In My Absurd Opinion...

Why The Hindu would never be ahead of our Times

2012-02-08T23:44:00.001+05:30

The month gone by witnessed quite a few amazing developments. Amazing, simply because these were unprecedented.
The Hindu, for long, had been seen as the Doordarshan of the print media. The Sultan of the South, barring the little pinprick around Hyderabad made by the Deccan Chronicle, had been the Chris Tavare of the newspapers; classic and copy-book. That was true till about a few months ago when The Times of India, world's largest read English Daily, decided to do an Ala-ud-din Khilji to the South.

I remember the early years of my adolescence spent in the hinterlands of Tamil Nadu. The term Newspaper was synonymous with The Hindu. For long, The Hindu's only real competitor was the Indian Express. But then, the Mahavishnu of Mount Road ensured that Indian Express' default denotation changed to that of a sobriquet for two of the aces of India's rich Tennis legacy; Lee and Hesh. For the few years that I spent there, the Hindu had a tremendous run. From serving as a the paper plate to a hawker's Ring Paranthas and Rasam, to playing the role of a poor man's mat in offices and parks, the thin, black and white parchment was omnipresent. The readership, of course, was outstanding. The monotonous black and white ink failed to dampen the spirits of the average South Indian reader, whose morning tea was incomplete without the news of the inauguration of a new Post Office in Erode, mill workers' strike at Salem and the mass polio vaccination drive at Thirupur. The entire paper, sans complements, thinner than the thinnest notebook of a Physical Education student, was sleek, sturdy and rather convenient to carry; one of the less apparent USPs. The content was mostly newspaper-like. Concise and to the point on the Edit Page and factual, expository and descriptive otherwise. Guest Writers were few, and far between. Paul Krugman, the noted economist and the late Peter Roebuck being the notable exceptions. It was as if the Editor had entire faith on his staff and backed his correspondents to possess and express the insight of the guest writers.

Back then, as a sixth grader, newspapers never amused me too much. Also, it took more than just will and interest to understand what was printed in The Hindu. Back then, Oxford English Dictionary didn't have an online version with which you could automate the search for words. Wouldn't really have mattered much as I didn't have a computer that time. As such, The Hindu was more of an enigma than an apprentice and an aide to me.
Then came Delhi. The journey home from the railway station was a sign of things to come. Every second roadside advertisement hoardings screamed 'Times of India'. Those that didn't and displayed social messages instead, were sponsored by the Times of India.
Next week, the newspaper boy came to our quarters to ask for our preferred choice of Newspaper. 'TOI', I cried, Instinctively.

That was Delhi. In Chennai, a few months ago, the Times of India launched, what was to be the crusade for the Final Frontier, the South. With it came a flurry of frenzy marketing gimmicks right out of the star marked page of the Delhi Times Booklet of Advertising. A crusade against an establishment and its establisher.
The onslaught continued. For weeks. For months. Blows were delivered, most of them were below the belt. The kingdom though, took everything in its stride. But then, the reins changed hands. The new leadership refused to take things lying down. The counter-attack began.

Studs (read unknown actors) were found and asked elementary common-sensical questions like the name of the Home Minister of the country. Deathly silence followed. Then came a barrage of questions like the pet name of a famous Bollywood actor, the actress famous for her size zero, and the gender of India's de facto first couple's newborn baby. Sure enough, the studs answered these correctly. Sure enough, these studs were the ones who read the most read newspaper whose name was, of course, beeped out, but with the added adjective 'most read' leaving nothing to imagination. This was succeeded by a succession of snapshots gleefully declaring that The Hindu 'also had pages 1,2,4,5,6 and 7', spread 'sense, and not sensationalism', featured 'current affairs that go beyond Bollywood affairs' and finally, hold your breath, focused more on 'government malfunctions than wardrobe malfunctions'. In this way, Vidya Balan of the South finally had her Dirty Picture moment! The Doordarshan had finally turned (it) on.

As a seasoned Times of India reader, I found the campaign really amusing and at at times, really amazing. The points raised were apt. The Hindu had hit where it hurt. And hurt, it did. I reconsidered my commitment and loyalty towards the newspaper that had grown me up yet grown up with me, at least for the last eight years. Every bit of accusation levelled against the Times was true. I had to make a decision. A fraction of second was all it took for me to decide.
I couldn't live without The Times of India. And I wouldn't.
I didn't.
TOI is hashish. First you like it, then you love it, then you get used to it. It's Shawshank.

Yes, it has advertisements-disguised-as-articles on the front page. Yes, it has weekly columnists like Chetan Bhagat. Yes, it carries full page ads of Arindam Chaudhary. Yes, it even contains expert opinion of 'are-you-ready' Ravi Shastri.
But, eventually, it presents to us what we desire. Perhaps calling it Delhi Mirror wouldn't be wrong.
We ask for it, TOI shows it. It is shoddy journalism, no doubt. But isn't that what we are? Shoddy?
Yes. Chetan Bhagat, despite his numerous shortcomings as a writer, is still India's best selling English novelist. He might not know everything about the Babri Masjid demolition, say, but just seeing his name, his famous name, beneath an article on the Edit Page, one gets tempted to read what he's written. Thus, the average Indian reader becomes aware of the issue, forms his opinion, and spreads the information. I am sure, the same article published by a staff correspondent at The Hindu wouldn't generate such an interest. Even if it does, it wouldn't have such a response. The Hindu, I reiterate, isn't for the average Indian reader.
Yes. Arindam Chaudhary, despite his repulsive personality, the disgusting smile and the senseless titles that he's given to his books, is ought to be treated as an icon of sorts, self-proclaimed or otherwise. Moreover, the average Indian is swayed by vividness, the sheer magnitude of the size of the paper carrying the ad. I am sure, the same ad, if published in The Hindu, wouldn't attract so many eyeballs. Even if it does, it wouldn't have such a response. The Hindu, I reiterate, isn't for the average Indian reader.
Yes. Ravi Shastri, whose voice is a nuisance for the eardrums, and his writing may not be a purists delight. The Hindu knows it. That is why Shastri doesn't write for The Hindu. For if he does, no one would read him. Those who read The Hindu, do not want to read Shastri. But then again, Shastri anchors every big (or small) cricketing event, clearly stating how popular he is to the average Indian. That is why, The Hindu, I reiterate, isn't for the average Indian reader.

Add to it the fact that Times of India is more colourful, cheaper, and has more pages. If not anything else, at least it outweighs The Hindu, sometimes literally, usually metaphorically.

And finally, TOI has been the pioneer of Corporate Social Responsibility in the print media. It has spearheaded numerous campaigns like Teach For India, Play for India, Love over Country, Aman Ki Aasha among others. The means may be wrong, or rather unconventional. The motto, at least a part of it, isn't wrong.

From a pure Business point of view, TOI has created a mini revolution in the field of print advertising. In India, one of the few countries in which the newspaper circulation is on an upward spiral, this mini revolution has shown the way for the organisations to have a mass appeal yet be profitable and dynamic; adjectives thought to be mutually exclusive till sometime back.

And this makes me feel that despite its shortcomings and despite the pithy campaign followed by a worthy rival, the The Old Lady of Boribunder would continue to consolidate its position at the summit. Whether it would conquer the final frontier, is debatable and as such, very difficult to predict.
For the time being at least, the Mahavishnu of Mount Road can live in peace in its own little Shangri-la, well aware that things won't be quiet for long.

With stats and inputs from http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-31/india-s-top-newspapers-battle-for-readers-hearts-and-souls-choudhury.html

Life on a Metro

2012-01-15T11:25:00.000+05:30

You get up at 8 am, skip the shower, skip breakfast, skip the socks, skip the belt, skip, jump and run to the nearest bus stop. Your metro feeder bus, as usual, is almost halfway on its way, when you just about manage to run and leap inside. Shut up! There are no seats available during rush hour. The bus stops at every red light, it also stops at green and yellow lights, waiting for them to turn red, and then wait for another two minutes at the red. This way, they can fit in a few other 'I'm freakin' late again'.
Finally the trolley arrives at the metro station. Uttam-Nagar west is not a place where you'd want to be early in the morning. In fact, the stink ensures that it's not a place where you'd want to be at any time during the day. But then, getting of the metro cauldron feeder-bus is a relief in itself.

Uttam Nagar West, checking in: You find yourself at the back of a serpentine queue, waiting to get yourself frisked by the CISF guards. The queue moves briskly. In the meantime, you look and smirk at the people waiting to purchase tokens at the ticket counter. You feel your metro card in your front pocket and get a sense of fake superiority complex. While the guard superficially frisks you, you sneak-peek at the ladies' frisking booth and fantasise getting checked and touched by the female constable.
Like every day, you forget to put your knapsack in the x-ray machine. Like everyday, you go back and shove it up the carousel. Like everyday, you punch your card on the entry gate. Like everyday, you discover that it has a negative 'balance'. And just like everyday, you have to go through the above routine all over again.

Uttam Nagar West, platform scene: The elevators seldom carries people your age, and yet again you have to climb the stairs to reach the platform. The waiting time is, again, 5 minutes. You curse the train frequency, the DMRC, the train driver, the station housekeeper,your boss, his wife, your wife and your mother-in-law. The timer still shows 4 minutes as the train swiftly arrives at the platform. It honks the moment it passes you, and you almost fall off your feet. You curse the driver, the DMRC, your boss, his wife, your wife, your mother-in-law all over again.
You choose a door, run with it till the train stops, jostle with fellow train-boarders, run over hapless deboarders, fight the poles insides the train just to get a place to stand near one of the seat columns. Shut up! There are no seats available during rush hour. You lay down your knapsack, sandwich it between your feet, rest against the pole, and wait. The train starts. You are almost knocked off your feet, again. You curse Newton, the train driver, your boss, his wife, your wife and your mother-in-law.

Uttam-Nagar East: 2 minutes into the journey, and no freakin' soul has got off. You stare at the gentlemen resting their rearside on the steel seats. You curse your luck, your boss,...

Janakpuri West: You see the Hilton Hotel in the backdrop and your mind digresses to Paris Hilton. You laugh at her, rather loudly, and get 'he's a weirdo' look from fellow passengers. You become conscious, and pause. As the train starts, you see the District Centre and then at your worn out jeans, your old trousers, your dirty jacket, and look back at the District Centre again. Then you look down at your shoes again and keep looking that way.

Janakpuri East: None of the passengers have vacated their seats. Fuck you all, you say, and go back to staring at your feet.

Tilak Nagar: You look at your clothing again then at the famous Tilak Nagar market. That's my place, you say. You hold your head high and promise to yourself to stop by this place on your way back home.

Subhash Nagar: Pacific Mall! You become nostalgic and remember the good old days; the movies, the food, the pool, the bowling, the break-up... Oh all of a sudden your shoes become interesting again.

Tagore Garden: The freakin' old man has waited for the train to stop and the doors to open before vacating his seat. You say something bad to his mother and sister, but then again, the metal rubbing against your bum during the rush hour is worth the wait.

Rajouri Garden: Malls and maals. That's how you remember this place. You turn back to see the pretty faces who have boarded to metro from here. You think-out-aloud the cliche joke '99% of the women are pretty. The rest are in my college.' You then replace the world 'college' with 'colony', reiterate the joke, and laugh again. 'He's a weirdo' says the look on the faces of people around you.

Ramesh Nagar to Kirti Nagar: You again start looking down as 50 year old ladies and 60 year old gentlemen are standing in front of your seat, gazing at you expectedly, hoping that you'd offer your seat. But you're there for the long haul, and just to make your intentions clear, you take out the copy of last Monday's Times of India, and bury your head in it.

Shadipur: You take a moment out of your engrossing activity of staring blankly at the Anushka Sharma photograph in the paper, curse your marriage, you wife, your mother-in-law and go back to Anushka.

Patel Nagar to Rajendra Place: You exercise the corners of your eyes by staring at the cellphone of the girl sitting beside you. She's a pro, and obscures your vision by putting her forearm in the way. You mutter something bad to her and take out your own phone and find three missed calls from 'home' You put the phone back where it came from.

Karol Bagh: You remember the Sari that you promised to gift your wife for your Wedding Anniversary last-to-last year. You set a reminder on your phone titled 'Wedding Anniversary', but cancel it because you don't quite remember if it was the 3rd or the 13th of August. Or was it July?

Jhandewalan: Looking up for the first time, you half get up from your seat to see the enormous Hanuman statue. As always, you ask for the same old things: 'promotion and boss' demise'. Status quo.

R K Ashram Marg: You start packing your belongings as your destination is drawing closer. In the process, you invite hungry seat scavengers to hover around you, waiting for an opportunity to grab what's currently yours. You smile at them, and your own luck. After all, you don't get seats during the rush hour if you aint lucky!

R K Ashram to Rajiv Chowk: As the train enters the tunnel, you undo and redo the chains of you bag, the scavengers draw close. You pick up your bag from the turf and keep it on your lap. They're closer now, you can almost sense their breath. You take out your cellphone and find no network coverage. You curse the DMRC, your cellphone service provider, you boss, his wife, you wife, your mother-in-law again, and slip the phone back in your pocket.

Rajiv Chowk: You erect your knapsack on your lap, look over your shoulders to the flock waiting to board the train, then at the ruck waiting to deboard, then at the scavengers waiting to pounce. Then you look at the route chart on the train, ensure that Noida City Centre is still a good 17 stations away, rest your head on the knapsack and shut your eyes.
In your dream, you envision some angry people standing around and hurling abuses at you.

'Crazy people', you mutter.

Things women always wanted to ask about cricket!

2011-12-23T20:35:00.006+05:30

Why should men always gawk at things like a long leg or a fine leg?

Why should men be allowed to raise a point or a cover-point or a backward point or even a silly point?

Why should men show off their safety pads?

Why are they allowed to have four or even five slips. These are three or four slip ups too many!

Why should there be six and not seven balls in an over?

Why do they always think that they can cut, pull and....and drive better than them.

Why are men allowed to apply their saliva, sweat and what not on the ball? Isn't that supposed to be disgusting?

What are good bouncers and hookers doing on the cricket field? Shouldn't they be at a pub or a brothel or something?

Why should those two blokes wearing those big white hats be allowed to watch the game from the centre, while the other fifty-thousand slug it out in the stands?

Why should the men need to run when there are boundaries to be had all around them?

Why do men need to run from all the way back when they always have to bowl from the same point? Can't they just stand there and throw?

Why do some men bat right handed and the others left handed? Shouldn't there be any consistency?

Why should they show the replay of the same shot again and again? People can very well see it the first time.

Why do they play in coloured clothes when they play for a day, and in all whites when they play for 4 or 5? And why do the coloured clothing not bear the name of the player?

If Harbhajan bowls the doosra, who bowls the pehla? Wasn't Flipper the name of a dolphin in an Elijah Wood movie? Why do they bowl the wrong-uns, why can't men ever be right? And what on earth are these carrom balls, and what are they doing in cricket?

Why do men need to talk openly about their encounter with swingers? And what are these in-swingers and out swingers?

Why is there only one man-of-the-match? What are the rest?

Why isn't stand and deliver declared a myth? Deliveries are awfully painful, even when you're on all-fours.

Why don't they have an under the wicket option along with over the wicket and around the wicket?

What is this natural game, and how is it played?

Why does this World Cup happen every 5 years?

and finally...

Do they never get a nature's call while batting? And if yes, how do they attend to it?

19 of the best!

2011-12-09T18:58:00.003+05:30

You might well have read numerous responses, feedbacks and tweets regarding Virender Sehwag's super-human effort at the Holkar against a hapless West Indian side. But there were some which went totally unnoticed and off the record. Here's the top 19 of them...

1) Gautam Gambhir: No wonder he ran me out! Had I remained unbeaten, I'd have had one against my name too. I mean too against my name two. I mean two against my name too.

2) Suresh Raina: No wonder he ran me out! Had I remained unbeaten, I'd have had one against my name too. I mean too against my name two. I mean two against my name too.

3) MS Dhoni: Yeah! Of course. Yeah? Of course. Yeah????

4) VVS Laxman: What? Didn't the West Indians go back home after the test series?

5) Darren Sammy: We created our chances, I almost had (him) on 170. He was hitting everything out of the park, so the ball hit towards me took me by surprise! And my diving effort went in vain.

6) Kieron Pollard: I've to learn a lot from him. How to play the square cut. How to play the on-drive. How to play the leg-glance. How to last for more than five balls in each match.

7) Andrew Symonds: He's the most precocious talent to have come out of India. [There's a wail behind his back] Of course after Sunny Leone!

8) Anna Hazare: Every corrupt bureaucrat must be made to bowl to Sehwag on one of these Madhya Pradesh wickets. I commend Shivraj Singh Chauhan for asking his curators to prepare such pitches.

9) Kate Middleton: Oops! I married the wrong bald man!

10) Arun Kumar Gupta (Joint MD, KRBL exporters): We've decided to appoint Viru's mother Krishna Sehwag as the brand ambassador of our brand 'India Gate Basmati Rice'. We've been the heart of the kheer that's made Sehwag who he is today. This deal will strengthen the bond.

11) Greg Chappel: Of course it's my 'Mission 2007' masterstroke taking effect 4 years later! You know these delays that happen in third-world countries!

12) Saurav Ganguly: You may forget the day. You may forget the man. You may even forget how he made you feel...But you'll never forget that someone who brought this guy in the team.

13) Rahul Gandhi: Well played! Although I don't think he should call himself a 32 year old 'old man'. I'm 42 myself and still have cerelac for breakfast.. Yummy!!

14) Ravi Shastri: In the presentation party tonight, we have Mr...

15) Shahid Afridi: Viru has tried to copy me all his life. Even today, after scoring the double-ton, he retired for the second innings... after prolonging his stay at the crease, he still needs to learn how to prolong his retirement.

16) Mohammad Yousuf: I agree with the latter half of Shahid bhai's statement.

17) Younis Khan: Same here.

18) Bhupinder Singh Hudda: Najafgarh is an integral part of Haryana. I've written to the PM to either give it fully to us, or make it a union territory a la Chandigarh.

19) Shiela Dixit: @Bhupinder Singh Hudda: I strongly disagree...

I try...

2011-08-13T19:49:00.000+05:30

I try to remember your face
and I find it hard to visualise
how indifferent you look like
because the moment I concentrate
the moment I cerebrate
many a piece aggregate,
many a face agglomerate!

I try to remember your voice
and I find it tough to recollect
your amazingly usual vocal effect
because the moment I meditate
the moment I regurgitate
many a sound assimilate
many a melody reverberate!

I try to remember your colour
and I find it implausible to reflect
your remarkably commonplace tan
because the moment I recuperate
the moment I try to vociferate
many a texture conglomerate
many a shade accumulate!

*abandoned*

In conversation with Ketan Bhagat

2011-07-28T15:29:00.002+05:30

After the resounding success(citation needed) of 'Five inches someone?', 'One night with the call-girl', 'The three mistakes that made my life' and 'Two straights', author-cum-columnist-cum-blogger Ketan Bhagat has come up with his latest masterpiece, his magnum opus. Fittingly, its called 'The Four Faggots'. This novel, which completes his 'high fives' in the author world will allegedly make him an international bestseller.
So your sincerely decided to contact him to take his perspective on his upcoming novel!

Me: Hello Ketan! How're you?
Ketan: Oh well! Hello. I'm doing great. How can I help you?
Me: Well Ketan, I just wanted an interview with you regarding your latest adventure in the author world.
Ketan: Umm okay, I never disappoint my fans, sure go ahead!
Me: (Fan?eh)So Ketan, you've completed your 'final five'. What made you put a number in each and every novel of yours?
Ketan: Its a kind of superstition you see. Every writer has some superstition or the other, this is mine. And I also believe that its inspired from my belief in numerology.
Me: Well Ketan, numerology has nothing to do with numbers. Its like...
Ketan:What? Who told you this? Numero is derived from the Latin word number, so its certainly related to number. See even my name has numerology in it. Ke'ten' Bhag'eight'.
Me: Oh, that explains a lot! So, what's 'The four Faggots' all about?
Ketan: Its a sequel to my first bestseller, 'Five inches someone?'. It takes off from where I left it. Harry realises that he's in love with...Ryann, and the fling with that Cherrian girl was just an infatuation. When he proposes to Ryann, he learns that Ryann himself has fallen for Alokk, who's now settled in US. They both leave for the US only to discover that Alokk is making out with Venkatt, the cramming nerd. These are the four faggots. The story is about their ordeal with their respective lives. Its about accepting who you are, its about trying, trying and trying harder every time to... to.. you know to... to..get there or there about, you know..
Me: Terriffic! Well that's enough about the future, lets talk about your past. How do you reckon you made it to an ITI, that too the best one, ITI Delhi?
Ketan: Look, I trust you. Please don't tell this to anyone. If you remember clearly, didn't I write in 'Five inches anyone?' that half the trees in the world have fallen trying to clear EJE, the entrance exam for ITI? Well, a fourth of those were felled by me. I couldn't crack EJE in the first attempt, so I set off one day with my chain-saw towards what was then known as the Prairie forests. When I finished, I trimmed it in such a way that it has now become the world's largest grasslands.
Me: Then?
Ketan: Well, then the environmental ministry intervened, and I got my wish.
Me: Oh that's unbelievable!
Ketan: Oh its not that great, eh! Whenever the government plans to make a Golf Course or an amusement park, they give me a ring, and I do the needful.
Me: Lets not go that way Ketan. Well, in the past you've been accused of being a writer with very limited resources, what do you have to say on that?
Ketan: What exactly are you talking about?
Me: Well critics say that you only write in the First person, even if the narrator's isn't the best perspective to look at the story.
Ketan: No, not really! I disagree. You know my infatuation with numbers na, that's the reason. I always want to come first in everything. From being the 'first' bestselling English writer of India, to using the first person while writing. My work speaks for itself.
Me: Sorry to interrupt Ketan, but if that is the case, then why don't you become a professional writer an quit your banker's job at HBSC?
Ketan: Now you're getting under my skin okay, next question.
Me: Sorry Ketan, my bad! But Ketan, when I spoke to one of your professors at IMI, Ahmedabad, he said that the only thing you gained at the institute was your wife, Anushka!
Ketan: He's wrong. Totally wrong. I learned quite a few things at IMI, Ahmedabad. I learnt the Big Mac Index, the filet o fish index, the McAloo Tikki index, the...the...the...McVeggie index etc etc etc..
Me: Oh! He's wrong then. But Chetan, do you find it insulting that the first suggestion that google search gives when someone types 'Ketan Bhagat's' in the search bar is 'Ketan Bhagat's wife'? Does it mean that people are more interested in her beauty than your writing?
Ketan: That's not the case. Anushka is an average looking Indian house wife...
Me: But the way you described her in 'Two Straights' was extraordinary. It made the reader feel as if she were angelic, divinity personified!
Ketan: That was for TRPs, you see! Who would have read the novel had I said that she was an average looking lady, the best for a loser guy like me.
Me: Strange to hear that! Okay, do you think that writing 'the three mistakes that made my life' was the biggest mistake of your life?
Ketan: In hindsight, I really do. But I think it made my next novel, 'two straights' appear better than it was, by relativity.
Me: Oh that was very candid Ketan. Okay, one final thought. Does 'The Four Faggots' have a biographical touch to it?
Ketan: No dear! You're missing a point here! I always write in the first person you see... so the touch is not biographical....its autobiographical!

Just then I hear some inchoate voices over the line, something that sounds like aluminium crashing on bones kind of...a deafening male scream...and then the line goes blank...

beep...beep...beep...

To bhi or not to bhi

2011-07-16T15:42:00.000+05:30

Reminder: In case your pronunciations are already pretty awry, please refrain from reading this blog post. You might end up feeling a bit screwed up!

"dheere dheere my englis becoming so gooding ki now when I speak in English people say -wow Mrs. Sharma what command over the language, what pronounciation, to which I politely reply-I beg your pardon, it's not pronounciation, its pronunciation"...
This is the transcript of my all-time favourite ad! A delightfully wonderful masterpiece, which, in a mere 58 seconds, encompasses the entire point-of-view of the great Indian bourgeois towards the fabled language. A closer look at this advertisement would tell you that, at least in our society, pronouncing a word correctly, is as important as using it at the right place, and at the right time.

This brings me to the larger picture. What exactly is the right pronunciation?
English is exclusively inclusive. No other language has adopted, borrowed and sheltered so many words from other languages. This has been English's forte, its idiosyncrasy, its X factor. However, on the flip side, this has also created probably the most challenging task for a wannabe angrezi scholar. The native languages have a typical way in which the words are meant to be pronounced. These porridges, when kept in isolation and restricted to a certain sect, are completely unambiguous. The problem arises when we mix these porridges together in the cauldron to make the ultimate potpourri.
In Britain alone, there are quite a few accents(which is pronounced as 'aksent' and not 'assent' by the way). Those familiar with cricket commentary might well have observed(and laughed at) Sir Geoffrey Boycott's famous Yorkshirish accent. A few might well have drawn parallels between his, and David Lloyd's who happens to be a fellow Yorkshireman too. So, what's the corrent pronunciation of the word 'gully'? Is it 'guully', as Boycott or Lloyd would say it, or is it 'galli', as Sidhu would say it? The answer is, surprisingly, both (conditions applied).

I vividly remember an incident that happened almost 15 years ago. Dad used to teach the various parts of speech to my sister and I. To put things in perspective, my dad spent most of his childhood in Bettiyah, a lost district in Bihar's rural heartland, where people seldom forsake Bhojpuri for Hindi, leave alone English. He went on to join the most backward of the country's 'alleged' forward looking organisations, the Indian Air Force, where you're taught to say yes, before asking what, and where the vocabulary is well defined and well...limited. A right is known as 'righto', transfer as 'posting', any public service bus as a 'PSI', a shopping mall as a small 'canteen', and a message as a 'signal'. Its not tough to imagine that not much of the emphasis is on pronouncing a word correctly.
So, one fine day, my English teacher(who was a grumpy old lady herself) asked us to recite the various parts of speech! I, knowing the 'poem', did a Hermoine Granger and raised my hand as high as I could. "Noun-pronoun-adjective-verb-adverb-preposition-conjunction-interjection". I didn't expect her to squeal '50 points for Gryffindor', but neither did I expect her to say/do what she did. For the first few minutes there was completely pandemonium. The noise of students giggling and feet thumping could've been heard from miles away. I stood there, chagrined, wondering what wrong I had said. I repeated the 'poem' in my mind, again, and again. My words weren't wrong, but my pronunciation(as she pointed out later), was. I had made the grave mistake of pronouncing 'verb' as 'bherv' and 'adverb' as 'adbherv', something that my dad had always done, and passed on to me. I went home and confronted my dad, cried myself dry, frivolously accused him of teaching me the wrong things and locked myself in the bathroom till the point the smell of the gutter got the better of me.
I was made the laughing stock of the class. Fellow pupils, girls, and teachers alike would look at me and say the dreaded 'bhi' word. I started hating my name too, for it began with the dreaded 'bhi' letter as well. I would fight, throw a few things back at them, but I soon realised that all my efforts were futile. I resigned to my fate. Fortunately, time, for once, proved to be the best healer.

Fifteen years down the line, I know that I wasn't wrong. If 'verb' can't be 'bherv' then neither can 'Punjab' be 'Puunjab', 'bathing' be 'bating', 'Bhatinda' be 'Pathinda', 'future' be 'fusure' and 'rasgulla' be 'roshogulla'.
No exam tests you on pronunciation. It just can't. So if someone tells you that Gavaskar can't pronounce 'McGrath', then go and tell him that 'McGrath' can't pronounce 'Gavaskar' either. And that none of them can pronounce 'ten Doeschates'. Pronouncing is one of the most arduous tasks! If given a chance, people would certainly opt to implement the 'Dijkastra's algorithm' as compared to reading out aloud his name.

However, there are a few words which have standardised pronunciations. 'Edict' should be 'edite' and not 'edikt' while 'champagne' should be 'shampane' and not ...you know what.
The relief is that these words are few, and far between. So the next time someone tells you that verb is not 'bherv', tell him to shut up and go get a 'laiph'.

The cricket jargon

2011-06-16T19:59:00.001+05:30

So you aren't a die hard cricket fan and whenever you watch cricket or are coerced into watching it, you mute the television because you can't understand the language that the chaps are speaking in.
If the above statement made you think something like, “oh my God, that's my story”, then this list might help you in understanding the jargon of the game a little bit.

1. Phrase: rub of the green

meaning: extremely good fortune

not to be confused with: one of the three primary colours
usage: when a batsman survives a close LBW appeal or an almost run-out or a clear caught behind not given by the umpire, then the “rub of the green” is going his way.

2. Phrase:electrifying atmosphere
meaning: when the crowd's in a frenzy or when the roof is about to come off

not to be confused with: motion of electrons and protons
usage: whenever there's an India Pakistan game, or/and Ravi Shastri is the commentator, you say that the atmosphere is “absolutely electrifying”.

3. Phrase: to know where one's off-stump is
meaning: having the precise idea of the location of the stumps behind you
not to be confused with: the ordinary English phrases like “to know where you stand” or its even more stupid version “to know where your towel is”, courtesy The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
usage: when a batsman leaves a good ball outside the off-stump, he knows where his off-stump is. Instead if he leaves, and the ball hits the stumps, he needs a training session with Gavaskar.

4. Phrase: long-hop
meaning: a ball that is pitched very short
not to be confused with: a form of walking
usage: when a slow, short-pitched delivery is bowled at a competent batsman, who duly dispatches it to the boundary, its called a long-hop. Albeit, if the batsman fails to connect, its called 'clever change of pace'.

5. Phrase: the heavy ball
meaning: a deceptively quick delivery
not to be confused with: using lead instead of leather in making the ball
usage: whenever a lean, wiry frame delivers a ball whose speed on the speedgun sends the device in a tizzy, and the batsman in a frenzy, the bowler is said to have bowled the heavy ball.

6. Phrase: to take guard
meaning: to mark the spot on the pitch where you keep you bat just prior to facing the bowler
not to be confused with: the duty of a Nepalese national
usage: when you see the batsman pointing two or three fingers at the umpire, not horizontally but vertically, he's taking his guard.

7. Phrase:to slog it out
meaning: to keep batting with concentration despite the hostilities of the weather or the opposition's fast bowlers

not to be confused with: slugs, slogging
usage: when you see a batsman play out overs after overs, huffing and puffing without scoring, he's in fact slogging it out in the middle.

8. Phrase: to trouble the scorers
meaning: to score runsnot to be confused with: vandalizing the guy who maintains the scoreboard

usage: when you get out without scoring, you haven't troubled the scorers. The more you trouble them, the better it is for you, and your team.

9. Phrase: to get off the markmeaning: to score your first run(s)
not to be confused with: carrying a paper marker with you while batting and giving it to your partner when he's on strike

usage: when a person is batting, there's a mark against his name on the scoreboard indicating that he's the batsman on strike. The moment he takes a single, the mark is transferred to his partner. If he takes a two, or any even no. of runs, its customary to alternate the mark between him and his partner so that it comes back to him after two, four or six shifts depending on the no. of runs scored.

10. Phrase: to give charge to
meaning: to advance down the track
not to be confused with: motion of electrons and protons

usage: when you want to get to the pitch of the ball, generally to play a lofted shot, you give the bowler a charge, i.e. advance down the track

11. Phrase: soft dismissal
meaning: to be caught of a ball that you didn't try to hit forcefully
not to be confused with: physical characteristics of substance

usage: when you are in hitting mood, and then suddenly decide to let one go, and play it with loose hands, and are subsequently caught, it's called a soft-dismissal.

Sizing it up

2011-06-14T21:56:00.002+05:30

There was a time when ignorance was bliss. There was a time when I could hold my breath, for eternity, and compress, suppress and oppress it. There was a time when wearing lose-fitting shirts obscured the vision.
And then, time turned its back on me.
The uprising was just too great for the linen to withhold. There was a limit to what the loose-fitting shirts could hide. And then there was a time when ignorance broke up with bliss. With it came the realisation that what I had been doing all along was just delaying the inevitable. I was living in a state of denial, vehement denial. And that it had to end, sooner, or never.
I no longer found solace in the fact that since it was a hierarchical thing, I had no option but to let it happen. Even the argument that my height could compensate for my weight didn't seem just; a feet and a half along the x axis were a feet much for the six feet along the y-axis.
Sitting on my armchair one day, I skimmed through the pages of my memory just to see when/why/how did it all began. Flashback, 1999, Guwahati: Class Monitor Vikas had a spat with class' bad chap Sumanta Kumar Das. The skinny Class Monitor Vikas was no match for the plump, overweight bad chap, and came home with a broken tooth, ripped front-pocket and bruised knees. My mum, who needed no reason to scold me, was unusually calm that day! Her Class Monitor son had given her a perfect opportunity to press for her demands for an extra half a glass of milk for breakfast, a quarter ounce more of rice for lunch and an extra chapati for dinner. Determined to exact my revenge, I put the routine in place. At first, there were signs of change, Paulo Coelho's fabled “beginner's luck”. But then, with time, Sumanta and I became friends, which had more than something to do with his dad being a confectioner, a fact which I wasn't aware of when I charged at him. The vendetta took along with it the addenda off my daily diet. The martinet turned gourmet became a martinet again!
There were a couple of other instances which made me contemplate gaining some weight again. One was in 7^th standard, when a bet that I bet, and lost in an arm wrestling match with the thinnest chap of the class. The other was Big Show's demolition of John Cena at Wrestlemania XX, Madison Square Garden. On both these occasions, I wished the sufferer had a bit more strength in his arms and a bit more fire in his belly. So I promptly ordered a cheap duplicate of the Slim Sauna Belt from our desi substitute of Asian Sky Shop, and began the alleged work out, starting with 15 minutes a day. The duplicate belt lived up to its reputation, and within a couple of days, I had to buy a new pair of pencil cells to feed it. And then again, and then again. And again. And again. And I had had enough.
Since then, weight and I had peaceful non-coexistence; a pattern which broke up last year.
During the summer vacations, when there was absolutely no activity, it decided to say a little “hello” to me. I ignored it. And sure enough, it took offence to the rebuff, and decided to stay. And it decided to stay.
In June, my brand new pair of Jeans became its first casualty! That was followed by my favourite T-shirt, the wonderful shorts that my sister gifted me, and a pretty old pyjama which I used to loiter around in during the rains. Then came the final nail in the coffin!
One fine day, I overheard a conversation between my mum and dad. The next thirty seconds were the most heart-breaking, nerve-shattering, rib-cracking and muscle rupturing of my life. “Vicky mota ho gaya hai”, she said. The floor slid underneath my feet, the world came at a standstill! I had a nervous breakdown! I went into a frenzy.

This realisation happened exactly an year ago! I did my bit to get back in shape. Hit the gym for a week. 20 crunches, 15 push-ups, five kilometres on the treadmill and stuff! But the weight didn't budge. Then I started getting up at 6, pretty early by my standards, and went for a jog each day! This lasted till the vacations, and with them, ended this brief struggle! I was never one who could control his instincts, so dieting was never an alternative for me. I gave it up for a while, resigned to my destiny. I stopped playing, stopped watching cricket, stopped everything. I lived but ceased to live.

As months passed by, I realized that there had to be a change. A physical change was beyond me. For the second time, I had no other alternative. I had to change the way I looked at it! I didn't have to change my eyes, I needed to change my vision.
These days, I've started noticing people a bit more than I actually do. People, who're rounder than they need to be, rounder than me! My height is my consolation, there are others who should be inconsolable, but are living their life as they want it, as I wanted mine to be.
One thing which I certainly learned, something which my mum, dad and sister had been telling me all along, was that one can always lessen the horizontal distance by increasing the vertical bit! In other words, I had been walking with by backbone forming an arch ever since I learned to walk! That is gradually changing. I try to keep my posture straight. And hence, the back-problems which I had been victim to, for ages, are withering away! Every adversity is an opportunity, I've seen it, felt it, made it happen!
There's another thing that I've learned from this ordeal! Eventually, its not the fat around your navel that matters, its the one behind your forehead!

Types of people you might bump on during an exam

2011-05-16T20:02:00.000+05:30

Most of you, who've read my previous posts have said that some of them, if not all have had a certain biographical touch to it. Yes! It would be hypocritical if I deny it. Most people write from their own experiences. I'm no different. So I thought, lets leave no scope for guess work this time. Yes, the next few lines that you'll go through(in case you do), have been straight drag-and-drop from the ROM chip of my brain. Lets see who all you can identify. As always, I'll take no name! omerta.

A year has 365 days. For us, engineers, if we count out the two month strong summer vacations, 54 weekends, gazetted, non-gazetted, self-gazetted(read mass-bunk) holidays, we're left with approximately 180 working days an year. Now, on an average, we, at the great university(again, no names, omerta) that we study in, have six subjects each semester which adds up to 12 per year. For each subject, there are two papers per semester. This adds up to 24 papers. Add to it, the eight practically impractical Practicals that we have. So, in toto, there are 32 exams per year. So, effectively that's an exam every sixth day.
To cut the long story short, its easier to understand someone by noticing the way he behaves during an exam, because that is what he does more, as compared to any other thing at college. I've been there, done that. Here are my findings...

i)The tension girl: I suppose Wren and Martin would forgive me for using tension as an adjective rather than as an abstract noun, but I can't really help it. There's no other better way to describe her. She has extremely sensitive ears, and can overhear many a study-related conversation,in parallel, from a good distance. The moment her brain parses a string that doesn't find a match in her records, she becomes restless. She scans the index and the glossary of all the books that she has of this subject. If a match is found, then its well and good, but if it doesn't, the chirping about the new string can be heard from a bird's nest located some hundred feet away.

ii)The tension boy: The tension what??

iii)The hypocrite: He cites ill health, a power failure, a lightning strike or a crow bite as the reason for him apparently being unable to study for the paper last night, or any other day prior to the exam. He keeps his cards close to his chest while the tension girl is spreading doubts in the minds of others, and secretly repeats the answer to the question being discussed, albeit only to himself.

iv) The cool dude: Most boys would like to call themselves so, but only an elite few make the cut. The day before the exam, the cool dude gets up at 11am, after snoozing around with his alarm for four hours, hangs out with his friends till the evening, watches a movie till dinner and finally decides to inquire about the syllabus and in some cases, the subject, for the next days paper. He calls up the hypocrite who's finished his seventeenth revision by then, and is assured that the guy at the other end hasn't started off with the syllabus as well. With a sense of belonging, and relief, he opens to book, only to encounter some raw material for a Crocin. Has it, and then goes to bed.

v) The practical-kind-of-guy: Exams and he don't see eye to eye. He criticises the system, mocks the subject, ridicules the question-setters and lampoons his compatriots. He allegedly runs after knowledge, and not marks, seeks practical exposure, desires real-world epitomes and pretends to read between the lines. Ironically, even the practical exams don't seem to get the best out of him.

vi) The know-it-all-girls: Yes. These are girls, and are plural. By the time the exams starts, they know the number of paragraphs, lines, words, punctuations, letters and even the syllables in the answer to each question which has the as remote a possibility of appearing in the question paper as you have of reading this line. They attract a lot of attention prior to the exam, much to the amusement of the cool dude and disgust of the practical-kind-of-guy.

vii) The 'chit'ter-cocks: These are the people because of whom microscopes are still not extinct. They tear of pages from their vacant class registers, and scribble anything and everything that they feel might appear in the exam in the minutest of manuscripts that mankind has ever seen. Then they find novel places in their wardrobe to store these; up their sleeves, up their socks, the front pocket, the side pocket, the inner pocket and the under pocket. They have a master chit as cache memory which contains a table making a many-to-one mapping between the set of chits to the location where they are stored in the wardrobe.

viii)The benchmarkers: These are the environment conscious chitter cocks who prefer to scribble on their desks rather than wasting paper.

ix) The tatoo-ed girl: She's more enlightened than the benchmarkers and knows that the benches, too are made up of wood, like paper. Hence, she prefers to do her graffiti on her palms and under her sleeves than on those obscure inanimate objects.

x)The underdog: He goes to the examination thinking that because he hasn't studied much, all the marks he gets would be a bonus. But as is the case in these times of recession, bonuses are few...and far between.

xi) The irony: He comes out of the examination hall saying that the paper was too hot to handle and it would be an irony if he manages to secure passing marks. The real irony is that he passes, that too with flying colours.

xii) The observant: Staring baldly at and trying to comprehend the question papers isn't his cup of tea. He passes his time by gazing at the young invigilator, gawking at the girl sitting in the adjacent row or even staring at the four walls of the exam hall.

xiii) The filler: The unusual species who fill six pages of the answer sheet when they know the answer, and ten pages, when they don't.

xiv)The cadgers: The beggars who've interpreted the adage "time is money" literally.

xv) The toppers: ***java.lang.NullPointerException;lack of domain knowledge***

The weekly quote-shoot [chapter 4]

2011-05-16T19:48:00.000+05:30

Welcome to the fourth instalment of the weekly doze that features celebs who suffer from foot in mouth disease. As usual, I'll repeat the golden words said by the who's who and who's not who said during the past week, and will try to interpret what they actually meant to say.
Last week's newspapers were completely submerged by news from the assembly elections that took place in quite-a-few(someone please tell me the exact number) states. West Bengal saw the left see red after a record-breaking 34 years in power, while in Tamil Nadu, voters did what they were expected to do, vote out the incumbents for the sixth time in a row. Kerala turned out to be a cliffhanger, while Assam was a cakewalk for Gogoi. Plenty of things were done, plenty was said... if you missed it then, here are the highlights.

1)Mamata Bannerjee, CM elect, West Bengal, on NDTV
What she said: "I'll continue to live a normal life. I'm a common man"
What she didn't: "Living normally is just fine but I think I went a bit overboard by calling myself a man".

2)J Jayalalitha, CM, Tamil Nadu
What she said: "My cabinet would be very short and slim".
What she didn't: "Unlike me".

3)Rahul Gandhi, on the Greater Noida farmer's agitation
What he said: "After seeing the condition of these farmers, I feel ashamed of calling myself an Indian".
What he didn't: And the remaining qualms were cleared upon seeing Mayawati's face in person".

4)Jagan Reddy, son of late Andhra CM, YSR Reddy
What he said: "My victory in the bi-elections is a slap on the face of the Congress".
What he didn't: "Yes! One gone, 347 more seats to go till I become the CM".

5)Manmohan Singh, on the issue of India doing a US like operation on Pakistan
What he said: "We're not like the US. We will not do anything like this".
What he didn't: "By the time I seek permission from Sonia Ji and Rahul Ji, our Osama would have happily slipped out of the security radar"

6) Dominique Strauss-Kahn, IMF chief, on being accused of raping a maid at a hotel
What he said: "I have full faith in the judiciary. I will come out clean"
What he didn't: "Who's this Shiney Ahuja guy? He's been sending me commiseration messages ever since the news broke out".

7) Duncan Fletcher, coach, Indian Cricket team
What he said: "I'll refrain from following a dictatorial approach with the guys".
What he didn't: "The Indian media loves alliterations...Guru Greg, Guru Gary etc. But Dictator Duncan wouldn't be too great, eh?"

8)Shane Warne, captain, Rajasthan Royals,after the Rajasthan-Kochi game
What he said: "I want to apologize to the fans for playing so dismally in the game".
What he didn't: "I want to apologise to myself and to Watto for being stupid enough to play with these scumbags for four seasons in a row".

The weekly quote-shoot [chapter 3]

2011-05-05T21:47:00.002+05:30

Before I proceed, I mean start, I've to clarify a few things.
Firstly, I know its a Thursday, and this weekly bugle sounds every Friday, but you know its half past eight now, so there's every possibility that by the time I publish this post, the repeat telecast of Mukti Bandhan on Colors would've had its last dialogue delivered(those whose mothers are big fans of soap operas would know when this one finishes).
Secondly, I received a lot of feedback which had to do with the use of cricketing phrases and adages in my writing style. Buddies, I can't help it. This is one virtue(?) which you inherit(for free), born in an age which coincides with Shri Vishnu's kalyug's incarnation, Sachinavatar's , reign on earth.
Thirdly, and most importantly, my newspaperwallah failed to render a copy of TOI to me. Instead, he gave me HT. Now, I'm not too well versed with this particular paper, so pardon me if you discover that I missed out on lot of remarkable quotations which were published in TOI.
My last experience with HT was in eighth standard when I was caught stealing glimpses of Janet Jackson's peek-a-boo act with Justin Timberlake published in HT City, in my class. The consequent sequence of events made me feel like digging a hole and hiding in it.
I hope my second homecoming with HT isn't as bad as it was last time around. So here I go
...

i)Arnab Goswami, editor, Times Now
What he said: "In the wake of the killing of Osama Bin Laden just 60 kilometres from Islamabad, the US must immediately stop all aid to Pakistan"
What he didn't say: "In the wake of the killing of Osama Bin Laden just 60 kilometres from Islamabad, people are actually tuning in to Times Now to listen to me for the first time.

ii)Gen. V K Singh, chief of Army Staff
What he said: "I would like to say...that if such a chance(nod for surgical strikes in Pakistan) comes, then all the three arms(of the military) are competent to do this".
What he didn't say:" Well of course! We're battle ready. In case the need arises, the Air Force will fly in the Seal Team from their Virginia base all the way to Mumbai. But you know how Mumbai is during these rains, so the navy would carry them from Marine Drive to Ghatkopar in a submarine and then the army would buy them tickets for the Rajasthan bound Thar Express from where those guys would carry it forward"!

iii) Deepak Mishra, special commissioner, Delhi Police, on the proposal to make PCR vans get a new look, colour
What he said: "The idea is to make PCR vans more visible and for that we're taking several steps. There's no point if a PCR van is parked by the road but the person in need is not able to recognize it"
What he didn't say: "Over the years, regular Traffic offenders spot the Traffic Police vehicles from far off, and then slow down. I hope than the converse of the above logic applies to them, so that our traffic policing business doesn't take a hit.

iv) E Sreedharan, chief, Delhi Metro
What he said: "In phase III of the Delhi Metro, the Airport Express line would be extended to Gurgaon so that Gurgaon Residents can also avail the facility of travelling to the airports faster than ever."
What he didn't say:"In phase III of the Delhi Metro, the Airport Express line would be extended to Gurgaon so that the Airport Express line can serve the Gurgaon residents too and can hence reach its newly recalculated target of 71 passengers per day."

v)Digvijay Singh, senior Congress leader
What he said: "Osama jee should have received his last rites as per Islamic traditions and rituals"
What he didn't say: "I'll miss you...boss...I'll miss you very much."

vi)Timothy Roemer, US envoy to India
What he said: "Pakistan must do more to fight terror"
What he didn't say: "This whole Osama fiasco makes one thing absolutely certain... forget about ordinary people and politicians, even terrorists are not safe in Pakistan."

vii)Daniel Craig, Actor (on him being a narrator for a show on History Channel)
What he said: "I have been incredibly fortunate to have been given a chance to play a small part in the process(narration)."
What he didn't say: "I told you! Ugly people can act. And now they can narrate too."

viii)Saurav Ganguly, on being selected to play for Pune Warriors
What he said: "They(the Pune franchisee) approached me, and I said yes"
What he didn't say: "Considering the position I was in, I didn't have too many choices. Considering the position they were in, they didn't have too many choices either.

ix) Virender Sehwag, skipper, Delhi Daredevils
What he said: "The lack of interaction between the foreign and local players hasn't been the reason for us under-performing this season."
What he didn't say: "I don't see too many reasons for us being so bad other than just batting, bowling and fielding poorly."

P.S: How's the new template?

Just Bin Laden: An Obituary

2011-05-02T23:44:00.000+05:30

With profound grief, we wish to inform you that Usāmah bin Muḥammad bin ʿAwaḍ bin Lādin, aka Osama Bin Laden, hit the bucket this dawn. He is survived by his four wives, seventeen mistresses and twelve legal and twenty-four illegal sons of a gun.
As a leader, he was respected by one and all. We all trusted him with out faith, our lives and our wives. He was our single biggest source of inspiration, others being Justin Bieber's voice and Venkatesh Prasad's bat. He had a terrific track record as a sharp shooter. Had he represented saudi arabia in the olympics, he would have surely won the trap,double trap and 10m air rifle events, all with a Kalashnikov, in the process, shooting down those as well who dared to compete against him. His stamina was world class. He could run many a mile no sooner someone told him that a Predator Drone was approaching.
He was a big movie buff. He had seen Sholay 911 times. Everytime he watched it, he would tell us that he would've done better than that guy Gabbar Singh. He used to ridicule the SLR guns that Gabbar had. Kalashnikov was his unanimous choice. He would also take offence to the way Gabbar handled the Thakur issue. He used to say that had he been in his place, he would've decapitated Thakur instead of the much meeker alternative of chopping off his arms. "Gabbar has no balls", he used to say.
His perseverance and celibacy were awe inspiring. He never touched women on second Saturdays and on blue moons of each month. He had tremendous respect for women. He believed that a woman's place was not in his feet...but in his bed. He left his biological trails right from Sudan in the west to Pakistan in the east. Women were so shy of him that they would run home and bolt the doors from inside the moment the word spread that he was around. Even he was so shy of them that he would slip in through the windows of their homes to avoid the embarrassment of going through the door.
He was a big Harry Potter fan. He used to roam around with snakes around his neck, often muttering something which he used to call Parseltongue. It is rumoured that when he died this morning, he had a dead Boa Constrictor in his left hand and a copy of "Quidditch through the ages" in his right hand.
We all feel very lonely without him. The world seems to have lost its colour. Even my wife has gone mad. She's crazily distributing sweets to all other women of the society, who too are behaving in the similar bizarre way. No word can condole or provide commiseration to our inconsolable souls which have just lost its soulmate.

In remembrance,
Asif Ali Zardari,
pro-tem chief, al-qaeda
part time president, Islamic Republic of Pakistan

The weekly quote-shoot [chapter 2]

2011-04-29T22:31:00.001+05:30

A lot of things, both bad and worse, happened over the past seven days, both in my life and in the newspapers! I'll talk about my own in some other post, but right now its the time for my weekly shooting spree. Here we go...
i)M.K Kanimozhi, daughter of M.Karunanidhi and co-accused in the 2G-scam
What she said: “I will not disclose my income tax info under RTI”
What she didn't say: “Who said I don't want to disclose it? I spoke to the Income Tax sleuths yesterday. They said they're having problems printing my bank account details. Albeit for some weird reason, everytime they query for my account balance, their database crashes printing some error messages like 'retrieved figure out of Integer's range' and stuff”.

ii)Vyalar Ravi, MoS, Civil Aviation
What he said: “The (agititating Air India) pilots, aren't even graduates. Their starting salary is Rs. 3.6 lacs per months. Other Indians earn less that Rs. 50 per month”
What he didn't say: “Thank God! Traveling cattle class in in Air India was never my cup of tea. Lets hope I get to fly on Jet, at least till these chaps carry on with their stuff”.

iii) Emma Watson
What she said: “Bullying wasn't the reason for me leaving the Brown University”
What she didn't say: “I guess the guys at the new university will not shout '50 points for Gryffindor' everytime I raise my hand in the class”

iv) Sunil Gavaskar, giving his reasons why Jimmy Amarnath should have been made the coach of the Indian team instead of Duncan Fletcher
What he said: “The core of the Indian team today is from the Hindi-speaking belt”
What he didn't say: “All our best coaches have come from Hindi-speaking belts. John Wright comes from Wellington, which has two North-Indian dhabas and Gary came from Cape Town, where my favorite show Khatron Ke Khiladi was shot last year. Traditional Hindi-speaking belts, you see!”

v)Timothy Roemer, US ambassador to India, after US firms Boeing and Lockheed Martin lost out to European Rafale and Eurofighter aircrafts in the race for IAF's multi million dollar aircaft deal
What he said: “I've decided to quit. I was told that the procedure(for the deal) would be fair. But it wasn't”
What he didn't say: “Well what do you do after you F-16 shoots down thirteen Rafales and seventeen Eurofighter Typhoons during one sortie? Ha ha!!! Gotha! You just turn off your play station an go to sleep”.

vi) Jose Mourinho, Real Madrid's head coach, after his side lost to Barcelona in the first leg of their UEFA champion's league semi-final clash
What he said: “I respect Pep Guardiola(Barcelona's coach) a great deal as a person and as a coach. But i'd like to see him win the Champion's league without sandles for once”
What he didn't: Bloody hell! I'll have to stick to euphemism as long as the (Messi)ah is still playing for his side.

vii)Anonymous, Ashmit Patel's friend on Ashmit's relationship with Veena Malik
What he said: “It was a one way affair from Veena's side. She loved him, he didnt”
What he didn't: “I've heard that this time around only married couples would be allowed inside Big Boss. To prevent the torture of these scoundrels marrying each other and the torture of having to see them on the TV again, I had to spread this rumor”.

viii)Kiran Reddy, CM Andhra Pradesh
What he said: “The Andhra government will not take over Sri Sathya Sai Trust after his holiness' demise”.
What he didn't: “We're looking for more lucrative areas to take over. Only yesterday I heard the news that A Raja and Kanimozhi run an IT company out of Hyderabad.

The weekly quote-shoot

2011-04-22T13:18:00.003+05:30

Starting today, yours sincerely is going to write a weekly blog featuring the famous quotes of famous (or otherwise) personalities said during the week gone by. Yours sincerely will also try to tell you what they didn't say so that you wouldn't have as much difficulty in undestanding their quotes as they had in 'researching' for them on the internet. So, here we go.

i) Arvind Kejriwal:
What he said: "No one's going to resign from the drafting committee".
What he didn't say: "Resignation is just fine, but the replacement might delay the bill. First, the civil society would choose a particular candidate with a decent track record. Second, the PM would google the name of the selected candidate to discover/invent true/false cases against him. Third, PM would speak to Mulayam Singh and Amar Singh to convince them to lend their voices again for recording another CD in return for stalling the CBI probe against them. Fourth, he'll tell his assistant to hire someone from the Sangeet natak academy who sounds exactly like the new representaive and will direct him to read out the script along with Mulayam Singh while Amar Singh records it. Fifth, all media channels would be sent a copy of this CD. Sixth, the Central Forensic Science Laboratory would certify this CD as non-tampered.
All this would take atleast sixth months and the monsoon session of the parliament would've given way to the winter session, with the Lokpal bill already kept in the cold bag".

ii) Digvijay Singh:
What he said: Santosh Hegde, Karnataka lokayukta and member of the drafting committee of the Lokpal bill, has been "ineffectual in curbing graft in Karnataka".
What he didn't say: "Instead of Hegde, Karnataka CM BSY should be in the drafting committee to provide first hand account of the possible loopholes in the bill which can be exploited by him to continue illegal mining in his state".

iii)Duleep Mendis, chief selector of Sri Lanka Cricket, on Lasith Malinga's request to withdraw his name from Sri Lanka's test squad for the tour of England
What he said: "It looks a bit awkward when someone says he's injured and continues to play (IPL)".
What he didn't say: "Of course son! I have no problems as long as the word "Mumbai" is still a part of the name of the team that you're playing for".

iv)E Sreedharan, chief, Delhi Metro:
What he said: "In order to avoid the kind of crowds we see in the metro these days, we've decided that all the new metro trains on the new routes would have nine coaches".
What he didn't say: "In order to cut down the costs owing to starting and stopping the metro at each station, we've made the train long enough so that it stops once every two stations".

v)Abhishek Bachchan
What he said: "I can't hide a pregnant Aishwarya"
What he didn't say: "But if "Dum Maro Dum" also bombs at the box office, then I can certainly hide behind her". [what an idea sir jee]

vi)Prakash Karat, chairman, CPM politbureau
What he said: "We strictly oppose the Jaitapur nuclear plant, which would be the biggest in the world as Nuclear technology is still untested".
What he meant: "How can we make such a hazardous power plant in Jaitapur? Jaitapur is an integral part of Maharashtra. Maharashtra is an integral part of India. And India is an integral part of China."

vii)Virender Sehwag, on the eve of Delhi's game against KKR in the IPL
What he said: "I'm not worried over Delhi's no-show"
What he meant: "All I'm worried about is my own bad form with the bat and KKR's good form with the ball".

viii)Sergio Ramos,on dropping the King's cup trophy which was crushed under the team bus's wheels during the celebration following Real Madrid defeating Barcelona in the final after 16 years.
What he said: "A misunderstanding, it didn't fall...it jumped off when it reached the fountain of madrid and saw so many madrid fans"
What he meant: "Someone amongst us shouted that Messi had jumped on to the bus to claim the trophy. Being a defender, it was my job to prevent him from scoring a goal. In the process, i ended up scoring an own goal".

A night away

2011-04-19T23:14:00.002+05:30

My darling who had been sleeping with me all these nights for the past two years, has finally decided to take a break! She'll spend today's night at somebody else's place. But rather than feeling distraught and flabbergasted, I'm quite upbeat about our separation.
To be fair to her, I'd used and abused her incessantly. My continuous fingering had let her badly bruised. She let me have my way, without any grievances, without any complaints and without any demands. Two years of monotonic love making left her with a broken spine, chronic lethargy, a lost eye and a set of non functional vocal chords. Eventually the most appealing thing about her; her sheen, her candour, her luminance... disappeared.
I knew that if something wasn't done right away, it would've been too late. It was just the question of me realising that how much was too much. It was that very moment that I decided that something had to give. It was that very moment that I decided that something had to be given that very moment. And then came the decision. To be with me forever, she had to...had to spend a night at another man's place. To be able to touch her all my life, I had to...had to let her be touched, both externally and ...internally by another man. She needed her sight, she needed her spite, she needed her spine and she needed her sheen. I couldn't provide these to her. Had I been able to, she wouldn't have been in this situation in the first place.
So off I went. I carried her on my back shrugging off the all the minor disturbances and turbulence on the way. Finding a suitable "another 'un" for her was difficult. There are way too many who volunteer for this job, more so at the place where I took her. And then I found it...and then I found him. After all negotiations, it all came down to the promises he and I made to each other. He promised to do to her in a night what I had always craved to do to her. I had no option but to accede to his demands. Yes! I finalised the deal. I left her. Yes! I left her there. Yes! I came back. Yes! I came back without her.
He had promised to give me a call at 10 pm regarding the status and further course of action on her. I started to get a bit edgy no sooner the clock shouted 10. And then it came, a good fifteen minutes past 10.
"Sir, aapke laptop ko repair karne ka kharcha 6000 rupae aega. Hinges ke 1500, battery ke 2000, speakers ke 1000 and display ke 1500".

Types of people you might bump on in the Delhi Metro

2011-03-30T01:32:00.001+05:30

Owing and bowing to popular demands, I've come up with the list of the kind of people you and I come across in the metro. Here's the dream list-
a)The bloody "Indians": They are essentially out of place physics students who do their experiments at the wrong place, and at the wrong time. They don't believe in the concept of queues. Stack is the only data structures that they respect. They want to be at the top of the stack, always. Before the metro comes, they choose a particular door that they want to enter from. They follow that door like my young cousin brother follows candies. They apply geometry and place themselves exactly at the mid point between the edges of the doors. The moment the doors part, they leap, they jostle, they push, they pull, they run, they grab and they exhale only if their rearside has found a nice little couch to rest on; thereby performing various experiments of gravity, friction, force, motion and work, all in one go! Physics at its very best, desi style!
b)The sentries: There was a time when "being cornered" was supposed to occur more by chance than by choice. But the tragedy is that the last sentence was written in Simple Past tense. The sentries, whether they're inside or outside the metro, are always on the look out for the slightest of opportunities to place themselves strategically between the door handle and the metal-cum-glass frame of the seats. That cow's corner is their utopia, their shangri-la.
c)The pole dancers: Yeah! The pole dancers are exactly like the sentries. However their bliss, their seventh-heaven are the seven foot poles, which are supposed to deal with finger prints rather than body odour. The pole dancers set their bodies up such that the pole runs right from their right ears till the ankle which is (inexplicably) twisted so as to hug the base of the pole. The metro's earth-quakes provide the sufficient external force for the pole dance to be feasible.
d)The early risers: They make their intentions very clear and leave no scope for a last minute panic. They vacate their seats a couple of stations prior to their destination and enhance the population-density near the doors.
e)The chokers: The exact opposite of the above. They wait for the doors to open for what seems like a very long time and make a move when it's about to equilibrium again.(P.S: not to be confused with the extreme south african form of choking where the person is so late that he gets stuck in between the doors every time he's in a hurry)
e)The middle-men: These people earmark a particular spot on the platform from where they always board the train. Then they backstroke against the de-boarding public, breast-stroke over their trailing luggage, butterfly over their dangling feet and freestyle over fellow train-boarders to reach "that" elusive spot between the two compartments. Their aim is to a) be a baby once again, and relive those rocking cradle days and b) They want to showcase their conquest of Newton's first law by standing at the most seismically active spot in the train.
f)The lookout boys: They always board via the first door of the second compartment so that they always face the first compartment(for obvious reasons) while inside the train.
g)The Gajodhars, Mahadevs and the Ramavatars: They board in groups of at least 5 each with each carrying luggage weighing more than each of of their weights put together and occupying more volume than an inert gas occupies in vacuum. They manage to find very interesting places to keep their luggage which includes(but is not limited to) the area midway between the mid point of the doors and the pole right opposite to it or the feet of the pole dancers, the early risers and in rare cases, the bloody Indians too.
h)The plug-ins: The merry men and women who give absolutely no damn to what's happening (to and) around them. Their ears are stuffed with tentacles that originate in their cellphones. Their eyes are focused on the 3 inch screen and they let their thumbs do all the talking.
i)The onlookers: The weirdos who have no other job but to looks at what others are upto. These are the those who stereotype the rest of their fellow travellers and then pass comments on them. On reaching home, they login to their blog account and paste everything that they've seen on it.
Wonder who I'm talking about?

Types of people you might bump on @ facebook

2011-03-28T00:00:00.001+05:30

1) The leach: He googles for a famous quote site, navigates to the last pages in order to avoid plagiarism rants, copies the second last quote from the list and pastes this as his FB status. He likes his own status and posts multiple comments on it. After a few days, there are 23 comments and one like on his update. 22 of these 23 are from him and this is the exact number of wall notifications on his friend's FB home page who had the utmost misfortune of commenting on the leach's update.
2) The stammering leach: The leach and the sequence of consecutive full stops, commas and misplaced exclamatory marks make a deadly combination, popularly known as the st.st.st.stammering leach.
3) The flibbertigibbet: The crazy female who does the iota of the iota of her conversations on FB.
4) The games bond: The chap who plays mind jolting games and challenges his innocent friends for a dual. He breaks his own highest score records each week and likes the subsequent notification.
5) The prediction hungry: She feeds on Fortune cookies and shrieks when they're not delivered on time.
6) The capacitor: He feels too lazy to go the market for recharging his balance and tries to find online ways of doing the same. He types expressions like "OMG! It really works" and then gives an obscure link to his virtual shangri-la, thereby providing others the opportunity to become like him by clicking on that link.
7) The tag heuer: He copies random pics from other peoples' profiles, posts them on his and then tags his unsuspecting friends in it. The unluckiest ones, who have the misfortune of a)being his friend and b) being tagged unsolicitedly on inanimate things, bear the agony of a logging in to FB just to see that notification and discovering a square bearing their name superimposed on a donkey going to a college with the world B.Tech/B.Arch/B.Com/B.A stamped on its back.
8) The hi-tec tag heuer: Exactly similar to the above, but someone who uses apps to create these obscure photos rather than manually copying them from somewhere.
9) The diva: The female who changes her profile picture each day and is disappointed when the no. of likes on her new pic fails to reach triple digits, her expected target.
10) The optimistic: The chap who likes everyone's status update hoping that Newton's third law would apply in the virtual world.
11) The chatteratti: The lad who's online 23X7(he hibernates for an hour a day) and looks for potential targets to chat with. He's the reason why the number of friends who're online on FB chat for "that" one hour is unusually high.
12) The narcissist: She clicks tonnes of photos each day, crops out her friends from those and uploads them to an album called "college fun!!" or "fun at blah blah".
13) The hurt locker: He who answers some unknown questions about his friends and wants them to unlock them every time they log in.
14) The perennial frand: He sends friend requests to females who are distinctly related to his own friends typing something like "Cn v b frandz" or "I lyk ure pix".
15) The 'straight'forward: The no nonsense type chap who mentions very very clearly in his profile that his gender is "male" and he's interested in "females". No messing around with him.
16) The perfectionist: The inane female who feels that the minutest of the details of her life deserve to be made public.
17) The video analyst: He hunts for anything and everything on youtube that's fit(or unfit) for posting on FB and uploads it on FB so sooner he finds it.
18) The assignment lady: The lady who believes that Google groups are just not intuitive enough to spread the word on assignment submission and pre-requisites for tomorrow's class.
19) The cryptographers: The rare breed of men who prefer to encode before they transmit so that ordinary people scratch their heads for two minutes on reading the content and conclude that these men are really ultra-intelligent.
20) The opportunist: The perverts who use facebook just for publicity. They write something crap somewhere else and post its notification on FB just to divert the traffic from their wall to their blog.

I lie in the XXth category! Which one do you fit it?

someone i love to hate

2011-03-27T22:08:00.000+05:30

Arindam Chaudhary(The Sunday Indian)
yeah! right. The boss of India's fifth best B-School[ :-) ], and the numero uno in Global exposure[ :-D ] is the biggest pest on the idiot box. His writings and speeches usually defy convention and always defy logic. He counts his chicken before they hatch, tells a charcoal to discover the diamond in himself and contradicts his school's (alleged) reputation by talking about the great Indian dream. He takes interesting stands on world issues, produces even more interesting movies and makes the most interesting observations regarding the Indian education system, of which he's and integral part. His dressing sense is weird, if not ridiculus. His hairdo is feminist, if not feminine. His specs look un'spec'tacular, if not ugly. His voice is dilapidated, if not disgusting. Arindam, please retire gracefully. Sunday is a the best day of the week. Please let it be that way. Publish your Sunday Indian on tuesdays, so that the week doesn't have to advance saying WTF(wednesday, thursday, friday) by two days!

Karma! You bitch!!

2011-03-26T23:40:00.001+05:30

Karma is a cliche, a fad and a bitch. Its something that happens unintentionally when you are doing something, and its something that ceases to exist, that contradicts its definitions, that violates its thresholds when you try to do it explicitly. No enlightened soul dares to define karma, because in the process of doing so, he isn't doing Karma, which is imperative to enlightenment. Sooner or later one realizes that not only its definition, but everything related to karma is not related to it.
Whim is the big daddy of karma. Whenever I've made hasty decisions, left it to the eleventh hour, procrastinated it almost to the point of no return, I've observed that I've invariably tasted success. The converse has seldom been true. Planning for the minutest of details, preparing till the eleventh hour and starting way before the schedule has seldom took me across the line or above the bar. The last New Year's resolution I took was way back in 2006, the last time I promised to myself that I'll study harder to come first this year was way back in the second semester, the last time I started preparing for the sessionals was almost two semesters ago!
When I tried it, my results did not deteriorate In fact they, as expected, soared . I never came first, nor have I wanted to. College is no school where you get brownie points for topping the class. College is different, you can't do shit with your first rank. The toppers are always stereotyped and marginalized as outcast and looked down upon. I've seen these toppers, do really cheap things for the smallest of increments in their marks. Everytime this happens, I ask myself," Vikas, are you better than this, and are you better than these". The answer, every time is an overwhelming YES! Deep within, there's still that belief(and lifeline) that I'm the best I've seen and I'm the best there is. No academic result(or otherwise) can dampen this belief. No academic result(or otherwise) is needed to reinforce it. It's what it is, its what it's always been and it's what it'll always be. It's depression-resistant, stress-proof and failure-absorbent. Its implicit, innate and immortal, just like karma, the cliche, the fad, the bitch.
Whenever I underestimated my opponents, I emerged on top. Whenever I respected their skill, their talent, their poise, I was steamrolled. Whenever I played to win the medal, I triumphed. Whenever I played to give my best, I faltered. With each success, this eccentric theory grew stronger till the point it became an axiom, a heuristic; a thumb rule.
In retrospection, I've realized that karma is all I did whenever I did not crave to do it. By respecting my opponents and trying to give my best I was not doing what I do best. I was trying harder than I needed to. I was striving for chivalry, which I thought would redirect me to Karma. It didn't. It never does. It never will. All I learned was that there was no indirect route to Karma. Infact direct or indirect, there's absolutely no route to Karma. Karma finds you. Its there, lurking somewhere obscured from your eyesight. The more you try to see it, the more obscured it becomes. Treat it like your master, your caliph, your prince and it'll throw its tantrums. Treat it like a bitch, don't give a damn, do what you do best, it'll wag its tail and will come looking for you and do what it does best; lick your feet.
Karma! You bitch!!!

Don't win it for Sachin!

2011-03-21T21:23:00.000+05:30

No sooner the clouds of the CWC2011 appeared on the horizon, the rabbles and rumbles began that this being Sachin's last world cup(a rational but blasphemous assumption), Dhoni and his boys(a euphemism for fully grown adults) have to win it for him. The phrase "win it for ..." is actually a misnomer because it literally means that the cup(that counts) is a cerelac solution in a spoon that is going to be fed to the little boy(a stupid metaphor for Sachin), while the cup(the one that counts) can't be grasped without the little boy's help. In a nutshell, this means that the cup(that counts) can't be won for Sachin without his own help.
So here's my list of the people for which India should win this world cup...

1)Win it for Kapil's Devils: These 11 folks did the most herculean of all tasks by beating Clive Lloyd and his men in the era in which they were considered invincible. The highest point of their careers was posing for the paparazzi from that Lord's balcony. However, their tragedies began ever since they retired. World cup after world cup, they're invited to a dozen shows on half a dozen news channels to recollect "those golden moments"; Kapil's fabulous 175 against the Zimbabweans, Chikka's blitzkrieg against the Windies, Kirti Azad's miserly spell against the Englishmen, Yashpal Sharma's magnificent flick for six and Amarnath's wobly dobly bowling in the last two games. These poor fellows are on the verge of Schizophrenia. Good Lord, please, they need a break, and more importantly, they need someone to take their seats. Win it for them.

2)Laxman Shivramkrishnan: Win it for Shiva, guys!! So that he gets a heart attack from the euphoria and we won't have to listen to his commentary again.

3)Ajay Jadeja: Win it for him MSD; the only rational and sound voice in midst of the constant rabble and babble on the Idiot box by the idiotic news channels.

4)ESPN STAR: The only sane cricket broadcaster in India deserve it for allowing us to watch every ball as it is without those "Sangeetha" and "Paragon hawai chappal" ads creeping up on either side of the pitch while the bowler is in his delivery stride.(And also for keeping Navjat Singh Piddhu away from the commentary box).

5)E.X.A.M: Tell this bloody four letter word that no matter how consistent and frequent this would be, but in the batting powerplay(March-April), there's only one boss, and that's not him.

6)Bryan Adams: Tell that lazy old Canadian fox that the next time he comes to the cricket world cup, he would need to prepare a special song exclusively for the event and 'summer of '69' is well past its sell by date(although the number "69" is still appealing) .

7)Sharad Pawar: Win it for the full time president of ICC and part-time Agricultural minister of India. Ensure that while you're opening the champagne bottle, you don't forget to nudge and push him off the stage as the Aussies did during the 2006 champions trophy.

8)Lalit Modi: Win it for the (ex)commissioner of the IPL! He'll finally have something to write about on his Twitter update that doesn't contain "IPL" as a substring.

9)Shane Warne: The blonde leg spinner might see an innings from Sachin which is "actually" better than Yusuf Pathan's hundred in IPL2.

10)Ricky Ponting: Win it for the Punter! He's still undecided on when to announce his retirement. Please help him take this decision.

Last but not the least, win it for every boyfriend and husband of India. Send a strong message to their spouses that "we" haven't wasted half of our lives assimilating fat in front of the TV doing utterly obnoxious nothing. All the brownie points that we missed out on, counts for something. It accounts for the cup, and the cup is the one and only one that matters.

WE DAY

2011-02-15T23:39:00.000+05:30

Yesterday, was February 14th; V-day, the D-day for every couple. Its the day when every seat of every theater, every corner of every mall and every bush of every garden is occupied by Laila-Majnus, the Heer-Ranjhas and the Romio-Juliets. They hold hands and steals some ephemeral gaze at each other. He pinches her earlobes. She fondles his hair. He caresses her lips. She fiddles with his fingers. These actions go unseen in the theaters, unnoticed in the malls and obscured from view in the gardens. And yet, she isn't really content. There are nothing painful in his pinches and her lips still have the warmth of his fingerprints. And yet, her forehead still plays host to the diabolic curves. The clock is her nemesis, the calendar being her perennial tormentor. She knows that thirteen hours or a day later, the interstices between her fingers would be prominent again. Her thumb would have her cellphone's keypad for company and her eyes would be searching for his name in the phonebook. Yes, V-day is fun, but its singular count is its singularity. He looks forward to V-days, while everyday she prays for WE-dayS.
He wants her support, her space and her flesh, but she only wants his money. TIME is that money.

Love your girl, because if you don't, then someone else will!

Don't wait for a special day to love her. Make every day special by loving her.

Those magnificient men, and their flying machines!

2011-02-10T21:58:00.000+05:30

Waiting for the blueline at the bus stop was an excellent opportunity to revise my lessons and keep a look out for the brand new cars and bikes. Even the bus journey up to and back from Sarvapriya Vihar was a time(and a very long one at that) to relish. The arguments with the blueline conductors, the tapping of the glass windows with a coin to set the bus in motion, the peep over to the ladies' seats every now and then, the jokes that were made on the way, the regular cursing of the government for the traffic arrangements(and the lack of it), the dismay at the sight of the ever under-construction flyovers, the constant gaze out of the window to check for milestones and the application of Newton's first law while getting off the bus are things that I reflect upon when my palms play curtain to my eyes these days. The overcrowded buses were never a cause for concern! These were excellent opportunities to hand on to the rear door and escape the torture of being amidst seventy humans in a narrow aisle meant to accommodate only twenty. And if we had the rub of the green, it even meant escaping the scrutinizing stares of the conductor, and traveling without a ticket all the way to the destination. The tussle with the conductor over the fare was in the itinerary of every day's trip. The conversation had these usual dialogues, "Bhaiya hum roz aate hain 5 rupay mein", followed by his taunt "to mat aya karre roz". The conductor's call to buy the ticket; "ticket bol" was always taken literally and preceded three different voices saying "ticket" one after the other which itself preceded a round of high-fives and guffaws.

The bus service was 764 and the years was 2008.
The bus service is 729, and the year is 2011.
729 has always been the busiest bus route of the cluster. It has the most DTC buses on a single route(afaik). There's a bus to Mori Gate every three minutes. Bus every bus is still crowded, overflowing with passengers and overladen with the luggage that they carry. But this is 2011!
Traveling in these new DTC buses isn't very exciting. Infact traveling in a DTC bus has never been exciting. What's the point in traveling in a bus when the driver and the conductor know that they'll still get 15 grands a month irrespective of the number of passengers that they carry? And what's the point in traveling in a us that runs only when its doors are hydraulically sealed? Its the bluelines that I miss the most!
I miss the thrill, the shiver and the goosebumps that I got when I just about missed the all-important lectures even after leaving my home well in advance. I miss the ECGs on the speedometer when the bus accelerated and decelerated in rapid succession. I miss the incredible "space" that used to exist in the middle of the buses as both the front and the rear conductors asserted fellow passengers to move towards the end farther from theirs. I miss the hard turns that the pilot(read driver) took on the acute chicanes(read bends). I miss the races that the bus had with other buses. I miss the literal definition of "standing on your own feet" that the bluelines taught me. I miss the horror and terror on my STD and ISD friends' face who learned that I traveled in bluelines. I miss the surprised looks on my LOCAL friends' face who realized that I traveled and survived the bluelines. I miss the debates and government bashing that used to happen everyday. I miss those new faces that i got to see everyday.
I miss those magnificent men!! But more than that I miss their blue-green flying machines!!

The article that wasn't published!

2011-02-10T20:33:00.001+05:30

So finally Ajay Maken, the hon'ble minister for Sports & Youth affairs consented to be the chief guest
for the opening ceremony of Anugoonj. However, he wasn't the only person contacted by Team TracER
to do the honors. Here is an extract of our conversation with a few VIPs that we invited to cut the
ribbon.
Team TracER: Hello! Is that M S Dhoni?
MSD: Well! Of course. Its me. Who's this?
Team TracER: I'm calling from TracER, the newsletter for the annual cultural fest of IPU.
MSD: TracER? Oh. Just for a moment I was scared as, you know tracer reminds me of the tracer
bullets that the Steyn (and other)guns fired at us in SA.
Team TracER: Oh okay. So we were just wondering if you could be the chief guest for the opening
ceremony.
MSD: Well! Of course. You know, Gary just tells us to enjoy out there and play our natural game. And
that is what we would do. The wicket right now looks flat...
Team TracER: But MS, what has it got to do with our fest?
MSD: Well! Of course. This is my standard response to any question that is asked about my future
plans.
Team TracER: MS its one of north India's largest cultural fests...
MSD: Well! Of course. I'll toss a coin, if it a head, then I'll come and if its a tail then..beep..beep..beep
Unfortunately, after hearing this, our reporter disconnected the phone as he was well aware that there's
a better chance of having peace in west Asia than MSD winning a toss.
We then contacted Mr. Suresh Kalmadi, the president of the IOA and requested for his presence at the
opening ceremony.
Team TracER: Hello Mr. Kalmadi, we're TracERs.
SK: I told you not to call on my cellphone. I've had enough of you CBI people. I told you na that i'll
give you the details for every single penny that WE and not I alone, have spent for the games.
Team TracER: No no Mr. Kalmadi, we aren't from the CBI. TracER is the name of the newsletter for
Anugoonj, the annual cultural fest of GGSIPU.
SK: Oh! I knew I knew!! I was expecting a call from you(What??)
Team TracER: Oh that so nice of you sir. Could you please be the chief guest for the opening
ceremony?
SK: Oh you're from IPU! Your under-construction campus reminds me of the magnificent stadia that
we had just about put up for the games. Better than Beijing Olympics. Better than the Incheon Asiads I
must say. I think the village was like the one we had at Athens....
Team TracER: Sir...Sir...Sir, the fest?
SK; Oh! I forgot. Nostalgia, you see. I'll surely come. Just inform me if you need other equipments like
treadmills and stuff for the athletes. I have contacts, and you might just have get a great deal.
Team TracER: But sir Anugoonj is a cultural fest!
SK: Oh yes. You may want to contact Spectak, the company that organized the opening ceremony for
the games. What a ceremony it was! I still remember the cheers that I received. You might even get that
Aerostat if its still intact. I'll talk to Lalit(Bhanot) about it.
Team TracER:Oh sir that's so nice of you. But I guess we have everything in place. If you could just
confirm your presence...
SK:Oh my dear its not about.. Oh wait a min, I have a call. Just hold on.
(After 5 minutes) Yes, who's this?
Team TracER: Sir its, me from TracER.
SK: What the .... I told you not to call on my cellphone. I told you I've had enough pf you CBI
people...
Team TracER: No no sir! We're not from the CBI. TracER, the newsletter for Anugoonj.. remember?
We just talked about the opening ceremony?
SK:Oh! I knew I knew!! I was expecting a call from you..beep..beep..beep
Unfortunately, after hearing this, our reporter disconnected the phone as he didn't want to hear the same
cassette again(and also because he still had a grudge against the committee for the over sized shoes that
he received while volunteering for the games).
The reporter then threw his cellphone in the bin and decided to personally visit a few well respected
people and invite them for the ceremony. Mr. Maken was the first person to be approached, and he gave
his consent. No complaints, no demands!

Dear exam

2010-12-22T21:50:00.000+05:30

Dear Exam,
You and I have had a tete e tete for ages now. It's indeed ironical that we haven't had a formal introductory session. So lets begin!
I'm Vikas, xx, 25-34-35, tall, medium built, black eyes, black hair, black eyebrows, and brown skin.
I know that you'd love to give me your introduction as well and I'm waiting for it. I really want to know more about you. So do write to me as soon as you receive this letter. Please give your ASL too.
As i introspect, I can see that our relation goes a long way back. I really don't remember the first time we met. My girlfriend says that when we're five, our existing brain cells decompose and new brain cells are formed. She has a point. Perhaps this is why I don't remember our first rendezvous. The earliest meeting that I do remember was when you visited me when i was in Kindergarten. Remember you gave me pictures of birds and animals and told me to identify them? And do you remember that i misspelt "crow" as "crew"? I cried a lot in my mother's lap after knowing that I'd made a mistake. But you just moved on, showed no leniency. You knew that I hadn't done the table of 2, still you asked it the next day. I was clueless and had it not been for the helpful class teacher, I would've got that wrong too. Can you imagine how unhappy i would've been?
But then as I entered my school, you became a bit predictable, didn't you? I would always expect the first question on your Math's incarnation to be the conversion of the digited form of the number to its word form. And you didn't let me down in this regard till 3rd standard. Why did you change yourself the next year? Do you know that I hadn't studied much because of the almost certain sitter questions that you used to provide every year? And can you please tell me the reason for you asking me to write a few lines on "Balanced diet" in class 4th when you knew that this was in chapter 7, which was not in the reckoning of the syllabus? But I had one over you then and there. I opened my book on the pretense of taking out my eraser and read the definition from chapter 7!! But that must've been the giveaway. How could you expect just one boy, in a class of 45 to answer the question precisely, that too verbatim?
But i also admit that you stumped my by asking the name of three regenerative organs of animals in class 5. You knew that the book mentioned only two, the tail of the lizard and the teeth of the snakes. I guess you must've laughed at my answer: the nails in humans, because nails are dead things( you asked me this in class 9th, remember?). But really, slowly but surely, i started developing a deep respect and admiration for you which was soon shattered by your vicious and unparalleled zeal the subsequent year. In hindsight, you know that I was ill on all the six days of your appointment with me. Still you asked me the full form of BDO, which was in Civics, which i couldn't study due to high fever. And then you asked me the name of the tropical grasslands of Africa, and I, like so many unsuspecting comrades, wrote the answer as Veld while the correct answer, that was not given anywhere but the JPH guide that you had with you, was Savannah! Do you know that this was the lowest you ever sank? I scored 63 in that meeting, the least I've ever scored, till date.
But then, the whimsical chap that you are, you again started giving easier questions and I soon started loathing you a bit lesser than i used to. This went on till 10th, when our relationship was at its pinnacle. I was really happy that our "Board meeting" in class 10th went as per plan. You know I had prepared so much for those 6 meetings. Remember i scored the highest in our Science meeting? 99?
But then, the 11th standard brought a sudden end to our short term honeymoon. You made me a gay. I had to sleep with the like of Pradeeps and Dineshs before our chemistry and physics meetings. They were very bad. Big, bulky, out of shape idiots. Sleeping with them was pain in the ass, but then you left me with no other option. So scared I used to be before every meeting that i even had to had a live-in relationship with the likes of RD Sharma and RS Aggarwal. I used to sleep in the class so that i could let these guys shag me all night long.
I used to dream about the happier times that we had with each other and feel that things could get no worse that this. But I was such a jackass.
Out of the blue, you handed over a major share of your control to your brother "Entrance" and started concentrating more on our final "Board meeting". If you were difficult, Entrance was arduous. He was loathsome, detestable, contempt-worthy, abhorrent and above all, obnoxious. he forced me into illegitimate relationships with jerks like ML Khanna, P.Bahadur, Morrison Boyd and HC Verma. I was forced to share my bed with old fashioned shaggers like I.E. Irodov and S.G Loney. I'm still recovering from the shocks that they gave me, and by the looks of it, I'll remain invalid for quite some time.
And then college dawned and for the first time, it was refreshing to welcome you back. You were good, you were better than before,and although you seemed like an enormous dark cloud, no one could miss your silver lining. But then the frequency of our meeting increased and we started seeing so much of each other that i started taking you for granted. Remember the shock that you gave me in our Engineering drawing meeting in the second semester? That is still a big deterrent and acts as the prospective cane when i become complacent and take our next meeting lightly.
Over the past two years, the frequency of our meetings has only increased. The fiction content in my part of the conversation has also grown arithmetically because the theoretical content in your dialogues has grown geometrically. The total marks that you bring with you has remained the same but the time and effort required to attain them has skyrocketed. I've ceased to be the same person that I was a few years ago, and you're probably one, but my far the most significant of the many factors responsible for this.
You've changed my outlook towards life. You've made me enjoy the average college day a bit more that usual. You've taught me to burn the midnight oil if the daylight is insufficient and too transient for my cause. These frequent meetings have soothened all the nerves that used to go mimic Neil Armstrong's heartbeats when he landed on moon, by the simplest of thoughts of a conversation with you. Last but not the least, you've given my parents a reason to be proud of me. They still boast about the outcome of our second "Board meeting".
You've taught me to make hay while things go haywire.

I can see three of your brothers;"GRE", "GATE" and "CAT" approaching. But I don't fear you, neither any one of them, anymore. And all this is because of you. Thanks you so much. Without you, I'd have been just another man, writing just another exam!

Waiting patiently for your reply.

With regards
Vikas.

This is not a status!

2010-12-06T20:25:00.000+05:30

So, where were we? Umm.. nowhere. So lets start from scratch.

Well a few friends of mine are complaining that they are a little perplexed for i haven't changed/updated/upgraded my facebook status for a long time and they miss the witty one-liners that i used to plagiarize from a few concealed and well-kept-secret-types sources.
There is some substance to these complaints too. I indeed have missed a few deadlines, when it comes to changing/updating/upgrading my status. But there's a solid reason why.
Not long ago, I used to put anything and almost everything that i felt like on my status bar. The world would know in a jiffy about the color of my new socks and the obnoxious smell emanating from my older ones or the size of my new oversized boxers and the safety pin i had to steal from my mom's cupboard in order to set them right. But soon i realized that updating such utter nonsensical vilifications can do certain things to your personality that i guess you wouldn't be too excited about.
Imagine reaching college one day and the professor asking you what took you so long to and and then a chap from the back bench promptly prompting that you were probably adjusting your underwear and had some unforeseen trouble with the safety pin, or worse still the professor himself kept a watch on your status update and those fateful word's came from his mouth and not of that of the back bencher's! Yeah, i know how pathetic it'd feel.
Fortunately, none of these has happened to me.
But it might had. And it was my moral obligation to ensure the dignity and prestige of my morality.
But alas!! Not all people are as introspective as your truly.
There is a girl, say Q(omg she's so lame),in my friends' list who posts all her college's updates on her profile. She intends to tell X people that teacher Y has asked for some work Z to be submitted by date (shit!! Z was the last letter) D. But since the number of people reading her status update, E, are very large(E>>X), she ends up getting F curses(of course not on her profile, and F is the number of curses and not a specific type of curse), G swear words and H frowning muscles per person. Obviously, F,G and H are very very large numbers.

But then there are some exceptional cases as well. There's a girl I(OMG she's so hot) who puts a Random Rubbish Update RRU on her profile K, and she gets M likes and N(omg i'll soon run out of letters) comments. Where, as you might have guessed, M and N are extremely large numbers.
But friends, yours truly, is neither a jackass like Q(omg she's so lame) nor as mirror-cracking as I(omg she's so hot). I'm just another man owning just another profile(i beg your pardon if this line seems vaguely familiar to you). And consequently, i've decided just to post "those" updates that are either as irresistible as my lust for I(omg she's so hot) or my mood is similar to the one i have when Q(omg she's so lame) posts the date of submission of the next assignment.

Nothing inbetween is acceptable!!

Lend me your ear(phone)s!

2010-11-28T20:28:00.000+05:30

Yeah goddamn it. Lend me your earphones. I'll shove them up the right holes.

Your ears deserve something better. Something of the order of Johnson's earbuds, an incense stick's read end or maybe a matchstick(if not the entire matchbox). But please keep those serpents away from those ears.
I sometimes fail to understand why are so many people obsessed with these? Is their conversation so confidential that they afraid being overheard? Or do they really listen to the same songs over and over again on their cellphones or i-pod or tri-pod(whatever)? Do they really have a strong desire to listen to the D grade "Yellow diamond yellow diamond" ads(in between a few interruptions by the RJs) over the FM? Or is it that they can't find something sharper to pull out their earwax? Well in the latter case, I'd prefer them sporting a inch-thick layer of the substance than to have a pair of eerie, creepy wires up their holes.

Lending me your earphones would save you from the torture of untangling them every morning before stabbing them inside the hapless cellphone, and the excruciating trauma you suffer when one of the brothers decides that its screwed you enough and pulls out for fresh air. You can be rest assured that lending me your earphones would make you at least 10% more learned and 22.75% more attentive and observant. It'll enhance your hearing capabilities by another 11.02% and lower the pitch of your voice by a humongous 35%. The lifetime of your cellphone would increase by a modest 5% while its battery backup would show a significant increase of 24.898%. *

So my dear misguided souls! What're you waiting for? Come forward(or just stay where you are) and donate your earphones. Even a small help, something of the order of one of the brothers, or even half of it, would be a giant step for earkind.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls!! Please lend me your earphones and I'll ensure that i shove them up the right holes, which i must clarify, aren't located at the side of your heads.

*The territorial waters of India extend to a distance of 12 nautical miles...oops, wrong clarification.