Hit Wicket

Few mental notes have been put down here. Read, comment and leave. Thanks.

1. Love. Sigh.

What a beautiful feeling! Each song you hear, while you are in love, seems like it was pin pointing to your life. You start liking the blue sky, the green leaves, you think about gifts, you think about pink polka dots, you think about holding hands and walking down on a lonely road, you start liking slow soothing numbers, you tend to like hearing stories, you start making plans, you change your password, you buy Reliance connection, you start writing poetry without it rhyming and without rhyming it is not poetry for your information, you tend to ignore your loved ones silly mistakes, you get nervous if they don’t reply within seconds, you absolutely hate when they talk to someone else. Phew. Love. What a beautiful feeling!

On the other hand, Love. Not only it’s a rotten egg when it comes to scoring in Tennis but what a nonsense thing it is. It actually makes you do things you might never do. Being in love is directly proportional to your level of Insanity. The person you apparently love and you don’t even know that if that is love, throws a stick and asks you to fetch that back, and you do that licking their toes after you do that. Bah. Funny is how people fall in love. You may fall in love, unexpectedly, while in your class or work place or neighbourhood and anywhere else for that matter. This point has been specially raised for people falling in love online.

Part 1

C’mon. Are you that desperate? Are you so anti-social that you couldn’t find a living soul around you to love? You don’t have decent people in your surroundings? Why? Do you have some disease?  Gupt-rog types which can only be cured by the Bangali Baba currently staying in a shady hotel near the bus stand?

And as far my experience goes, Rahul-Gandhi-approved-99% of these relationships fail. Why? Obviously because you don’t and you cannot know a person from their online behaviour. If you think you know me, pich, I pity you. Note it down on a piece of paper and either tattoo it on your forearm or stick it on the top of the mirror: YOU CANNOT BE SAME PERSON ONLINE AS YOU ARE OFFLINE.

I used to think that only girls fall into this online relationship traps because of some lovely flirting done by some notorious guys (cool_dude123 and sparkling_tarzan1986) but nopes, even inferiority complex affected guys also fall for the same. I know a guy who has ruined my Facebook timeline or what do they call it, News feed by copy pasting ultimately sadistic sher-o-shayari when a girl dumped him online. Dumped him online. Dumped him online. I want to type ROFLMAO but I respect his feelings so I would restrain from doing it. ROFL only.

And girls, heh, you know you are going to fall for it one day or the other. You are more prone to it. One, because the whole world conspires always to do bad things to you. As if the world doesn’t have other important issues like how to avoid traffic jams, etc to think of. Relationship. Heh. You are in a relationship with someone online, sitting thousand kilometres away from you. You don’t know what he does all day. What sites he opens in the other tabs while chatting/flirting with you. He gives you gyaan and you take it religiously as if he was Jesus and you were a Nun who thought that being a nun was a wrong decision owing to your other desires. You plan to send them gifts. Second, you feel that all your offline friends suck. They don’t suck. You suck. Or at least you want to suck but not getting a chance.

And hey, do you think it is about you, specifically? No baby, it is a generic post. I would be the last person to see you sad. But since I have seen people sad because of online relationships so writing about it. When Orkut/Facebook was not the only menace, Twitter popped up. What a useful service! And what a satyanash. My TL looks like a Yahoo Chat Groups window where half of the words are Tamil. Now I don’t follow anyone because of their region or language. I follow them because they looked interesting. Now they start flirting on Twitter as well. Goddamnit. How much nonsense a person can bear! And people still fall for that? Phew. How idiotic one can be? When we still, and that’s a shame, are bounded by the system of castes and religion, loving someone who is God knows how many light years away from you, isn’t it selfish? Aren’t you just trying to cajole yourself? Aren’t you just trying to sound cool in front of your offline and which infact one day be your real friends even if you don’t think so by telling that you have a girlfriend/boyfriend and you are not a nerd like the blogger. Nerd hoga tera baap. Hehe. Aren’t you just trying to find yourself a teddy bear which will listen to you in case the beer you tried didn’t get you the high you wanted?

What? I am jealous? Jealous hoga teraa baap. Hmm. Why would I be jealous? Ask yourself. Didn’t your life took a bad turn when you fell into the so called love? If it didn’t, it will.

Without advising or suggesting, I just want to conclude this by saying that, if you have an online relationship or even applies to Long Distance Relationship, keep the crap with you. I am not interested in it. Even a bit. Well, of course, I am generalizing. Not pointing to someone in specific. But I am done with it. I don’t want to listen to your moans and cries. Really happy looking smart people who could do wonders in their fields of expertise ruin themselves in love. Grow up and behave like grownups. Okay? Good. And seriously, if you still think it is just about you, don’t worry, at least 3-4 more people will think the same. So chill madi.

Part 2

Personal love life. I am okay with it. I was like wandering in a desert for few years and when I saw something Oasis-like, I just jumped into the mirage, having declined the offers because I just didn’t want to have a relationship just for the heck of it. So if I can decline, others can decline as well. They have their own personal shit going on. People dying, life’s crashing, job losing are far more important things to handle than to handle a stalker. Respect. I don’t need your advice. Why is it so necessary to have a girlfriend? Any social protocol? It doesn’t make anyone Gay if he doesn’t have a GF. He doesn’t have because either he doesn’t want to have or he couldn’t have. It doesn’t mean he has failed. When I will feel like diving again, I will do it. Thanks for the concern.

2. This blog, is not going anywhere. It is not going where I expected it to be. It was supposed to be an anonymous blog where I didn’t want any praises, any friends, any poem-repository. I am not even able to give it ample time. I don’t want to make a post look good by inserting few gaalis in it. I am unable to rhyme the way I wanted. Heh, love makes you rhyme as well. Another side-effect. I had no plans for this blog and when you start a project without proper planning, it usually goes down like WTC towers. I am writing such a stupid post itself suggests that I am done with this kind of social networking.

Social networking was so much fun when it was just for fun. I think I have passed that age. New social network will come and go, I will make profiles on everyone though. But I need more time to understand myself. There are several thousand other things to achieve. Social network won’t let me do that. It needs a break. Second time.

3. This blog, if you look from my point of view, looks like a blog by a Devdas cribbing about a girl. Cribbing which rhymes. Enough of this nonsense. This is the last post on this blog. The twitter handle will die soon.

P.S.: But I’ll be back. (Someday, somewhere, soon)

Going anti-social – 1

There was something missing (my win most probably) in our duel last night, so I came back to continue our incomplete fight. But, what I encountered was an unusual sight. As the usual place of meet up was plain blank and your window was ghostly white.

I tried to peek but you were nowhere to be seen, I wondered for a while that where could have you been, but then I chuckled a sigh of relief latently seeing the space neat and clean, yes, I can be that mean.

Then I checked my phone and hoped it shouldn’t ring, without you being there I felt blood rushing back to my dead right wing, being free for the time being, all I wanted to sing.

Err, not that you have clinged on yourself on to my collar, but deviating all my attention to you makes my world look smaller. Yeah, yeah you will be heard, calm the beep down, don’t start the holler, the worlds we live in are as far apart as the region called as polar.

Because of the overdose of itself, we both end up being aggressive, I, being the rude dude, grin, you cry as if you did a sin, stop being so sensitive, for opening the ports to everyone will do you no good, people will keep using your assets till they become liabilities later, sure they would if they could, if you allow me to use the language slight offensive.

There are better people there where you have gone, for sure. They see you as you are, neither they pretend to act better, nor do they flirt just like that or seeing a feminine they drool and get lured. There are real people there who can be trusted in a better way than those who are on the other side of the door, why do you want to be such a loner when there is so much to seek out here it self more.

Too much of dependence on me will eventually make your emotions soak, as I might get myself out of this as I get further choked, talking at this unholy hour is anyways sounding like you croak, moreover I am man of very few words so better go sleep and stop making the thing a joke.

That gave everyone a chance to do something nice this time, as it was so good to see you offline.

Disclaimer: What’s that?

One Year in Bangalore

So I reached a place called Iggalur, Southern most part of Bangalore. Total green, total South India. Half of the people there speak Tamil and the others Kannada. Both languages being similar to Buffalos to me (Kaala Akshar Bhains Barabar, Sherlock). Tamil was like Pi written in all the angles possible and Kannada mostly ‘W’s. Anyways, I have no right to bash any script so not doing it.  The place, Iggalur, was painted in Green and the skies painted in many different shades of grey. In fact the cloud looked like they hung lower than usual. Bliss. It was quite a pleasant change from the scotching Hyderabad heat and way better than Jaipur’s boiling year-long summers. The temperature being just what the doctor had ordered. (Shastribot effect). While Hyderabad was Eminem, for more than one reason, Bangalore was like Lucky Ali. The apartment at Iggalur had no TV and no Internet but some amazing views and silence which you could actually hear. I loved the weather more than anything. Well, I had heard about the climate of Bangalore but experiencing it first hand was something amazing. For a guy who has lived all his life at the place where you can count the drops of water when it rains, this was like repeated telecast of Sachin Tendulkar hitting straight drives. As the modern day kids say, orgasmic. Though after a few days I moved to a more suitably located part of South Bangalore mostly inhabitated by ‘Amiths’ or the North Indians.

I had chosen Bangalore over Oh-So-approachable-With-Eatable-Food-Hyderabad or The-North-Most-City-In-South-India-And-THE-PLACE-TO-BE-Pune (Sorry Chennai, you are good only from a distance. Touchwood.) Because it was supposed to be the ‘IT’ City. I had heard so much about it being cosmopolitan with plethora of big IT giants and abundance of opportunities to work and many college friends were living here. You know, when you come to a city, you come with a mindset. I too had some expectations with the city of Bengaluru. Heh, some of them have been met, some still wandering to be met. So now I start my, I hope, un-biased or may be biased experience of the city and mind you, it will have some fair and unfair comparisons to my hometown Jaipur and Hyderabad where I had spend the last 65 days. Since I am talking about myself, who is an Engineer by degree, I am going to talk about stuff I see. Also, this post is from an Indian who has lived all his life in those geographical parts of India which are above the Tropic of Cancer. So some biasing is justified. Yes, offense if you feel so.

While Jaipur smells mostly of spices and Elephant dung, Hyderabad can be truly described by Russel Peter’s snide comments about Indian cities in general where as you step out of your plane and you smell shit. Bengaluru is like a coffee shop. Smells good Da. Though when it rains here pretty good, there is no familiar smell of the mud that I consider very Non-Indian.

The first thing someone hits when someone enters a new city is the road. And since Bangalore was made, probably for retired people, it has roads as wide as the walkway in a garden. They took the name Garden City too literally I guess. Bangalore acts being fast paced but it is stuck in traffic jam. One wants to reach a place before time and it drains all your energy out till you reach the point. First thing to do when you come to this city, remove the word punctual from your CV. Drivers here are so insecure and rash, same as Hyderabad, as if they want to reach home quickly to check whether their wives are sleeping with neighbours or not. What they don’t realize is that even the neighbour is stuck in a traffic jam. Jaipur’s drivers are still learning how to drive though.

The buses here are the major medium for transportation and in fact, are the best maintained buses in whole of India. The revenue earned by the Government has been put to brilliant use in BMTC. Wigs off along with scalp for that. I absolutely love the reach of the bus service. They have taken full care of the pocket of people and for those who can spend slightly higher, awesome Volvo buses are at your service. With a maximum of Rs. 50, one can glide to any part of Bangalore in the Red Shiny Volvo buses with cool wind gushing inside your clothes. Even the normal buses are kept tip-top for the masses. Like every dead dog on Indian highway has an opinion about Cricket in India, similarly everyone in Bangalore has an opinion about Traffic Condition here. And since Bus stops are strategically located just near turns, and just after flyovers, Buses feel proud to be the part of the jam. Who doesn’t want to do a jig in the jam?

Though it is a tragedy that the bus service virtually goes off after 9 PM. Why Sir? Don’t people travel after 9? Only few major places have buses running after 9. If you are stuck till late, you have to resort to Auto Rickshaws. Heh, Auto rickshaw drivers. If someone has problems of High Blood pressure, I would request not to ask anything from Auto Drivers. They suck. Suck and swallow. Shit and suck and swallow. I don’t know who told their generations that IT people are rich so they charge enormous amount even for tiniest of distances. Anand Ramchandran wrote a brilliant piece about the Autos in Bangalore so better read that. I only have cuss words for them. I might kill an auto driver as well, forewarns, if provoked more.

Food wise, I like South Indian cuisine and I have eaten more rice being in a more pan-Indian family so eating 1000 varieties of rice is not a problem. But if your diet demands more wheat, I feel slightly bad for you. The food here is costly, same goes with the accommodation which is stale and on the costlier side with ordinary apartments and high amount of security money. Seriously, what could easily fed someone in 150 Rupees, here they take Rs. 300 for ahem, err, not so good food. Now I love Idly and Dosa so I enjoy them sucking each finger with each bite with Coconut chutney. DAILY. Point to note is that everything here is cooked in Andhra Style which is spicier than usual Udupi style. And when I say spicy it means loaded with green chillies as if green chillies were free. God bless your digestive system, especially during the morning rituals. Sambhar here is as ordinary as any Salman Khan movie and I assure in my hometown, Sambhar is much better. I am yet to eat Curd-Rice and Rasam. There are many North Indian joints for food but they cook North Indian food in South Indian style. Overall, I am disappointed by the restaurants here. And I am still hungry to eat real south Indian food here. I can still remember the first time I had awesomest Sambhar and Dosa in my life cooked by a Tamil neighbour aunty back in 1990s. Also, Bangalore is hill stations to people here so don’t expect cold water. Chilled water? What is that?

Well, since everyone knows you love to drink, there are plenty of pubs around. Just pay and keep peeing and peeing or puking the way you like. The liquor shops here open till 11 PM and mostly flooded with guys and girls alike. Modern, you see. If you don’t drink, don’t worry mate, come home someday and it will be lovely when mil baithenge 3 yaar, aap, main aur our ginger tea.

Places to visit? Meh. But if you are from a village in Uttar Pradesh or North India in general or Orissa/ West Bengal or combined North East or anywhere in Rajasthan apart from Jaipur, you are going to love this place. The city has enough malls and maals and pubs and cafes in them that you were waiting for all your life. I am not going to talk about the Malls here because they are not worth it. But go to UB City mall to get inferiority complex and when you come out forget it and LOL. The Brigade Road, which seems to be having a competition of show off, is the place to be on a weekend. The roads are full of people of all shapes and sizes, with all varied sizes of eyes, the most loose or the tightest clothes possible, the ugliest and the most beautiful people possible, and I love North East Indian people. They give Brigade Road an effect of it being Not in India and somewhere in Bangkok. With their way of being tip-top all the time, I wonder do they keep on putting permanent makeup from on their way to Bangalore from Manipur?

Q. Where do all the roads in Bangalore lead up to and why? 

A. Yes, MG Road and I don’t know why apart from it being the major road since British times and all the important buildings happen to be on that road.

 

Apart from old age attractions like Laal Bagh and Bangalore Palace, nothing much is there to see. My hometown had 2 aspects, one modern and one old and one could go to Malls as well as Castles on top of hills depending upon the mood. Bangalore is very similar everywhere so you don’t get to know the difference much. Though there are many places around Bangalore where one can go in weekends. Google to find out.

Umm, I feel that Bangalore is in fact a good place to work. The culture is the work culture here. People here mean business. Work more and leave the politics to NCR. The people in Bangalore come from all parts of India as possible. Also, number of Africans and Europeans can be seen, probably selling drugs or just chilling, who knows. I am most impressed with the addressing system of the houses here. You can find out the address quicker than your GPS because of the Mains and Crosses which one gets familiar with within seconds.

Bangalore, as a city, is in a hurry. Hurry to become something like Mumbai. No idea why? And in the first place, why would anyone even like to be like Mumbai? From what I have heard from real Bangaloreans, it is not what it used to be. Also, it was not made to be like this anyways. It is more hype than hip. People, who think Bangalore is the best place to live in India, have not seen India. It is, though one of the best places to live in India but certainly not the best. The best part of the city remains the weather. You cannot beat that. Although with the constant cutting of trees, exploding population and ever-growing pollution, the climate is changing more rapidly than the speed of people who read ‘offer documents are subject to market risks’. Bangalore seems like a kid who was pressed upon big responsibilities while it was still an infant. Kid did the job perfectly for making way for Indian Engineers a force to reckon with in the world and full credit goes to the people of Bangalore and South India to create job opportunities in many fields. Obama fears Bangalore and expects the Americans to give jobs to Boston and not here. Hehe, there we win. But the kid is now struggling to cope with the increasing pressure. Though still the people welcome outsiders but the odd feeling of accepting them with sour smile is slowly setting in. People here are generally cool but some of them don’t answer when asked a question in Hindi. Hope it doesn’t become Chennai. Recently a Kannada organization proposed that Kannada should be made compulsory if one wants to live in Bangalore. Rise of Kannada Manoos huh? They must also remember that the credit of city’s success should be equally shared with all Indians alike. Bangalore is way better than most of the cities in India because sometimes it lacks the Indianness which is sometimes needed and sometimes not needed. There are a lot of advantages of living here as one gets all the exposure needed. There are concerts, blogger’s meets and many major-minor events which won’t happen in most of the Indian cities. Bangalore is a big point on the world map and it is going to stay there for long. It has all the aspects of an Indian city and many aspects of a Non-Indian city. And that’s the USP.

This is neither a travel guide nor a survival guide. But this is what I feel at this moment of time about the city of Bangalore. It might change as I explore more about this city. As of now I am not sure whether I love this city or not. But certainly, I don’t hate it. This city has given me long due employment so I have utmost respect for the place and the people here. Love is still about to happen and I remain optimistic.

P.S.: Fun Fact: When someone dies in an accident in Bangalore, people say either a Dog or an Engineer must have died.

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This post is Corrupted

You know why I don’t write big magnanimous topics in my blog which many others do on a regular basis, each time they come across some glitch in our society or our so called system? This is because I cannot preach people to do things which I am unable to do myself. I can, if I want to, give God level lessons on several things people want to read about. But I stay away from all this glitter. So to start with, lets talk about the hottest topic right now: Corruption.

Though this hot topic has been the sometimes-obvious-sometimes-latent trending topic since man settled. Settled and got corrupted. Sigh. But frankly, I simply love corruption. When I was growing up I learnt A for Apple, B for Ball and C for Corruption. It was very easy to learn and moreover I had several examples to learn from. When I was wetting my bed in sleep or even otherwise, Bofors scandal happened, and which is still not settled. Like every parent wants their kids to study in reputed schools. English medium CBSE yo types. They put me through an admission test for such kind of school. I slightly flunked in English. So they had to apply jack and cheque to get me through. Another form of corruption where they put money before merit. It is another adventurous story that the guy who failed at remembering Alphabets properly, grew up and topped English in Boards Exam. No claps please, thanks. Soon Harshad Mehta Uncle did something nasty in Stock Market which I understand as much as I understand Off Side rule in Football. Few years later Laloo Prasad Yadav ate up all the fodder by mixing Rabri in it and still came out clean out of Cow Dung although smell still persists. Before A Raja could even think of entering Telecom, Mr. Sukhdev goofed up everyone who knew what Telecom meant in those days. Then later came many other famous scams and scandals of Corruption. Not to forget the Satyam Scam. Heh. Then I paid 200 Rupees in cash to a police thulla to approve my background check when I had applied for Passport. Once I was going to watch a movie by Chetan Bhagat called “3 Idiots” on my bike. I was cruising along mild speed of 55 KMPH but somehow I crossed the speed barrier by 5 KMPH. What nonsense! So the interceptor’s traffic policemen stopped me and demanded Rs. 400/- as fine. If I would knew bargaining, I would have been either a woman or a Baniya but since I didn’t I agreed to give him the actual amount of fine. Rich? Who me? Nah. But that police guy says that Sir you look like a honest and good person so give us Rs. 200 only and drive slowly from next time. I said Okay dude, take 200 and don’t bother me next time Ok? Classy no? So everything was going according to the plan and getting corrupted peacefully.

Scandalous guys were doing scandals non-stop. New entrants started doing newer kinds of corruption in new fields as a competition. Corruption was growing leaps and bounds happily. Then suddenly one day, something happened. Some Assange fellow leaked some cables (I am still unable to decipher the cable thingy) and people got enlightened that Hey, Internet can help us curb the menace of Corruption. Woot!

Then in our own country, suddenly some Bhai and some Baba come up and started fasting to stop this and that. Why so? They didn’t have any work or what? And apparently I got some SMSes saying if you give missed calls to some random number, Government is going to approve Lok Pal Bill. Techy! I suggest, spread one SMS with the number of your ex or your enemy or your HOD if any, to take revenge. He/She/You will get frustrated with the missed calls and will have to change the number. There goes the concept of Number Portability in drain.

Ok, seriously now, people, you need to look inside your own girebaan first. You talk about standing with Anna against Corruption? Who is Anna, do you even care to know? Ok, you support him to bring a change in your society. But do you think that just sending spam emails or writing a Facebook status will help you stop Corruption? Ok, this might show that you actually care about it. Good. Now when fasting is becoming a fashion statement with everybody jumping in the bandwagon, you call that Yoga Trainer with a big mouth a fucktard? Double standards I say. Love or hate the cause, not the person who is carrying it. I am not a Yogatard but I once went to Ramdev Baba’s Yoga Camp, in hope to see some items, way back in 2003-04 and the only songs I heard from the stage were patriotic numbers and not some bhajan keertan sponsored by RSS fellows. Now if you ask me to go attend a dharna in some Jantar Mantar, sorry I cannot because I have to feed myself for my future kids. We Indiots just pretend to be in a cause from outside. Nobody wants to be a part of the actual revolution. We want to stand behind leaders, and have biases against them. Totally fair but we doubt more than we believe. Bhayee, if someone is saying something about ways to deal with corruption, at least listen to him. Criticizing anyone without any solid reason is one thing we Indians are proud of.  The day we stop doing pity acts of corruption ourselves, only that day we will be able to achieve something. Now I can but I am not going to give you ideas on how to stop corruption. You know it well. You read my blog means you understand what is to be done to curb evil things. Blah. I am myself corrupted as much as you are. I don’t hate or love any Anna or Baba but I now at least have someone whom I can follow if I want to fight for my cause. I would not doubt them.  I still have voting power left.

P.S.: If I wanted I could have written a rhyming post with rhyming corruption with several other lovely words like Molestation, Premature ejaculation or better insert an interruption with castration but I avoided it as even kids read this blog.

Picture Courtesy: http://www.atomicpinup.com/MoviePosters.html

Rhyming is dying

No crushes to crush, no destinations to rush,
No paints to brush, no memories to flush,
No unsuccessful infatuations, no twisted situations,
No ugly conversations, no heated discussions,
No job interviews left, no plan of bank theft,
No skills to adapt, no mistakes to correct,
No affairs to end, no fragile castles of sand,
No topics to trend, no broken relationships to mend,
No trains to stop, no height to atop,
No hurdles to hop, no dirt or blood to mop,
No bed to sleep, no hedge to creep,
No ocean so deep, no shoulder to weep,
No song to dance, no scenery to glance,
No looking through lens, no burning romance…

One day it will be back, sense it may lack,
Rhyming is dying but I’ll keep on trying.