... & I'M BACK

its been sometime since i left Pune.

I do miss the place a lot. Never ever did i think that i would miss any place more than Hyderabad.

It took some time to sink in. Pune has that polish to it, which, Hyderabad lacks.

Of course, I know its just that I have some real good friends back there. Hyderabad , on the other hand , at the moment looks like a Desert full of mirages.

There have been days where i felt that i might have just found that alter-ego of mine only to realize that i had been chasing a mirage. what follows is a feeling that parallels the experience of being lost in space.

what? what is that like?

hmmm... well those of us who had paid a bit of attention to our classes in school remember that in space there is no such thing as UP, DOWN,RIGHT LEFT,EAST WEST, NORTH SOUTH. Now imagine what that would feel like.

Its great to be back home and there is no mistaking that. With family around Hyderabad is my comfort zone. But time is witness to the fact that people give their best when pulled out of their comfort zones.

Yes, what i miss the most are my buddies in Pune. Pune is where my career was reborn and rose in true phoenix style. I hope i will be able to continue my association with the city very soon!

Love you Pune!

EVE !!! ADAM ON THE PROWL!!!

PUBLISHED : SUNDAY 25TH JANUARY, CYBER GALLERY , PHURSUNGI, HADAPSAR - 12:40 PM

A monday holiday is nothing short of a festival for those privileged few who work 5 days a week.That Monday,26th Jan,2009 had the privilege of being the day India celebrates its republic day was a treat.Morever for me it gave me a reason for not calling this monday "black", which i have been doing since LKG. :D

The 3 day holiday got off to a lazy start with me watching my roomie clean the room and me chipping in at the finish. :P
But the real excuse for me to write this blog came in the evening. I had been to the railway station to see off my buddy akhilesh's parents.On my way back after spending the evening at akki's flat, I closely observed a phenomenon which i had , umpteen times seen when i travel in the city bus. But this time it was different. I had to make sure that i was observing without the subjects noticing me.

City buses are a crowdy affair with women & girls bearing the brunt.
Crowded buses-- a time when dark romeos are on the prowl.
Here i list the modus operandi of a typical romeo, in fact two of them,the first one especially who appeared cramped for space when a 6 footer like me could have slept on the bus floor with still loads of place remaining.

ROMEO #1:
A 5' 4" inch guy wearing a shirt enough for two guys like him.
He stood a couple of paces in front of me. Next to him were 2-3 college girls. Romeo #1 was swaying to the left when the bus was travelling as straight as a laser..LOL.
He got his brush. But what irritated the hell out of the other passengers was that he wouldn't move forward with loads of space in front of him. The thing with the indian public is that we despise and criticize as a mob, in a crowd and in opinion polls. When it comes to speaking out as an individual we are as lifeless as a stone. The girls could have been more vocal but they chose to ignore and turned their bag strapped backs to our romeo.
This is where I come in. Show him the plenty of space ahead and to his irritation make him move a couple of steps ahead ( the look on his face was worth displaying on National Geographic's chosen pictures list.. LOL) To add to his woes, a seat got vacated( a gent's seat) and he occupied it( I doubt if he really would have had there been more self-muted females standing).

ROMEO #2.
Scene 1 - take 1
This one was the "smooth operator" kind.
It must have been the second /third seat on the left side, the side reserved for ladies in Pune city buses. We were a couple of stops away from the final stage. A girl who had the seat to herself for a while soon had our romeo for company. Initially our romeo occupied the seat with only half his tashreef ki tokri on it. LOL.( what was he trying to do? is that city bus chivalry? :P)

Scene 1 - take 2

guess what? romeo has his bum on the seat -position proper - though he still doesnt have his back entirely to the seat. that he is still not facing the front entirely; with knees slightly still outside( got the picture!! u need to visualise this to really get into the skin of the situation. Remember you are seeing this through my eyes and my specs [which cost me a whopping 2100 Indian rupees!!! :P ] [ btw its 2100 rupees for the specs,,, eyes -- priceless ]).

Scene 2 - take 1

Romeo facing the fron perfectly. And for some reason cant keep his legs together. the left one especially. The girl now gets conscious and presses inwards towards the bus wall -- expecting the seat to widen by itself. ( arre yaar ! i could have done it. I am potter incarnate afterall but wizards are not allowed used to use magic in muggle world ( muggles - ordinary people like you. wizards - my kind who weave magic all around).

Scene 2 - take 2

Romeo's left arm moves out against his own consent! --pushing the girl further inwards.
Girl looks out of the window. ( what! was she expecting prince charming to come riding on a karizma and take her out of the window??!!!)


Scene 3
The last stage is here. The girl am sure must have been relieved to see the bus halt. I looked at her and then at romeo #2 and raised my left eye brow.( non - verbal way of saying -- you could have done better girl! ).


END OF PLAY.

these scenes however turn even more gory. But then ladies need to speak out more! Say No to Romeos!!!

KEEP IT SIMPLE !

It sure is difficult to keep things simple in life. People talk of simple living but it is not as simple as it seems. All my student life i have heard my favourite teachers  (especially english) stress on the fact that we need to keep things simple.

Of late i have started blogging on a more regular basis. I also invite my friends to read my blogs. One of my friends Sailandra Harsha (shailu) called me up to compliment me on my blogs.

He said that my expression capacity in english was good. But he insisted that i explained to him what i had written. His point was that no matter how well i wrote, it would be difficult for him to understand my vocabulary.He hit the nail right on the head.

Of what use is all the matter we write if we can't make it simple.It's true that the use of proper words makes the sentence short and its meaning, precise. But all this talk reminded me as to how we regarded english speaking a valuable skill in school.

My school memories came alive as i talked with shailu over the phone.In the fourth standard, we had this notion that speaking english at bullet speeds was what we needed to learn, thanks to our limited exposure to english cartoons and movies.

Slowly it dawned on me, thanks to my teacher Mrs.Anuradha & Mrs.Subbulakshmi that speaking fast wasn't so in after all. The very purpose of language is to communicate properly and effectively.

It was then that i realised that imitating foreign accents wasn't what i needed to learn.However, I also realised that i needed to keep my accent as neutral as possible.

As my vocabulary grew I realized how certain words made my sentences more accurate in their meaning. But here too there was and there still is a lesson to be learnt. I realised that i needed to make use of words more commonly used so that what i wrote or said would interest more people.Also the length of my blogs is what i would like to reduce.

So here goes... all future efforts to blog will concentrate on using simple, plain yet effective english. and yes I will try to keep the blogs compact. 

After all, "small is powerful" :)

JIGSAW PUZZLE

TIME: 830PM IST
VENUE: CAFE (POST DINNER)

It surely has been a taxing week so far.
Put on a project at work does give you a glimpse of the things to come.
You on your own. Accountable for every key you hit on the keyboard. You start ignoring gtalk pings from the very friends you would chat endlessly in leisure time.
It surely is not like school where a passionate teacher painstakingly guides you.
Neutral faces all around giving you no insight into the evaluations they make about you.
Welcome to the world of responsible working adults, a place kids are dying to reach and adults themselves wishing for the time machine to reverse itself.

As the minutes tick by at work, I realise how those little disciplinary habits help me out now.
I also regret putting off many things i could have learnt.
I still need to get rid of that laziness bug which has dragged me down time and again.
Thanks to ganesha's blessings I have been able to phoenix my way back to a position from where i see the world being offered to me on a platter.This is one lunch i aint missing for sure.

Though my position is no more stronger than a infant who cant even crawl I do see my life now as a treasure map with the catch that its a set of Jigsaws. A Jigsaw puzzle waiting to be put together. A push here and a push there. The pieces are surely falling into the right places.
And this time around i solve the Jigsaw with a glue in hand.
Its strange how one opening in the wall of depression and setbacks can give way to hope and success.
The Phoenix of Success always helps those who cling on for that extra second without giving up.
And as the Omens say, its time to rise like the phoenix from the ashes and repel the fire breathing dragon of fear and despair!
Time for me to start working on the jigsaw puzzle. :)


PS: after advising a friend who had been coughing all week to go to a doctor, looks like i need to see one myself what with a sore throat and running nose sapping my energies LOL.. any quick remedies? ;)

HHRPK... FM.. CC [;)]

HYDERABAD TO PUNE

I seem to be the chosen one when it comes to travel nightmares.
I was in my hometown hyderabad for some work, which didn't materialise. Being a weekend buses were full and private operators were auctioning away seats.
I managed a last seat in a non-AC bus for rs 650.
The bus which was to depart at 6PM, on my further prodding the agent, now had a an actual departure time of 730PM and which thanks to the indian way of punctuality departed finally at 930 PM.
Even these few hours weren't without misadventure.
I was told later that the private operators weren't allowed to bring buses into the city. They worked around this rule by picking up passengers in the city in a mini bus which would transfer them to the Bus waiting on the outskirts of the city.
Hardly had i boarded the bus,my tour operator called me and said that i would have to cough up another 200rs as the bus arranged was an "extra" bus.
That was enough to set the temperatures soaring. At the time of this call there was only one gentleman along with me who was seated a couple of seats before me. To his shock i transformed, within the battling of an eyelid, from a calm guy-next-door to a abuse hurling machine.
I immediately had the feeling of being held ransom which i wasn't giving in too.
Dad had dropped me at the pick up point. I called him up and had quite an argument with the agent. That we had to pay 200rs eventually made my blood boil.
I called up dad and asked him to hand the phone to the travel operator.
In true "bhaigiri" style hurling abuses i had heard but never used I promised him that on my return he would have more than a piece of my mind.
i cant wait for the month to end, which is when i have another trip coming up!
Till then i will keep reading this blog of mine to keep the volcano simmering.
In the meanwhile a couple of letters to newspapers are bound to follow!
Mera Bharat Mahan! Indeed!!!

IF YOU CAN BEAT A MILLION SPERMS......

The title of the blog is what i deem to be the little snowball in my life which started an avalanche of positive thoughts.
Whenever i am down in the dumps this one line spurs me to work, to fight & to cherish the gift which we call life.
Strange, how often we allow little things affect our spirit and fog the vision of a bright future.
and surprising that we in the due course of time allow ourself to be bogged down by the excuse which is wrongly dubbed as "practical thinking".

I was in hyd for the weekend to follow-up on my passport application.
One thing which constantly nagged me was my progress at work. I have very well known, albeit the hard way, that i need time to settle down and absorb concepts and was never the quick types who seemed to be born with loads of onboard memory. & as the law of attraction goes one negative thought attracts many more. At this very moment i had a recollection of an article which said about how only one sperm out of millions manages to fertilize an egg which results into our very existence.
The very fact that we have beat a millions even before stepping foot on land should be inspiring enough. But there are those eternal pessimists ( you might be one) who point out that the others of our species who roam the earth are very much amongst those "one in a million" breed. But they however, for a fact miss the point that these are the people who we need to win over as team members instead of competing as opponents.
Even the competition we face from the outer world should spur us to improve ourselves and our productivity.
We have a point to prove that we are indeed "one in a million".
For,here, on this planet , we compete not against our fellow beings but against our ownselves.
We dont need to prove that we are better than the "one in a million" millions who walk the earth.
The race is against our own selves.
See ya at the finishing line :D !

ON CLOUD 9 IN 2K9

Come new year eve, and there is this air of festivity around. It aint a festival for us indians but still what it definitely means is that a new calendar adorns the walls of our homes.
The trouble most of us have is in identifying a way to celebrate this day.
With no desi connection to it, its booze, music and loads of junk food which makes up the menu for the night ensuring that our doctors never go out of business right from day 1 of the year!

I had no clue how i would be spending the day either till late in the evening when my college buddy rajat invited me over to his flat where we caught up with a couple of movies over a roti and paneer makhanwala dinner for me and tangdi kabab for the others. and there in lay the first lesson of the year.. never eat a tandoori roti when its cold ..LOL

The movies we watched didnt work wonders for my appetite either. Slumdog millionaire has a sure shot appetite killer scene in the first half an hour or so i guess. so if u have that habit of eat n watch avoid it for the first half an hour or so.. after that you wont eat any way ;) :D

As i write this i am reminded of the " where to go? what to do?" plight i was in same day last year.
With an academic profile that would do me good only when seen upside down and a sagging ,yet still alive and kicking, spirit ,i was preparing ( well ok ! i dont think its what u call preparing) for the stage 2 of cdac's diploma course's entrance.

The course was the only way one could stand a chance of entry in the IT field if one had not made it through the college campus or didn't have any contacts. I fitted the bill perfectly.
However that was surely the beginning of a rise aka phoenix style... 8 years of misery put to an end in an years time.

Though not exactly in the kind of position i want myself to be in I am surely on the path.
My greatest realization,discovery or whatever you wanna call it is "THE LAW OF ATTRACTION". revealed to me by my personality instructor at CDAC Mr. Nitin Ahir.
The best seller "the secret" was the one which he used to put it across to us. Can never thank him enough.The law says our thoughts are a magnet and attract similar thoughts creating an avalanche of sorts.

My pillar of strength is Ganesha. This explains my orkut and gtalk display images.
The gtalk ganesha which also adorns my orkut album images is the work of a close friend who though is years younger to me, is , i consider, Ganesha's omen to me that my time has come and is here to stay!

The resolution for this year did u say??? --- stay on cloud 9 in 2009!