Lighter Side of..........

Song Sung True

2006-03-25T00:50:00.000-08:00

Once in a while you come across a song which you can completely identify with. When you listen to it you think, this is me. I believe Metallica's James Hetfield felt the same way when he heard 'turn the page'. Most recently for me it's a song by this chap called Colin Hay, the song's 'overkill' and it's on the Scrubs soundtrack. It's really scarry how much I can relate to the song.......

I can't get to sleep
I think about the implications
Of diving in too deep
And possibly the complications

Especially at night
I worry over situations
I know I'll be alright
Perhaps it's just imagination

Day after day it reappears
Night after night my heartbeat shows the fear
Ghosts appear and fade away

Alone between the sheets
Only brings exasperation
It's time to walk the streets
Smell the desperation

At least there's pretty lights
And though there's little variation
It nullifies the night from overkill

Day after day it reappears
Night after night my heartbeat shows the fear
Ghosts appear and fade away
Come back another day

I can't get to sleep
I think about the implications
Of diving in too deep
And possibly the complications

Especially at night
I worry over situations
I know I'll be alright
It's just overkill

Poly-ticks

2006-02-10T06:27:00.000-08:00

It's amazing. Throw a group of guys of the same age in a hostel and WHAM ............every body hates every body else one second.......every body loves everybody else in another...........friends,enemies it's a fine line.......it's all politics baby.........it's enough to shock Atal ji out of his slumber (where is he anyways?)

This is what 'lack of distance' does to you..........

I'm not complaining............I hate them too......

A dum da dum da dum da dum da........people are strange when you're a stranger, faces look ugly, when you're alone.......

Twang

2006-01-25T01:46:00.000-08:00

It's been ages since I sat down and wrote an entry. There is much that has been happening in my life and though I sometimes find humour in some of the events , as soon as I sit infront of the computer screen to type them out , I suddenly don't find them so funny and just chuck the idea. Other times the incidents just happen to be another account of my numerous train journeys and I fear that another railway related post would render the name of the blog unfit.
Anyways reading a friend's entry about music I thought that it wouldn't be a bad topic to write about. Also since I am known as the unscrupulous pretentious b* , I just thought I'd justify the name by unscrupulously copying his idea.
Every time I listen to a song , it brings up a memory of some part of life. But generally whenever I think music I just remember three kids (my brothers and I) sitting infront a L.P player, singing and trying to enact Harry Belafonte's ''Jamaican Farewell". That is my earliest memory of any music and even though I now sit infront of a machine which stores thousands of songs which are available for my listening pleasure (digitally re-mastered) at the click of a button, I never had as much fun listening to songs as i had infront of that LP.
There are other memories of picturesque mountain slopes looking out of the window of the car en route to shimla listening to "uptown girl"or "karma chameleon" play on that old car stereo or my mom trying to teach me how to dance in the drawing room with Frank Sinatra crooning in the back ground or just going crazy over some Elvis song .......those were the times , it was about the music man.
And today as I look at my cassettes sitting on my shelf gathering dust and that wonderfull L.P player banished to some dark corner of my loft, I just think about what a major part music has played in my life, how the songs just bring up such vivid memories and how the way I listen to these songs signify how the times have changed.
And in the words of Harry Belafonte (Jamaican Farewell)
"Now I'm sad to say, I'm on my way
won't be back for many a days
my heart is down, my head is turning around
as I leave my little girl in Kingston Town"

2006-01-24T13:30:00.000-08:00

I've always wondered how they do it. I try to guess that its the body or maybe the looks , an attitude perhaps and in my more envious moments i thinks it's probably the money. But i am in awe of those guys who women swoon after, those lady killers. I am a realistic guy , i know my limitations, another thing i know is i do not belong to the above mentioned species.
I'll not go as far as saying that i am the women repeler or that if i was the last man on earth, the women in desperation will learn how to reproduce without a male partner (i hear they are allready learning how to do that). But i have never been the type who would get those lingering looks from the women..... a coy smile maybe......nope, never.
Being short and fat in my younger years did not help build my confidence in the matters of the oppisite sex . It also does not help if your brothers are considerably better looking than you. My grandmother a wonderfull , candid lady , in an attempt to palliate me used to tell me that i should study hard and become succesfull and that the women then would not care about how i look. These words, though well intentioned , didn't exactly help. I have hence thinned down a bit (or to quote my father , the fat just got streched out as a result of growing taller).
Sometimes my attempts to act suave and sophisticated go terribly wrong , my self proclaimed stylish half smile sometimes, i have been told gives me a retraded look. Other times , my serious 'tragic young man' look just seems like i'm sulking.
One foolhardy , illadviced attempt to start a conversation with a random girl was not recieved well. The girl in question when approached by me , in reaction to a simple "are you from so-an-so?" looked like she was going through various stages of some sort of an epliptic attack and fled.
Freud asked "what do women want?"......i can't answer that question , but i can confidently answer what they don't want.

jane queue?

2005-11-03T10:32:00.000-08:00

Calamity, they say brings out the best and the worst in people. From a railway ticket counter queue however, I am sad to say, no good can come. A frequent traveler and a regular customer of the Indian Railways I have to go through the tedious and nerve racking process of getting my ticket done at the above mentioned counters. Believe me when I tell you that in my vast experience of getting tickets done, I have never come across a calm, peaceful, orderly queue. Also surprisingly the male population has little to do with the bellicose nature of the railway queue. From when we were ‘ye high we’ve been told how the male of our species is the warrior , conjuring up an image of a huge hairy beast with blood and saliva dripping down his jaws , scanning the horizon with his bloodshot eyes looking for his next conquest. The female however, the mother , the protector, shielding her cherubic children from the harsh realities of life and the wrath of the male beast. The queue (from now on how I’ll refer to this devious creation of Satan) shows a complete role reversal. Aunty jis , Mummy jis, Behen jis and occasionally some young girls from all walks of life converge to become territorial, savage animals. Try to break line and you’ll have five aunty jis , nostrils flaring , descend upon you faster than you can say , well , “queue”, hurling anathemas at you , your family , and anybody who is unfortunate enough to know of your existence, telling you the exact location of the end of the queue and suggesting you get there post-haste. And it’s not just direct confrontation but also the politics, oh the politics. You’ll have a group of allied aunties , talking about how the lady in front is taking an unnecessarily long time, how it’s making them late for so-and-so kitty and shaking their head in despair on how people can be so inconsiderate, loud enough for all to hear, especially the lady right in front. The person in front of the queue is always the enemy, it doesn’t matter if a moment ago she was the one standing with you condemning the last person who was at the head of the queue to a life time of pain and suffering for holding up the queue, sympathizing with you about the irreparable damage it’s done to your schedule.
There is a variety of aunties, each kind utilizing a different approach to make your ticket buying experience, one which will cause you to wake up in the night, drenched in sweat, screaming in terror. There are the Punjabi aunty jis, hefty, mini wrestler type women with a ‘don’t mess with me’ , arms folded stance, staring down anybody foolish enough to look directly at her with her ‘try sneaking in front of me and your history’ look. Then there are the women who are the quite, dignified looking women, looking every bit as though ‘this is not where I belong’. But step in front of them by mistake and they’ll give you a look which would make you feel like the scum at the bottom of the pond, wondering whether your upbringing was severely lacking. Then there are the supposedly jolly aunties, looking happy and benign, making small talk with anyone who cares. Try anything funny though and you’ll get a gentle but firm rebuke which says “this is the first and last warning bub, do it again and you face dire consequences.” With the onslaught of technology I’m sure these queues will very soon be rendered obsolete, causing a collective sigh of relief from all who have been through and survived the unique aunties-in- the -queue experience.

Fate Actually

2005-09-02T06:38:00.000-07:00

Ever had one of those days when somehow you feel things aren't completely in your control. How there is a bigger power somewhere which has a major role on deciding what's going to happen next . I'm not exactly the religious types, I'd probably fit in the category of borderline agnostic (skeptical most times, but become a believer when there is a result etc round the corner).............. Infact the best definition of god i thought was said best in this movie i just saw (disturbing, how much of my knowledge is derived from movies).......trying to explain what god is to a guy one guy says " Well you know when you want something real bad, and you wish for it......... well god's the guy who ignores you". But sometimes you just get the feeling that some omnipotent force is guiding our life (not necessarily in the right direction.....i sometimes think).........Ok now before you shake your head in a sad kind of way and reach for the phone to call the men in white coats , allow me to elucidate...........
The other day i was in class as usual, getting bored out of my wits (trying to figure out the the time complexity of the quick sort algorithm usually does that to me). It was thus a welcome respite when we found out that our usual humanities teacher was absent and his substitute was a gentle , apologetic kind of guy, just the type that can be bullied by hardened nagpur university "almost there" engineers. For some reason my friend and i started talking about life after death, the Hindu concept of life after death and what happens after death. Not topics we usually discuss in our spare time. My friend was of the opinion that after a person dies and receives 'moksha' (release from the cycle of birth-death-rebirth) the soul of the person becomes a part of an omnipotent, omnipresent life force. This struck a cord with me as i have never been a great believer in the concept of "heaven and hell" (more on that later). The lecture (or if you call the teacher sitting on the side explaining to two uninterested students his convoluted life and the fact that he dreams of joining the U.N some day, a lecture) ended eventually and we were just making our way back to the hostel. Now usually to exit the college we have to pass the administrative office. Outside this office hangs a white board which in the morning is sparkling white and on which ,in the course of the day, atleast before our recess , some unknown entity of the office writes a thought for the day. As has become our habit, while passing the above mentioned office we usually glance at the board to see the thought for the day ,which are usually sweet and sugary(usually on how love, a smile, hardwork etc can do wonders in your life), causing us (hardcore pessimists) to roll up our eyes in disdain. As we glanced at the board that day , what was written made us stop and re-read it. Written on the board was 'Death is not the end , it's the beginning'........
Now call me crazy , but sometimes stuff like this convinces me that there is something more out there.

2005-08-08T11:03:00.000-07:00

So here I am , back again , home...... But this journey back has been more educating than my other journeys........There are two things I learnt
1) That one incident can cause a sequence of other incidents.......like a domino effect (I believe they also call it the butterfly effect........learnt that from a movie with the same title......crappy movie)
2) Nothing , I mean nothing is more irritating than a stationary train when your on it and close to your destination (not even pre-teen kids)
3) God hates my guts ( I mean if I plan something why does he have to shove a spanner in the works......"everything happens for a reason...blah blah")
4) I suck at counting

I feel i have lost my audience (very hard thing, losing an imaginary audience).......well in the words of julie andrews "let's start from the very beginning" (yes I did like 'the sound of music')

well as always I wanted to come home from the hell that is college ( for the record it's not that bad, but now I have an image to maintain)..........Anyways providence was on my side this time. Out of the four subjects I have, three teachers went on leave for diff reasons. Cut a long story short, the next instant I was on the earliest train home. Now my plan this time was simple , out of the many trips home I have never had my room to myself , and though mind you even though I love my relatives a lot.......I just need my own space sometimes.......You know at night kick back listen to music ......pig out, just chill out. Well for the past couple of trips, after lights out in my room (which happened pretty early) I had to be really quite and prance around like a ninja to get to various things (the fridge mainly , I get very hungry at night ...........I know ninjas didn't prance around much , but sounds much cooler than a ballet dancer)....anyways

My dad was supposed to pick me me up at the station at around 7:05 am..........and then it happened (tadam, tadam................ok let's see if I can make this sound like a discovery channel special..........here goes)

far from my train at another station a goods train got slightly derailed, now this harmless incident wasn't going to make a difference in my life (ok it wasn't harmless for the train , or any poor schmuck standing next to it......but you know ....shit happens)
Back home my mom calls up railways enquiry .............as expected my trains late

Back in the train it takes every ounce of will power and reminding myself that my parents have invested a lot of money in me to keep me from jumping of the train.............I mean seriously , as stated above , nothing is more irritating than a stationary train...........It's even more irrtitating when the last twenty mins of the journey takes four hours and the fact that all the other trains (goats , cows etc.....) overtake my train ...........

Back home again , my dad , goes to my grand mom's house since it's closer to the station......my train is delayed further , so he makes the best of a bad situation , kicks back and starts watching the match

The friggin train is still not moving..........I decide to get off and catch a local train......as soon as i'm off the railway announcer bitch says that my train is about to move ("the inconvenience is regretted my ass"........She doesn't sound apologetic at all)...........I rush back .........Luggage in tow...........The train moves , goes about 200 meters and stops........The local train overtakes us (give me a break god)..........By this time I imagine hara-kiri would be a good idea...

Back home my dad just walks out of grannies house and is informed by the guard next door that our maid was .......well (ahem)...........gettin it on with some guy (how he knew.....I don't wanna know).............ofcourse intervention was neccesary.................maid was told to pack her bags......

The problem now is that my granny's house runs on the shoulders of that maid........take her out of the picture and the house comes to a stand still...............

Well in the end (i'm gettin tired of writting this post........I fear it has become stale and boring) the house was emptied and the residents settled down in diff houses includin, mine........

Coolest Character In The Whole Wide World

2005-07-26T07:24:00.000-07:00

And the award goes too.........hold your breath people..................................................................................................................
.............................................................................................................................
Are you dead yet...........allright it's a tie

between The great Bugs bunny and Daffy duck , for providing excellent wholesome phamily entertainment for young and old alike, having an excellent wicked sense of humour........ providing the world with great quotes such as "What's up doc??" ............for always taking "that left toin (turn) at albekoyki ".............totally kickin Elmer Fudds ass...............but most of all , for not being a gay sweet heart like that faggot Mickey Mouse (up yours disney)

Yes i do need to do something more constructive with my time

Survival of the Dumbest

2005-07-06T02:01:00.000-07:00

Sat for my first company recruitment process....... you can tell from the title that i was'nt selected (yes i am bitter) . Clearly some body in the company i sat for (you'll know the name after i buy it and take it down piece by piece) thought that selecting morons would help the growth of the company.

Allow me to substantiate. The selection process was like this , first up an aptitude test . For those who cleared the aptitude test , there was a group discussion.... this is where the fun began.

Enter ten students in the room. Two people from the company observing us . One is this old really disintrested looking guy. The other is this young guy who looked just slightly older than us. Apologise for making us wait for some time ("some time", 5 hours!!!).

Gives us the topic "Future shape of mobile telephony" . Now this is'nt really a topic open to discussion . "Yes there will be a future" is the best i can think of , but then again i have been waiting for 5 hours and have'nt eaten since the morning. The disintrested guy gives us a minute to think (think?? what's that). I jot down some points on a piece of paper. The S.O.B sitting next to me copies my points , word to word.
The best is yet to come. This really sulky looking girl starts of " I think Mobile phones are very important now days. The fellow who invented mobile phones got the idea when he tied one metal cup to another and could hear from the other (i swear she said this)" At this point i look around in disbelief. No reaction from anybody, they are taking all this in without even flinching. After that Howdy-Doody next to me gives his two bits (was'nt really a discussion .....more like individual speeches) . He says my first point (the one he had copied)"The world is getting smaller (i'm sure he had no idea how,global warming perhaps)"and then is slightly lost( i had stopped writting after i discovered he was copying) then in a flash of great inspiration he says "I see the shape of mobile phones becoming smaller as well (slightly square , rounded at the edges maybe einstein)" . Again no reaction . Disintrested guy looks lost. Young guy looks ...well young.
I sum up the courage to push my opinion against such brilliance. Say some thing about cheaper networks and international roaming etc. Big girl sitting on my left begins " It is raining" , then pauses after this self explanatory statement (this may sound random, but wait there is a point to this , albeit a dumb one, but a point none the less). "In the rain cell phone get wet (talks a bit like yoda). Then mobile phone just piece of metal. I see water proof mobile phone in future (yes maam, we have a team of engineers in nokia working on that right now)" .
Another girl begins " Every coin has two shapes (much like the cellphone, everyone was stuck on the damn shape) " and babbles on about terrorism and M.M.S incidents .
Sulky women suddenly wakes up and declares "I think we are straying from the subject (no shit Sherlock)". Says it about five more times and shuts up. I venture to tell them how i think the word shape is'nt really what the cell phone will look like but what the future holds for it. Pandamonium breaks out, and now there is a discussion on what the topic is all about. I catch the word shape and a waterproof again (big girl really thought she was on to something, small water proof phones). Disintrested guy has had enough . Holds up his hand and in a pleading sort of way says "Please stop". Young guy grinning for no particular reason. And that was the end of the discussion.
The people mentioned above were selected by the company ( After the G.D there was a technical interview..........but that's another story)

Blame it on Eve

2005-06-10T11:21:00.000-07:00

"If you can't fix it, Blame it on someone else".........
Want to know why life is so misserable. The blame lies with Eve (of the "an apple a day keeps god away" fame) . I got this from the hallowed pages of the world book encyclopedia (credit where credit is due)
"God created Adam and Eve and placed them in the garden of Eden,tending the garden of god. They were permitted to eat from any tree except from the tree of good and evil. But a serpent persuaded Eve to eat fruit from this tree. Eve gave Adam some fruit who also ate it . As a result they became mortal and god exiled them from Eden. Outside the garden , Adam had to work hard to make a living , and eve also had to work and to bear many children (that explains why my mom keeps complaining) "
Lessons learnt :
1) Never, never believe a talking snake (i mean freak out or something.....it's a talking snake for crying out loud).
2) Children were basically a punishment (thank your mothers everyday for bearing with you)

Pessimism

2005-05-02T11:04:00.000-07:00

I find that pessimism isn't just a way of thinking, it's a way of life. I personally adopted this way of life when things just couldn't get any worse (after adopting it, I was pretty sure they would). Now I've become so adept at it that, if there was a prize for "best pessimist" , I would probably convince myself that I wouldn't win it.
I know it's not the best approach to life...........But it's so easy.
And in the words of the great Arnold Bennet (have no idea what makes him great, but when quoting someone, one has to follow protocol)
"Pessimism, when you get used to it is just as agreeable as optimisim"

How it all began

2005-03-31T02:46:00.000-08:00

After much procrastinating............... I finally get down to making a blog.
This being my first post there's always pressure to write something scintillating funny or intellectual or something,want it to be just right..........so much pressure!!!! And since I've got enough stuff to keep me worried for a lifetime I think I'll not worry about this and keep the post mediocre so that not much is expected (not the best philosophy, but sure is easy)...........so there

Funny thing........... i just performed a spell check on the above para (wanting it to be perfect blah blah....) and the word blog was'nt in the spell check dictionary...........