one more try

Over time I find that I spend more time reading blogs than writing. (Thanks to Google Reader)

This coupled with a hectic work life - ya for once work is looking up and everyday morning I am waking up looking forward to the new day....quite a change - I hardly find time to update this blog.

So, I have thought instead of letting this blog die a natural death, I will update this with trivia. My first love.

Here is the promise, atleast once a week, I will upload 5 trivia questions. Answers can be left in the comments. And the correct answers will be uploaded next day. Lets see if this lasts.

Another day...another time...

Mumbai stint comes to an end. Next week I will be in Chennai. New place, new people. Spent the last entire week at various farewell lunches and dinners.

It is difficult to say good bye. Always...and I am an emotional fool for that.....but then this time I am looking forward to it...

no title.....

कुछ सपने टूटने के लिए ही देखे जातें हैं
कुछ अरमान कभी पुरे नही होतें
कहीं दूर गंगन में उभरा इन्द्रधनुस,
अपना कभी नहीं होता.

सपने टूट गए तो कया गम है,
फिर से नए देख लेंगे,
आख़िर एक ही तो तजुर्बा है हम में
सपने देखते ही रह जायेंगे..........

pathetic spellings....but then, my Hindi spellings were always a pain for my teachers

Obama...

Was watching the frenzied support that Obama has in India. And the applause when he won. Wonder whether his so called supporters in India have any clue on his policies, views, background or track record???

Wouldn't it be better if these supporters decided to vote in India instead of worrying about the election in US??

Dreams.....

Campus Dreams, Dream Company, Dream Job, Dream Location, Dream Girl........life is based on dreams.....and then one day....Dream company after dream company don't give you an offer, dream job after dream job don't actually work out the way it is supposed to......Dream Girl vanishes from your life......

Crashed dreams, shattered dreams, dreams lying broken under the harsh arc light of an unforgiving world....some steps when taken burn boats and bridges leaving not a charred remain for you to step back......and then from amongst the ruins........no a phoenix doesn't rise....that happens only in Dreams.....from amongst the ruins.....a tear falls.........

Watching your dreams crash around you.......watching your dream walk off with someone else......watching your dream being rejected by the person who got it........

Life.....goes on.....

Nice one

Found this article on the web. Brilliant article. Worth a read.

Of Mumbai Meri Jaan, Bihar Floods, and others

Watched मुम्बई मेरी जान this weekend....thanks to AM who tagged me along. Well whatever the reviews said, this was a movie worth watching if you are a part of Mumbai. For those who haven't watched the movie yet this is what the synopsis is, "On July 11, 2006 the local train service, known as Mumbai's lifeline, was struck by a series of bomb blasts. Bombay Meri Jaan explores the impact of this devastating incident on the lives of the people of Mumbai. From a brilliant broadcast journalist to a patriotic corporate man; from a retiring policeman at the twilight of his life to a rookie cop at the dawn of his career; from an angry and xenophobic unemployed young man to a coffee-vendor struggling to survive and belong: Mumbai Meri Jaan follows the lives of people from all strata of Mumbai's bustling society as they tackle the aftermath of a fatal incident that brings out the best and sometimes the worst in them." (courtesy UTV site)

The movie laced out well and the acting was good. Madhavan was brilliant, so was Irfaan Khan. Paresh Rawal portrayed the retiring cop so well that today morning when I saw a constable with grey hair at the naka I really wondered if he was the inspiration behind the role. On the other hand Vijay Maurya got too much into the skin of the character......or was he not given enough lines?? A new cop, who chooses to ask his senior what his achievement was, questions the system that exists does not pull the trigger on himself without enough reason. Also, Kay Kay Menon I felt overdid his part of being a Hindu Fanatic....and Soha Ali was not genuine enough.....

Maybe because you connect with the places and the people you connect with the movie. I doubt how much a person from lucknow or chandigarh would connect with this movie.
The personal drama did not look to personal for anyone other than Soha and Madhavan. And the usual Hindu-Muslim bashing and then bhai-bhai preaching. It is a tribute to a city, a tribute to the people, but it could have been handled better. Maybe it was not possible to compress this in cinematic time, but a tragedy that 7/11 was, deserves something more than this.

At the same time, one is forced to ask some serious questions. We talk about the Spirit of Mumbai but is it something more than spirit? I think it is desperation that forces people into the Spirit of Mumbai thinggi. Truthfully, who would want to travel in overcrowded trains? Except for the fact that the only other option is at least 2-3 times the train journey time. The most chilling scene in the movie, when Madhavan's friend from the US tells that maybe the next generation will become used to terrorism. To me that is a stark reminder about what life is going to be all about. Survival. And like MM says in her post, that how much longer can we create gated communities and pretend that we are safer just because we chose not to look at the world around us? Isn't it time that we decided that it is important for us to be responsible for our own security. That we cannot keep blaming the police and the government for everything? This brings me to another recent event, the calamity in Bihar. One recent TV report, said that policemen where saving all they could and moving to higher ground and another showed an interview with a villager that prasasan kuch nahi kar rahi.

I know it is the easiest thing to find a scapegoat, but then do we realise, that we are the prasasan, the administrators? The IAS officer is just a representation of the society we live in. He is no superman to save the people. He wants his cut like everyone else. Everyone in this country is out to get his pound of flesh. And by everyone, I mean everyone. We are all cheats and thieves in private and saints outside. Sarkaar kuch nahi karti is our favourite statement. But, the same statement makers will bribe a govt official who pulls you up for breaking a law, will cross the road at anyplace, will spit and dirty the city, you see for us, as long as it doesn't affect us, we are fine. We will rave and rant at the unfairness of it all and then go back to being the way they are.

Where are all these related? Bomb blasts, terrorist attacks and bihar flood.....they are all the product of our apathy.....apathy born out of not trying to be a country.....we are not Indians.....we are hindus, muslims, brahmins, dalits, maharastrian, bihari, everything but not Indians......when we start bribing the cops to let us go for small offences a precedence is created that says that the more money you pay the bigger offence you can get away with......when you pay to get your work done without standing in a que, you start a trend which says it is easy to ignore the rights of people who have been waiting before you......and that is the tragedy from which all the bigger tragedies flow......question is can we say "Never Again" or will it just be another movie being made on another tragedy?

Classics all the way

I picked up this tag from Altoid. Found it interesting enough to make it the first tag on my blog....and I pass it on to Daffodils...lets see if she beats me on this....

"Following is a list of books that decorate most people's bookshelves but not always read. In this tag we are supposed to reveal how ill read we are by showing the ones read in bold, by underlining the ones read at school, and by italicising the ones started but never finished. "


1. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
2. Anna Karenina
3. Crime and Punishment
4. Catch-22
5. One Hundred Years of Solitude
6. Wuthering Heights
7. The Silmarillion
8. Life of Pi : a novel
9. The Name of the Rose
10. Don Quixote
11. Moby Dick
12. Ulysses
13. Madame Bovary
14. The Odyssey
15. Pride and Prejudice
16. Jane Eyre
17. The Tale of Two Cities
18. The Brothers Karamazov
19. Guns, Germs, and Steel
20. War and Peace
21. Vanity Fair
22. The Time Traveler’s Wife
23. The Iliad
24. Emma
25. The Blind Assassin.
26. The Kite Runner
27. Mrs. Dalloway
28. Great Expectations
29. American Gods
30. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
31. Atlas Shrugged
32. Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
33. Memoirs of a Geisha
34. Middlesex
35. Quicksilver
36. Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
37. The Canterbury Tales
38. The Historian : a novel
39. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
40. Love in the Time of Cholera
41. Brave New World
42. The Fountainhead
43. Foucault’s Pendulum
44. Middlemarch
45. Frankenstein
46. The Count of Monte Cristo
47. Dracula
48. A Clockwork Orange
49. Anansi Boys
50. The Once and Future King
51. The Grapes of Wrath
52. The Poisonwood Bible
53. 1984
54. Angels and Demons
55. Inferno
56. The Satanic Verses
57. Sense and Sensibility
58. The Picture of Dorian Gray
59. Mansfield Park
60. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
61. To the Lighthouse
62. Tess of the D’Urbervilles
63. Oliver Twist
64. Gulliver’s Travels
65. Les Misérables
66. The Correction
67. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
68. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
69. Dune
70. The Prince
71. The Sound and the Fury
72. Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
73. The God of Small Things
74. A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
75. Cryptonomicon
76. Neverwhere
77. A Confederacy of Dunces
78. A Short History of Nearly Everything
79. Dubliners
80. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
81. Beloved
82. Slaughterhouse-five
83. The Scarlet Letter
84. Eats, Shoots and Leaves
85. The Mists of Avalon
86. Oryx and Crake
87. Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
88. Cloud Atlas
89. The Confusion
90. Lolita
91. Persuasion
92. Northanger Abbey
93. The Catcher in the Rye
94. On the Road
95. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
96. Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
97. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
98. The Aeneid
99. Watership Down
100. Gravity’s Rainbow
101. The Hobbit
102. In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
103. White Teeth
104. Treasure Island
105. David Copperfield
106. The Three Musketeers

There, these are my dismal stats : 33/106.

If anyone else is interested, please do take up the tag.

My animal personality

What Is Your Animal Personality?

Cougar

Well I am a Puma....Growl.....

I adopt a puppy....

Following Daffodils' suggestion I decided to adopt this cute little pup....albeit virtually till I can convince Sucho that I need a real one.......Well the naming thing has been put off.....will do so shortly.....

Hamlet Act 1 Scene 3

LORD POLONIUS:

Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay'd for. There; my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!

Some advice doesn't age. Like Poloniu's advice to his son Laertes. Even after 7 long years, I remembered most of the speech. The rest is googled. Modern tool to remind you of ancient wisdom which is still valuable in modern times.

New look

Finally decided to give a new look to this blog. Was getting bored with the old. Hope this also signals a new enthu to blogging....This was how the old blog looked. Just keeping it here so that sometime later can come and take a sneak peak and remember the days of yore

When life hands you a lemon........

Over a period of time and after lots of deliberations I came up with a few fundas for my life. I don't know if I am right; I don't know if these would work for others.....but yes they have made my life beautiful....

1) Chance pe dance.....

Okay this sounds like it has been copied from some Bollywood movie (yes it has been)....but there is nothing like chance pe dance. Impress your boss/girlfriend/girlfriend's parents. Take the slightest opportunity that comes your way. Even if it means filing a rusty piece of metal. (I did that, ask Suchorita for details)

2) Enjoy maadi...

Enjoy maadi is pucca Bengaluru lingo.....but it sums up life's philosophy. Hell, who knows whether you will be around to survive another episode of the crash of the titans -a crash that Elwin had in the Church grounds and he survived to crash again in Surathkal with different results, that's beside the point- but yes, lived every minute and enjoyed it is my mantra.

Many a times we think that, after I do this I will enjoy. While in school, we think that we shall have a ball when in college. In college, when the wallet is filled with more paper than money, it is will freak out while working. Sadly work doesnot give you enough time to freak, so it is after marriage. Marriage comes with kids, and it goes on. The point is, the time is now. Every minute in this world is beautiful. Every minute a blessing. And every minute counts. Live for the moment is my philosophy.

3) Fall in love....

The best feeling you can get when you know some one some where is waiting for you and only you. Nothing beats the tiredness out of the system other than a smile from you sweetheart.

Talking about love, make sure you take a walk in the park in the rain and carry only one umbrella. Millions of people and hundreds of movies cant be wrong. It is great. Walk hand in hand in the park while it is raining heavily and not a soul is around.

4) Spend time with friends....

Take time out to talk to a friend. Just like the good ol days. If possible meet up for coffee and beer. Six figure salary will not help you when you are lonely. Friends will.

5) Walk around in any new city.....

More than exercise, it is a way of knowing a city initmately. Don't be a flying toiurist. That never helps. Try to absorb the city's sights and sounds. That makes the city. Not some building. Buildings are the bones. Try to reach the soul of the city you are in.

6) Try to stay in a hostel atleast once...

Hostel life seems scary when you are living at home. But try it. It builds you as a person. No work seems to be too difficult, no food too yucky, no clothes too dirty, no inscet too creepy. And at the end of your stay, you end up with a bunch of friends who are closer to you than any of your day scholar friends are.

7) Enjoy getting ragged and rag your juniors....

I know, I sound scandlous....but I learnt this. My first year of engineering was hell as far as I was concerned. I hated it. I din't rag my juniors. But moved on. When I joined my first job, I realised that here also there is ragging. Albeit in a different form. Ragging builds you character. You cope with life better.

8) Last but not least...'Life gives you a second chance'...it is true....you have to recognise the chance and leap for it. There is always a next time. Always.

At the end, remember, life is never fair or smooth. Life is a constant learning process. Life does hand you roses and lemons. When you get lemons, dont cry...make lemonade.

A (poor) man's guide to buying a ladies' sweater

No part of this blog is my own...I got this as a chain of forwards...loved it so much that thought it deserves a p[lace here
====================================================================

Sharath, can you get a sweater for me when you come to India ?
Why ? Don’t you get sweaters in India ?
No, just like that.
Okay fine. Will try. (As if "Just like that" suddenly made it more convincing!)
You know my size right? And I want a light pink color one.
Yeah, I kind of know how you look, can always make an engineer’s approximation ( you will discover what it is soon ). About colors lets see.
And hey, remember that for my sweater, you have to go to the ladies section.
Like I am that stoopid. Thanks for reminding anyway, you never know what would have happened otherwise. :)
And so I went. Over 1500 sweaters to choose from, laid out in 6 aisles in the mall.
Yeah, this is good. Probably what she wants. But this is a turtleneck sweater, goes right up till her chin ( or is it cheek ). But she has a short neck right –will it be okay? Or does she? I didn’t notice. Do I have her picture? No.
What about this one? Looks great. But is this her size? She is thinner than me. Well, most people are – so that doesn’t mean anything. Looks too small for her. But then sweaters are supposed to be tight and they stretch. So it must be fine. But does she wear tight clothes? Am not sure.
Forget about pink. Must look for some bright and bold colors. She probably doesn’t wear them though. But come on, she can try, one must experiment with clothes. (look who is talking). Yeah, this one is good ; narrow shoulders, so will look good on her. But hands look short. Does she have long hands? I don’t remember.
Okay, this one is lovely. Really soft texture and kind of light orange – somewhat similar to pink – approximately atleast. If not, I will convince her it is. Infact, this is Cashmere ( Kashmir ) sweater. How much does it cost now? Okay great, what do I have to sell to buy this one? No no, something else.
This has to be it - black and beautiful. Black is the color of the season, someone said. Actually no one said so, but I will tell her someone did ! What is this thread here now – does it go around the waist ? or the neck ? Or does it sit pretty around the hands coming from the back. I mean how is it worn – forget it, that’s her headache, she will figure. Oh..no…low neck – forget it.
This is white and black horizontal stripes. Will be cool – never seen someone with this kind of a design. But will this make her look like a zebra? What if people will walk over her in the traffic !
Hey, this has a cap attached. But then good for winters like Pittsburgh. Not for Bangalore. Should be fine. This has some fur around the neck. What if she is allergic to animal fur. Is there something like plant fur by the way? Why take the risk.
Taken me about 45 minutes and this is not going anywhere. Try something different.
Pick a number. 55. What is today’s date. Nov 25. 55 modulo 25, 55 divided by 25 gives 5 as reminder. Pick the 5th sweater to the right from the present sweater. Okay man, this is your sweater.
Morals of the story :
For men: Buying clothes for women is one great experience – if you haven’t yet, you must try – it’s a different world altogether and it gives you ample opportunities to try out new mathematical tricks to randomize your selections.
For women: We are glad that you not only do your own shopping, but actually can’t resist it!

To be or not to be

To be or not to be that is the question.......Hamlet taught by Gopa Bose and Mrs. Browne....I have forgotten everything except for this line....and this is the question I ask myself...everyday. Incredible though it may sound, I have been in Mumbai for about a year now and the only thing I have seen till now is the Bandra Sea Face. What am I doing here?

The crux of the problem lies in the janus faced title that i hold..Software Engineer....The workload doesnot permit me the luxury of loafing around on weekdays and the salary doesnot permit me to stay in a place accessible to the city.

The question in front of me is to continue this wretched existence or cut the cord to this profession and embark on an I love life mission?...Doesn't work.. I am no revolutionary...I love that feel of warm money coming out of the ATM on the first of the month..so what if I am dead broke by the 20th..Dead broke...thats a joke..Dead people are buried with goodies atleast...i dont get the luxury of that...Okay coming back to the point....I am not going to cut my cord..cant cut it...need the smell of fresh cash...then I shall continue...maybe ask my PM for a transfer to Timbuctoo...(Pune)