Have it HOT !!!

Halaal?

2008-09-22T13:00:00.002+06:00

Since around 20 days, my home looks like a terrorist bomb site. My whole terrace has been laid with marble. Which when was about to get finished my landlord thought of doing more beautifications.

Anyway, I have a nice rapport with the workers.

Yesterday we ordered a bucket of chicken masala. Which was enormous, and we could'nt even finish a quarter of it. Now S had this good idea of giving rest of the chicken to the workers. So today morning I asked them.
You guys do have chicken, right?
Haan bhaiyya we do have chicken, but we only have the halaal kind.
okkk.

Now I was slightly pissed off. Then I wondered should I be? I personally have eaten non-veg in my muslim friends'. And they have eaten in mine. Should the religious rules be followed rigidly or should they be considered as guidelines which when the context demands can be broken?

First instance of Egalitarianism?

2008-09-18T13:17:00.005+06:00

I have started reading "Ka". :), my namesake, it means "what" in sanskrit.

The first chapter begins the story of Garuda. He hatched out of its egg after 500 years. His mother Vinata looked over and protected the egg all these 500 years. When he hatched, his mother told him her story, and gave him his first mission. The mission which would end Vinata's slavery to her sister. Garuda listened and absorbed everything.

Garuda was all set for the mission, only for the fact, that he was hungry. Hungry for 500 years. His mother told him to go to a nearby island, and that he could eat all the nishadas he could. But only thing he had to keep in mind that he should never eat a Brahman. Now Garuda has no clue what a brahman is or what a nishada is. He has just seen his mother, his aunt and his cousins which are snakes. Anyway he hopes when the time comes he will know and flies away.

He comes to the island and picks of hundreds of nishadas with his beak. The nishadas fell down into the endless well that is his empty stomach. Suddenly he feels something stuck in his throat, and an immense pain. He realized that he must have accidently swallowed a brahmin. He tells the brahmin to please come out of his throat, and that he is really sorry. The brahmin is holding onto a nishada woman and says that he won't come out without her. Garuda says whatever, just please come out. When he sees the woman, he thinks she looks just like his mother. And realizes that the thousands he had swallowed must be similar to her. He is overcome with guilt and flies away hungry.

He does get to eat later, an elephant and a turtle. But the main thing which comes out of this episode are these:
1. Brahmins where obviously considered top and even devas could'nt harm them.(pain in his throat)
2. Nishadas were considered lowly so that they could be eaten. (Vinata tells garuda that he can eat all the nishadas he wants)
3. When Garuda sees the similarity between the nishada woman and his mother, he feels guilty. (why does he? what is the point of this in the story? )
4. A brahmin has a nishada woman as his mate and is ready to die with her (how come this cross caste bond)

The only plausible reason is, even in that age some people obviously had egalitarianism on their minds.

kwippy feed

2008-07-03T15:08:00.002+06:00

The black box on the sidebar, are my and my friends latest kwips.
kwips = my IM status + web kwips
We launched rss a few days back. Right now i am using a feedflash widget, will make something better soon.

Delhi Noir

2008-06-22T22:04:00.002+06:00

So this week the chasingframes thing has changed a little. Earlier we used to pick a creative commons picture from flickr and wrote a short story based on it. This time however we write a story and then either shoot or pick a picture which suits it. And the theme of the story was "Your city". And if you have been following the delhi newspapers I am very much influenced by the recent ongoings.

******************************************************************
Delhi Noir

I was listening to the phone. For the past few months this was my pass time. The way I spend my lonely evening hours. The phone I was hearing was a MTNL phone, which I had taken so that I could get a good internet connection. And why do i keep saying "hearing the phone" as it was the radio. Coz it acted like a radio for me. A radio which had romance, soap operas, thrillers as well.

I discovered this when the phone rang. around 2 months ago. I was surprised because I had not given this number to anybody, thought it must be a wrong number. I picked it up and heard,
"..jee aaj mohan ne bhindi banaai hai. mainey usey hazaar baar mana kiya hai bhindi kisi ko nahi bhati ghar pe. Idiot hamesha bhool jata hai."

Before I could speak anything or show any semblance of understanding what this lady meant and why was she telling all this to me. I heard another lady's voice,

"jee ye naukar toh sare gadhe hote hain. ek hamara kisan. kal hi hum uske kamre mein gandi magazine dekhe. humne toh inko bata diya. chhat pe le jake inhone apni belt se khoob maara. Ab batayiye ji ghar mein baby bhi toh hai. Bus ek mauka diye hain usey agar fir kuch harkat kari usne toh bhej denge vaapas chhapra."
"baap re bade dil vale hain aap log toh. agar hamara mohan aisa kuch karta toh usi vaqt nikaal dete. chaliye jee fir baat karte hain"

Man my phone had a misconnection. It was fabulous. Every half an hour the phone rang at least once. And I found myself going towards it away from the numerous chatrooms I trolled. Here are a couple of more interesting calls,
"yo girl...wasssup? you been to college lately?"
"not for the past 4 days... hey listen ..that bitch karuna mam is doing sharma sir..."
"could you even expect...and that Sharma the old bastard :) ..he must really be a playboy getting that cold and frosty karuna"
"ya i know..and watsup with you and Shanky, no hanky panky hunh ...giggles..."
"he's a really nice guy ya...not like we thought...he's helping me with the computer project. I think one of these days when mom and dad go out for a party or something I'll invite him...mohan ek cold coffee le aao jaldi"
"hey naughty naughty....don't have that cold coffee, keep up the heat LOL...."

So here I was listening to these conversations, just being a voyeur made all of them interesting. Of the old lady's menopause problems and the young girls love problems. And often I could hear as a subscript these people ordering mohan or kisan around. It was more of a "noise" for me, which broke the flow of the conversations. So it came as a surprise when mohan took a more central stage in one of the calls.

"hey listen ... something bad happened today. .."
"kyon kya hua?...nothing with shanky right?"
"no ya..I thought I was alone in the house, and I came out of the bathroom after a shower. Thank god I had wrapped a towel."
"what happened..? you were obviously in your room only right?"
"ya,.. but my room door was open and out there stood mohan gawking. I gave him a good thrashing. what the hell he was doing standing there in front of my room. Have told him I will complain to dad. He was crying and all..saying he would do anything if I kept quiet. Maybe I won't tell only..i could use him on my side .. i could invite shanky more often"
"beeeetch..:D..."

Man this was getting hotter by the day. Hotter than I could handle.
So when I picked up the phone today I was surprised when I heard,
"police is that police...i need help fast...is somebody there..."
i waited for the police to respond, but no one seem to be there.
"god damn ...koi hai ...mujhe madad chahiye...vo mujhe maarna chahta hai...WTF koi kuch toh bolo"

I banged the phone down. If I kept quiet I wasn't there. That's how a voyeur works. I couldn't watch the telephone. I put a newspaper over it. It began ringing again. I took it off the handle. And ran outside. Climbed up the iron stairs to the roof.

I have been standing here on the roof for the past half an hour. I know what happened must be somewhere near. Should I be ashamed of myself? Should I be afraid that the police will track me? but what wrong did I do? What are people upto under all these roofs?

The world's most simple language

2008-06-06T12:45:00.011+06:00

This is part of chasing frames.
**********************************************************************************
Hi, I am Michael Souza, a linguist researching on languages which do not use recursion. It has long been held by Chomsky and his followers that the human child has an inherent instinct for languages. Teach him a few rules and he will use recursion to make more sentences and phrases. But since Everett discovered the Piraha, I have been fascinated by the other paradigm. That language is cultural. Piraha language has the lowest number of phonemes in the world. Just 3 vowels and 9 consonants. I think I have discovered the Misaka tribe has even lesser, 2 vowels and 6 cosnonants.

I was there in the middle of the amazon, for two months. Was dropped here by canoes, this area being so far out not even float planes come this way. And the worst part is we don't have a common language we both understand. So the going is really tough. I used to grab hold of a object, say a root of tapioca and then try to find out what it is called. Just before I came back to UK I had a vocabulary of 12 words.

Now when I came back the Misaka had become famous. Printed throughout the world, and shown in news channels. I remember the episode. I plane had passed at quite a low altitude over the settlement.
I really laughed my head off when I saw the accompanying article. The entire article was based on guesswork but written like a science paper. It was absurd. For me even though I was there, I could hardly make sense of what went. I'll try to describe the event in detail.

It was morning and I had just had my breakfast of pig liver roasted over fire. Chingwa was cleaning the lama wool he had just shorn off. He had just rubbed in the red blood of the lama they had hunted. Whenever they killed the animal they would rub their blood all over their body to get their spirit's power. A while later the village witch would come to bless them so that the animals spirit really gets one with him.

When the plane came in the witch was blessing them. I'll try to note down whatever I heard with what I understood inside brackets.
"ooe te pee koou. pee tuu GRRRRRR ooooo maaaa keeee" Then she went silent.
From their expression they seemed to know what to do. It was really rehearsed. I later realized that the 2 propeller plane lying across the marsh was their "hunt".

Other than big flying objects they were quiet friendly towards others. I will go back to the Misakas in a week.

********************************************************************************
More stories - by supreet, dipankar, , amit, forced ambitions

updated on jun 27 2008 - read this report on NGC on which an anthropologist Robert L. Carneiro says:

"The point is that, because we've never contacted them, we just don't know anything about them," he said. "So anything anyone says about them has to be treated as speculation."

read the full report here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080619-uncontacted-tribe_2.html

Yellow journalism

2008-06-02T14:20:00.007+06:00

Do you read newspapers or watch news channels? Do you get entertained or informed?
Since last few years I have lost all faith in media ..about all. The way they unleash their creativity they should change careers and become fiction writers. And the news channel guys should make soap operas. You could read vir sanghvi's take on this phenomenon.

I still had faith in some agencies. BBC for instance. But after I read the article about the lost tribes of Brazil, even that has faded. Below is the image and a part of the article.

The white blob in the photograph could well be cotton, and the beige area next to it is probably a basket. The cotton would either be cultivated by the tribe, or gathered in the wild. It would be woven by the women, into the kind of short skirt worn by the black figure. Cotton would also be used to make hammocks....read more here

Now what on hell does this statement 'The cotton would either be cultivated by the tribe, or gathered in the wild.' convey. Is there any other way the cotton could be there. Maybe the cotton in that forest self detaches from the tree and comes floating to the basket. I am not sure what IQ level this article is aimed at.

So I, Supreet and Forced Ambition have decided to use this image for the weekly photo story. We also invite anyone interested to write a story based on this picture. If you write about it kindly put a link in the comment. We plan to publish the story on 6th jun (friday). I would suggest you do the same so that nobody gets influenced by the other stories. So happy writing or shall I say happy journalism.

updated on jun 27 2008 - read this report on NGC on which an anthropologist Robert L. Carneiro says:

"The point is that, because we've never contacted them, we just don't know anything about them," he said. "So anything anyone says about them has to be treated as speculation."

read the full report here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080619-uncontacted-tribe_2.html

Mas que Nada

2008-05-31T15:48:00.001+06:00

via smaran

Five headed she dragon

2008-05-30T17:53:00.004+06:00

Photowalking at Okhla Bird Sanctuary
Originally uploaded by Aditi Pany

The five headed she dragon started spewing acid, on the whole countryside. It did clean all the toilet commodes but did a lot of damage to the monuments which where made of marble.

People had been anticipating something of this sort. They hadn't sent to the dragon his monthly decided quota of a beautiful virgin girl. The decision not to send was not because of any moral dilemma but the inability to find any virgin girls. The city elders lashed the girlfolk for not protecting their virginity for such crisis. The girlfolk after a while could'nt take it any more and decided to take the matter in their own hands. They gathered in the city stadium and began the tiresome task of threading in beads. They aimed to make such a pretty necklace which they would then present to the five headed dragon. The dragon would then become really confused which head to put the necklace on. And thus bound in his eternal confusion they would capture her and put it in a small box. Which they would give to the menfolk to sink to the bottom of the city lake. And thus ends the story.

****************************************************************************************************

Third in the series of stories based on pics.Another one from supreet here.

The mixed salad

2008-05-22T17:20:00.003+06:00

************************************************************************************************
Second in the series of stories based on photos.
************************************************************************************************

Doctor Thomas expecting a child wild with pain, thrashing around, was pleasantly surprised to see him quiet calm. His face was hardly visible, covered in blood. He opened his medical box and got down to work. Apparently a small piece of shrapnel was lodged at the base of his neck. With a razor borrowed from a onlooker he went to work. The child lost consciousness in the first few minutes.

He had been brought to the masjid by the imaams son, Junaid. Caught between two religious mobs fighting over yet another petty issue. The imaams son was crouching along with this kid in a small nook. They exchanged names, he was Samraat, a street kid an orphan. Meanwhile while the mob was thinning out, a molotov bomb fell a metre away. Samraat got hurt. Seeing all the blood on the kids face, Junaid just could'nt leave the kid alone, helpless.

Samraat, now lives in the masjid. And he prays daily to his own god.

***************************************************************************
More posts on the same pic by supreet and dipankar.
The first in the series of stories was here.

awesome Stop Motion video

2008-05-21T16:23:00.000+06:00

Do, chaar, chhe, aath, dus. Bas.

2008-05-15T17:04:00.000+06:00

Awesome article about MithunDa.

Secondly, the plot, the basic template of which remains unchanged. Whether he plays an honest police officer or a member of the working masses, Mithunda loses his parents to the evil men (usually Thakurs or the mafia) within the first 30 minutes. A horrible fate then befalls his sister just before the interval. With an hour of the movie left, he metamorphoses into an avenging angel. The only suspense that is then left is—in which order will he kill the villains and how far will their body parts fly.

Read the full version here.

Never stop trying

2008-05-15T14:32:00.011+06:00

*******************************************************************
My friend Supreet started this meme of writing a story based on this picture. He had given me 100 words. I have taken my artistic license a lil far beyond. And I am writing it as a parable. More posts from supreet and dipankar

*******************************************************************************

In a quiet town called Eritoria, there lived a young man called Stephan. He was calm, bordering on boring inspite of being young. And being in the age that he was, he was hugely unpopular with the girl folk of Eritoria.

In fact nobody noticed him as he walked the streets or sat in a pub drinking a dark beer.

One night with the moon glowing blue amidst the clouds, he walked towards the lone hill. The night was silent. It seemed even the critters had either fallen asleep or were resting after bouts of mating. He noticed clouds blanketing the moon as the moonlight faded. As he neared the peak, the clouds began to rumble.

He saw a bright flash of light and a thundering sound. The hair on his neck stood up. He could'nt move.
He had a vision.
He could see a girl dressed in white with white wings floating near him. He realized that it was an angel. The angel whispered in his ears,
"Dude, don't waste your youth,
Coz even kings with there gold
with speed become old
dress up, style up and don't be uncouth."

With this he came back to his senses. Off he went to the city tailor, woke him up and giving some urgent, phoney reasons asked him to stictch the very latest in fashion.

The next day dressed to the nines he went to a friends party. He had been promised all the beauties of Eritoria had been invited.

The party had begun. People were faking laughs on boring jokes.

Amidst the crowd one girl stood apart. He had never seen her before. He thought he saw her smiling at him. With angels whispering in his ear, his head had exploded to twice it's size. He went to her and said,
"oh beauty with the drink
i am a youth, who was uncouth,
but i am decked up to the brink
So lets go out,
amidst the bushes
and make out."

The girl's eyes became read at this wanton proposal. With the flick of her wrist as fast as lightning she threw her drink on his face.

And with this we get to the end of the story. The moral of the story is definitely not, "Don’t put off ‘til tomorrow what you can do today."
It is actually closer to this, "Never stop trying."

Chris Sharma ..who?

2008-05-08T19:27:00.002+06:00

Chris Sharma (Chris Omprakash Sharma) is one of THE best rock climbers in the world.
Who also does "Deep water soloing".

Troubleshooting Bullet starting problems

2008-05-02T12:34:00.003+06:00

Yesterday I kicked at it for almost half an hour. Till my right leg muscles began to cramp. Gave up took an auto to office. These videos helped a lot.

Today morning I was determined I would find out what exactly is wrong. Keys on, right switch on, petrol lever down. And I tried the horn, it did'nt work. Voila, so it was a dead battery. Success at the first troubleshooting I did. I am sharing this with everyone who think of their rides/gadgets etc as black boxes. You input a fuel/energy and it gives back what you need. But sometimes a lil bit of coaxing does help. As I learn more about the bullet in particular I will share it here.

I will start with the very high level modular scheme. A internal combustion engine needs three things to run:

Fuel
Compression
Spark

If the engine gets good quality fuel and it is compressed with the right mixture of air. And at the right moment it gets the spark from the spark plug, the engine will run. So any troubleshooting should be three pronged. First should find out which of these 3 things has the problem. And then go onwards.

Expect more such posts in the future :).

2008-04-30T22:42:00.000+06:00

A haiku dedicated to my new ride.

silent grabber
aching right leg
kickstart trouble.

I hope future ones are a tad bit happier.

Got a bull!

2008-04-26T23:21:00.003+06:00

After a long internet search and pussyfooting I got myself a bullet today. My last bike was a second hand splendor, and was a lemon so to say. God save its soul, as it never gave me trouble, still I had to refill its engine oil every month. Coz its piston was nearly gone. And bullet was always like a dream vehicle for me from childhood. And the image it has with popular perception that only men with big "personality" can drive one. The thing which goes with me is its basic design, a design which can be explained in under 200 words. Also the traveller that I am could expand my wings with this. So I decided to buy a bullet. Now the first obvious choice after a second hand splendor was a new bullet. Who wanted lemons when you could have company warranty. Online research showed that bullet has more variables than that.

The models which were made in England, between 1960-70s had a heavy crank in the engine, which to a layman would mean that the engine was more flexible and could be ripped to high speeds. By flexibility, I mean that a bullet with a heavy crank can be driven in the fourth gear at very low speeds. And some of these bullets were expensive. A visit to Karol Bagh, to a shop called "Gurdial Auto Engineers", gave me an entire different perspective. Most of its clients are embassy people (firangs), who get a second hand nearly junk (khatara) 1960s bike and restore it. After restoration some would even cost more than a lakh. Close to a new bullet.

So I decided against popular wisdom that a newbie should go for a electric start new bullet, and went for a second hand 1990 machismo. The point being, that once I am inside the bullet world (which is very close to a clique, considering many bullet owners considering all other vehicles pansy/sissy), I would be at a better position to decide. Riding it since morning, with the occasional stuck at a signal trying to kickstart, overall its been smooth. And to every guy who thinks that a bullet needs a heavy built "personality", may rest assured that it needs none. For bullet I can say other vehicles are ridden, while bullet rides itself.

More bullet posts ahead :D.

bioengineering

2008-04-24T17:16:00.003+06:00

saw this pic of a bridge made of tree roots.
and also heard the term bioengineering in context of real world engineering. does anybody have any other examples?

via bindu

Naagin the lady cobra

2008-04-15T17:33:00.001+06:00

via ranchu

saturday night fever

2008-04-15T15:18:00.009+06:00

Saturday night, at Max Mueller Bhavan with Smriti. Schaeben and Voss were ok, frankly a little amateurish, especially Schad Privat. On the other hand I have become a fan of East India company. Among the folk/fusion groups I have heard, they are the best.

And folks at the Max Muellers know a thing or two about being the perfect hosts. With low seatings covered with mattresses and white sheets. A open bar, and good food (though expensive). And a table with ash trays and a placard saying, "use these". I guess this is the only mucic concert I have been where alcohol was permitted. Even the musicians had an occasional swig :).

kwippy!!

2008-04-02T17:13:00.000+06:00

What is kwippy? - a micro/nanoblogging webapp + IM status logger + social network

Why another microblogging app when there are already plenty out there? - There is twitter, pownce, jaiku, and 10 other similar ones. Though all of these promote small posts, each has a different kind of social network.

On twitter you mostly meet strangers. By strangers I mean people you don't know in the real world. It's like barcamp, or a conference where you go partly to network. You meet fellow bloggers, marketeers, and people from your field. Yes friendships may grow among them, but mostly there are subtle motives behind the tweets. From promoting your blog, selling your product, showing your expertise, etc.

Pownce is geared more towards file sharing, sharing media (youtube, mp3s) etc. And it has an AIR instant messenger kind of software which makes it a little closer to an Instant Messeger.

In kwippy, the whole focus is on the Instant Messenger. The friends list on the instant messenger is the most intimate friends list you can find, of all social networks. It gives the people in the list immediate access to your attention. People share their joys (i got a raise), sorrows (i flunked my english papers), their favorite links, and thousand other things through their status messages. And all these people also have a list of their closest friends on their list. And like in the real world when a real friend introduces you to another person, the chances that you hit it off are greater. There's this trust thing which is automatic.

So there - kwippy has a social network which gets real friends, friends you could meet. And it stores all your status messages, which become your emotional timeline.

We have been working on it since some time, and now it is in testing. If you would like to check it out, and give your invaluable suggestions for improvement, either go to kwippy.com, or comment here.

Living Darfur

2008-04-01T15:56:00.002+06:00

via smriti

Ever wondered why Darfur, or Tibet, or sierra leon (blood diamond), narmada valley (amir khan's views), etc.. are so cool to support. Many of these do deserve support, but I am really wary of people who don't know zilch about the issue but just support it for coolness sake.

Sheila Chandra

2008-03-25T17:33:00.002+06:00

The singer who came before most other "fusion" bands. But the video is too funny :D, view the original here.

"The one" on sulekha

2008-03-18T17:30:00.002+06:00

The one claim to fame I am proud of :P. Someone has scanned in the stories from DNA, Me and uploaded the pdfs. Here are pages 1 and 2.

Sabeeh Ruka nahi

2008-03-17T17:09:00.001+06:00

Wicked hour

2008-03-17T15:08:00.002+06:00

Sundat evenings have always been sad for me. In anticipation of the monday morning blues :). Anyway i have found a balm which eases the pain. The wicked hour on 102.6 fm (delhi AIR rainbow), RJed by sunny. Awesome music. And very concurrent to my newly discovered hobby, of discovering new music. And I am also thinking of starting a podcast, sharing my own new discoveries with others.

Goldspot

2008-03-11T23:04:00.000+06:00

two movies

2008-03-10T13:48:00.002+06:00

Sophie Scholl - the last days
Im July

Max mueller bhavan is a cool place to hang around. Open bar, open air movies and barbecque. What else does one want on a saturday. :)

Lemon Nana

2008-03-07T00:50:00.002+06:00

A cool drink recipe for the coming summer.
things required -
Lemons
Mint
Water
Ice

Processing the mint -
Mince/blend the mint leaves and get it's juice. I blended it with a little water and sieved it. You know have the mint extract. Or if mint extract is available use that.

Mixing -
20% mint extract
2 lemons
sugar to taste
rest water and ice cubes.

serve in a transparent glass with a sprig of mint.

And it is great for digestion too. enjoy :)

heart

2008-02-21T21:38:00.003+06:00

the heart is a weird place
with false corners and
dead ends
but it does have a window here and there
bringing in rays of light
but is there a door
is it open?
am i in or out

Chasing storms in Thar desert

2008-02-18T13:49:00.001+06:00

got this awesome travel documentary from offroadpakistan.

Scrub Me Mama

2008-02-08T11:41:00.000+06:00

Scrub Me Mama With A Boogie Beat

BA

2008-02-07T22:51:00.000+06:00

AA doesn't just stand for the highest grade in school classrooms. It also is an abbreviation for Alcoholics Anonymous.
It has local delhi chapters. Smriti is doing a project on alcoholism. So accompanied her as an observer at one such meeting. Very powerful experience. For those who don't know about anonymous meetings it is such. I am creating a fictional Anonymous group called Blogaholics Anonymous. And the first ever meeting for it will be held right now, and where else but on my blog. I'll start,
"Hi, I am kaa and am a blogaholic."
"hi kaa", says everyone.
A doubt here: why is it anonymous if I have to tell my name.
Anyway, "so what is the topic today" I ask.
"How to get time for your family when you have 4 different blogs" volunteers someone.
"Yeah, very good topic. Though I do not have 4 blogs, just have 2 now, still giving love and affection to a blog, replying to comments takes so much time. Maan...When I was in my initial recovery stage, it was really difficult. I posted my prayers to my prayer blog every morning and evening. Yup I had created a new prayer blog just for people like me who could then take blogging as a hobby not as a jihad. Anyway I had so much problem in the beginning, I checked for new comments from my phone even while I was driving. I got challaned 3 times due to this habit. Then one day I said to myself """Enuff Is Enuff""". Found the Blogaholics Anonymous number and came here. Since then I have found strength. I do blog now and then. My RSS subcribtions have come down from a 3 digit number to 2 digits. thanks for listening to me"
clap clap clap

Sorry if i offended anyone. Anonymous groups are really helpful for many people. This post was just for fun. And to create curiosity among you readers of what it is about, so that you can find a group that you need.

2008-02-06T18:15:00.000+06:00

that's piratebay for you

Fiddler on the roof

2008-02-03T14:24:00.000+06:00

Saw it yesterday at Siri Fort. It was a hindi musical and apart from some funny lyrics was good. Got interviewed by a freelance reporter from US, writing an article for a jewish newspaper called Forward.

Meat

2008-02-01T10:37:00.000+06:00

Most people eat pork, which accounts for 38 percent of world meat production, followed by poultry at 30 percent and beef at 25 percent.

In a discussion lately someone was saying poultry is the most consumed meat while I thought beef must be. It seems both of us were wrong, it's pork.

Kraftwerk

2008-01-31T17:02:00.000+06:00

My kinda band :D. read more about them in their wiki. This particular track, "Trans Europe Express" was an "inspiration" for a song in Koi Mil Gaya.

Cornelius

2008-01-25T15:13:00.000+06:00

“Ideas come out just through living life,” says Keigo Oyamada, 39, who goes by the stage name Cornelius, after a character in the movie Planet of the Apes. Indeed, the Tokyo-born producer and musician manages to squeeze inspiration from even the most mundane corners of existence — the song Toner on his Sensuous album, for instance, is built around noise recorded from his inkjet printer, and it’s exactly this kind of aural experimentalism that has made Oyamada a hot name among fans of electronica, and prompted bands like Bloc Party and the Go! Team to ask him to remix their songs in his explosive, multilayered and brilliantly eclectic style.

Read the wiki for more.

The purring motor

2008-01-22T16:53:00.000+06:00

My mom tells me that I was a very picky eater. When my parents wanted to feed me, dad started his Allwyn Pushpak and then only I would eat. This ad made me remember that.

2008-01-18T20:02:00.000+06:00

I am writing this with the soundtrack of two azaans in the background. It has been three days since I noticed the 7:30 one going.
And the two sounds of "Allah u akbar..." start within 5 secs of each other. One of them is a male child's voice.
At mornings there is the hymn singing from the gurudwara which starts at 4:30 and the school boys prayer (also sung in the mic) around 7:30.

Plenty of communal music.

Holy cow!!

2008-01-16T17:08:00.000+06:00

Yezdi!!

2008-01-16T17:05:00.000+06:00

The site is still on.

I have a pet now.

2008-01-09T22:16:00.000+06:00

And it's a firefox. Called fusion.

The second photo was taken by Divyanshu.

A good '07 - and a hopeful me

2008-01-01T19:54:00.000+06:00

Ended 2007 with a bang.
Wish all of you a super duper new year. Be successful in whatever you do!

Taare Zameen Par

2007-12-24T13:25:00.000+06:00

Awesome awesome awesome, movie!!
Just proves that people have realized that not all movies need to be made with a hero and heroine who are lovers, and songs and the whole brouhaha.
A story which also has a message.
And also loved the fact that the film is partially inspired by Calvin and Hobbes.

Won't give out much. Go and watch the movie yourself.
p.s. I cried once and was on the verge at least 4 times.

My Christmas gifts

2007-12-21T16:00:00.000+06:00

What do you get when
Friends(developers) + Wacom tablet + Me (the model;)

this:

and they are on the net too, request them for your portrait if you like their style :D.

Lalit,Saurabh,Golak,Yatender and Dipankar

Moorda Dhan (Dead money)

2007-12-18T16:05:00.000+06:00

This phrase was used by an elderly gentleman whom I had the opportunity to meet in one of my train rides. He was epitome of grey wisdom. Also having read and travelled a lot. He knew all about parvati valley (Malana) and about how it is difficult finding labourers in Chhattisgarh because of the minimum price for rice (i'll write about that in another post).

I am paraphrasing,..

Why do people run after money? How much of your life you actually waste going after that, when in fact even when you get it, are you truly happy.
In fact there is two kinds of money in this world. 'Dead money' and well 'alive money'.

Now let us see what is alive money. A cycle rickshaw puller earns say 100 bucks a day. How much time does that money stay in his pocket? A day, 2 days maximum a week. I would say most of it is spent in a day. That money is truly alive. It moves. It's dynamic. It changes hands.

Dead money on the other hand is dead. It stays where it is. It rots. For the most it may reproduce, I mean gain interest, but even then it's like two elephants mating. Once in a year?

So in short don't kill money.

I am not sure exactly how to go about following his advice. Did he want us to invest? Did he want us to earn only what we need? I don't know. Do you?

Kutte ki dum?

2007-12-14T15:33:00.000+06:00

kaa: abe kutte ki dum
ka koi polite equalent phrase

brijesh: abe woh to saket hai
ruk sochta hoon
gadhe ki gaand

kaa: sal3e

brijesh: abe yeh kaafi polite hai
ruk fir se sochta hoon
tujhe kitna polite chaahiye

kaa: kaafi

brijesh: main tulsi terey aangan ki...
yeh kaisa hai

kaa: savere savere bhang piya hai kya

brijesh: abe....yeh highly polite aur religious bhi hai
ruk thoda kam polite sochta hoon
behen de takke
yeh kaisa hai

kaa: nahi yaar
thoda aur fight mar
u r nearly there

brijesh: tujhe english mein chahaiye ki hidi mein

kaa: hindi mein

brijesh: gobhi ke phool
moongfali ke chhilke
paaan ki peek

Do you know of a more appropriate one?
and btw, brijesh is here

Booghie, Bhainsa aur Boomba

2007-12-07T13:06:00.000+06:00

Bansilaal bade thakke hue thhe.
Soche bheeru ke adde mein thoda thharra maar len.
Maarne ke toh maar liya, ek seesa aur apni dhoti mein khos vo baahar nikle.
Baahar unki booghie khadi thi. Aur saath mein bhainsa.

Ab bansilaal apne bhainse se pyaar bada karte thhe. Bole le pee tu bhi.
Aur pilay diye poora seesa.

Boogie mein baithhe hanke ... hurrrrr ...chal re ...

Bhainsa chala mast.

Bajoo mein aaya boomba.

Aur bhainsa samet booghie samaay gayee boombha mein.

Toh ye hai kahaani Booghie, Bhainsa aur Boomba ki.

p.s. booghie == a bhains driven cart
p.a.s. boomba == an irrigation canal

Ninja Parade

2007-11-01T14:16:00.000+06:00

Ninja Parade Slips Through Town Unnoticed Once Again

Modesto, CA residents turned out for the city's annual Ninja Parade, where no ninjas were seen for the 30th year in a row.

Vodafone half marathon - cheering and some bike stunts

2007-10-29T14:33:00.000+06:00

Yesterday was the world's richest half marathon. People of all ages, and sizes ran. I didn't. My last attempt taught me that running 21kms without practice leads to a lot of ache. So I went to cheer the runners. At India gate saw this group of kids who had modded there regular bicycles for doing stunts. Young people have so much energy, venting that pentup energy in something like this is far better than doing drugs and those other kind of thrills.

And this is a clip from the race.

2007-10-27T13:18:00.000+06:00

I have a roof, I mean my barsati has. It’s a triffle difficult to climb, but once you are up there you can see around.
A petal of the lotus temple.
Factories spewing black clouds in Noida.
And thousands of other roofs. And each roof has at least half a dozen black, cylindrical, water tanks. “Syntex ki tanki” as they are called. On a silent evening as I stand upon my roof, I seem to hear them talking. No I am just kidding, trying to pass of as an arty writer. They actually seem to be like serious gargoyles on their 24/7 duties. If you look from a flight over delhi, you may see them as freckles over a teenage Delhi’s cheeks.

2007-10-26T23:56:00.000+06:00

When in yo near
theres flat beer
salt and lemon
would make it taste less queer.

Have you seen these type of chickens?

2007-10-19T17:45:00.000+06:00

Ignobly great

2007-10-10T18:00:00.000+06:00

The ignoble awards are out. If I would ever be a billionaire, I would give out some of the billions to the winners. And then maybe it'll loose its 'ig' and be called as Kaa awards

MEDICINE: Brian Witcombe of Gloucester, UK, and
Dan Meyer
of Antioch, Tennessee, USA, for their penetrating medical report "
Sword Swallowing and Its Side Effects
."

REFERENCE: "Sword Swallowing and Its Side Effects," Brian Witcombe and Dan Meyer, British Medical Journal, December 23, 2006, vol. 333, pp. 1285-7.

WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Brian Witcombe and Dan Meyer

PHYSICS:
L. Mahadevan
of Harvard University, USA, and
Enrique Cerda Villablanca
of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, for studying how sheets become wrinkled.

REFERENCES:

"Wrinkling of an Elastic Sheet Under Tension," E. Cerda, K. Ravi-Chandar, L. Mahadevan, Nature, vol. 419, October 10, 2002, pp. 579-80.

"
Geometry and Physics of Wrinkling
," E. Cerda and L. Mahadevan, Physical Review Letters, fol. 90, no. 7, February 21, 2003, pp. 074302/1-4.

"
Elements of Draping
," E. Cerda, L. Mahadevan and J. Passini, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 101, no. 7, 2004, pp. 1806-10.

Walking around in JM

2007-10-07T22:49:00.000+06:00

The last month has been a whirlwind of activities/emotions. Today we went to old delhi, the area near Jama Masjid. Awesome fun. Walked around the lanes selling everything from sequins with little bits of clothes in between. And belts with jewelled buckles for guys. And mannequins with black cloth wrapped on their eyes.
We ate seekh kababs, roasted chicken in makhan ki gravy, seb doodh ke saath, shahi tukda, habshi halva.
Forgive me if I missed something..when there is an interesting company I tend to forget the details.

Awesome video

2007-09-27T13:40:00.000+06:00

Found this awesome video. Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the director of Amelie is involved in this video. Enjoy :)

Foutaises - Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Uploaded by Jumbo

2 men playing around with 2 kids

2007-09-21T12:46:00.001+06:00

cover
Originally uploaded by dogwelder

The blower's daughter

2007-08-31T16:42:00.000+06:00

A song which I discovered here. After a long long time a song managed to give me the goosebumps.

Wuthering Heights

2007-08-30T18:02:00.000+06:00

One of my favorite songs, Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush. Kate Bush is one of the few, who write their own songs. I like her despite her weird voice :).

It has been covered so many times by different bands. Here are two ends of the spectrum. First is by Puppini sisters, second by Angra.

i m feeling poetic

2007-08-19T23:49:00.000+06:00

We live in our own wells.

once in a while
with the change in the weather
a wind passes by
bringing in a few leaves
and maybe a feather.

but i want more,
somebody put in a bucket and heave me up.

Adam and Eve (alternate version)

2007-08-17T00:06:00.000+06:00

You know the Snake, apple, Eve version right. Now hear the alternate version. Had a chat with a indian classical music teacher. Very interesting man, he was telling us the virtues of music. During this discussion this story came about:

"So the gods decided to make someone in their reflection. They made Adam and Eve. They gave them all the organs. Everything that was needed to start a human society. They also made a lot of beautiful animals, plants and trees.

But to their dismay, Adam and Eve did nothing. Their plan was failing. They called Adam and Eve back and examined them. Everything was normal. Then they realised. Both of them did not have appreciation of music in them. So the needful was done and Adam and Eve returned to earth.

Now even the wind through the trees, or the chirping of birds stirred something in them. The gurgling stream encouraged them to unknown deeds. Once they came to a valley. Adam and Eve were separated mesmerised by the beauty and the music of nature. When Adam realised he had lost Eve. He cried out loud, "EveSSSSS!!!!" The sound echoed through the valley "EveSSSS!!!"..."EveSSS!!"..."EveSS!"..."Eve". When Eve heard her name being called so musically she was attracted to that voice. She also cried out loud, "AdamSSSS!!!!".... "AdamSSS!!!".... "Adam!".
They ran towards each other in slow motion choreographed to the music of the winds, water and the birds.

Hence make music/love not war!!

Critique of the Critics

2007-07-25T12:47:00.000+06:00

Yesterday I, Mayank, Golak and Smriti went for the 6;30 show at siri fort. The movie was "Hia W'Houa" (She and He). And the director was Elyes Baccar, who was there to answer questions. I won't say much about the movie, apart from the facts that there was just one set, an apartment of two rooms; two main characters; and it was pretty experimental.

What was most interesting was the question answer session.

Anchor: We have the director Mr. Baccar here. If you have any questions ....

Critic 1:mmmbbbl mmmmbbbbll mmmbblll

audience (chorus):plz speak in the mike.

Critic 1:I was saying that your film was remarkable, economy of sets, characters, and it was almost like a play. At least I concieve it as such. Where you influenced by the 'The theatre of the absurd', say Beckett.

Director:Yeah, I like Becketh, as he zays a lot without zaying anyzing. Just by actions. etc..etc..

Critic 2:The last scene, I think it made the film fall into hyper-reality. Where we know that this cannot be real but still subconsciously think it is real. The pain, angst, his infertility (other words), which He must have felt definitely play a big part. The woman in his life about whom we don't know a lot. The Un-knowledge we have of her makes her seem unreal.

Critic3:Did you intend it to be sadomaschist, or sadist. As in when the girl seems to torture him. What did you intend to achieve?

Director: I wrote the film keeping logic aside. The most difficult thing for me was to keep that feeling, which came to me when I wrote the first line, throughout the script. I mean to keep that feeling throughout making the film. There is no logic to it. I wrote it, something came out, the end result is this film. If I were to direct this film now, I might do it differently, change the camera angles, change in direction etc. So your question is a big questionmark for me.

Critic 2(to critic 3) :You mentioned about sadism and sadomasochism, but I completely disagree. I think there's definitely a homage to Fellini's 'Leather .mmbbl mmmbl', in this film. Also the way ..... ... is ......... etc..etc..

In short I hate critics.

Osian's cinefan - 2007

2007-07-22T22:03:00.001+06:00

7 films in 2 days.
Sansho, The Bailiff (sansho dayu by Kenji Mizoguchi) - A prostitute named Namigaki has made this song famous throughout the sado province. " Zushiooooooo......... Anju......something something....something something...", which is actually due to her yearning for her lost son Zushio and daughter anju. The bailiff is the evil slave master.

Times and Winds (Bes Vakit by Reha Erdem) - The camera work was marvelous and the characters chose to sleep in the undergrowth whenever they needed escape. Weirdly funny.

Days of Glory (Indegenes by Rachid Bouchareb) - The muslims from Algeria (which was a colony of france) fought alongwith france in the world war, against Nazism. The motto of the war was liberty, fraternity ...and such. Meanwhile it occured to them they needed liberty from french too.

The Yacoubin Building (Omaret Yacoubian by Marwan Hamed) - A building called 'The Yacoubian' stands witness the changes in the social and political world of Egypt.

Dancing Bells (Challangai by Deepak Kumar Menon) - The story of people of indian origin (tamils mostly) who are in malaysia. Though the production quality was ..cheap, the acting, the dialogues were excellent.

Opera Jawa (by Garin Nugroho) - An entire film narrated in the opera style. This film was the most experimental of the lot. Throughout the film people dropped out like rabbits running on normal batteries. While i was on duracell.. :D.

I wish i understood javanese, coz all the poetry was lost in the translation. And the dance varied from traditional to the robot to the modern style.

Falafel (by Michael Kammouin) - Once on an island in Sumatra, it rained Falafels over a ghetto. The people of that ghetto ate falafels for 15 days. BTW falafels are a dish, which look like a cross between a cutlet and a bhajiya. When falafels are fried they float on the oil. But once in 5-6 months one of them denies to do so. Contradicting Archimedes and Newton it sinks to the bottom. This is called the runaway falafel. The hero of the film picks up the one that sinked and himself got sinked into a whirlwind of a night.

Domicile Conjugal

2007-07-13T23:48:00.000+06:00

Saw 'Domicile Conjugal' today, with sudeep and mayank. I have started liking french cinema more and more. The best thing that i liked about this movie was that it seemed as if it had layers. The outtermost layer would be the comedy, which everyone understands and laughs at. The indications of the second layer would be the surreal touches, the out of the ordinary things which happen, like the flowers in the vase opening up 500 frames/sec and popping out small paper messages. These subtle hints which indicate at a second layer of meaning.

And the worst part of this movie was that I couldn't see any coherent second layer.

last night

2007-07-04T16:19:00.000+06:00

the octopus clouds slimed forward
towards its prey
I laid there on the plastic mat
eyeballing it
but it sprayed after all
to my dismay.

USID 2007 - hyderabad

2007-06-25T19:27:00.000+06:00

I am back from hyderabad, after attending the USID 2007 conference. It was my first conference in usability/design. All I had to do was sit, listen and eat. My paper on 'Digital Identity' selected for publication got me a free entry into the conference. And the speakers who came from varied backgrounds have left me satisfied. First I'll jot down the points which I liked about the speakers I liked. And then what fun I had in hyderabad.

M.P.Ranjan: He is a professor in NID. And his concepts of design are so clear. This clarity becomes obvious when he asks questions which are so poignant while not being stumblers for the speaker. And he has got to a stage where he is more beneficial in macro design, that is pushing for design policies to the government, etc.

Ravi Krishna: I was not very excited about e-learning. But his talk was an eye opener. In most e-learning programs, there is the concept of an instructor, which we have incorporated just to translate our offline experience online. But is that really necesarry. For a different media the options could be different. He talked of formats taking the example of tv news programs. Of how news has changed from, news readers reading to us >> talking to us>>people to us>> people talking to people, etc.

Kentaro Toyomo: Works with microsoft, in enabling technology in rural india. He too has a sense of design which takes into account other factors like socio economics factors etc..into account. I learned a thing or two.

Lalitesh Katragadda: As google india head, gave us an insight into google. how things work there. Google india maps was launched his year while I was launched in US around 2 years around. The reason he gave was, ppl in the US navigate using road names, while in India most ppl use landmarks. This fundamental difference brought the question of which landmarks to include.

Also went around hyd a little. Saw Hussein sagar lake, smoked some hukkah in 'My cafe latte', and ate boti kabab roll under the charminar. (*thanks to gajju for the ride and being the perfect host :)

ATM woes

2007-06-12T15:27:00.000+06:00

I hate it when people take forever inside an ATM booth. It would have even been forgivable if what inside that persons mind would have been this:
"pehle dekhen ki kitna bacha hai.
hummm.... babuji ke ilaaj mein lagega 3 go hajaar... fir bitiya ki sadi bhi toh hai...agar koi ladka mil jaaye achha toh bhala ho jaaye rampyari ka....haan agar parvati ka bachda ho jaaye toh thoda doodh voodh bhi bik jaayega.
etc..etc.."
But no here the person would be suited booted, but still would take 10 mins. First he would check the balance. Then try to play a video game on the touchscreen. Then probably if everything seems fine, he would decide on an amount to withdraw.
Oh i hate it when people take forever inside an ATM booth.

Flirt guruji

2007-06-01T22:40:00.000+06:00

Delhi is a wonderfull place for arty films, theatre and the like. The two days movie marathon at Indian Habitat Center, where I saw 6 movies in two days. After each show going out, stretching all my muscles for the next show. Getting tired after watching a lot of movies is the second best kind of tired I know. First best would be after a long trek.

And i have started driving classes. And my teacher is 5 years younger to me and casanova number one. With him telling me about his conquests with a hollering of "accelerator chhodo" in between.

While I try to get my two wheeler experience translate into the four wheeler one. Narrowly avoiding rickshaws and such. He goes on,

"yaar mere jeevan mein pata nahi poonam hi poonam aati rehti hai. Ek saal pehle ki baat hai. Poonam ke papa ka phone aata hai. Kehte hain aao sunday ghar pe. Yaar ab mein bola kyon bula rahe hain ghar pe. Vo bolte hain aa jao chai pee ke jana. Ab mein gaya sunday unke ghar. Pahuncha toh poonam ki maa bolti hai, baitho vo toh naha rahi hai. Mein baith gaya. Unki mummy chai leke aayee. Mein aur uske papa chai peene lage. Itne mein vo aati hai. Taawal lapet ke."

F&*& i thought. What kind of stuff is he talking about. Is it really true?
He goes on,"Vo aati hai taawal lapet ke balon mein."
OHHo..I thought.
"Aur mere bajoo mein baith jaati hai.
Mera hava gul.
Samajh mein nahi aa raha thha kya chal raha hai.
Uske mummy papa, biskut namkeen lekar khila rahe hain. Beti mere baajoo mein baithee hui hai. Mainey toh pata nahi man hi man kya kya khvaab dekh dale."

Fir kya hua jee, i asked him.

"Fir uske papa chabi dete hain, aur bolte hain, Ja isey thoda sikha la."
Aur mein usey 2 ghante ghumaya, india gate, CP vagera."

Dost unhone tera bahut bada kaata hai. I told him, thoda chai vai pila ke fokat mein gadi chalani seekh gayi.

"Dost thoda katva ke zyada lene mein hi bhalai hai. Bhaisaab seekh jaao aap bhi."

Hmmm...

Zibahkhana - Zombified

2007-05-18T20:39:00.000+06:00

After Shawn of the Dead, this i think would be my favorite zombie flick. I want to see it, see it, see it. If you find it somewhere.. point out the source to me.

Our moms

2007-04-30T13:34:00.000+06:00

Some time back i andrane(friend from bhilai and iitb also known as Devendra Rane) had a chat..and we got into some roleplaying. I played my mom's role and he, his mom's. It would be good to know that our homes are queit nearby in bhilai, and our parents are also friends. With pardons and excuses in advance to our mom's if we are crossing our limits.
Here goes:

Rane’s mom: namaste ji.... kaha jaa rahe ho ?

kaa’s mom:ji mein toh somvaar ko bamleshwari devi ke mandir jati hai..vahin se aa rahi hoon
aap ?
Rane’s mom: bharat ko school chhod kar aa rahi hu....

Rane’s mom: aacha.... anand kaisa hai ? gajju bata raha tha ki vo dilli chala gaya hai naukri karne ?

kaa’s mom: arey haan usko bol bol ke hum log thhak gaye thhe.. ki ye freelancing veelancing chhod..

kaa’s mom: naukri mein ji ..har maheene tankhva milti hai.. freelancing mein kabhi kaam mila kabhi nahi mila..

Rane’s mom: haan.... gajju bol raha tha ki usko bhi naurki karne ki koi iccha nahin hai.... bol raha tha ki vo bore ho raha hai

kaa’s mom: achha..

Rane’s mom: bol raha tha ki naukri karne ka koi fayda nahin hota hai

kaa’s mom: arey kya faayda .. aajkal ke bachhe na..

Rane’s mom: yeh aaj kaal ke bacho ko pata nahin kya ho gaya hai....

kaa’s mom: haan ..chalo anand naukri le liya ...iske papa bahut khush hain aajkal..

Rane’s mom: vo bolta hai ki agar aabhi naukri karte raha to phir naukri hi karte rahega.... uske papa to kuch bolte bhi nahin hai.....
kaa’s mom: iske bhi papa kahan kuch bolte hain.. mein hi bolti thi..meri sunta thode na hai vo..
Rane’s mom: aapan log middle class wale log hai.... koi bijness to hai nahin.... phir yeh saab ulti seedhi baatein karta rehata hai vo

kaa’s mom: ab nahi padh pata ..bevkoof nikalta toh ..soch lete kismat hai.. par padh likh ke bolte hain ki naukri nahi karengey..

Rane’s mom: haan..... mai bhi wahin bolti hu ji.... aab IIT mein jaane ke baad naukri ki koi kaami hai kya.... phie bhi naukri nahin karni hai..... jo milta hai usme khush nahin hai yeh aaj kaal ke ladke

kaa’s mom: haan ji.. aapki toh dono betiyon ki shadi ho gayee.. ab toh gajju ki hi bari hai

Rane’s mom: aarey shaadi ki to baat bhi nahin kijiye usse.... vo kehata hai ki anand aur uske baaki dost bhi shaadi nahin kar rahe hai jaldi.... isliye vo bhi nahin karega 2-3 saal.... aab to shaadi ka naam lete hi phone rakh deta hai....

kaa’s mom: hum logon mein thoda late hi hota hai ji shadi.. vaise anand ke bhi roomie ki shadi ho gayee..

Rane’s mom: haan..... par yeh ladko ki shaadi jaldi kar do to aacha hai.... nahin to isi tarah naurki chodenge aur settle nahin honge kabhi....

kaa’s mom: haan..sahi bole ji aap

Rane’s mom: gajju bhi aapne doston ki shaadi mein jata rehata hai.....

kaa’s mom: shadi karva do toh jimmedari aayegi..

Rane’s mom: aur poocho ki tu shaadi kyu nahin kar leta.... to bolta hai ki unlogo ki girlferend thi IIT se.... isliye itni jaldi kar rahe hai

kaa’s mom: anand toh kabhi aisa kuch bolta nahi..

Rane’s mom: haan.... jimmedari ki to koi parvah hi nahin hai in logo ko....

kaa’s mom: pata nahi uski bhi koi girlfriend toh nahi..

Rane’s mom: pata nahin.... yeh log ka to bhagwan hi jaane, kuch batate bhi nahin hai ji.....

kaa’s mom: haan ji ..ye kitne kismat vale hain ..inke papa ne apne sari behnon ki shadi karvayi,..,..ghar paise bhejte rahe..

Rane’s mom: haan..... aur gajju ko to koi jimmedaari ki samajh bhi nahin hai....

kaa’s mom: ye sab toh inko karna hi nahi hai.. mast kamaao khao ...aur thoda bachao ....apne khushi se raho..

Rane’s mom: haan..... aarey saving ke baare mein to yeh aapne papa se hamesha dant khata hai.... pata nahin itne paiso ka kya karta hai yeh....

kaa’s mom: mein bhi hamesha fone pe bolti hoon bachane..ke liye..

Rane’s mom: aab bol raha hai ki naurki chhod dega aur kuch project karega....

kaa’s mom: kya project ....padhai karega?

Rane’s mom: pata nahin.... kuch to project bolta rehata hai .... bolta hai ki naukri se aacha hai yeh saab karna..... padhai nahin karna hai usko.... bolta hai ki uska iit ka professor usko kuch kaam de dega kaam karne ke liye

kaa’s mom: achha...
vaise padhai kar raha hai toh karne deejiye na..
hamara anand toh na jane kya freelancing kar raha thha

Rane’s mom: pata nahin ji.... kya karega yeh.... bachchpan se hi kabhi koi jimmedaari nahin di..... thoda samajhdaar ho gaya hai, lekin phir bhi kehata hai ki naurki karne se jindagi mein aur kuch nahin kar payega.... par aacha hai ji.... anand aab naurki kar to raha hai.... ise to pata nahin kya ho gaya hai.... aachi khasi naurki chodd raha hai....

kaa’s mom: nahi ji ...usey samjhaiye.. is umr mein ye sab nahi karna chahiye.. abhi paise bachane ka mauka hai.. ek baar shadi ho jaayegi toh kharche badh jaayenge

Rane’s mom: iske papa kuch bole to yeh shayad sun le.... meri to sunta hi nahin hai ji

kaa’s mom: iske papa ke davaai ka time ho gaya ...mujhe jana chahiye..

Rane’s mom: aacha ji....mai bhi chalti hu..... iske papa aane wale honge office se....

Are you the favorite person of anybody?

2007-04-29T18:10:00.000+06:00

I stumbled upon this question, with Miranda July's short film with the same name. I had seen her, 'You and me and everyone we know' and absolutely loved it. It was mayank who had the awesome idea of searching this short film on youtube. and here it is ...

And this is a ideal film which describes how powerful a short film can be. A simple question, which many wouldn't even have thought about, but who do so when they here it. And the question itself is so powerful. Let's assume that every person on earth has one such favorite person. Even though many wouldn't have thought about it, they may vote for one, when asked this question. And only one person could be the favorite. So in the ideal case, if everyone was the favorite of just one person, then that means everyone has got one personal fan. Now obviously there are some people, who are so charming, that they are favorites of more then just one. So the direct implication is, there would be many, who are nobody's favorite.

A journo and a banker

2007-04-11T12:48:00.000+06:00

Yesterday, was like most working days. Only difference was a supershot of serendipity. I was standing at Sarvapriya vihar bus stop, waiting for my bus, twiddling my thumbs.
When I saw these two batchmates of mine, from IITb, walk towards me. For a sec I thougt, am I dreaming? Ravish Tiwari and Sushanto, ravish who I knew to be studying in Oxford and Sushanto who worked in Bangalore.
Meeting people who we know in a big city like delhi is like, a very rare incident. Anyway caught with them in the evening after work. Ravish who did his MTech in Metallurgy, is now a journalist in Indian Express and Sushanto (same degree) is in Investment Banking.
Then had a lengthy beer headed chat on the education system in India, with these words coming often, 'population', 'demand', 'supply', 'reservation', 'aristotle', 'coaching' etc. coming in.
Also got some views on the issue from a JEE aspirant, who between mouthfuls of parathha, vented his anger on this years easy JEE paper.
Anyway, keep an eye out for Ravish's articles in the express. He writes about politics, poverty and policies.

kaa ka camera

2007-03-31T19:15:00.000+06:00

Finally i have bought my own. Canon S3 IS and 2Gb memory.

Its been a while since i have been thinking about getting a camera. Since our family got first point and shoot camera, fixed focus camera some 10 years back, I have been the photographer of our family, our relatives and any function, party,etc. On my uncle's (mamaji's) marriage the photographer ditched us at the final moment. Everyone looked at me. That was the most strenous day for me as a photographer. Working on a camera which did'nt have a battery. So it worked on a fixed shutter speed. So i had to calculate the aperture for every situation keeping that speed in mind. Anyway around 75% of the pics i took were ok. And most were pleased. Though some of those gossipy aunties thought i had missed them on purpose :).

That camera belonged to one of my other uncles. It was a yashica electro. A very popular model once, now there are so many of them, even vintage camera collectors are wary of them. My uncle wanted me to get the battery from mumbai. I took the camera along with me to mumbai to make sure i got the right model of the battery.
Once when I was in VT, i remembered i had the dead battery with me. So I went to the lane which began from the station towards the Gateway. The camera shops which lined the whole left side. I asked one or two who pointed me towards a inner lane. From one pointed finger to another, I found myself in quite a inner lane. There the shop owner told me he did have the battery. He sent his helper to somewhere who brought the battery after around after 10 mins. Just to be sure, i asked him to check it with a voltmeter. He did that, and the voltage was ok. I paid him and left.

When i reached my room, took the camera and put the battery. There is a button which checks the battery. When you press that button and the battery is working there is small green light which lights up. That green light remained silent.
I took out the battery and examined it properly. The base of the battery didn't seem all right. All i had to do was twist the base, and the whole base opened up, like a bisleri cap. And inside where 4 button cells. The ones you can get for a ruppee.

Anyway i continued to use that sturdy camera, throughout my college stay. It was with me on treks, cycling treks. And meanwhile 4 years had passed, and my kind uncle had willingly forgotten about his camera. I will present him a digital camera soon.

Meanwhile, I got another camera a vintage leica. And this one literally fell into my hands. I was walking towards my room in hostel, when I found a guy breaking a lock. And to my utter suprise he was using a camera as a hammer. I snatched the camera from him. Broke the lock for him. He was from orissa. One of his friends father had given him this camera to get it repaired in mumbai. He did'nt have the enthusiasm to do that. So the camera had laid around in his room for quite some time. And he had found it quite useful as a hammer. He was quite glad i valued that camera so much and gave it to me.

This camera is quite famous in vintage camera circles. But I don't want to sell it. But with it's unusable features (there are two viewfinders, one for focus and other for layout), i would rather not use it as well. If I get someone passionate enough I will give it away.

Then came the era of digital camera. Since many of my friends had one, there was no dearth of one. So i spent my days phtographing with borrowed cameras. Once I went to Goa with anmol's camera. I was climbing a hillock near anjuna beach. With all the beauty around I, a moment of carelessness, and the camera came tumbling out of its bag. Flying down some 6 feets, it landed on solid granite, bouncing once it came to rest inches from a puddle. With my heart in my mouth, i found that the lcd had cracked and the buttons beneath the lcd were not working. Other than that the camera was working. I knew what doctors must feel like when they have to tell a family about there dying member. Anyway anmol was quite cool about it. He repaired it himself (he's a microelectronics MTech :), i just had to pay him the 5k for the new LCD.

Recently after coming to delhi, vinod's friend divyanshu, who is a great photographer himself became my photography partner. Once we went to tuglakabad fort at around 11:30 at night. We parked the bike, and were busy shooting the fort in the yellow light with late slow speeds, using a tripod. Suddenly we could here a police siren, from a gypsy which was standing near our bike. We went towards him. The inspector was a punjabi.
"kya kar rahe ho itne raat mein?"
Divyanshu:"jee photo kheech rahen hain"
"yahi time mila hai?"
Divyanshu:"raat mein hi monuments ke photo achhe aate hain na"
"ye ilaka theek nahi hai...jaldi niklo yahan se..kuch ho jaaye tumhe toh sabhi dilli police ko bolenge, aur ye bike tumhari hai? koi le jaata isey toh?"
Divyanshu:"chabi toh mere paas hai :)"
"sirf chabi hi rah jaati"
We left 5 mins after that warning :).

I need more adventures like that :).
And i have made a slideshow, with some basic fundaes for people who are planning to buy a camera.

The truth, destiny and all that shit

2007-03-23T19:07:00.000+06:00

To every person who is having a pre/post/whatever mid-life crisis regarding their jobs, here is the answer.

If some people can find truth sitting under a banyan tree,
while others can sitting in -5 mountain tops,
you can too sitting in a cubicle in front of a computer screen.

Contest on SlideShare

2007-03-20T21:19:00.000+06:00

'World's Best Presentation Contest' is on at slideshare.net/contests. If you made your way through your college projects without actually doing anything, but only thorough well made presentations, then this is for you. There are both people's choice prizes and judge prizes. The judges are the who's who of presentation gurujis.
Here is an entry with anish's haikus.

Delhi is drizzling

2007-02-10T16:59:00.000+06:00

Caught this strand of conversation in the morning, in front of our office.
"ammaji, aaj toh chhod do...vaise hi keechad ho raha hai, baarish mein." Said the young watchman to the old sweeping lady.
She replies,"baarish mein khhana toh nahi chhodte na."

Each has his quota

2007-02-09T15:15:00.001+06:00

This is the last post of that chat. You may want to read the first, second, third and fourth posts, if you already haven't.

"
Am i bombarding you with too much information. You work in IT right, ...are you in sales. Good that you are not. Your body language tells me you are bored. :)..You know for every person the total amount of talk during a time interval is always about equal. I mean the amount of talk that I talk during a day is constant for me. Likewise it can be broken into smaller chunks. i.e. Mein har ek ghante mein kareeb kareeb utni hi baatein karta hoon. So if I felt you were'nt paying me that much attention, you would have eaten and left, then i would have to speak to the next person who came around. I can't help it. Mujhe apne ek ghante ka quota khatm karna hai :)."
Yeah..and may we meet again.

won't 5 lac, can't 50 lac

2007-02-08T23:32:00.000+06:00

This is the fourth post of that chat. You may want to read the first, second and third posts, if you already haven't.

"I come here 3-4 times a week. Here i can eat a lot of variety, for a very cheap rate. ...I live alone. My family is in chandigarh. I have been posted here. Mumbai is better than delhi. Even though i am originally from delhi only...but still mumbai is better, i can say. In fact, living in any metro is bad. Once i was transferred to jabalpur for a year. I felt so relaxed there. I used to call my children and puckaartha thha unhe. Unhe lagta hoga budhha paagal ho gaya hai. Metros mein toh ghar se office mein ghante aur vaapas isi mein chakallas hota hai.

....nahi chandigarh bhi nahi achha..chandigarh hi achha hai. My son he used to study in one of the best convent schools in jabalpur. Ab sarkaari employee bus ek hi cheez kar sakta hai apne bache ke liye. Padha sakta hai. 5 lakh ki dukaan vo daalega nahi ...aur 50 lakh ki daal nahi sakta. But even koi sarkaari school chandigarh mein us school ka baap hota. Chandigarh mein toh har pathhar ke neeche ek ek school hain. Aur saare achhe ...jo sabse bekaar hongey vo bhi baahar ke achhe schools se toh achhe hi hongey."

The next post will be the last.

Fistful of Raisins

2007-02-04T20:00:00.001+06:00

This is the third post about that conversation. Please read first and second if you wish, before reading this.

"So you eat outside daily. Oh sometimes you and your roomies cook too. Eating at home is the best. For me, my family is in chandigarh, while i have been posted here. That's why come here, because here you can eat a large variety for less money. What was that i last had..yeah beans. Now i am having baingan. There is so much in nature, you should always have a variety. In daals there are so many varities. But still the quality you get is not so good. It's all bio engineered. When i was young, we had toovar daal which took 14 months to ripen. Nowadays the variety they grow, its takes 4 months from sowing to reaping. That toovar tasted sweet. But now it is really difficult to get. Even if some farmer grows, he does only for his own consumption.
Even this rotis are all made of maida. You know there is one thing you should do. You know raisins, ...yeah kishmish. You should have 30 grains of it daily. That will counteract on all the bad effects. But then you should have more water otherwise it will some bad side effects ..haa hAA haa."

Teetar, bater and other birds

2007-02-03T21:51:00.001+06:00

This is the second part of our conversation. If you are thinking which conversation, you would have to read this post.

"
Are you non-veg?...ok so you are..what do you have..chicken?...mutton..? beef? pork..??
Ok..so generally you have chicken and mutton only. Me too...I generally eat birds, mostly chicken because they are the only ones available. I have eaten, teetar, bater, duck.. In teetar also there are two varities, one which is home bred, the other jungli. The jungli ones are really tasty, but each of them weigh only about 150 gms, while the home bred ones are like 300-400 gms. In fact even the gaavnty chickens are really tasty. Have you noticed they do not have a single ounce of fat. Pure muscle. But you should have desi chickens which are like 6-7 months old. Any older and you wouldn't be able to chew. You need kachha pyaaz to eat it then. Even broiler you should take 3-4 months old.

...yeah bater is the small brown one. Ok..so you have had bater at mohammed ali road..hunh? There is also another one which has brown spots on it. It's called chakor. But you don't get it nowadays. "

Updated on 13th Jan 2010 - I recently saw in my google analytics page that this is the top result for "teetar in english". So to fulfill people's curiosity here goes:

Teetar is called the Grey Partridge or the Grey Francolin. The name Teetar is based on the call of the bird, which comes as 'Ka-tee-tar-tee-tar'. More details here.
One common confusion is between Teetar and Bater. Bater is called quail in english. And it looks quite similar to Teetar. One difference is that Bater is brown in color while Teetar is grey. A photo of bater:

Wife and Job

2007-02-02T11:36:00.000+06:00

I met someone interesting yesterday. Unfortunately the person was the wrong age and the wrong gender. Anyway he was really interesting. During the 1 hour we talked, eating our rotis and daal, he told me so many wonderful facts, philosophies, etc..etc.
So from today onwards I will post one such episode everyday. Here's the first one:

Everyone thinks their child is most beautiful. Naak beh rahi hogi...fir bhi..'kitna sunder hai mera raja beta'. Hoga ekdum badmaash...ye bhaga vo bhaga..tv toda..'kitna chanchal hai..ekdum natkhat'. Vaise hi sabhi apne aap ko samajhdaar samajhte hain. Kisi na kisi angle se, IQ mein, EQ mein...ya duniyadari mein.
Par sabhi ko naukri aur beevee apne padosi ki achhi lagti hai.

hungarian jazz

2007-01-18T00:13:00.000+06:00

I risksawed to the hungarian embassy today from green park. Though i was an hour late still could catch 40 mins of great jazz. The band was called 'Cornelio Tutu'. The drummer was especially great.
Once or twice i have to get out like this. Otherwise it becomes the same old monotone.

Conquering urban space

2007-01-17T00:21:00.000+06:00

I have rinsed every ounce of knowledge i had and here it is:

Thought if I am part of the designing, I should be a user first. In fact i think it's a lot good for some of the thigs i have in mind. I'll be back with more.

Modern art

2007-01-15T23:58:00.000+06:00

Some of his tricks," stammered ben, trying to seem innocent.he was for his little mistress. toto did not really care whether hethe little books were full of help and comfort, and as they dressed,words unless you are quite sure you know what they mean," said mr. and taking his review, he went away to look over a learned pocket. "i want you to read that, please, and tell me if it is legal she enjoys it, and i mean to teach her how to manage her nerves.

"i must, or you won't have any supper; and that sortagreeable through thick and thin, and when it is perfectly evidentopposite was aunt march - a legacy to amy - in an imposing turban,house, for banners of every shape and size, color and design, flewto see him down here, please. don't let any one hear." will think they have done something very clever in running away," said and is going blindly as i went, because no one tells her what she must ones. jack's mean sometimes, and i told him i'd dig for myself if he didn't .

Can you guess what the above two paragraphs are about? I could'nt. It was part of a spam mail I got. Question is who could write such stuff? Is it a copy paste job? Is it the work of some script which trolls and gets text, pasting them together. Anyway it's like a modern art piece of writing.

The kid who stole 'gud'

2007-01-11T22:45:00.000+06:00

So i was coming home from office today, using the service of the great dilli ki bus service. I was at the very front standing near the driver and helpers.
The helpers were discussing one of their enemies, bus number 505, and it's crew. 'bhenchod aaj toh laga di hai unki, sabse aagey hain...abhi tak 513 bhi nahi nikli hai....bhen$%^& ...................bhen%@#$..." They were really excited as there was a great distance between them and the other bus in front of them, so they had lot of passengers. They were also very loud. Hearing all the filth floating around a 40ish old man came in front towards them, and began thrashing them.
"kya bhen@#$# bhhenc@## laga rakhi hai ..yahan ladies bhi baithi hain....tumhari nahi hai toh kya hua kisi aur ki toh behene betiyaan baithi hain yahan."
The helpers were totally silenced in a moment. Glancing at each other with an embarassed look, they stood silent.

But he was still angry, and began chating with a fellow passenger," ye log itni galiyaan dete hain ..ki...inki nahi hai toh kya hua.........koi kuchh bolta nahi hai isi liye....koi banda mil jaye khatrnaak toh gaand faad de inki."

Hearing this the driver smiled, "bilkul sahi kaha sarkaar, bilkul sahi,,..gand faad deni chahiye inki toh. achha suniye ek kahani. Ek gaon mein ek bacha roz apne ghar se gud chura kar khata thaa. Uski maa usey samjha samjha kar thak gayi thi. Ek din vo usey mandir ke pujari ke paas gayi. boli panditji, isey thodi samjhayi deejiye, ye mua roz gud chura kar khha jaata hai. Panditji bole, agle hafte isey lekar aana mein samjha doonga. Agle hafte aane pe pujari ne usey samjha diya. Maa ne poocha ki panditji pichle hafte kyon aapne hume vaapas bhhej diya. panditji bole, pichle hafte tak mein bhi gud chura kar khaata thha."

I began laughing. He was totally speechless for a second. Then he said,"aapne toh mujhe ekdum chup karva diye."

My most entertaining bus ride in delhi.

Old wine new bottle

2006-12-27T07:49:00.000+06:00

I have joined Uzanto. It's into usability consulting, and has two other sites, Mindcanvas and Slideshare. Mindcanvas does customer surveys through game like methods and slideshare is for sharing slides. My work here would be as an Interaction Developer. Which is kind of a new idea, as it lies in between a designer and a developer.

And the company is based in Delhi, so bye bye mumbai. Everything happened so fast that here I am with just one jodi of clothing and no chances of getting to mumbai for my stuff before 15th jan.

And my number has changed, now it is 9910829201.

And everything happened so fast that kisi ko bhi mumbai chhodne ke bare mein bata nahi paya.

And btw, i, vinod and vishal had an awesome weekend. We went to Kangra valley, namely to Kangra, palampur, dharamshala and mcleodganj. The pics will soon be here(flickr).

Stolen phone and fried hard disk

2006-12-21T16:47:00.000+06:00

Electronically the start seems bad. The only two pieces of hardware on me, my phone which somebody flicked and my usb hard disk which a army dude fried.

Agra is one mad place. A friend tells me their used to be a hospital for the senile here. Consider these, the rear view mirrors of all bikes folded inwards like hands in namaste. A gazillion types of jugad vehicles, with tullu pumps and scooter engines. ALong with ghoda gadis and bullock carts. They can manage to jam the traffice in perfectly good roads. When traffic gets jammed people jump their bikes upon the sidewalks, and which a moment later gets jammed too. So all in all after prateek's marriage I had only some time in Agra and I couldnt see the Taj.

The marriage though not my first north indian marriage was the first in which i like 'participated'. Though standing on the sides and looking on, on dancing girls, and other such rituals. Still it was fun. Only it was a little bit lonely, as i was the only outsider in between cousins and their families. And meanwhile i grew a little careless, and my phone got stolen. Prateek's family did try to find it, checking the servants and so on, but it couldn't be found.

More of prateek's friends arrived on the marriage night and we did some baraati naach.
Overall it was a great experience. I felt i was living inside the movie monsoon wedding, though the drama was less.

So here i am in delhi, since. I went to gully parathe vali, chandni chowk, qutb minaar. And red fort. At its entrance there is an Xray scanning device. I had my hard disk in my bag. Fortunately i remembered about it. I took it out and showed it to one army guy and told him to check it personally as it would be damaged by xray. He was looking at it from all sides, while another army vala took my bag and began examining it. For a second while i was giving my bag to that guy the first guy put my hard disk into the xray machine. Idiocy even has limits, he could have told me that either xray or leave or anything of that sort. I was pretty sure it was gone. And indeed when i checked after reaching home it sure was not detected.
Anyways spilt milk, why cry.

And i have realized ," mobile hard disk is not good for archiving stuff. "

Jazz utsav 2006

2006-12-04T16:10:00.000+06:00

Had three awesome evenings in a row.
Gary lawyer, emanon and anushka jagtiani on saturday at bandra fort.
Tears go by, film by Wong Kar Wai at Cinema Kollage andheri.
Maria sadowska, Wolfgand Haffner and 'i cant recall the name' band.

On On!!

2006-11-30T16:39:00.000+06:00

Last sunday was loads of fun. I like running and i like beer. So where do these two things meet ? In a hash of course. You can know what it is here
I liked the concept very much. If you are in a new place, and you love traveling to unknown places, this is for you. just google hash with the place name. If that place has a local chapter of hash harriers or maybe some other hashing group, you'll find the next run. Call up and go ON ON!!

kya baat hai!!

2006-11-17T00:53:00.000+06:00

I just saw the "Kya baat hai" on MTv. If i remember correctly, it was hosted by Cyrus earlier, and i had always admired him. Of how he could mediate a debate. He's an expert in making a very serious situation into a comedy and getting people who were a moment ago fighting, rolling on the floor laughing.

But this episode was hosted by Rannvijay. The roadies vala vj. The point of the debate was, "Do you think, IITs are overrated?" And the basis for this debate as laid out by Rannvijay was that in a recent college ranking two IITs didn't make into the top ten. Which in itself is a very poor basis for such a point to be made. Who did this ranking? What is their credibility?

Anyway, Rannvijay made it very obvious very clear from the beginning what he thought of IITians. What he did was go to TSEC (engineering college in mumbai), stop random students and throw them this question. "Are iits overrated?" Some said no, which even though he tried to but couldn't change. Others were like, "they study all time, we have fun", "you can't judge people from a day's performance"etc.etc. Finally he got two people to come to IIT powai to challenge IIT junta. The challenge could be anything, he said.

Meanwhile we reach IIT kanpur, inside one of it's classroom. Where two rows of iitians take on two rows of non-iitians.
IITians:We have CNC machines...only the one machine in Asia, ... wind tunnel...etc..etc..
non-iitians:thats because government doesnt give us that much funds to buy all that stuff.
IITians:iits are funded not only by the government, even it's alumni give us huge amounts.
non-iitians:but these alumni were also created by funds from our govt some 30 years ago.
Rannvijay:the point is if we give funds to some college in patna and make it a iit..say we make 10 more iits, will these be still be good.
IITians: IIT's pillars are it's students and it's faculty. the students come here after JEE. and only the very best are chosen as faculty.
.
.
.
non-iitian girl: iit guys hooted in a college function when a girl was dancing onstage.
iitian: women get raped in DU, at least that doesnt happe here.
.
.
Finally Rannvijay stepped in, having during the last 15 mins given comments like, 'these are the best brains in india' and such. He said lets decide it in the basky court. 5 ppl on both sides.
IITians won 8-4. But the non-iitians should be given credit as they were basically strangers and they did score 4 points.
Anyway I do not want to go into this debate and rip off the arguments, but i would like to go into why did MTv choose this topic?

A one day performace shouldn't decide JEE was one of the points which kept coming up. There are other people who may even be better than those finally selected who did not perform on that day. Why did they not perform? But those who got selected did perform on that day, so they got selected. Are you asking for a series of tests. Now JEE has two papers elims and finals. What are the expenses involved in conducting JEE? What would happen to the expenses if the tests were more in number? And those who did not get into iits did get into other engg colleges. By what, some entrance test? someone who did'nt get selected in that test may give them the same argument.."one day performance".

Funds given by government was another point. The other colleges felt they were not given enough funds. Where could our government find so much funds? They have got a limited amount of funds and a billion mouths and hands outstretched. So they prioritise. Now do they get anything out of the 4 lakhs spent on each iitian deserves another post.

And who is overrating iitians if they are being overrated. The media? The politicians? It is like going to aishwarya rai and asking her, "do you think you are overrated?" if she says yes, then it becomes a fact that she is overrated. If she says no, then she is a liar.

I am not too sentimental in this post, am i? If i am it is because of all the things we have to face. People have such views about us, please consider the following and tell me if you have heard these:
a)iitians get at least 40-50k salary in india easily.
b)just one line in your resume can get you a hundred offers, line being, 'i am an iitian'.
c)iitians always study, they don't have any fun.

All i have to say is, people give us a chance before naming us nerds.

Drunk drivers or killers?

2006-11-17T00:50:00.000+06:00

So some guys got drunk. Then they took to the road. Somewhere in bandra the driver lost control. The car went offroad and mowed down a some people who were sleeping on the pavement.

The police swung into action. The media had a field day. They had all the components to make a great story. The 'rich brats', 'drunk', 'big cars' etc.etc. The driver even showed them his middle finger. No wonder the story made cover page. The masses always love such stories. 'The poor downtrodden people killed by drunk rich brats'.
Let us look at the facts.
a) Drunk driver creates an accident.
b) ...ah ..
I can't seem to think of point b. Why were the others arrested? For being drunk? If i remember correctly some of them were past their 18 year age limit. Can 18 year olds get drunk? I am not sure. They cannot get into a pub and order drinks, for sure. Whatever...if they have broken some law they must be punished. For drunken driving it is maximum 6 months in jail and some fine.

The point I am getting at is, I hate such news pieces. They do not give a complete picture, which is even pardonable. But they skew the topic in such a way that they get maximum viewership. My point being, why were the people sleeping on a pavement?Didn't they have beds in their homes? Did they not have even homes? Where did they come from? Why can't they live peacefully in their village? Don't they have land in the village? And is sleeping on the pavement legal? Do people in all megacities in other poor countries sleep on the pavements? Why can't the media ask these questions? Are people on the pavement so part and parcel of our life? Don't we want them not to sleep on the pavement? To have their own homes.

What is true and will be is that people will get drunk. And some of them will drive. Irrespective of how wealthy they are.

The SuperGroup

2006-11-13T19:12:00.000+06:00

People saw black clouds rushing, as if god had pressed the sky's fast forward button. Nobody noticed the 4 guys silently entering their lane, as they were too busy grabbing clothes from the hanging lines and covering their vegetable carts with plastic. They ran inside their homes and birds tried to find space between shutters of old buildings. No one could have guessed what would happen in the next few hours.

Their was an old Shiva temple at the end of the lane. Some said the shivlinga their was from the time of Raja Bhrukuteshwar. Seeing no other place the 4 guys ran towards the temple for shelter. Getting wet was not such an issue, but they had to protect their cache of grass. Their was nobody at the temple. They made themselves comfortable and without much ado lighted a joint. Soon the smoke covered the room. Munching on the leftover coconut and peda, they sat their hallucinating. Their thoughts were broken when with a loud crash the door of the inner sanctum opened.

The bright light due to a lightning outside stole the darkness from the room. And as the boom crash sound of lightning followed the light there came out of the door a man, dancing wildly. His hair was very long and matted and his body covered with ashes. His eyes were so red, they seemed to spew fire. Each time his feet hit the ground it felt like the earth had been shaken. The fat one, so entranched was he, by the man's dancing took a drum kept nearby, and started playing. Meanwhile another one took a pooja thali.

Gradually the man who was oblivious of everything initially, absorbed in the surroundings, including the four guys who were playing like rockstars. The redness of his eyes seemed to vanish with his fury.

Raising one hand, he motioned the 4 to stop playing.

Then he said, "The world had gotten so evil, I was here to do my duty by finishing off this kaliyuga. But your "wild rocking" music made me loose my anger. And it will take me about 1000 years to get fully angered again.
You better keep rocking, or I'll be back (with a wink).

Anecdotes Bhilai valon ke

2006-11-12T15:08:00.000+06:00

I'll post anecdotes about friends sent in by friends :).
The first batch has been baked by subhash. Aur kisi ko kisi cheez se pain ho toh mujhse kahe...and if anyone wants to narrate any other kisssa abt our friends plz mail them to k.a.anand@ gmailDOTcom

*************************************************
:-----Anirvan:------

1) This is one of the stories that can b treasured as it was created by anirvan(in my words his name means anir--matlab bina pani ka,,,van--matlab maruti Van),,,,,
U may remember Mr. chakraborty,mathematics teacher (the ghost of middle school),,,well when anirvan was in bhilai some 5-6 years back in durgapuja,,,he had a small dispute with the persons who r from sec-4 durga pandals(as anirvan belongs to sec-10 durga pandals),,,so he took a stick (bans ka danda) frm one of the pandals n was likely to beat Mr. chakraborty n told him that i m no more a student of urs n can slap n beat u.....well what a gutsy guy....

2) This was one of the famous story that many of us knew that anirvan had created when we r in middle school,,once upon a time one of his relative(as far as i remember his maternal aunt)was going to scotland via aeroplane(thankgod usne yeh nahin bola ki khud ki fighter-plane se scotland gaye the...),,,so when they have reached at very high altitude,,,then anirvan aunt suddenly saw a whale with his/her family in the ocean....cool a person who is flying at a very high altitude cannot see the ship equal to size of titanic but can see a whale with whole family.....

3) One of anirvan magic creations....we all know the situations that all the mumbaikars have faced last monsoon on 26th n 27th july.....well at that particular time anirvan was there at mumbai stuck somewhere (a few miles away frm his home in mumbai) due to heavy rains,,,,as the rains stopped for a while he had started his journey back 2 home,,,due 2 heavy rains all the roads flooded n its impossible for all people 2 go back 2 their home but our gutsy anirvan had swimmed back 2 home along with the bodies of dead mammals n rodents,,,infact the water current is so strong that it is impossible for animals to swim(it is well known fact that most of the animals can swim very effectively),,,but anirvan had swimmed back almost 12 kilometers n that too against the current(well we all should suggest anirvan to take part in competition to cross indian ocean for this rare feat)....then when i asked him why he is not accompanying us to swimmingpool in lonavala trip then he told me that he forgot swimming.........

4)Anirvan who has enough potential to recreate the aura(magic) of HARRY-POTTER series....had convinced Abdi(AKA Abhishek Choudhary) that my nick name, my family used 2 call me is Maadho(infact it is MANTU.),,n that abhishek had clarified with me on lonavala trip after so many years finally he got out of anirvan aura.....

5) Anirvan who had done Phd. in fekology have one more emotional+tragic story in his kit(potli baba ki) that he reopened in front of me n my roommates.............story is like this:-

He had 2 face the flood situations whereever he goes(last time in mumbai,,this year in surat),,may b indradev is unhappy with him.......

well flood alert has been given 2 surat residents in prior,,,so our MR.Feku chakraborty,,,had purchased some vegetables n milk(as his mind is always active),,,finally surat is in flood,,,,n his mind signalled that he should smoke,,but to his utter disappointment he had exhausted his stock....then he saw a paan-thela open(astonising paan-thela is opened apart of the fact that 1st n 2nd floor of his apartments has been evacuated due to flood),,,,then this hero of surat swam again to have his cigrattes packets,,,when he is back into his apartment,,,the packets got soaked leaving cigrattes wet,,,,,he then lit the gas stove n dried the cigrattes(i m not a smoker but my friends tell me that if once cigrattes got wet its not possible them to dry up in fire),,,may b anirvan had dried the cigrattes in pan....anyways he became hero of the apartment n everbody have great expectations frm him,,,,he is very kind 2 give all the milk packets 2 the family having childrens(round of appalause for that)....now anirvan resides in 3rd floor n water had flooded 2nd floor n now came up till his window(just a feet or two below his window)...he catched two-three big fish from his window n then made fish-curry frm that n invited whole apartment 2 have feast,,,n all gujju maximum of them are vegetarians,ate this fish-curry with delight(i don't remember the exact no. of flats in his apartment that he had told me,,,but if my memory serves me right then it is approx to 30)....

6)Rarest of all:-----

Anirvan who have all kind of stories that can never b imagined,,,n apart of all this he try 2 convince everybody that he is true....

Anirvan likes travelling n had gone to ujjain,,,,,now story takes a new twist...Anirvan visited 2 KaalBhairav,,,that is a temple near a shamshaan bhumi(Crematorium),,,,he reached there in evening and spent a night in that temple(as he had told me that nobody used 2 stay there in night time as there are aghori(tantrik) n u can see ghosts n peculiar looking evil spirits (having tail of lion,head of wolf with horns n body of vulture n now by this time my roommates fainted) between 12pm to 4am...gud thing is that they doesn't enter the temple but if u will constantly see them they hypnotise u to come out n once u r out of the temple, u will b killed,,however anirvan kept on seeing them for those all peculiar looking evil spirits for sometime n then he slept........

another story on same day(infact at night)...........

Doesn't exact remember the place he had gone(but he had gone somewhere like Amarnath Dham),,,,there he met a person who was an IIT passout but have left his house an was living like a saint(duniya ke moh-maya se dur ho gaya tha),,,,,so they both have gossips n after sometime anirvan felt that his stomach was empty,,then realising the situation, saint told to anirvan that as anirvan is very true n kind person he will give him food n then,,,us mahatma ne ek thali prakat ki(jisme chhapan bhog the.) one more thing that magical person had shown that kind of chamtkar only 2 anirvan......lucky guy...ain't he???? all the IITians passout isn't it great 2 know that IIT had produced a magical person....

*************************************************
:------Parag:------

I n parag both r in pune since long time but got 2 see each other only when we met at the day of lonaval trip.....
he is astonished to see that my height increased so much(i m 5.10" approx),,,then in between them conversation i told him that sarvanand height had also increased n he is 5.8",,,,then our parag felt bit awkward aur mujhse kaha abe aisa mat bol,,,,mujhe abhi tak aasha thi ki kam se kam sarvanand se to lamba hoon....,,,well dear parag average indian height of a boy is 5.6"......so there is no worry as u r above average.

Parag whose belly have some extra pounds which is very common if u r an IT guy, had seen adds of sauna belt,,,n alas purchased one,,,,then when we met for lonavala trip during gossips i have suggested him to try sauna belt to reduce those extra flab,,,,then suddenly he screamed.....kabhi sauna belt use mat karna, maine 20 din use kiya 1 kilo bhi kam nahin hua aur TV mein bolte hain har din 1 inch kam hoga...bakwas hai,,1500/- Rs. gaye paani mein......

Maverick Jethmalani?

2006-11-11T13:25:00.000+06:00

There are always two sides of a coin. And we can only see one side at a time. Which may make us think that there is only one side existant. When it comes to establishing law and order, we have got the justice system, which looks at both sides of the coin. At least in priniciple it should. So if someone kills someone else, it tries to see the reason behind the killing, whether it was premeditated or hot headed, etc. The whole point of this is that it is not objective, like in some countries, where there are rules like, cut the hands of the thief etc.

Even if we assume that the principle of presuming the accused as innocent until otherwise proven is for once forgotthen. Even if the accused is guilty, he/she deserves the right to have the best advocate. Now comes the question, is our justice system dependent upon the advocate's competency? The probability is high that the prosecuting and the defending advocates would never be eqaully competent. One would always be better. The fight is biased from the start. As it does matter who has the better advocate on his side. So if people think that since Mr. Jethmalani is a great advocate, Manu will be acquitted, they are in fact admitting a flaw in our justice department.

Tunga Balla Torava

2006-10-04T22:34:00.000+06:00

"but inside ....we are all tigers.

That is how the MTv ad for the Xbox 360 ends. Totally out of this world, this ad is weird. When i first saw it, and did not see any product coming, i wondered if it was a MTv promo or something. But then it came in the end. Did some googling and found that the creative director was Cyrus Oshidar of MTv. Also found a lot of postings by firangs who couldn't make head and tail of it.

So here are some facts:
a) there is no game called Porok. It is purely a fictional game.
b) the language used is just a mixture of 3-4 languages. I could make out mallu and tamil words in it. I am sure the other words are from kannada and telugu.
c) it was shot in the middle of mumbai and not in a village.

Advertisements have to target a focus group. What works in cities, may not work in villages. What works for teenagers, may not work for middle ageds. And so on. So let me ask you who could be the focus of this ad? Who might the people who might buy the xbox?

Games in india are still played on PCs. The personal computer has become ubiquitous in cities. You could play for a hour in a cyber cafe for Rs.10. Highly affordable. My guess is 99% of serious gamers in india use a PC. To me they look like a good market. Very computer savvy. Having high paying jobs in IT. And they would already be aware of the XBox, even before seeing the ad. The ad is not informing them about anything. It's just selling them the attitude. Every ad doesn't have to "sell" the product. The point that it needs "selling" may make a bad impression.
And here this ad outclasses many others.

Obituary

2006-10-03T15:21:00.000+06:00

And i did'nt want to say this before, as i did'nt want to get anyone sad. Two of our classmates are no more. Mayuri Diwakriti one of the sweetest girls in our class, succumbed to some ulcer in her stomach and died a few days before her marriage. That is the worst something that could happen to anyone. Or maybe not, may she be in a place where she is eternally happy, not like here where all we can do is remember old times.

If you are searching for something missing here, plz don't just kick my ass.

This is life. We can do nothing but to move on. And enjoy the most we can And don't do things which will make us ashamed of ourselves. And if we think we had done something wrong, kick our ego's ass and ask forgiveness.
I will take this opportunity to do exactly that.

Bachpan mein bahut chutiya thha yaar kya karen...shayad abhi bhi hoon ye shayad agle 5 saal baad realize karoon.

Subhash, yaar i am really sorry, tereko jo bhi peeta veeta thha yaar, uske liye. Vo toh chhod, jo class mein tujhe hum sab milke tujhe jo tang karte thhe uske liye bhi.

vanashree, tujhe meine class 6th mein kuch toh unt shunt bola thha ..jiske liye tune chhatri se bol kar mujhe daant khilaya thha. uske liye sorry.

ek baar class 5 mein mainey dauda ke fatima tere haath pe meiney bahut zor se maara thha. Mere unguliyon ke nishaan aa gaye thhe tere haath pe. sorry yaar.

yaar ek banda thha na vivek, jiske papa army mein thhe. gobi ke parathe lata thha .
usey mainey ek baar class mind karte hue lakdi ke scale se pair ke haddi pe mara thha. abhi soch ke mere raungte khade ho jaate hain, ke mein kitna violent thha. maaf kar de yaar.

aur kisi ka mainey agar tan ya man dukhaya ho toh unse bhi sorry bolta hoon. yaaron dil mein kuch mat rakhna please :)

Bhilai Reunion @Lonavla

2006-09-28T16:47:00.000+06:00

16 guys + 1 bungalow + 1 swimming pool + lots of booze == lots of fun + lots of puke + lots of tears
The initiator was Sarva, who is here for his vacation from US. I passed the baton to madho (urf subhash :). He did such great work at contacting everyone he could, and then motivating, threating and forcing people to lend a weekend for old friends. Who else would have made a whole doc file with email ids and phone numbers of our classmates. The dates 23rd and 24th were fixed, and the place lonavla was chosen for it's good climate as well as accessibility. Madho even booked a awesome bungalow.

saturday (23rd): People set off from pune, mumbai and surat. A few of us namely me, bunty, sarva, dhagat, tyabji and shiv reached lonavla by 2 pm. We went to bushi dam, trekked to the waterfall and had some nice bathing vathing. By 5 we had our fill of fun and went to book into the bungalow. It was around a km from the railway station. A duplex with lots of mattresses and a house servant. Subhash gets another kiss for it :-{}.
As the night approached more people began arriving and by 8 all had arrived. We all sat around mehfil style. And the drinks started flowing. I will upload some video files in a day. Old stories and incidents kept flowing. Some samples:anirvan- " ek baar madho gadhe mein gir gaya, aur hasne laga. uski maa usko hasta dekhkar bolti hai, 'ek toh girta hai fir hastahai maadho'".
Ania the king of farts and second papaji of a great many. papaji because he renamed a lot of guys who even now dread those names. When asked what made him name Ravi Verma as pilli papa, he says,
"ek baarmein raipur se aa raha thha. Kya dekhta hun ki ravi ke papa baithhe hain. Beticket.
Dare hue. Ekdum pilli lag rahe thhe." Somebody asked, "Pilli matlab?" Ania:"arey ekdum darpok types, bengali hai." toh isi liye kyonki ravi ke papa pilli thhe isi liye uska naam pad gaya pilli papa.

Now nobody please believe this, and i am really sorry if i am insulting anyone (ravi's father). But the fact is Ania is so imaginative ki junta it's upto you how much of it you should believe :)). Ania yaar maaf kar de ;).

And about old crushes. Which i wouldnt disclose. Those who wish to know all the details should have come. So better be there @the next meetup :).

And gradually as people began getting drunk and some people began getting sentimental. I won't go into details, but i will say this to everyone, be confident in yourself and you will achieve what you want.

Others began puking making a mess of the beautiful bungalow. And to our bad luck the servant came for a midnight check. He was so terrified at the scene he promptly called up his master. And the master came in the morning demanding demanding extra money,,,and chewed madho's balls a lot. But thanks to madho and jaydeep he dint get anything extra.

Morning some of us went for a swim in the pool. Where madho in his skin colored chaddi scared some kids who thought he was naked. And bunty with his white chaddi who looked like mandakini in that famous scene.

Gradually one by one, everybody woke up, with there hangovers :). And we walked over to a snack shop. Where everybody ate so much poha that he was very happy with his earnings and he closed the shop when we left.

Then we hired a sumo sort of vehicle, and in two trips went to 'Loin' point. It was awesome. Though the lion looked a bit like a gorilla. But still.
Shot lots of baloons at the mela. Guess what they used as bullets in the air gun....moong daal is the correct answer.

Spent some time at the lion's point before moving on the monkey's point. We expected a rockface shaped like a monkey, all it had was a bunch of monkeys fornicating.

After that most of us wanted to be back to our homes. Madho was a little upset as he had booked the vehicle to show some 5 points but we had seen only two, lion and monkey.

And we booked a sumo. Others caught a train. And we are now all back in the same old world of getting up in the morning for job, slogging at work and coming back to our homes. While we were young i was not very happy. i always wanted to grow up. To have the money to buy anything i wanted. To eat as many chocolates as i could. To have the freedom to do whatever i wanted. But now like me most of you would prefer to go back to our childhood. But there is a silver line to all this. Imagine yourself after 20 years, middle aged, pot bellied, beginning to get old we would so want to get the age we are in now. We would all cherish what we can do now. So make the most of your javaani while you can :).

and please junta if you want to say anything please comment, or mail me and i will add it in the blog itself. Please try to recall any dailogues or interesting conversations. Jab boodhe ho jaayengey toh pad ke khoob hasengey. Aur parag and nitin please upload karo yaar pics. Bunty ke fone ke pics yahan par hain : flickr sets

Aur flickr pe bhi masti ke saath comment karne ka. And girls yaar tum log nahi aa paye mein samajh sakta hoon, bombay pune ke baahar se toh koi ladka bhi nahi aaya. Please tum log bhi comment shomment karo :).

Naneghat (mis)adventures - I

2006-08-28T18:35:00.000+06:00

Gajju and I went to naneghat yesterday. My brother was also supposed to come, but i guess he is a lot more kaamchor than I know of. He remembered some chores he had to do.

When we were leaving our flat, i had some 300 rupees on me. Gajju did not have any cash. I thought 300 will be allright for a modest trek. And both of us did not take our wallets and phones. Who wanted to worry about keeping them dry and safe. On train to kalyan had some deliciously fresh white milk sweet. They serve it on dry leaves. It cost us 10 bucks each. Awesome it was.

Reached Kalyan, went to the bus stand. Asked the information countervala:
"sir, vaishakhare kaun si bus jaayegi?"
The mousthacheod guy says in marathi," paune daha la gadi aahe", when the other one corrects him, "nahi re, paune aath la aahe, sava aath la jaannar aahe". And then he pointed towards a bus.

It was 8:30 then, we sat there. Around 8 we thought of getting into the bus. While entering I casually asked the conductor, "vaishakhare jaayegi na?".
He says , "nahi". I was a little bewildered. But the enquiry guy had said it would.
Then we roamed around asking different conductors if their bus would go to Vaish.., but everyone pointed at other buses.

It was around 40 minutes since we arrived at the stand. I was really becoming desperate. We began asking passengers through the bus windows. One of them said yes indeed it would go. As to confirm, we also asked, "naneghat vala vaishakhare?". Yes was the answer. We entered bus and even got seats.

We sat there on the seats for half an hour. Then someone came and said, "ye nahi jaayegi, kuch toh jhagdda ho gaya hai."
WTF
Some people began leaving. When we began to leave the driver arrived and started the bus. We were mementarily happy, "oh so there jhagda is over.". The driver reverses it and drives back to a corner and parks it there. Back to square one.

Now my patience was getting very low. I again went to the enquiry vala and asked him about the bus to vaishakhare. I told him i want to go to naneghat. He points towards four buses. But have'nt i asked those conductors, i thought. But just to make sure, i walk towards them and again ask them if any of them go to "vaishakhare".
They all reply,"no."

My heartbeats increased. My muscles tighten. This is fight or flight. I go to the enquiry guy and yelled at him. He yells back, "hum bol rahe hain na ki jata hai, toh jata hai." i yell back, "Ticket toh vo conductor hi dega na, nahi toh aap de do ticket." Then one of them says, "ask him for ticket to 'moroshi'."

And we finally get our bus. At that time i was still puzzled at what was the whole matter. Later it occured to me that vaishakhare is a small stop on the route nearest to naneghat. Now many fast buses do not stop at vaishakhare, but if you ask them they'll drop you where the trek to naneghat starts.

The misadventure didnt end there. More to come in part II.

Sona* belt anyone??

2006-08-26T04:28:00.000+06:00

My roomie is high again. We were watching the super hit show of home shopping brand. Skipping through channels if the current one died out. There always was always more coming. But everywhere they kept showing us "Sauna belt" and it's amazing capabilities. My idiot roomie who is a little shy around his expanding waist, thought of calling the number and enquiring about it.

The number was (well is, as of 26 Aug 06) three zero three zero seven zero zero zero.(*)reason for this notation to be declared later).

It was around 1:30 and we had settled at VH1. Today is friday so it was Headbanger's Ball going on .The kinda music on which moshes happen. So he declared he was gonna call and did.

roomie: "Achha humey sauna belt ke bare mein pata karna thha."..
3zero30sevenzerozerozero:"..............."
roomie:"hum powai area mein rehte hain"...."kya aap home delivery karte hain?"
3zero30sevenzerozerozero:"..................................."

me:"abe us se poochh ki gas khatm ho jaaye toh unde vagera ban sakte hain kya usme"

roomie:"achha humne dekha AD mein ki usme ande bhi bana sakte hain"
3zero30sevenzerozerozero:" ah,,,,....,,,,..."
roomie:"achcha iska price bataiye na."
3zero30sevenzerozerozero:"ruk batata hoon price..... " at which point my roomie gave the phone tu me
>(me)< "ek toh raat mein call karte ho ...dekh lo mere paas ye number aa gaya hai &*^&*^&^&*^*^*()&*()&*% *(^" and I cut the line.

When I told my roomie about his number being in his posession. And he being very angry about this.
He got scaarrred out of his balls. The guy who normally would shrink his nose everytime he saw us cooking some nonVeg, agreed my suggestion of changing his name. Getting plastic surgery done and leaving our country. To alaskan hilly jungles. Where the grissly hunts. There he could do what hyena in the serengetti does.
Chase beers. Wait for them to hunt. Then wait for them to fill their stomachs.
When the beers leave to doze of after a glass of honey. He would slowly approach the kill and suck the marrow out of each bone.

p.s. parts of this post are false and bear no resemblance to any incident nor person, animal aur a grass.
(*) = if the sauna belt people google there number and find this posting, then they will get to him. My roomie pointed this out to me and allowed me to put this post on only this condition.

Daman (of Daman and Diu fame)

2006-07-17T21:47:00.000+06:00

Conquered it on an old splendor. We had actually planned for Vasai fort. But when we neared vasai, we saw the signboard for Daman, 150 kms. Quickly changed plans, and with the power bestowed upon us by plastic money headed to Daman.

The highway is superb. It was very firang looking road and the traffic was also lean. We pushed the old splendor to 75 kmph, above which it groaned. Otherwise it did quite OK. Must admit splendor is one reliable bike. Only pain with long distance biking is the pain in the neck and the rashes on your bum. Otherwise it was one smooth ride.

Went to a place called Ambica bar, whose owner was friends with bhartiya. He was not there, had gone to Pune. So we did't get any extra hospitality. But the food was cheap as well as mouth smacking. The prawns were really fresh. Drank lots of port wine. I admit i havent acquired taste for real wine. I like port wine, which in daman is rs.70 for a bottle than even a rs. 1500 bottle of cabernet sauvignon i had once had. Also bought two bottle for friends. Now we have a relation to Don Corleone. He also had started his business by smuggling booze. It was smooth sailing as we were never stopped by any cops.

Somehow portuguese could'nt or did'nt change the people or the culture here. For starters, everyone has heard about goan food. Daman and Diu food??? The restaurants here have been afflicted with the punjabi + mughlai food disease. Punjabi food with it's lots of oil and with every other dish looking and tasting the same. There was sea food but it's preparation was generic. And there are gujaratis everywhere. Infact they would i guess constitute 90% of the population. I am making a guess, when portugues left in 1961, gujaratis came over and changed everthing. Read this wiki.

After wining and dining we went over to the jetty. The boats were plowing even in the night. The creek which separates the two parts of Daman, Moti Daman and Nani Daman once had a bridge. But it fell down during one heavy rain. This giant piece of concrete was swept to around a kilometre. There is a red light marking the spot, warning boats and ships. So now there are these small boats which ferry people across the narrow creek for a sum of rs.2.

A slight rain began, which reminded us of one of the three necessities, namely "makaan". The hotels there were quite expensive. Though not compared to mumbai. The cheapest hotel at daman would be around rs 300 for a day. And we did not want to spend even that amount :). So went some 8 kms to Vapi. Found a room for 130 with a attached wash basin. Actually we found out later that it was a shulabh shouchalay which was converted to a lodge when people began hearing wails and howls at night. Now it is obvious that when this was hardly a place one could attend to his/her business. Hence it was converted into Amar Guest House. Attached wash basin, a bottle of cold water and two ghosts on the house. Luckily because of all the heavy wining and dining we slept undisturbed.

I woke up at 8, which is after a long time. Got a sleepy and unwilling bharatiya out of bed and off to the jetty. We were headed to Nani daman. Took a ferry. There is a big fort in Nani daman. As soon as you get out of the boat, you face a great gate, Kille ka darwaza. Awesome looking. And obviously very different in architecture to the shivaji forts lying around. Once you enter the gate, there are different public offices on both sides of the road. Municipal court, Secretariat, library, weather bureau, everything you can imagine. And everything is so accessible. There was no guard at the gates of the secretariat and the main building was hardly 20 meters from the road. Some of the sign boards still have spellings like, "Amdavad". There is another gate at the end of the fort. Which leads to habitation, and wine shops. Had beer for breakfast and took a autorickshaw to the beach.

The monsoons are not the time to go to beaches. The water looks like creamy tea. I could make myself get inside that slush. Had a cool time watching slimy creatures doing there daily business. There was a bunch of boys, youngest being 12 and the oldest being 18 playing football. Around 15 in a team. It was very proper with linesman and all. And the quality of play was also good. Bharatiya noticed one kid who played like ronaldinho. After a while walked inland. There was a tadi shop, but there was no tadi. Rainy season is bad for tadi tappers. The rain water goes into the matkas and dilutes it. We took a rick to the bazaar, and to our luck the sunday bazaar was in progress. From fish to tshirts, heaps of bras to knick knacks. We bought two plastic toys which can swim when wound. Both of us had enough and were looking forward to the return ride.

And as return trips go, was uneventful and unexciting.