How the writer never changed...

Once in a while your blog creeps up on ya and bites ur own mind off... (yes thats right you read that right)

Murali is in cunningham road.
Murali goes to Infinitea.
Murali pauses while standing in front of Infinitea and sees Shezan restaurant and thinks of all the memorably bland Peas Pulaos he'd had there when working for Hewlett Packard Pvt Ltd.
Murali wipes a tiny tear off left cheek.
Murali realizes it was just sweat (Alreddy februari is hot pa April March devre gathi)

Murali walks into Infinitea. The Prodigal Sun (employee) returns, more mature, more serene....
None the wiser though.

He orders English Scones. The dish sounds delightful and rather pretentious no? He orders anyways, having a glorious picture in his mind.

He gets 4 biscuits.
One spoon of jam.
An iota of cream, which looked like some pigeon slurped it in for lunch, let it pass through its body and its excretory system ejected it with a horrendous feeling of shock and dismay.

He stepped out of Infinitea thinking I should record this weird syndrome he has...and he should title the post 'The Cookie Syndrome'. Looks like somebody's already done that for him :

The Cookie Syndrome

I couldnnav put it better myself :)

P.S : 4 years from now, I'll buy some more extremely inane bullshit in a rather overpriced place and write another post and provide a link for this one in that one. This is, of course, we survive 20 12 2012.

Bile

"...Further we would like to inform you that the form now onwards you bile generated day will be on 25th of every month.

In case you need further assistance, please do call or email us. We'll do our best to help you."

Happy to help,
English_Impaired_Happy_Helper

From Vodafone Customer Care (yeah you guys! you reading this?)...

The rest of the mail, preceding the absurd sentence shown above, was very normal and formal.
Looks like she took a big swig from a jar of bile juice sitting on her desk and assigned my monthly bile cycle!

Aussie heavy metal meets Indian maw

Well me maw n me were listnin to the raidio thee othr daiy n outta nowhere this sawng jus pops raaight into the local raidio staytion (akashvani apparently!!) :

ACDC Back in Black

Well me mamma listens to the first fuew minits n goes 'hhhhoooooooooaly coww somebaadi's pinchin 'is butt or somethin!!' Was drinkin a glass o' waatr, n thats when I start laughin at that one so 'ard that there'z waatr comin outta my nose?
But she ain't done ya know so then she sayz 'whoa now they must be poarin hot waatr on 'is head now yes they are'

Ya don't believe me click on the link thein!

Ka2

How pleasant for a truly depressing abysmal day to turn into such a jubilant one!
I feel totally uplifted and truly, selflessly happy...A cathartic excellent feeling!

God bless!

To strive, to seek, to find

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down,
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
and though We are not now that strength which in old days,
Moved earth and heaven,
that which we are, we are.
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

- Lord Alfred Tennyson

Feel the thud!

How would you feel, if when you're driving, the whole world around you is running at a volume of 2 or 3 (TV units) and all the honking and blaring and screeching of vehicles is totally suppressed??

Or picture driving through the din and dum dum of Bangalore, with the whole town almost quiet, except music playing on loud speakers THROUGH OUT the city!!!

I'm not suggesting driving under the influence :P

Meet my new Sennheiser earphones!! They're in ear earphones, which means once you poke them in the general direction of your ears, they get down to business making it their comfy cosy home. This pair, though, went a step ahead and really got into me.

Henceforth I decided to call them 'Brainphones' :D

Cos believe-you-me here, these buggers pretty much remove all the other crap outside!!! Apart from me looking in awe at a gesturing, happily chatting mom and gathering no audio input, at first I could feel the thud of my own feet walking! When your ears are really really blocked, I guess every small impact to/on the body is "felt"!

And this isn't no special 'noise cancellation' earphones either...Okay this is enough text for just a pair of earphones I guess. I'll wind up by saying for a music crazy ppls like me, this is a God send! Of course, its much better to let ur ears enjoy some music than some really annoying and loud horns...

P.S : What? Of course I listened to Freebird first!

The TaaLegari Tales - a HowTo

Nadi Shastra, for the uninitiated. (I think i've used this word before in my blog...uninitiated...huh i'm getting repetitive and predictable...well i don't mind)

These are no taal tales. Believe me, for I'm a survivor! :brave look on face, looking far far away

Step 1 : Don't go to the taalegari place
Step 2 : You should have followed step 1. Sigh. Move on then.
Step 3 : Determine sex of self. If male, press right thumb into inkpad. If female, press left thumb into inkpad. (Dono protocol for "neither/both" so don't label me a "sexist"). Press above selected thumb onto paper of piece.

Step 4 : Come out of the place and wonder if they have affiliations with criminal organs of the society, to which they can feed ur thumb print. Just to be safe, commit to self that u won't commit any crimes in future.

Step 5 : Go back in and ask them when u've to come back. Get a phone number too (useless anyways).

Step 7 : Arrive on time and stare at all those chappals/sandals/shoes outside the main door. (If you DO manage to have ur appointment on time, i will give u 1000 Rs a.)

Step 8 : Your taale gari (palm leaf) has been found! (Unfortunately.) Congratulations!!!! (Really?)

Step 9 : Important step...this is very important.
Do NOT go 3 times at odd times of the day and get upset at him for not scheduling u earlier.
Do NOT pay him any money in advance.

Step 10 : Listen to all the hocus pocus he'll tell you about how life's a bitch and how u have a good probability of having an accident, a bad marriage, tough times ahead, awesome promotions, foreign tours, family issues, good kids etc etc, surprisingly all lined up one after the other!


Summary : Life is just like a long island ice tea. All sortsa shit in it. You don't need no commercialized, tamil guy speaking kannada with a fucked up accent (apparently i've to do some 'booje's to solve all my "dosha"s or problems) to tell you that.

Movie Review : Choti si baat

Watched this movie again after a long time from the credits to finish. Loved it again :)
Was looking for a bunch of words to describe this cute lil movie, done with such tact and finesse and subtlety. Surprisingly found them on the back page of the CD cover, which we bought for 45 bucks by the way. To think that I sometimes shell out 5 times the price to watch unbearable and sickening crap nowadays gave me a shudder.

But back to more pleasant and happy tunes. Here's what the back of the CD cover read:

Choti si baat is an endearing, lovable comedy about a young man who walks the rocky path of love because his heart is true but timid. Arun (Amol Palekar) falls in love with Prabha (Vidya Sinha) whome he sees everyday on the bus-stop on his way to work. Not having the courage or know how to express his love, all he can do is follow her to her office and her home and pine from a far. Just as he is wondering what to do next, along comes Nagesh (Asrani), Prabha's brash young colleague who seems leagues ahead of Arun in his pursuit of Prabha. A now deseperate Arun seeks the help of Colonel Julius Nagendranath Wilfred Singh (the legendary Ashok Kumar) who tackles the battle of love with the same meticulous planning and ruthless efficiency needed to win a military campaign. He instills in Arun a new self confidence and teaches him the strategies of waging love. Arun returns to Bombay a new man ready to face anything. Another heart winning classic from Basu Chatterji, Choti si baat has never faded in its sweet, funny magic.

Amen. What this paragraph doesn't deliberately capture is how brilliant Amol's performance is, how quippy the script is, how brilliantly yet simply some scenes have been shot. A must watch if you're a fan of those good old hindi movies made with some sense and with something more/different than a spunky heroine, an invincible hero, their romance and a quixotic villain ready to die!

Nice TED talk

I just love this guy!

Don't you?

When the truth is found to be lies.
And all the joy, within you, dies.
Don't you want somebody to love?
DOn't you need somebody to love?
Wouldn't you love somebody to love?
You better find somebody to love..

P.S : Non rhetorical question.

I hate 'em!

Autowallahs!

This post was constructed inside the brain of the author while navigating the once-calm roads of Jaynagar.

I truly hate 'em!

They park in really inconvenient places (like the corner of an intersection)
They turn first and then look! (Gnawing teeth.....)
They go really really slow while having no clue about the fact that they're holding up traffic behind them...
They think that the right of the road/lane is always theirs
They forget that their dear autos have a fat ass and treat it like a moto GP bike!!

Well now, I know that several auto drivers are polite and drive safely and slow, with due consideration to others on the road and traffic rules. Which is why, I am only making a generalization and am not stereotyping them. (the difference being that I make room for exceptions in the former, whereas I don't in the latter).

Based on all this, I coined a new word for all of them today:

"Traffuckers".

Yep thats who "most of them" are....

Get your doseh? today!

Q : What does one usually get to order in a masochistic restaurant?

A:





Welcome to Adarsha Restaurant on National Highway 7.
Rather painful dosa it was indeed.....

Diwali 2009

Murali,

In the year 2009 when you were jaded enough not to go gaga over crackers, but were still foolish enough to go ahead and pollute the environment (how's that lung btw?), you went to a Standard store and saw the following. You then wondered why on earth some ppl would wanna name crackers in such a manner. What immediately followed was a innate impulse to record this on the Internet. The "letter to future self" format was a spur of the moment thing.

Anyways, some amusing cracker names:

1. Bofors!
Did not even get what kind of cracker it was...There was a picture of a simple rifle with sparkling colors all over the box and the word 'Bofors'

2. Cherry Garden
A pleasant sunny day...Birds chirping, Butterflies flyin in n out...Your soulmate and you, with a perfectly pure pot of Earl Grey tea and sandwiches sitting in a Cherry Garden and WHAM!!!

3. God's Gift
Certainly...Sound and Noise pollution, other divine presents aside.

4. Jasmine Drops
@$&*%$@*&%$@ ???

Happy Deepavali all.

wet lips of yours

Did Kunaal Ganjawala feel as disgusted with 'vo vo vo ho!', after finishing the recording of the song, as I am feeling right now after one session of practice?

Fans

(14:30:11) Name_Withheld_For_Obvious_Reasons: you act like an asshole sometimes... i feel its better to talk to a pot than you

Always feels good to be appreciated.

P.S : In Name_Withheld_For_Obvious_Reasons' defense, I did say something out of context in a rather serious conversation...

Free as a bird

Free as a bird,
it's the next best thing to be.
Free as a bird.

Home, home and dry,
like a homing bird I'll fly
as a bird on wings.

Whatever happened to
the life that we once knew?
Can we really live without each other?

Where did we lose the touch
that seemed to mean so much?
It always made me feel so...

Free as a bird,
like the next best thing to be.
Free as a bird.

Home, home and dry,
like a homing bird I'll fly
as a bird on wings.

Whatever happened to
the life that we once knew?
Always made me feel so free.

Free as a bird.
It's the next best thing to be.
Free as a bird.
Free as a bird.
Free as a bird.

Goa....again!

The first time was with Kris, Griz and Ash...it was truly, one of the most memorable trips I've had...The perfect place at the perfect time with the perfect people. Granted we didn't go to Tito's (which I heard was so not worth it...the entry fee, in off season, is apparently 1000 bucks JUST to get in and after u're there, its not all that great...sour grapes maybe but well :D ) or the cruise n to the other dazzlin stuff in North Goa, but we had some super good fun our own style....I can still remember flashes of amazing moments...its like a mental picture...'click'!

This time around though, the setting's different!

* Office colleagues (most of whom I don't know very well, and the others I've only had partial personal interactions for just 10 months)

* Friggin 30 of 'em !!!!

* South Goa!!!

Potential for disasters u think? U haven't heard the best part yet...I was travelling on the train as someone else! Yep that's right...I had to suffer MPD, atleast name-wise to get to paradise...If caught, the fine for impersonating somebody is...well thankfully I still don't know aye?

After travellin for close to 20 hours (one looooooooong train drive and another seemingly long bumpy bloody bad bus drive), we get to Colonel Jose Menino resort, Varca. Place looks like a dump. We look like a dump. Since another colleague n I decided to join the gang later than others, our room...isn't there! In a gang of 30, miscommunication is just way too easy I guess...

15 mins later : The fan's running on full speed...Two males, avg age 25, are lying sprawled on the bed.

No this post is gonna become too long if I do it this way. Change. Okay got it.

When you're in the company of ppl u barely know or "ppl u do the 'raised-hand-smile-nod' thingy with day in and day out but don't expect to spend a vacation with them" , u can do several things. You can struggle hard to blend in, fit in. There, u're competing with ppl who've been together for the past 5-8 years and read each other like an open socket. Or you can be the broody, silent guy who's taking it all in, waiting for an opening.

Both of these approaches become rather taxing when you're up against a set of ppl with a rather quirky sense of humour, with a dollop of sillyness and a generous serving of perversion. For instance, if I'd said, in front of few of the gang "...the broody, silent guy who's taking it all in, waiting for an opening.", several of them would've burst out howling, and while u were wondering whether u'd made the most inane of statements or whether ur pants were down all of a sudden, one of them would say:

"Opening? Wow whose opening are u waiting for? And u're taking it all in? I didn't know u're used to swallowing man!" (For those who didn't get either or both of those puns, leave personal comments please).

You see the point? If you wanna blend in, you've got to stoop to a level which you'd rather not visit. If you wanna be the silent brooding guy, they let you be. Its just that the jokes will wanna make you find a .45 and shoot yourself.

Oh and oh oh...while we're at silly, perverted jokes, here's another one which never got boring, through out the trip:

Stupid silly IQ in negative bitch colleague : Hey I'm feeling sleepy ya!
Smart highly pervert colleague : Wow...who's sleepy?
(Sleepy the elf? "Feeling" sleepy? As in groping? aaaaaaaaaa there u get it...MAN! I had enough of that though!)


The silver lining
--------------------------

As a colleague of mine said, "The problem with South Goa is that there aren't enough good places to eat, but the beaches are gorgeous".

True, true and very true.

As I walked down the road to Varca beach, I realized 'hey! what else is there in Goa maga?'

1. Food (whoa the variety in sea food...)
2. Beaches (different ppl, different attractions ;) )
3. Cheap booze (several ppl might scowl at me for putting this at number 3)
49. Water activities.

The beaches ARE gorgeous...I can still hear the roar, the rustle, the whisper, the sigh....mmmmmmmmmm :)

To summarize:

It takes patience to blend in with a gang of ppl u're trying to blend with :) If running low on patience, you can use the following:

1. A swimming pool (nothing like half naked guys in the water trying to outsmart each other...u just admit they're good, and have a nice time in the water :)
2. Alcohol! Nothing breeds camaraderie better than good high spirits! :D :D Enough on that topic eh? ;)
3. A colleague letting it slip that u manage to sing more decently than others...Somebody who knows how to sing gets respect. Phew that helped!

If you can think of other things to add to that list, yee mayl me...

The End. (Yawn)

P.S : I watched a memorable Manchester Derby in the world's worst cable tv setup ever. Adds to the variety of the trip ashte.

Shaayad...

Ahed-e-masti hai
log kehte hain

Mai-parasti hain
log kehte hain

(I think the 4 lines together means, the worship of wine aka mai promises enjoyment...Its a complicated and unusual combination of urdu words, not usually found together)

Shaayad ek baar ujad ke naa base
Shaayad ek baar ujad ke naa base
Dil ki basti hain, log kehte hain....

(These lines are the killer ones)

EGO

Fucking FUCKING fucking fucking fucking ego!!! (I've found that I like that word when I'm angry)

The ugly side of a man/woman's ego rares up and blinds the crap out of the person...When you're trying to make a point and win a war, you've to lose a battle. And if you've had time to prepare for the war, you should see who your opponent he is and when you've to concede. And most of all, you've to FUCKIN Listen! LISTEN to what the other party is saying cos not only may the other party be making valid points but may also be making mistakes, on which you can capitalize by out thinking the opponent and offering the RIGHT point of view, politely (a quality which I'm grossly lacking in this post...I see it yes, thank you)

Back to the ugly side of ego...It is, one of the ugliest and most evil things I have seen on this planet so far...This is primarily because:

1. It successfully renders a person blind to "the big picture/the right thing/the truth" (sometimes "what is the truth/the right thing" is debatable...I concede)
2. Not only the point above, but it also provides the person that is under its control, a passion and a fallacy to continue to remain under its influence and ignore the truth. A strong personal viewpoint transcends true and correct reason. A massacre also occurs in the process.

BAH!

Lonely as you

"It gets terribly lonely man, don't ask" said Dilip, as he rested non-chalantly on the circular slab of stone jutting out of the ground, the ones you commonly see at the entrances of parks/playgrounds.

"Uh huh?" Karthik nodded solemnly, trying to be mature but unable to hide the inquisitiveness from his eyes. His ears were on full alert, soaking in every word of his illustrious, enigmatic, cool cousin. This was one topic which he'd like some hindsight about!

"Its that phase when you're no longer just a teen, but aren't married yet?" went on Dilip, taking a deep, melancholic puff. "It gets pretty damn lonely man...That craving that you get...Its unbelievably strong...makes you long for somebody...terribly lonely u start feeling"

At this point, Karthik's mind was like K R Market on a day before a festival...swarming with questions...Is he talking about the craving that I think he's talking about?? And why that period, for one to feel terribly lonely anyways? And how terrible can it get after all? You've your friends, your family, your workplace, your relatives, your neighbors etc etc. Won't work keep you busy and occupied most of the time? And...

"Wanna take a drag at this?" was what broke Karthik's reverie at 7.50 pm near the bus stand there. Dilip was offering him the King! Giving him equal status almost! But wait....was he just testing me? Should I say no cos I'm too young? But it'd make me cool if I DID take it...Oh but dad n ma...Oh no...DAMMIT!

"Uh no...I don't smoke any more...it was a long time ago and I didn't like it much so I stopped" said Karthik, to avoid sounding lame...He felt lame after completing the sentence though...

"Oh ok...sure" said Dilip with a smirk as he finished it off, and popped the minty into his mouth, starting to walk back towards home...

Karthik felt annoyed at having been so immature...One bloody puff! You could've walked home with him, with the victorious minty in your mouth matching strides with Dilip, the cool one!

As he rounded the corner, the angel donned a lawyer's robe at the same time and started saying "why's it so cool to smoke anyways? what's the big deal? It hurts anyways...And whats this loneliness that he was talkin about? the craving and the longing? and why...................