leave me in a helplessness of an utter kind.

Even the very first time that I smoked, I got no pleasure or relief of any sort but numbness. A numbness followed by displeasure and an intense cough. A feeling that I cannot precisely describe lasted on the mind for a few minutes. You must be smoker to understand the feeling that I am talking about. This is neither a good nor a bad feeling but definitely a peculiar one. So peculiar as to one might want to try it another time.

Obviously, I tried it another time and many times after that, just to re-experience the peculiarity of numbness on the mind. I always expected to get more of the cigarette before I smoked but got less after, and feeling disappointed smoked it again to get more of it the next time. I fell into a vicious cycle of smoking and smoking more. Cigarettes work with people because they explore this exact stupidity of human mind and there is no definite cure for this or any kind of stupidity. Before I can understand all this I have fallen prey to this stupidity. Even though I was getting addicted I never felt that I might be getting addicted to smoking since it always left me in an illusion that the habit was always under my control when it was precisely the other way around. “What is in it”, I used to say, “After all, I am the master of my life. So when I have the power to start it then I have the very power to stop it.” Even so, I have never realized that stopping the habit has never crossed my mind in a year after my starting it.

Then one day some something happened that made me start realizing how worse the things can get with this habit. A friend of mine who used to smoke along with me took a medical, leave only to be seen after two months with bandages all over his chest. Because of smoking his veins or arteries in the area around his chest got blocked and had be cut through by a surgery to unblock. (I didn’t exactly ask him whether if they were veins or arteries cuz his face was so pale that time that I did not mind asking him what precise pipes have been cut through his body). Since I saw him, I too started feeling a blocked vein in some or the other part of my body. At First I thought it was all some psychological hallucination (I am in a habit of hallucinating a lot of things) and kept smoking but when the unusual activity started spreading from veins to other parts of the body. I then started feeling a little something in the lungs. It was not bad though but also not good but a little weird numbness. Instead of considering it a danger I complacently considered it something regular.
(FYKI the guy whose veins have been cut through resumed smoking after 3 months.)

I took a wakeup call when I came to know that danger is not just confined to the pair of my lungs but to a sacred pair of the precious something. Thanks to a program on national geographic channel on hazards of smoking, I got to know the worst that smoking can do to a man (not a woman to be more precise). As soon as I have known it I did not wait for symptoms to show this time. I wanted to stop it for once and for all. My determination was so powerful that it lasted an eternity short of an perpetuity. In other words, its just a day.

But this time smoking was different. With every cigarette I smoked there a came a lots of anxiety followed by guilt. I started giving lame excuses to smoke to smother my restlessness. Every time I thought this is going to be my last cigarette, very soon it became the last but one cigarette.

As I was going through this emotional atyachar, the year of 2009 was coming to an end. I heard this concept of New Year resolution and got overwhelmed by it. I thought it to be the only way to put an end to my habit. I made a strong resolution for it and doubled my intake of cigarettes during the month of December thinking I will not be smoking any cigarettes from next year. Exactly on the 31st as the clock was about to struck 12, I smoked which was going to be one more last cigarette for the rest of my life.

How good it could have been if the above line would have been the end of this tale but unfortunately it isn’t. Exactly after 15 days I smoked 5 cigarettes at an occasion and 5 more cigarettes after that. Again I am back to the vicious cycle of guilt and started looking new excuses to stop the habit. I know this is all stupid but just to understand how stupid I am being, I wrote this article. I want to see if my understanding of the stupidity of this habit can help me quitting. Wish me luck friends.

(I haven’t smoked in last 5 days. Pray for me that I smoke no more.)

A Truth of Life

2009-12-25T05:55:00.000-08:00

What is Life?

Well, the answer that I might give to this question actually depends on my mood. Sometimes it seems to me like a wonderful journey and quite often it does not. Right now it feels like a stinking pile of shit which is getting slinkier by every passing moment. Just felt like unloading this pile of filthy slime of my life somewhere. Then I remembered about this blog I created. Sorry readers (if there are anybody still left), kindly bear with me and this stinking article. This is the reason why I am back to blogosphere, to let my frustrations out.

Since my last article I took a very long break. Where I was gone, somebody might ask

No where!! Absolutely nowhere….

Intellectually, professionally, personally I am just at the same position that I used to be a year back. I actually thought I would take a break from everything else, and will give a plenty of time to myself to rejuvenate my body and mind. But the thing that I realized is I am not a goddamn Buddha to get some sort of enlightenment through the abstention of worldly activities. That is why I am back.

A truth I learned through my behavior for past few months,

Result of doing nothing is simply nothing….

Well it is that a simple truth of life. Some people take their plain commonsense to understand it, some take a life time. For me it took a part of my life time to understand it. I hope with this unforeseen enlightenment of mine I hope to flush all the stink that has accumulated in my life for my inactivity and to revert back on this wonderful journey called life.

Legend of a Loser

2009-10-16T01:00:00.000-07:00

I am writing this article on the auspicious occasion marking the loss of my 4th mobile phone. It should not come to you as a surprise since this is not the 1st, 2nd or not even the 3rd but 4th Mobile Phone that I lost. I don’t suspect that there can be a loser more pathetic than me. If you find one please let me know. I will at least feel a bit better for not being the biggest loser I have ever come across.

God gives people a variety of problems to deal with for the rest of their lives; for it was amnesia. All my life, I have been losing all kinds of things from pens to cricket bats, rings to watches, match boxes to suitcases and the list goes on to become pretty big. I have lost a considerable part of my family fortune for the amnesic traits of my dysfunctional brain. My poor mom tried a variety of treatments from feeding me all kinds of nutritious nuts to psychological medication to cure my amnesia but instead they acted on my intestines causing me constant constipation throughout my child hood.

Name any kind of thing that a guy should have with him, the chances are ripe that I might have lost it at some or other point of my life. Size doesn’t matter nor does its importance; I have lost them all with out any prejudice towards a particular item. I also lost all the gals that I ever loved in my life so far, although it has nothing to do with my amnesia. All this makes me feel I am the Biggest Loser that life can make of someone.

I don’t exactly know how it all started but many rumors are in circulation through out my neighborhood. Of all theories, the one proposed by my mother comes close to being accurate. According to her, once when we were traveling to delhi by train, during one of the amavasya nights which is considered as the darkest of all nights , when there was a thunderous storm which was trembling all the surroundings with lightening for which our train compartment started shaking mysteriously and that too exactly in the middle of the night, everybody heared some loud voice which was caused when I, a boy of 3 yrs old, popped out of the upper berth of the compartment and fell down on the floor, head first, with a loud thud. Every one feared I am dead but luckily I escaped with a mystical memory loss problem that effects both my long term and short term memory alike in uncanny ways. This is far more worse a problem than aamir khan had in Ghazini. After that, my mom says that my amnesia actually started.

According to her, the very first thing that I started losing, way before I started losing my mobile phones, were my under wears. Every day she used to dress me up in a nice under wear and a pair of knickers on it and leave me in the neighbor hood. I used to come back in the evening with my knickers on but the under wear missing inside, mysteriously. Don’t dare wondering if same is the case now since thankfully I don’t lose them anymore; its mobile phones now.

After that it was the turn of my pens. If all the pens I ever lost during my school days are recovered and arranged in a straight line they’ll circle this planet at least twice. Since I was putting a big hole in my family earnings for buying pens my dad made a deal with the a local pen manufacturing company and brought home a big carton of cheap pens each worth 50 paisa each. Even if I lost 2 pens a day, monthly bill wouldn’t reach Rs. 30 per month. Fortunately that carton lasted almost all my school life. Once they were over I started stealing a pens from my class mates when ever I lost one. Interestingly I observed that stolen items stayed longer with me than the items I brought with my own money. I don’t know the reason but if I find it out someday, you’ll surely read Zabi’s ‘Eternal Law for the Eternity of Items’ gets published somewhere.

In my school life, along with pens I lost lunch boxes, cricket bats, My school bag one time, A titan watch gifted my father( after which he passed an ultimatum that Never shall a watch be placed on my wrist again), innumerable notebooks(including notebooks of other pupils ), Just one shoe when I went swimming in a pond and god knows what. The legend still continues with mobile phones getting sacrificed to my losing appetite.

Following is my mobile bill so far,

1st Mobile: 14,000 INR

2nd Mobile: 14,000 INR (this is the stupidest decision of my life)

3rd Mobile: 7,000 INR

4th Mobile: 1,500 INR

5th Mobile: (yet to come, but I am sure it will go too)

You must be wondering why I am telling you this. I feel incredibly bad when I lose an item and feel like the biggestloser. I have realized that there is no use whatsoever in worrying about the things that got lost. The better thing to do is to have a sense of humor and make others laugh about it. Hope you enjoyed. You’ll hear from me again, when I am to lose one more mobile phone which I am sure will happen soon if you all keep faith in me. Till the bye bye. Take care, shabbkhair.

P.S: By the way, If any one wants to sell me a 2nd,3rd,4th........e.t.c hand mobile phone below 100 bucks, please leave your contact details in the comment box in this blog..(No warranty is required)

My Best Freind: Chapter 5

2009-08-22T11:45:00.000-07:00

Click below for the previous chapters..

Intro & Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4

(contd..)

Chapter 5

As vibrations were getting louder, my heartbeat was getting faster. The only person who got happy listening to those vibrations was my mother.

She said cheerfully, “Your daddy is coming early today. Not much work at bank, I suppose.”

About my dad, He is not only a bank manager but also the de-facto head master of our school. He used to take a few classes early in the morning and would generally preside over assembly session before leaving for the bank. It was he who actually used to beat students for unifrom in the assembly. Entire school use to dread him. All teachers used to hate him because he had rules as stringent for teachers as he had for students. He was an efficient manager. Teachers still hated him because employees always hate proficient bosses. That’s management funda. Just as I hate my boss in the office.

About those vibrations that caused dread were coming from his Honda, a 2-wheeler. They kind of acted as the bell in the cat’s neck and used to warn us in advance. However, Honda is a smooth bike but those brassy vibrations, were a result of my monkey business. It is a funny story. I was taught in a science class a year before, that the smoke coming form automobiles is bad and causes pollution. I brainstormed over the issue and came up with a brilliant idea of preventing pollution. I felt the immediate urge to test my intellect and then saw my dad’s parked bike. I wanted to stop the pollution by acting right on the source of it, and in that bike as I figured out, it was the exhaust pipe. I immediately filled it completely with all the sand and stones I could find and felt immense pride of being a genius who has devised a panacea for the global problem of air pollution.

My dad went mad when he got to know about my endeavor. Severely reprimanding me, He arduously cleaned up all the muck out of that pipe. He later calmed down after the bike got started without a glitch and started emanating rather cool noises which were quite rhythmic as if they were made by a Bullet or Harley. He always had this dream of driving a bullet like the moviestars of his time did, which unfortunately cannot be fulfilled owing to his low height. However, thanks to me, he can now at least ride something that sounds like a bullet. He never got the silencer replaced and took as much pleasure emanating those vibrations from the bike as we dreaded listening to them.

He was a stern disciplinarian at home too. He had devised a set of strict rules for us to follow in the house. After school, 2 hours of play, 2½ hours of study, ½ hour of English news and finally 1 hour of our favorite T.V Programs. That was the time table which is to be followed strictly on all days with out exception and any disregard of it could attract severe punishments. My mother was a bit lenient on the time table and used to let us enjoy when my father was not around. Mothers, they are all like that, so nice.

On that day my father came home a bit early and at that too on time when we’re supposed to do study according to his timetable. I was doing anything but study since I am anything but adherent of rules.

Finally, the vibrations stopped, so did my heart. I jumped off the sofa to shut the T.V. off. My sister opened her bag and spread a layer of books on the floor just to compose the ambiance of room so as to look like we’re studying. A devious little mind I should say. I looked around for my school bag. It was nowhere to be found. I scratched my head for a while trying to remember where I had hurled the poor thing last time. I recalled that it was still in the school in my class room. I some times left it in school because it didn’t matter as my house was inside the school and my class was just about 20 steps away from the hall. Anyhow, I didn’t have enough time to get the bag without being caught by my father. Then came a feeling that some thing dreadful was about to happen.

My sister already started mugging something loudly. In spite of her noise all my concentration was on those foot steps which came closer and closer. That door would open any time and a slap could land on my face. At the nick of time I had a brilliant idea. Just as the door was about to open, I took one of my sister’s book lying on the floor and started mugging it as if it were mine. My sister gave that threatening look that she usually gives me, when she is about to blow me up. Ignoring her I started reading louder and louder without even understanding a bit of what I was reading.

The door opened and my dad came in. He gave us a smile displaying his satisfaction at our parody. I got over enthusiastic at his smile and started mugging even louder. Every thing was in order except that a 6th class student was reading a 3rd class science book. I was reading something like this,

“Animals have four legs, we have only two legs.

Animals don’t cook their food we do.

Animals got no brains, we do…….bla bla”

It was a comparison between humans and other mammals which is too primitive for a 6th class student to read. My sister and my mother started gaping in disbelief.

My father shouted, “What the hell are you reading?”

Until my father shouted, I did not realize that some thing was wrong in what I was reading. I wish I knew what I was mugging but I had no idea. I took a look at the front page to find any label my sis has attached but there was none. I remained silent.

Now it was my sister’s chance to shine before my dad and she rarely misses an opportunity especially if it were over me. I knew she would definitely love cracking me up. No prizes for guessing that she is my dad’s favorite.

My sister said, “That is my book daddy. Bhaiyya didn’t even get his bag from the school.”

My mother was watching all this from behind. She started laughing listening to my sister. Not that the situation was funny but I knew she laughed to simulate my dad’s sense of humor so that he gets cozy enough to spare me off the punishment he might be thinking of giving, as indicated by his anger at that moment. Thankfully, a smile came on his face, as I was praying for, which lightened my heart and created a ray of hope. For a second, I felt like it was the sweetest smile that I have ever seen on my dad’s face. Before I could show my 32, oops!! Sorry.. 24 teeth expressing my delight, I got a warm, tight and strong..

PHAT!!!

My Best Friend: Chapter 4

2009-08-17T03:19:00.000-07:00

My Best Friend:

Click below for the previous chapters..

Intro
Chapter 2
Chapter 3

Chapter 4

“That gal, she is panni aka pranitha. She is……”

I took a moment’s pause. I just wanted to say, she was stupid too, but that didn’t come out of my mouth. Reason? There is this thing called conscience which acted on me, She was the most talented gal and was the actual topper of the class and was supposed to be the leader of the class but I got the job only because she gave it up. I don’t know the reason for her renunciation, but she must have regretted her renouncement after tasting my impulsive leadership skills.

I told raghav, “She is my biggest enemy in the class. She acts as if she is a leader to all gals, and always incites them to do only one thing, hating me. So I hate her back and so should you if you want to be my friend."

Well, well. There wouldn’t have been a person wilier than me in the class at that moment. I don’t know if panni ever incited other gals against me but I surely did incite other guys against her many a time and was doing exactly that, right at that moment.

Raghav asked me skeptically, “but Why? She looks O.K to me?”

Oh boy. She didn’t just look OK, She was awesome. She was so beautiful that whenever I think of her now that K.G rhyme plays in my head,

“Chubby cheeks, dimpled chin

Rosy lips, teeth within

Curly hair, very fair

Eyes are blue. lovely too.”

She had all those things except for the blue eyes which are of course no match for her beautiful, round & dark eyes, which havenin them, so deep a meaning that you’d like to get lost searching for it. She was one of those beautiful gals who came inches close to me only in terms of physical distance. but stayed miles away my heart. all because of my stupidity that I showed in various forms. Here it was pre-pubertal stupidity and lack of essential hormones that might have incited better feelings for her other than hatred. At that moment all i did was to hate her like most young guys do until they become a little mature to understand the worth of a beautiful gal.

I hollered at raghav, “What do you mean why ? Did I not make it clear to you? Do you want to be my friend or not?”

“Ohhh ..K. got it, my dear friend.”

“That’s what. So we are friends huh?”

“Sure.”

Well, that was my way of making friends. Any class mate can either be my friend or be tortured till he becomes my friend. Since raghav was smart he chose the first option.
I showed him a sign of my thumbs up which was customary in our school to show it to a person whom you want to be friends with. It seems he did not quite understand what it was about as he was new to the place. He just stared at it dumbly. I signaled him with my eyes towards my thumb.

Not quite understanding what I meant, he asked, “What?”

I asked, “Friends?”

He held my thumb tightly and said, “Yes, friends.”

Looking at this seenu, the dumb fella, started laughing with weird hissing noises and said, “The new guy doesn’t know how to make friends.”

Listening to this I replied to Raghav, “See, if u wanna be friends with me, you too have to show your thumb. In case if you don’t wanna be friends then you can show your little finger. But we become enemies then,which obviously is not good for you.”

(Don’t laugh. I know every one out there must have followed such stupid customs)

He showed his thumb and I showed mine and then we both shouted together,

“Friends.”

That’s how our friendship started.

……………………………………………………………………………………….

I was siting in home watching some stupid agriculural program on doordarshan that evening showing how to raise pigs. We did not have the cable connection as my parents thought T.V would spoil me as I watched all senseless programs on doordorshan and they were sure that I'd loose my sense If I had better programs to watch.

“What the hell was it that you did in school today? Without a tie, with out manners and all reckless while talking to me, your school principal, especially in front of those parents? How can I punish other students for school uniform and discipline when my own son doesn’t care about having them?

“Maaaa, did you forgot telling me that I am your student only in school, not here?. Please don’t talk about things that happened in school. Now get me that pudding you are desperately trying to cook from last ½ hr”

“OK. Fine then. Get yourself some nice bamboo canes tomorrow. I shall come to your class and will treat you exactly like one of my undisciplined students.”

To this I replied meekly and sweetly, “Sorry mamma, please don’t do that. I’ll be careful next time.”

“Careful? About what? Wearing a uniform or not getting caught?”

“Wearing a uniform, of course.”

(Big lie again)

My mom asked me, “How was that new kid in school?”

“He is good ma. We became friends already. I think he’ll do great.”

“I saw his old school report. He did very well there and he is an intelligent student. It seems there will be some tough competition among you, panni and that new boy for quarterly exams next month.”

I got a little disappointed fearing that there can be a trouble to my leadership from Raghav. But I solaced my self, bearing in mind the fact that he has to catch up at least 2 months of syllabus,he has missed. I can respite my foxy skills confidently and can be nice to him for a while, until he was actually proven a threat.

I heard some vibrations coming very far away from down the street. I looked at the watch. It was not the time yet. I felt, may be it’s not exactly what I m thinking. My sister, who was cheerfully playing outside till then, came rushing in with a terror stricken face. She tried to speak something but she was running short of breath. She mumbled something.

I shouted loudly, “What?”

She was breathing heavily and couldn’t answer.

“Is he coming?”

She started moving her head up and down, unable to speak.

The instant I understood her,

“My Heart came out of my mouth.”

(to be continued..)

My Best Friend: Chapter 3

2009-08-14T05:05:00.001-07:00

Note: Read the chapter's below, to get a lead of the story.

Intro
Chapter 2

Chapter 3

I was skeptical if this was the guy aaya was talking about since he was quite older than me; at least by 2 years. I went towards the office room. I heard a shout from the office room, “Where the hell is your school tie? And why is the top button of your shirt open?”

“Sorry Mom, errr.. I mean Madam.”

Yeah yeah. My mom is our school principal and obviously I am the son of the school principal. Being her son I did not gain any favoritism from her. Instead, I got all the unnecessary attention. Smallest of My mistakes were actively noticed and littlest of my actions were thoroughly evaluated. But I had my ways of taking advantage of being her son without her knowing. My mischievous deeds will follow through the rest of the chapters.

“How many times I have to remind you that I am your mom only in the house not in school. Address me only as madam here. O.K”

I replied, “Yes Mom, I mean madam.”

“Where the hell is your tie?”

Actually I and my friends used to wear the tie only during school assembly when the inspection for the school uniform is done. we used to take off our school ties and put them back in our pockets after school assembly. We wanted to look different from other kids and wanted to be considered as rebels in the school. We considered it cool. A rebel in my own school, how stupid was I. As if that were not enough, I always kept one of the shirt buttons open to look different from my friends just to look like their leader.

I replied, “I removed it during intermission and forgot to wear it back Madam”

“Why do you have to remove it in the first place while you are still in school?”

“We had to play the game of kabaddi Madam.”

“In a 15 minutes break? How the hell can you play even one full game of kabaddi?”

“We’ll play only a part of the game in interval madam. We’ll continue the rest of the game in lunch break.”

lies, lies and more lies, I never gave up telling them until others gave up asking questions.

My mom aka principal shouted back,” Intermission is only for going to “pass” not to play. “

“What can we do madam. We don’t have a period for games like other schools do.”

“I think I have to cut short your intermission break to 5 minutes. It’s long enough to serve the purpose it is intended for and no more. And also, I never want to see you without a tie again. This is my last warning to you. No excuses will be tolerated again.”

I took the tie out of pocket. I actually never opened the knot so that I can wear it back as soon as any strict teacher demands it. So it was easy wearing the tie back.

“Meet Raghav. He’ll be your new class mate. He shall sit with you today. Introduce him to the class. Give him the list of text books and note books he has to buy for all subjects. Make sure teacher enters his name in the attendance roll. Also give all the information he needs to know about the rules of the school. And Raghav. This is Zabi, Leader of the 6th class. As a leader of the class it is his duty to accompany you for the first day of any new student in the school. Ask him for any help you want”

The Man, standing besides raghav, who I figured out was his father, interrupted my mother, “Madam, every thing seems fine but we really can’t pay the admission fees by next month. We came to this village very recently, and I got a job in the local factory only yesterday. There will be a lot of bills by next month to pay. We’ll be really grateful if you can postpone the payment of admission fees by 2 months.”

This happens a lot in my school. Most of the students in our school are the children of migrant workers working in the local industries with very low wages. Rarely do they pay fees on time but we live with it. Added to that, they also negotiate the school fees and most of the students never pay Admission fees. I really wonder sometimes how my mother is able to run the school without a incurring a loss. I guess it is just her urge to be independent and interest to impart some education to those children. Our school fees are also very low starting from 40 rs for L.K.G to 80 rs for 7th class. Nowadays, I spend more than that to eat one biriyani in a weekend or spend four times that amount for a movie in multiplex. Anyways I knew that time that my mom won’t refuse that offer since they are just offering for a postponement and not the cancellation of admission fees which if the would have demanded, she would have accepted readily.“

My mom replied to hi father,” it is O.K. But make sure you buy all the text books and note books as soon as possible along with the school uniform. Now Raghav, go to your class with zabi and don’t hesitate to ask me for any help you might need. Welcome to Sun Shine School.”

We started walking towards our class. He asked me in an excited manner, “What is a class leader?”

I took the tie out of my neck and put it back where it is supposed to go, Right back into my pocket. I seriously stared at him and replied, “I am the leader of the class and the rest are followers. So from today you’ll listen to what I say and do exactly as I say. Understand?”

Listening to my answer, all his excitement changed into horror, which made his face look little all of a sudden. With a tamed tone he asked me, “Are you serious?”

I did not want to spoil his first day at school so I thought I’d ease him down a bit so I replied, “Of course not; I am kidding. In our school, every class has its own class leader. It is usually the topper of the class unless he or she doesn’t want be. In such case the next topper will be given priority.”

“What does a leader do?”

“Lot of things like accompanying new kids on their first day, collecting home works for correction, monitoring the class when the teacher is absent, getting canes for caning up students etc. etc.”

“Students are beaten?”

“You’ll see, but not if you read well and complete you home works. So don’t worry. I’ll save your ass if you don’t do it since I am the one, who looks over the home work correction. But you have to become my friend”

We reached the class by the time I finished explaining. Every one started looking at the new kid and they will soon start befriending him but I already made him an offer he can’t refuse. I stood in the middle of the class and shouted loudly as our social teacher shouts when she starts a History lesson, “Hey children…”

A gal shouted back at me, “Hey, we are not your children. A teacher can call us children, not you. We are your classmates.”

I hated the bloody gals in my class for reasons innumerable. They never used to listen to me and always fight with me. The truth is never used listen to them and I usually started the fights.

I replied, “Oh yeah we’ll see. Next time I monitor the class I’ll show you how you’re my children, Anyways, This is Raghav our new class mate.”

Every one in the class shouted together loudly and slowly as if singing, “HAI,,,,,,,,,, RAGHAV.”

He smiled and replied, “Hi”.

I shouted back, “That’s enough for now. Come raghav, I’ll show you, your place.”

I took him to the last bench where I comfortably sit with all the front benches camouflaging all the prankish things I do. There I saw shyam waving his head, half asleep, with saliva dripping out from his mouth.

I looked at raghav and said, “Meet sleeping shyam. Always sleeps in class and sometimes wakes up in the middle of the class screaming, like this.”

I gave him a hard kick . He woke up screaming just as I said. Then I screamed back at him,

“Get aside you moron. I have to go inside to sit at my place.”

I introduced him to the rest of the guys in my bench one by one. There was a “Mota seth” aka Mohanlal chand, a marvadi guy who’s father owns the biggest sweet shop in our village and is the richest man in our village. Next to him was Joseph aka “Jozip” as he calls himself, a keralite or mallu as most of the people like to call, whose father is an electrician in a local factory. Once, Instead of his son’s fees for two months, his father offered us to fix all the electrical problems we had in our house. Next to me was dumbo aka seenu, a real dumb fella, whose father is a local villager who constantly whines about delayed monsoons and increasing power shortages when he comes to pay the fees. When he is not paying the fees he sends us nice packet of fruits and vegetables from his farm so that we don’t complain.

He smiled at all of them warmly and followed me inside to the corner of the bench and the corner of the class. Actually there are 6 of us sitting in the same bench as there is a shortage of benches in our school. I asked sleeping shyam to move onto another bench so as to accommodate raghav in this bench today.

I kept telling him about all the other kids in the class as we sat down,

“’Yuckie’ aka Yuck-kil aka akhil, the most disgusting guy in our class. He farts in the middle of the class, he scratches his head and smells his fingers, he always fingers his nose, and he does things that make you puke on him. That’s why he’s nicknamed him yuckie.

“That is “Bang head” aka Rudra. He always sits in that corner. If he feels any emotion other than happiness he starts banging his head. He is sad- u’l see Bang Bang. He is angry, more Bang Bang. If is angry at some body he bangs their head with his own. So don’t mess with him.”

“And who else you want to know about? “

He asked, “what about the gals?”

“Gals are stupid, all of them with out exception. If you want to be my friend, you don’t talk to them. No guy in the class is friends with them. “

“Can I at least know about them?”

“Yes, of course. Whom do you want to know about? “

“That gal.”

“That dark gal?”

“No. The fair one.”

“The fair who?”

“That fair girl with curly hair.”

(to be continued..)

P.S : Read the chapter below for continuation.

Chapter 4

My Best Friend: Chapter 2

2009-08-13T05:02:00.001-07:00

Note: Read the chapter 1 below, to get a lead of the story.

Chapter 1.

Chapter 2

I asked my sister,” What the hell has happened to him? The last time I saw him, he used to be an urbane young guy.”

“Don’t you know what has happened? And when exactly did he was an urbane young guy to you?”

“I ran into him once not very long ago.”

“And when exactly is that?”

I tried to recall when exactly did that happened. I remembered that it was almost a decade ago. I felt really awful at this realization that I never met him even once all this while and completely snubbed him.

I answered,” Guess, a decade back.”

“What? Did you not used to boast him around as your best friend in the school? And this is how you treat your best friend? How lucky he is, to be your “best” friend.”

“Stop pulling my leg. Tell me if you know anything about him or else I’ll gather the information myself.”

“Yeah yeah. Leg pulling, seems like I got no better work to do. Anyways about your friend, he is in a mess now. Recently got released from police station I guess. He was jailed for a month.”

“What? He went to jail? What the hell did he do?”

“I heard a lot of rumors, but according to a local news paper report, that got published recently, he is the kingpin of the piracy racket that is spread across all the neighboring villages.”

“Oh My God. He has gotten into illegal stuff now.”

our car started shaking abruptly.

“WATCH THE ROAD YOU MORON!! That is a tree and this is the road. watch where you are going.”

“Oops. Sorry...”

“I think, I said I wanted to go to my friend’s house not a hospital and get me there safely alright...”

“Oh sure; your safety is my priority dear. Btw what kind of a piracy racket was he involved into? “

“Shut up and drive. I know you are bad at multitasking. Try to socialize a bit with your old friends that you have forgotten and gather all that information. All that you do when you come home is eat, sleep and stick to that idiot box. Now don’t talk until we reach the town”

“I just wanted to,,,,”

“Shut up.”

“But..”

Umm..

I finally shut my mouth up and drove her to her friend’s house. I dropped her there.

She said,” I’ll take an hour. I’ll call you once I am done. Don’t go too far a place where no mobile network can track you. Also you know how much of petrol our car guzzles. Dontcha? So stay close.”

“Yes Madam. Anything else?”

“Nope. Bye now.”

After dropping her I waited there for a few minutes mulling over where I should go. There are a few friends of mine in that town whom I can meet, but it seemed like a bad idea since there are those who will either be too interested to spend more than an hour or too uninterested to tolerate me for an hour. I thought of going to a place in the outskirts of the town which has a pond with a beautiful lake shore. Hoping it would still be beautiful, I drove my car past the town.

Luckily the place has kept its beauty somehow. I gathered a few stones and sat on a rock, and started throwing those stones, one by one, in to the pond. The solitude and serene atmosphere provided impetus to my nostalgic thoughts that were waiting for this solemn moment. It was perfect time for some retrospection.

.................................................................

“Zabi!!” Aya shouted in the middle of the school.

One of the teachers responded, “Don’t thunder the entire school. He is in 6th class”

She came to my class room, “Zabi, Principal is calling you. Come to the office with me.”

“What for?”

“A new kid has joined your class. You should accompany him today.”

I went towards the office room. I saw a kid and his parents standing outside the office room. I looked particularly at him. One feature of his I couldn’t miss noticing..

His remarkable brown eyes….

(to be continued..)

P.S : Read the chapter 3 below for continuation.

Chapter 3