2008 - Moral of the story

2008 is about to get over. In various ways, this year has made a dent; dent on my financial position and a dent on my sense of security. But there is a moral to the story. Let me explain.

2007 was a happy year for all who even remotely put money in the market. Sensex would just keep going up and up until offcourse this animal called gravity, woke up from sleep and realized this sensex thing seems to be defying it and needs to be put to task. So it did and the sensex after enjoying the view from top of Patronas towers in early Jan 2008, fell hard. So hard that it is now at a level where you can accidently step on it. And yes offcourse on its way down it burnt a hole into several pockets, one of which was mine. Moral of the story - If something appears to good to be real, chances are it isn't real. Exit before the reality bites.

Terror reached a place this year, which it had never reached before. Our Psyche. We are scared; scared of unattended bags, of political rags, of buses and trains, of parks and planes. Cheeku warns me against going out to Malls on weekends just to avoid crowds. Its a constraint on freedom, to curtail plans for such reasons; feels pathetic I know but even after doing so, one never knows if something would go wrong and when. Moral of the story - Live now, in today. Don't worry about the past, come over it. Don't worry about the future, it may not come over.

One of the good things to have happened to me this year though is that I did this basic course in Art of living on Anusha's Recommendation. Generally, the recommendations given to me take quite some time to translate into an action plan; nevertheless my turnaround time for this one was just 3 days. I don't know where the motivation came from for me to bike at 6 in the morning in freezing Gurgaon cold to attend the session consecutively for 6 days, especially when for the first 5 mins after waking up everyday, I debated with myself whether to go back to sleep. The course indeed is good and recommended to one and all. And yes offcourse, I am not getting paid to write this.

 

2009 is a kissing distance away now. In various ways it's going to be a life changing year for me. I am not jumping in with any resolutions; i will rather just be myself and i hope i will be up to it. Merry christmas and happy new year to all of you.  I will be in Mumbai for 31st and looking forward to it. Have fun. See you in 2009.

Random Ramblings

Yeah, I know. Long time, No see; Not busy, just lazy. So let me make this short,

• I have discovered youtube. Not that I just flew down from Solomon Islands after 20 years of isolation today, just that over the past few days I came across some nice videos on various subjects. To give you an example my search strings include "balance sheet" "CDO" "steve jobs" "bharti" "russell peters" etc. all returning pretty good results. (You can try "Monica Belluci" to find even better results)
  

Check this one Bharti Ad out - it gave me goosebumps

• I saw this video for the first time today, that too on youtube and not on TV. I am not watching much of TV. I used to love my morning tea with the news paper, not any more. Welcome, google reader. I read my cricket matches on cricbuzz. (this is one not out of choice, thats the best one can do in office). Though, I am still not eating fruits and vegetables in email attachments but yes Internet seems to have arrived in my life

• I saw Dostana. Liked it for lighthearted movie. Some genuine humor. Ironically, We were two guys (the second letter is 'u' not 'a') watching it. Junta around found that to be in the spirit of the movie and gave us those Oh-my-God-this-is-gurgaon-not-miami looks !

• Indian Cricket team is on a roll. After flushing the Kangaroos down, they are just wiping out English. They seem to be taking this colonization thing very personally. Good for the viewers though !

• Sensex is down, downer, downest, downester, downestest.... Everyone is loosing badly But then In a capitalistic economy, the gains are privatized and the losses are socialized. (Thats government bailout for you in a sentence.)

• I love Google Chrome, Fantastic browser, darned good speed. Minimum Hassle. Oh and Just that you know I dont work for google, I actually work for a Financial Services company and I am glad I am writing this in present tense.

I can't figure it out. I really can't.

I had a childhood. The one that I and so many boys like me wasted in growing up. I still remember how, in moments of deep thought and introspection just after watching a Stone Cold Steve Austin deliver the stunner to Brett – Hit Man - Hart and winning the match, we had decided WWF was it (now WWE). Yes, that's where we make our careers. It was high time there was an Indian in WWF. Preparation was on. We had already decided our entry music to the ring. It would be Tipu Sultan title song. I mean all we needed to do was drink lots of milk and go to gym and convince our family. Alternative careers weren't that much of option though, in those times. We would still try. But then…

Movies happened, I mean the day I saw Amitabh Bachchan in Don. I knew that IS it. That's where I should go. I mean WWF is fine but then if Undertaker beats me up then that is serious damage to national pride and my bones. (I did not know it then I was leaving the beating to be taken by Khali. But yes he is having his share of fun enjoying terrific popularity in some unique entertainment channels like Aaj tak, India tv etc.; Unique in the sense that they only entertain themselves.) No but I had to be in movies, I had to become an Indian Movie Star wearing white shirt, pant, socks, shoes and under…. like Jeetendra, leading a super cool life, swing around the garden with heroines which even with parents watching was fine. And yes even if I do get beaten up by the villain, it's only for a good cause and more importantly its fake so no damage to bones and I even have a sure-shot revenge in the end. So all was set. But then…

Cricket happened. In a few days I saw world cup 96 quarter-final, Ajay Jadeja smoking Waqar's bowling and Venkatesh Prasad & Amir Sohail telling things to each other the meaning of which I didn't used to understand then. Passion, Emotion and a billion people seeing you on screen. That was it man. That's what I wanted to do. I was sure when I could hit my friend Raja and Rinku for six… sometimes, I could even win matches. I knew I was born for it, born to open the batting for India and yes bowling as well. I was dreaming about it often and I was day-dreaming about it even more. But then…

Reality happened. It was my 10^th class exams. Trust me exams were the worst thing mankind could have done to itself. It drives a compulsive urge in your parents to get the TV cable disconnected and to throw you head-first on to your study table. I hated history. Why do I have to know when Raja Ram Mohan Roy was born? Is his birthday more important than mine? Did he know my birthday? When I grow up history gets prohibited. But then, Exams came then results came. There was limited damage done. But somehow parents got super serious. They gave a power bomb to my WWF career; hit Cricket out of my mind for six and my movies flopped even before they were made. Graduation became single point agenda.

Time would eventually tell me, that I would do engineering and even an MBA, will get a decent job which will make my parents reasonably happy. That I won't be swinging with heroines in the garden, but I would have a wife that I would really love. May be in the future, perhaps time would tell me that I have a decent carreer, a nice family, visits to nice places and a hopefully peaceful retirement. But then would time ever tell what I really want to do with life or would I, like so many in this world, would have lived my life not knowing what I really existed for. That's the question that is standing between me and a peaceful existence. But I can't figure it out, I really can't.

MBA is over: In the hindsight…

Convocation got over a few days ago. I got my degree. I am an MBA now. I wonder what that means. One thing it does mean is that I am going to be paid some more than I used to before I had this degree, which supposedly means I am much more intelligent now then I was ever before. Which sounds like a highly arguable assumption to make given the total lack of physical (or intellectual ?) evidence to support it. But hey !! Stop right there. Don't even start to think of comparing my IQ levels with those of chickens or even worse Ms R Sawant coz even the idea of it is extremely underwhelming and totally depressing. Like Air and God, there are somethings not to be seen but are believed to exist. So for my sake and for the sake of shareholders of my recruiter, believe my intelligence to exist.

Jokes apart, Two years of MBA have been totally worthwhile for reasons going much beyond a mere payraise (which is why people take to MBA but never admit though ;)). I gained friends for a lifetime, people whose absence in daily life I will surely miss. While keeping my text books in the refrigerator ensured, I only know full forms of NSE & BSE but not much beyond it. Classroom any way is the last place to learn in an MBA program. Going out and participating for some events especially to Bhubaneswar taught me things that no text books or faculty can teach. Things not to do with Porter, BCG, deferred tax or below- the-line but to do with integrity, healthy competition and other basic values of life.

Being married and doing MBA gave me a hands-on something technically called work-life (or work-wife?) balance. Though during MBA I tilted the balance towards my life and wife, I do now know that one needs to constantly prioritize between job & home. You see it's just about weighing the pros and cons. While in a fix, all you have to do really is to make a choice for a lesser punishment. It may be between a miserable multi-tab multi-colored excel sheet and a more-expensive-than-you-can-afford necklace, or between main-mummy-ke-ghar-jaa-rahi-hoon and Be-there-tomorrow-and-day-after told to you by your boss on Friday.

I think I now understand a few tenets that modern world corporate live with. For work purposes, you & your colleagues are a team but when it comes to bonus you are contestants of a zero sum game; To work is pain and to get work done is more pain etc. Post MBA I also feel I understand more things then I used to about people. I still can't fully understand myself though. Really.

Convocation

Of Minesweeper, Pac man and Rubic cubes

Right O ! Here is an almost 26 year old, BE and MBA guy about to rock the floors of the corporate world starting July. CEO's can fasten their seat belts or that plush leather chair could just disappear from underneath. Competition, just watch out. Quite a few of you would be out of business soon. Investors, hold your money tight for now. A right investment in July could be your sure fire way to millions…

Ding Dong. The bell rings. Its 8' o clock. And guess who is at the door to win a 3 day 2 nights trip to Mauritius, fully sponsored (by you that is). Yup it's the house maid. Its time for me and Cheeku to wake up, for her to spend another day at work and for me to fix the few remaining pieces of the picture which would finally read MBA.

While I sip my morning tea, I go back to the cerebrally conceived optical illusion I had before opening my eyes to the blaring door bell (for the idiomatically illiterate it's the dream I am referring to). Quite a dream, so much enthu and aspiration I think. The kind of 'hit-the-floor' energy that Tamil movie dancers exhibit. (They tend to do it quite literally though. In the latest flick down under, the item number performance measured 6.5 on the Richter scale.)

Warning : Heavy stuff ahead.

I had it all, the enthu and stuff. Had is the key word here. Whether I still have it as big a question mark as the US presidential election. So where did it all go, if at all it has. At least it's not as prominently present for me to be as sure of it as I am of the outcome of a Mayawati Vs Vishwanand Anand Chess match. So does it recede in others too? perhaps yes. May be with increasing education and age, the proximity to reality and real life issues increases. Perhaps, not the best thing to happen to an individual's aspirations. Not that it makes you any less skillful or equipped. No way. I can still make good timings in minesweeper and make at least one face of the Rubik cube as I did in times when the gas cylinders at home and other such stuff was outside my scope of work. But just that with time gas cylinders do become your responsibility and one is required to make all the six faces of the cube simultaneously. That's when it becomes so difficult to cross your best scores in pac man and you can't go beyond world 4 and 5 in super Mario. This is where the question marks of uncertainty play battle-city with your enthu and stuff.

But that's not it. Quite a few can make all 6 faces of the cube (even with eyes closed. You must check out Guinness prime time on AXN). I might do it as well, with some perseverance. Let's see, only time will tell. Wish me luck and don't blame for a heavy head please. I warned you.

(Apologies to those who are finding it difficult to figure all this out. In all probability you haven't played enuf video games. Quite something to have missed I tell you.)

Just-in before 2008

History repeats itself. Trust me. If you don't then you need to think of my situation exactly approximately a year ago.

Flashback: Cheeku has gone to Bangalore to undertake a week's training. I am lying in my house staring at the wall like any piece of broken furniture wondering what use it can put itself to. Life is going through its motions without much knowledge of where it's heading. (Not to pretend that otherwise I have it all figured out)

Cut to somewhere closer to today: Cheeku had again gone to Bangalore giving me the déjà vu of the furniture like feeling.

But between the two, quite some time has transpired. My blog hasn't really been party to it and its way too much for a single cover up post. Quite a lot has changed while many things have remained the same as well. Like, I am much closer to finish my MBA yet my cluelessness as to the value of the degree remains. I have crossed a mile stone by getting myself a job to do after my MBA, while the sense of missing purpose remains and off course, had a rocking time with family, but the count of family members remains the same…

Cheeku has now returned for good, just like she did from Canada, Swizz and US. (No she doesn't for tours and travels company. She'z a software person). While she was on her world tour, I myself did some travelling, not one that required a visa though, unfortunately. :-( I have been 8 different states in the past year, travelling to places like Chennai, Bhubaneswar, Delhi & NCR, Lonavala etc. which may be I will talk about in my coming posts, which by the way should ring a bell or two in your minds. It should be telling you that more of this - despicable torture, the kind that Himesh Reshamiya has reserved all rights for, or poetic bliss the kind that legendary poets unlike me are made of (depending on whether you are the rest of the world or me) – is in the offing. If you take the former view you have Anusha, Rikesh, Sanchit and likes to blame who pulled me back here. (a serious thanks guyz.)

For now I just want to wish you all a merry Christmas and a great new year ahead!!! May all your wishes come true and you uphold all your resolutions. For the community of people like yours truly, for whom resolutions are futile and they don't know what exactly to wish for, may this New Year be more chillax!!

Mere Jeevan ki Naiyaa...

Bhagwaan jee, aisa mere saath kyo decide kiya? Maine peechle 1 mahine se aapse kuch nahi maanga, maine socha uske birthday pe mehnga gift kharidne ke liye paise maang lunga. Nahi dene the to theek hai, lekin meri waat kyo lagaayi?



Oh this is so bad. I had so many things planned for her birthday. Oh yes I had. Okay if not so many than at least two. Gift and Dinner. Sacchi mucchi. I was feeling happy and excited. But the planets you see. They just cant see good things happening to VVS laxman and me. Laxman bhai went to south africa with all band baaja and got first a ball duck and just before we could have a gala time on her birthday cheeku went out of bombay for a training.



Dil ke armaan aasuon main beh gaye,

aur hum yaha guldasta pakde reh gaye.



And as if judaai ka gum wasn't enough, I have my end-terms starting the day she would be back. Garibi main aata geela.



And if even that was not enough, my life between her leaving and coming back is miserable. The mornings no longer start with a melodious scold, a sweet hit of the pillow, a tug of war of the blanket and my finger in the hot tea. I now wakeup to two miserably ringing alarms or a baai ringing the door bell or I dont wake up at all. I somehow manage to get in and out of bathroom in time, but my habit of forgetting the essentials outside is leading me to a lot of embarrassment especially with the maid around. (I wonder i should start keeping a pile of newspaper in the bathroom.) And then I... Hai Ram, Mujhe sharam aati hai.



I make it to the insti only 15 mins late. Life has moved from ghar ki chai to ek cutting on the tea stall, from garam garam jaykedaar ready khana to sabji laana, cook ko bulaana, aaye to theek nahi to hotel main niptanaa, from home sweet home to a something thats looks similar to a hostel room (I hope cheeku is not reading), from an excuse to rush home to majboori of going home..... life has taken a U turn and I feel I am driving wrong side. All in all I am waiting. Waiting for her to be back and bring my life on the right track.



O mere jeevan ki naiyaa beech bhanwar main gud-gud gote khaaye

jhatpat paar laga de, o cheeku paar laga de....

Don ke dushman ki sabse badi galti kya hai?

Don ke dusman ki sabse badi galti kya hai? Yehi ki woh Don (movie) ka end samajhne ki koshish kar raha hai. By that logic I am one of the "Don ka dushman" trying to figure why Don did what he did? I wish the movie ended before its final twist. Par shayad Don ko tweesht in the tail bahut pasand hai. Isliye pura 360 degree tweesht kar dala. By the way, With the exception of khai ke paan banaras (club remix ?) - that too in with a UP crew in malaysia (total lack of imagination) - I like the music and singing. And I think I would spare myself from getting into the whole non-debate of Sharukh is better or Big B is.

In the mean while, There has been some disturbances in my blissful schedule of wake up-go to class-sleep-wake up-go home. The disturbance came in the form my tryst with Passport office of Mumbai. After visiting the place I feel customer care employees should visit passport office every now and then. It can be excellent crash course training patience and how to survive rude , dumb and misleading people. I mean I was lucky to get in and get out in as short as 7 hours. swear I would rather listen to non-remix Himesh Reshamiya 10 times in a row than visit the passport office. If the former is merciless torture the latter is fatality.

By the way, in the short whiles that I have been awake in college I have listened to the lecturer in economics. After careful evaluation of her teachings and a few hundred sincere attempts to make sense out of them, I have come to realize that this world would be a better place to live without the Economists and Economics. I mean Physicists would turn in there graves if they listen to concepts of velocity of money being number of times money changed hands in a process. All Maths and Logic goes for a toss in the economic equations. Here is a funny one, the salaries paid to Indian politicians by some freak logic and freaker economics contributes to GDP. No wonder its going at such a good pace. Perhaps The only thing good about an economics book is that the number of sharp curves one can see in an economics book can give Jennifer lopez an inferiority complex. To top it all here is my personal favorite line from the subject, In the long run, we all are dead.

As if thats not enough we have business communication lectures. If one sincerely attempts to follow all principles of it he would only be able to write a perfect letter at an age when the only letter he would need to write would be - an application to God for filling up a vacancy in heaven. Nevertheless, if one has to live in a bee-school he has to bear with the stings ;-)

Of Temple, bhooth,beaches and ulcers

Its always a great time. The one just between the exams and the results. My Exams are past. The day they were over the feeling was similar to the one that comes when the nature is calling and you cant receive the call because you are in a meeting. It keeps vigorously vibrating somewhere in your stomach nevertheless, Until the blissful moment of release, when you feel a couple of kgs of extra baggage you were carrying all this while in your intestines has found its way out. It feels so light now, after the exams that is.

The weekend after the exams was good. I went to Hari Hareshwar with Cheeku and friends. The name of the place itself suggests that its renowned temple and I visited for asking the Gods; "Please flood the Exam office in my college. All my answer copies are kept there. " I am sure God would listen to me. I have read that god listens to those who pray for others. Arey bhai ... my prayer was meant for my teachers who are about to read my answers naaaa , you silly.

Me and cheeku had good company, abhi, dipsi, sanjay bhaiya and keerti di. By the way the whole trip was planned in a very chaotic manner. We could not find a travel agent willing to lease us a car and a driver. The rains gods to be blamed. All cars stuck. Finally we managed to find an decent car and an interesting driver. On our way, He told us about a ghaati which has a ghost of a budhiya and boodha coming between 12 and 3 each night. The story went like this:

me and keerti di: ha bhaiya, kya keh rahe the bhooth ke baare main...
driver: kuch nahi sahab... jaane do
me: arey bhaiya, batao naa, aisa bhi kya hai...(i was already reflecting on the movie kaal, lekin yahaa to bhoot do hai, ek couple)
After a lot of urging from us to speak and from dps to not speak (she was chanting hanuman chaalisa alll this while) bhaiya finally spoke.....
Bhaiya: yaha ghaati pe roz raat ko ek boodha aur budhiya aate hai, lift mangte hai aur gaadiya rokte hai. Koi daya karke baitha leta hai to fir gaadi ka accident ho jaata hai yaa fir passenger gayab ho jaate hai....

Silence for a while. Some more silence. Darna Mana hai for some and darna zaroori hai for others. Jaise taise ghaati paar ki. The night was dark, it was raining and for most of the journey absence of any creature resembling human outline, added a lot of flavour and imagination to the classical oration of driver saab. So thinking about kaal, bhoots and cursing the maharashtra tourism for not having proper signboards, we reached Hareshwar.

The place we had initially booked was in all probability made for shooting of Ramsay movies. It was in such isolation that even the bhoots would think twice before going there. Considering the existent centiments of the truly afraid females and disguisefully nervous males we found another place to put up. Hanuman jee could now relax as the vigorous calls he was receiving from us had now stopped. The rest of the night all of us were peacefully asleep except for....... that was a good guess.

Incidentally there was a bright and brilliant beach also in Hareshwar. There was greenery, mountains and a big ocean. A scenic and engrossing beauty unlike the other beaches that I have seen where the beauty is confined to the blondes lying around and the only people enjoying are the massage walas. We thoroughly enjoyed photography, dips, unsuccesful attempts to float on water (abhi and me enjoyed some desperate attempts to swim in some in which unfortunately we could cover no physical distance) and last but not the least the tasty saline water because of which 4 of us now have ulcers in the mouth.

By the way, ulcers have not been all that bad, cheeku feels pain while speaking which has ensured a tranquility at home and life, until ofcourse today when she has audibly recovered enough. (you will trust me if u look at the time this was posted.) think i should close this down. Cant give so much pain to my readers in a single post. Bottom line. Hari Hareshwar recommended. Go there. Hope fully the right people will catch mouth ulcers for you too... ;-)

(Closing prayers: Oh God, May cheeku not read this post)

Zindaaaaa hoon main

Sorry, really sorry. I dint turn up for long here (and according to a lot of you, it was for good.) But I have been busy with a whole lot of exams and assignments and what not? So what makes me come back here? After all, I have an end term exam 10 hours from now and here I am writing this post and listening to Indian Ocean.

The answer lies in the fact that I have a marketing end term. Open book format. Doesn’t require studying, just press on the gas and drive your way to glory. One of my friends just described marketing in his own way : “I am not able to study this subject for one night.. How do people specialize in this...... it’s like having a woman as a wife who is not even good for a one night stand” but then that’s that in life, you have to have a lot of one night stan…. uh.. no… , I mean you need love a lot of things, which you otherwise love to hate. So if you are a boyfriend and you want to keep it that way, you need to remember the birthday of her family, cousins and their cousins and there family. Bypassing that subject for safety reasons, I would try and take a digression. After giving so many exams on subjects I don’t even have the remotest idea of; like the one today, legal aspects of business; I am now capable of giving writing a six page answer on any damn subject. Gas is the buzzword in the exams here in B schools.

Any way I would better get back to my subject now. The bloody grades are relative here. So I need to have an optimism of Vinod kambli, who still wishes to come back in the Indian team, to study this subject called marketing. This post is short (read: timepass) just to convey that Bruce almighty exists and is alive and would keep turn up here in some time, till then its time for me to give some gas on marketing and for my friend to give it a one night stand.

Haai ree meri kismet

You know, some people have this uncanny knack of the getting into trouble without having to make much effort for it. If ever there is a merit list being made of such people, you would definitely see so many familiar names for instance; Sorrow ‘big mouth’ Ganguly, Natwar ‘Oil’ Singh, Jagmohan ‘CAB’ Dalmiya, Jaswant ‘Mole’ Singh, , Rakhi ‘Mika’ Sawant, John ‘Indian Summers’ Wright et al. By the way, I see a very familiar name positioned not far behind Ganguly and just a sniffing distance away from Rakhi. Mine. But I assure all of you and cheeku all the more that I have a better sense of self control then Mika.

Nevertheless, I do get into trouble. With ease. Just this morning I woke up to a not so different morning. Everything was pretty familiar. I mean I woke up when the alarm rang, I stopped it and slept again. I woke up again when cheeku took the blanket off me. Then I folded my self in a serpentine fashion and slept again. I woke up again when she shouted out loud in my ears. Then I took the pillow and put it on my ears, covered my face and slept again. Then I woke up finally when she put my fingers in a hot cup of tea. This I dint sleep coz things were getting hotter you see. After 25 mins I saw myself neatly dressed and combed (Things actually have changed after marriage) all set to leave for the Insti. You see, it was a usual morning, but only till here.

I went out of the flat, climbed down two floors, realized I had forgotten the keys and climbed back again to get ‘em. Then I went out again, climbed down, reached the main gate of the building and it started raining. Yeah, you guessed it right, I dint have an umbrella. Well, in Bombay you can expected all things to go wrong when you least want them to. I challenge you wont find a public toilet when you’ve got the nature’s call, so you would take a auto, rush back home, answer all the calls and guess what you see right in front of you on your way back at the same place from where you started a small room with a “Sulabh Shouchalaya (Public Toilet)” board hanging on it. Anyway, I was determined to not go back to the flat to pick up an umbrella and so I rushed out to find an auto. For a change, I did find one in reasonable time.

But then, when hard luck makes love to you, it makes sure the climax is a delayed and lasting one. So then just before a flyover the rickshaw walla informs me he has broken some clutch wire and he can’t climb the flyover. Shittt, was the first thing I pronounced. Nevertheless, intellectually acute that I am, I immediately thought of a simple solution; to payoff this rick-walla and get into another one. Outside the rick, it was pouring heavily. I saw an empty rick passing-by I stopped it and thought that’s it, I am done. As I as I moved my hand towards my rear pocket I realized I was actually done. There was no wallet in my back pocket. I called back home to check whether cheeku is still around and if she could come atleast halfway to help only to find a ‘no answer’. Finally, I took the same rick home took the wallet. My prudential safe came into play by then and I took an umbrella just to make sure things don’t get worse. I paid off the rick and took another one to reach the insti 15 mins late. For a change, I had some fortune; I had company of another of my class mate and somehow I was allowed inside as well.

Just as I right this blog I realized, it hasn’t rained today from the moment I picked up my umbrella. You see, that’s Mumbai for you…

U & I... in this beautiful world (Part 2)

 

U & I ..... in this beautifull world

 
 
 
  

A new beginning...

Change is difficult to absorb especially when its for the worse. I used to have lots of spare time in my recent life. So much so that i could afford to compete for slow cycle races with ants and win them. But there is something about this city bombay which hurries me up. Uncomfortably so. Now i have no time to stand and stare. I need to wake up early morning even before the hens of chicken vendor near by, then take a 60 second bath , chew some bread and rush out to be in the institute at 9.00. I swear i would forget to wear my pants someday.

Its only because jupiter and mars have aligned themselves and Pluto and saturn are at 312 degrees to each other that has created just the right planetary position for my finance lecturer to fall ill and thereby resulting in a free lecture which I am aptly utilizing to write this blog. Speaking of planetary motions relating to human actions, the best logic that i have heard till date in favour of the argument is that moon can move and affect tides on earth and human body is 70% water so it can as well affect human actions. So don’t wonder when something happens as stupid as you dashing into the traffic police with your bike when you don’t have the papers or the license. It was the moon which did a small tap dance , you silly.

Speaking of the events that have happened between my previous and this post are that i have got married and had a trip to himachal pradesh and part punjab. It is when you marry that you realize that marraiges are so enjoyable when someelse is on the hot seat. You can eat, wonder and do as you please. But in my case the planets had decided that my time was up and yamraj was already on his way in his ferrari to welcome my bachelorhood to his hometown called hell. So there was me married to this beautiful lady, feeling happy about the past , okay about the present and sad about the future, especially of my lady dearest's .

For those bachelors who have a weak heart and a weaker spinal cord, Marraiges are a tough affair for you would need to take the ashirwad of atleast 1257 people whom you might remotely recognize or may you would have last met them 3 births ago. I would be so inundated with ashirwad that i was thinking there must be a crowning glory on my head now and a super protective halo which would protect me from all evils.

Just by the way , i discussed my blog with my lady dearest and she started wondering who scores more on uselesness me or my blog. She is still wondering, in between she has preferred to remain unidentified on my blog but then we settled for a nick name. I think she is very cute and the most suiting nick would be cheeku, The cute little fruit.

I must tell you that cheeku is very particular about my appearance which i had never bothered bout before. So now a person who assumed face creams to be dedicated female product is applying Garnier to his face. My hair which were happily lied in the direction of their choice and were masters of their will are now stay neatly and uncomfortably together in a direction of cheeku's choice. My bath's are much more sincere and I pray the day dosnt come when she washes me in the machine with some surf ultra. Never the less, she has promised to not rinse and dry me in the machine.

Taking wedding into our stride cheeku and me started for Punjab, our first destination being chandigarh. We dint realize we were in chandigarh to the point when we read “Jaspinder loves Prabhjot” inscribed by a passionate couple on a tree trunk. Being in Gujarat I was used to “Jignesh loves Jalpa” but this was first time I read such a dramatically different and resounding inscription. I recommend Chandigarh and you will realize its dinstinct beauty in the form of rock garden and lake and the people, provided the relative larger personality doesn’t intimidate you.

From then on we went to various places in HP namely Shimla, Kulu, Dalhousie, Dharamshala, and Manali. The most remarkable ones were Manali and Dalhousie. At Rohtang pass, we spent a lot of time in the playing with snow, skiing, running around, photographing the scenary and sneezing. (Pics in the coming posts). Dharamsala was good for the health resort that we stayed in. We were treated to live ghazals from the locals singers and I even did a philmi stunt of dedicating a song “Na kajre ki dhar, Na motiyo ke haar…” to cheeku but cheeku failed to appreciate it and I got a strict warning to not repeat it again. I humbly agreed with my head down and hands folded. I bet she was a school teacher in her last birth.

Despite all the scolding and an occasional beating, It was a blissful state of being that I enjoyed in the trip. There was one instant when planets decided to give me a chocked nose, some fever and physical weakness as well and we were required to start 4 in the morning for a 10 hour drive to a hotel at parwanoo. As i somehow managed to sleep a caring affectionate hand on my eyes and other caresing my hair gave me a tremendously soothing heavenly feeling. The hands were of cheeku and the time was 2 AM.

Well, thats what makes a married life worthwhile despite all the scolding, beating, garnier cream , forced neatness and all other things.

Rohan Shah (1982 - 2006)

The words in the title can be written on the gravestone of my bachelorhood, which has 3 days of life remaining. Somehow, there is no feeling of getting nervous or overexcited-ness in me as of now, despite this being my first marriage. Let me see how things change in the days to come.

My home is now pretty much stuffed with people. There is more noise inside my house then there is outside arjun singh's house at the moment. Just By the way I hate him for doing this reservation act. He should have known better than this. Now the meritorious candidates in prestigious institutes would be even less in number as the hair on arjun singh's head. He needs to apply thanda thanda cool cool navaratan tel on his head and rethink reservations. That would indeed be favorable for the student's community and his hair.

Back to my home, people are expecting me to somehow look darned smart in the function and thus I am being chucked into the men's beauty parlor every now and then. The person their subjects me to some real smelling thing he calls bleach cream and then all sorts of facial stuff and I hate him for doing this 3rd degree torture to me. By the way, due to this I realized what it feels like to my readers in reading my posts.

And then I was informed today that there is ceremony tomorrow at my place where several females from our society and castes and all have been invited to apply haldi and kesar and other such yellow stuff to me. They call it nilhane ki rasam. Now that's what I am really afraid of. Till today the exclusive rights to give rohan baby a bath were with my mom, and mausi and … okay that's it. But now a whole parliament full of ladies can claim to have given me a bath… that's disgusting yaar, seriously… And I really don't know whether I would look fairer after coming alive out of this rasam but I will sure look yellower.

I think all this ritis and riwaaz have been written by some frustrated gentlemen trying to take revenge with the present and future world spending their last time in agra's mental asylum. One of the riwaaz is that my lady-dearest's bro would pull my ears during some ceremony, So what that I have already set a deal out with him but not everybody can. .. frankly speaking I would have preferred a Christian style marriage for more than one reasons.

Well, if you really force me to point out something good about what's going on here then I would say I love the sheer spirit. There are so many people all enthu about the whole thing and willing to take responsibility of arrangements doing stuff, spending quality jolly time together. I think its really worthwhile to be a part of such masti, not at the cost of your own marriage though…

Taking a break...

Right-ho! My last day in office today and then I go back to my hometown Ujjain tonight. My Ghar-parivar has been enjoying for the past 6 years with me leaving home for engineering and then my job. Their entertainment took a rare-break only when I came back home in leaves. May be they find me as dumb and boring as you people find my blog, nevertheless I won’t spare you coz I will keep writing and I wont spare them coz I will keep going home.

You are perfectly right in thinking that I have gone nuts coz I have. Simply because I am going home after a long time. The only occasion when I have wanted more to be at home was when my class teacher was beating the hell out of me for watering the plants in the school garden with my own nitrogenous fluid.

Well, Ujjain is a holy city with a lot of temples and religious value. So to get good internet service there one has to go to a temple, pray and then offer some food to the beggars outside and wait for god to take notice of your abysmal state of disconnectivity from the rest of the world. Still I would try and be online some times but my readers can enjoy this break.

Just by the way, I would be going very close to action, come this june. I am going to Srinagar and the valleys. No to jump off, you silly. Just for a vacation. May be I can consider joining some anti-terrorist group there. All I have to do to bore them to death is make them read the stuff I have typed in this and previous posts. So my post from there should be a COOL one. Literally.

That reminds me, considering my writing abilities, I have got a surprisingly high number of visitors on to my blog. Some of them have been generous enough to comment on my posts. (I hope the money reached you guyz – 50% advance, baaki meri post padhne ke baad). I must thank all of them for being here (anusha, kobra, xpressions-and-her-son-rohan, rose, innervoice, sneha, vivekanand, shekhar, sneha, all anonymous and all whose names I am dumb enough to forget.) I promise I would never threaten you guyz again if you keep coming here and keep commenting.

Back to my trip, Come 10 june and I would be in bombay, to educate myself in NMIMS. Well may be then I would learn to write good posts. Till then enjoy the break.

My Last week in office…

These are my last days in office. No, I am not being fired. Neither is the office going shut for not sustaining profit because of me and alike who have worked (or rather not worked) here for 2 years. Just that I am leaving. Not that I could not bear my boss or vice versa (we share a better rapport than ganguly and chappel) but just because an angelic gentlemen who came to test me and some other equally bad candidates for an admission in MBA at NMIMS had favorably responded to my bribe attempts, kidnap-your-daughter / transfer-to-sukhliaa-gaav dhamakis and death threats. I don't know whether he has been fired from his job since but I hope for the better.

Nevertheless, I am through with this place, well almost. The days gone by have been pleasant for me atleast. They have not been able to get any work out of me till-date. The kind of person that I am, (SMART LAZY BUM – read this if u are clueless) I have never been too much into books and that renders me as good at technical as Inzamam is at English. Still I have derived some non-technical learning in this 2 year stint. Let me record these for my future reference :

1. DON'T CALL PIG A PIG : If you see your colleague who scores a perfect 10 in uselessness barometer and gets paid more than you then you need not let him know how strongly you feel about him being a pig. But then there are people like yours truly who cant resist kicking an empty pepsi-can lying on the street. So considering this strong desire, your best attempt to vent your emotion should sound like – "Hey mate, your workability potential shall be increasingly optimally utilized when we exchange a few notes on how scholes' work-life-balance matrix concept juxtaposed with phillips' vertical job enrichment theory result in higher employee efficiency."

2. BE GOOD AT PRESENTATIONS : I would rather prefer to be handcuffed in kaal-kothari and listen to 3 hours of non-stop ila arun songs but not give a 30 min presentation on "Increasing project planning efficiency by utilizing prima vera". But hang on mate, if you got to get that fat-as-yokozuna performance allowance, then you got to give the presentations. Its OK if the only thing you know about prima-vera is the spelling (that too in hindi), but you should seem to know a lot about it. "Confuse, if thou can't convince" is the motto.

3. SMILE : There can be circumstances when your trouser zip has kept your internals ventilated by humbly staying open with the lower part of the shirt popping out through the gap and you realize this only after giving a seminar to 100 employees OR your wife has started the morning by hitting you with all the armory available in the kitchen OR in the worst case, you have forgotten to wear a trouser -- then even in these circumstances, smile and if you can't do it naturally then force a smile.

4. SATISFY THE JOB : This is important. "Thou shalt satisfy the job before the job satisfies thee." Searching for job-satisfaction first day in office is like looking for 3 years pay in advance. Be good at what you are doing before you ask for doing what you are good at. If you do the opposite you typically realize that your skill set is null set.

And then there are some minor common-sense points which off-course everybody would take care like – "not asking your bosses sweet-sweet, kuchee-kuchee PA for a coffee despite the highest urge to do so" and "not discussing cricket while boss is discussing non-existent profit" and off course "don't keep a Sharon stone wallpaper and Pam screen saver". Pretend to be a good boy even if you are a bad man.

Yeh khana hai yaa…

Just had lunch. I ate something the caterers here in office call food and expect me to believe it as well. I must appreciate their guts though, which can only be compared with pravin mahajan's lawyer who goes on record saying his client is "mentally ill". Neway, I expect pramod mahajan to get well and sort out his brother and the lawyer and the mental illness (if any). But I think I need to check out this caterer's kitchen. While the others are still eating let me go and observe the cooking that's going on in there.

I look at the cook in his kitchen, which smells radically similar to a hospital's general ward. He goes about to cook in a manner comparable to scientist working on a formula for a chemical weapon in an underground chemistry lab. While in his innocent dreams he is blissfully ignorant of the pressure cooker delivering whistle after whistle loud as a mill-siren. Just before the cooker goes bonkers and blasts he suddenly wakes up from his dreams like someone who after listening to a Jagjit Singh gazal has just flipped channels to find Navjot Singh Sidhu. He switches off the gas. I am thinking had there been one, the scene would have been strikingly similar to what they used to show in Jaspal Bhatti's "flop-show" where Bhatti attempts some chemistry only to blast the beaker and comes out with glass pieces and white chemical all over him.

While he goes about cooking his dal look-alike in the utensil of the size of a bathtub, I take a peek at the rest of the menu. There lies the good old bhindi distastefully mixed with aloo. Still a better combo then Nagma and Ganguly I guess. The salad contains 5 kg of chopped cabbage mixed with 2 slices of carrot, which one has to be lucky to find out. The Muter-Paneer is all-muter-no-paneer, I bet the best of underwater swimmers wont find any. Finally, there is the forsaken curd, which seems to be lying there from the nineteenth century.

With no more motivation to move around further, I leave the place trying not to think of what tomorrow's ordeal at lunch table would be like. While crossing the dining hall I see a part of the crowd still eating and I pray they never visit the kitchen or else…

Me, Myself and Irony

There is something that has more irony to it than ganguly getting clean bold, blaming the pitch for it in the press-conference and being reminded by the journalist that the ball was a fulltoss. And that something is that I am constantly looking at the gmail chat bar for the past half an hour only to find nobody online. And whenever I go for a meeting or something even more useless but madatory then my best buddies would have their names bright and sparkling accompanied by the green ball. This leaves me with one less choice for wasting my time.

By the way, there are several measures of high quality waste of time. One is what I am currently doing. For an unfortunate reader who will put in "protinex powder" in the google toolbar and arrive at my blog, I am taking the pains of putting down this post. Anyway, I am sure blogging community would be going by the rational that god wasted his time big-time to manufacture something as a terrible a waste of time as Homo sapiens, it automatically confers the right of wasting time to us.

So herez my tribute to the global-time-wasting community : "5 terrific ways of wasting time" in descending order of popularity.

5: CHAIN EMAILS & FWDS : Irritating, disgusting and frustrating added together and squared would not describe the feeling you have on receiving an email saying "Yahoo would close its service if you don’t fwd this" or "Bill Gates sharing his wealth" or "Nokia distributing free phones" or "your next 3 wishes will come true if you fwd this to 27 people." The fart jokes that not even santa singh laughs on and the PJ series are even worse.

4: MESENGERS : This single most coveted waste of time for office goers. From Advani to Adnan Sami nothing would go un-discussed. The chats can range from how-to-kill-our-boss to come-to-the-parking-lot-at-4-when-noone-around depending on the mood, person and gender.

3: ORKUT / HI5 & LIKES : As if all the messengers were not enough, chatting through scrapbooks can be a real pain-in-the-lower-back, six inches below the belt. (I thought of writing ass, but I avoid profanities in my posts and so there is no instant in this post where I have written - ass) People associate a lot of passion with number of friends they have in their connections and so don’t wonder if you get a friends request from the person who asked you the directions towards the nearest loo in an apparently urgent call of nature.

2: BLOGGING : There is no more satisfying way to torture your enemies then writing your totally unnecessary , undesired and unsolicited opinion in 7648 words on how you feel about an even more unnecessary, undesired and unsolicited issue like "lakme-wardrobe-malfunction" and forwarding the link to them. Moreover, every tomy, pappu or hariya in the blogging community who have just read the book "11 ways of coming out of depression" will, with all their sincerity give there two cents on life, death, angel, evil, suppression, depression and human philosophy which if god-forbid Ayn Rand or any of her students read would depress them enough to make them jump off patronas towers.

1: READING MY BLOG : I know nothing else would compare favorably with this . The people who agree can jump to the comment section and the people who don’t can restart reading this post.