I am a single man.
I like to think that I am smart, handsome, funny, trendy and all those positive adjectives in superlative terms. My friends assure me that I might be slightly correct in my assumptions about myself if I take my nose from the clouds a bit. Unfortunately all my friends are male. That is probably why I am single....
This great friend of mine in Singapore has a girlfriend. Lets call her S. She is nice, funny and quite helpful. I caught hold of her one fine evening and told her to do something about my "single-ness". She hemmed and hawed and finally relented.
This is the deal (she said). I was supposed to think of a nickname for myself. Then she would give me a couple of phone numbers with whom I could begin sms-fraandsheep. Thereafter whatever happens is up to us.
Further pressure yielded one number. The lady apparently answered to the name of Julia. I held the cell-phone in my hand and thought up flowery lines to unleash on the hapless damsel who then would be (I hoped) duly swept off her feet, her heart would be mine, angels would sing and everyone would live happily ever after.
Three hours of deep thinking yielded these lines:
"Hi Julia, this is Neil. I had the temerity to take your number from S. How are you doing?"
I dashed off this missive and waited. And waited. And waited.
The next day I called customer service.
S checked up with her friend who denied receiving any harassing sms'es. She then figured out that she had given me the wrong number!!!!
I did not check whose number that actually turned out to be but I must admit that chances are good that "Julia" was a guy. He must have been bemused.
How bemused he could have been I can imagine. You see this happened to this friend of mine once....
Lets call him M. He is a great friend. He looks hard on the outside but is equally soft on the inside (once you get to know him better I mean). He is the type who does fifty push-ups to relax after a hard-days work and sleeps to the soothing lullaby of Metallica howling at top volume. His only problem in life was that he did not have (or ever had) any girlfriend.
Suddenly one fine day it all changed.
His cell-phone started beeping with flowery romantic sms'es every two hours. Those sms'es were REALLY flowery. You know the type which conjures up rainbows, pink hearts and butterflies.
He tried calling this number but the other person never picked up.
M started smiling. He started arguing that women were emotional and delicate creatures who needed men to protect them. He started listening to Boyzone even.
One fine day a particularly flowery sms came along. M woke me up while I was sleeping off a hangover and showed me the sms. I suggested he use my phone to check up on who the love-sick damsel was.
He dialled.
The other side picked up the phone.
M asked, "Hi this is M speaking. May I know who this is?"
(pause)
The other side returned with a manly, sheepish and coy voice answering, "Hi M. This is Mehboob speaking". (Mehboob: Urdu word, Masculine term. Loosely translated to mean a passionate lover)
M was very sad after this.
So I guess "Julia" must have been adversely affected by my missive. I don't think I will pester S again after this to "set me up"....
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Now that will be cool....
I was just sitting today watching this ACDC concert. (I know I know.... I am ACDC fixated these days.... just bear with me). I bought this DVD a few days ago and was watching it on my laptop.
They were doing their thing and the entire stadium full of people was on its feet. I just thought to myself, "Wow! Someday in my life I want to attend a concert like this!".
That got me thinking.
What are the things I would REALLY REALLY like to do in my life atleast once? Well the following is such a list of things. Not in any order except the order in which they came into my head:
1. Attend a concert of AC/DC or Rammstein.
2. Trek in the Himalayas. Go up to Lake Mansarovar
3. Take the Konkan Express train from Mangalore to Mumbai during the day.
4. Better still... ride a bike down the West Coast Highway.
5. Hold a new born baby and show it its first sunrise.
6. SOMETIME read through the Bengali Mahabharat my Grandfather gave my Dad.... and which my Dad has a good mind to give to me. (For that of course I will have to learn to read the Bengali script and attain more than a nodding acquaintance with that language).
7. Buy a Honda CBR 400 or better (Fireblade? Hayabusa?)
8. Climb a hill, set up camp on its peak and spend a night. (I almost did that once. Me and a few friends climbed this hill near Bangalore. Once we got there, it got so foggy that we almost decided to spend the night shivering under the watchful eyes of the God 'Nandi' whose statue graced the peak. The fog unfortunately cleared soon after.... We climbed down in the dead of the night and at the village near the base, we discovered that we did not speak Kannada and no one in the village spoke English or Hindi. I even broke into Bengali in desperation but to no avail)
9. Learn to appreciate Indian Classical music.
10. Learn enough General Theory of Relativity to shut this friend of mine up who proses on about it whenever he is in his cups.
11. Buy a 'raddi' laptop for 100 bucks (I mean dollars) set it right, find software for it which will run on its hardware without major trade-offs on functionality, write scripts which will make its use simple and then gift it to my Dad who is scared of Electronics!
12. Keep a dog at home. Call it Jurgen... or Adolf or Pervez....
13. Go on a blind-date.
14. Make a four-course meal for my parents while they sleep oblivious of the treat (or ordeal most likely) in store for them.
15. Learn the fingers-in-the-mouth-whistle
Well I guess the list could go on and on but I will stop here. Would anyone else like to write his own to-do list?
They were doing their thing and the entire stadium full of people was on its feet. I just thought to myself, "Wow! Someday in my life I want to attend a concert like this!".
That got me thinking.
What are the things I would REALLY REALLY like to do in my life atleast once? Well the following is such a list of things. Not in any order except the order in which they came into my head:
1. Attend a concert of AC/DC or Rammstein.
2. Trek in the Himalayas. Go up to Lake Mansarovar
3. Take the Konkan Express train from Mangalore to Mumbai during the day.
4. Better still... ride a bike down the West Coast Highway.
5. Hold a new born baby and show it its first sunrise.
6. SOMETIME read through the Bengali Mahabharat my Grandfather gave my Dad.... and which my Dad has a good mind to give to me. (For that of course I will have to learn to read the Bengali script and attain more than a nodding acquaintance with that language).
7. Buy a Honda CBR 400 or better (Fireblade? Hayabusa?)
8. Climb a hill, set up camp on its peak and spend a night. (I almost did that once. Me and a few friends climbed this hill near Bangalore. Once we got there, it got so foggy that we almost decided to spend the night shivering under the watchful eyes of the God 'Nandi' whose statue graced the peak. The fog unfortunately cleared soon after.... We climbed down in the dead of the night and at the village near the base, we discovered that we did not speak Kannada and no one in the village spoke English or Hindi. I even broke into Bengali in desperation but to no avail)
9. Learn to appreciate Indian Classical music.
10. Learn enough General Theory of Relativity to shut this friend of mine up who proses on about it whenever he is in his cups.
11. Buy a 'raddi' laptop for 100 bucks (I mean dollars) set it right, find software for it which will run on its hardware without major trade-offs on functionality, write scripts which will make its use simple and then gift it to my Dad who is scared of Electronics!
12. Keep a dog at home. Call it Jurgen... or Adolf or Pervez....
13. Go on a blind-date.
14. Make a four-course meal for my parents while they sleep oblivious of the treat (or ordeal most likely) in store for them.
15. Learn the fingers-in-the-mouth-whistle
Well I guess the list could go on and on but I will stop here. Would anyone else like to write his own to-do list?
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Chic-lit or Chic-shit
There have been very few times that I have really got worked up over a book. This is one.
A few days ago, I picked up this book called, "Imaginary Men" by this lady called "Anjali Banerjee". The blurb told me that it falls in a genre called "chic-lit" (Literature for those cuddly things in frilly skirts you find in malls).
I thought the story would go the usual way: Girl very lonely, pressure from family, girl with broken heart, in walks a prince, censored love scene, everyone lives happily ever after.
After reading too much of The Battle of Stalingrad and getting bad dreams about the Mumbai Underworld, I thought this would be a nice change.
Guess what?
The story DID turn out to be exactly like I mentioned above. But with a twist.
Look at how the book starts:
The heroine Lina begins:
"I'm allergic to India
I snort and sniff through my sister Durga's wedding, my eyes watering from Kolkata pollution, not because Durga is marrying the Bengali version of Johnny Depp. Not because I am the eldest sister, twenty-nine and still single.
Sweat seeps through my choli shirt, in this bright turqoise sari, I feel like a giant blueberry.... A few bachelors prowl in ill-fitting suits, hair slicked back, cell phones plastered to their ears. I keep my gaze averted. I won't talk to any of these geeks."
And this is how the story goes all through this book. India is like this. Indians are like that. I land up in India, I suffer from the traffic, the pollution, the nosy relatives, the house-hold astrologer, the T.V. which runs shows which are rip-offs of the "Brady Bunch". I have no privacy, there are so many mosquitoes, I don't want to do the house-hold chores...... The litany is simply endless.
I turned back to the end-paper to read the profile of this lady and it says that she was born in Kolkata but went to the U.S. as an infant and grew up in Canada and California. She simply has not lived in India!!! Her idea of India is as quaint as it is unreal. She calls her characters Lina, Durga and Kali. The handsome guys in this book are quaintly called Raja Prasad and Dev Prasad (Have you EVER run into anyone with names like these). They also go into jungles to hunt on an elephant and have an army of servants in tow to keep the mosquitoes away. According to her Hindu marriages ceremonies finish with the bride and the groom taking "Seven STEPS" (as opposed to seven pheras).
I don't think this lady is qualified to write about India. She is simply milking her Indian name to come across as an authority on something she does not know. She wants to give an exotic setting to her romantic comedy.
These are the sort of people who perpetuate the myth of our country as the land of snake-charmers, Sadhus, cholera and dysentery.
Besides I don't think she has a very good notion of her own country (now I mean the US). According to her, if your sister is in need of a shoulder to cry on, the only thing you can do is to drive across the state and have an emergency jogging session in the Golden-Gate bridge park!!!!
Now comes the funniest part.
The heroine Lina is a match-maker by profession. She has an interview with this Bengali financial analyst. According to him (Lina says),
"I am active runner (sic). I enjoy sports, meditation, golf, travel and gardening. I like the outdoors in general..... I want to settle down with attractive and motivated woman(sic again..), a professional girl, beautiful inside and out, with similar family background who can complement and enhance my family.
My father is a well-reputed family physician. Retired, of course. My grandmother is an intelligent and pious lady. My family prefers a girl of Brahmin roots."
(Here Lina writes, "Stuffy upper crust")
"I prefer woman nineteen to twenty-fourish, no older."
("In other words, his personal flight attendant").
"I am a hard-working professional, building my career in the finance industry pursuing CPF course.... I have a Master's Degree..."
"Your annual income?"
His face reddens. "Fifty thousand to Seventy-five thousand"
Now we come to the lady Lina herself.
She is a wheatish complexioned, twenty-nine year old matchmaker. She has a scrawny build. And she works for a company called Lakshmi Matchmakers (And therefore earns nothing worth shit). I do not know much about how she looks but she used to have a boy-friend (another quaint name here) called Nathu who died in a car-crash. She has a gay guy called Harry as a friend. And nothing in this book makes me think that she is in anyway intelligent and well-read. In fact she comes across as a rather shallow and dogmatic creature.
And look at the guy who ends up finally pursuing her:
This guy called Raja Prasad. He is a tall, dark and handsome prince (are'nt they all). He has muscles all over his body (probably in his head also if he is chasing a girl like Lina and not some princess). He is (of course) rich. He runs a granite factory, three orphanages and sundry other charitable institutions in India. Plus he spouts sundry astronomical fundae five minutes after meeting Lina. To raise funds for the orphanages, he come to the US every now and then and while he does that, he stays in the best room of the Hilton and get chauffeured around in a Rolls. He has been engaged when he was a baby to this princess called Sayantoni. He has three palaces in India and they all simply crawl with servants.
After reading all this I could not help but laugh. The author seems to think that this is a match made in heaven! And look at how this all ends:
Lina cannot leave the US. Raja cannot leave India. So we are at a dead-lock. Raja finally gives in and moves to the US because he feels he needs to know her better.
In the end of course we have our Lady move to India. She lives in a palace, gets a retinue of servants and lives happily ever after.
Give me back my "History of the Battle of Stalingrad" Again!!!
And Madam...please please stop writing. Take matchmaking as a profession, but spare us this shit!
A few days ago, I picked up this book called, "Imaginary Men" by this lady called "Anjali Banerjee". The blurb told me that it falls in a genre called "chic-lit" (Literature for those cuddly things in frilly skirts you find in malls).
I thought the story would go the usual way: Girl very lonely, pressure from family, girl with broken heart, in walks a prince, censored love scene, everyone lives happily ever after.
After reading too much of The Battle of Stalingrad and getting bad dreams about the Mumbai Underworld, I thought this would be a nice change.
Guess what?
The story DID turn out to be exactly like I mentioned above. But with a twist.
Look at how the book starts:
The heroine Lina begins:
"I'm allergic to India
I snort and sniff through my sister Durga's wedding, my eyes watering from Kolkata pollution, not because Durga is marrying the Bengali version of Johnny Depp. Not because I am the eldest sister, twenty-nine and still single.
Sweat seeps through my choli shirt, in this bright turqoise sari, I feel like a giant blueberry.... A few bachelors prowl in ill-fitting suits, hair slicked back, cell phones plastered to their ears. I keep my gaze averted. I won't talk to any of these geeks."
And this is how the story goes all through this book. India is like this. Indians are like that. I land up in India, I suffer from the traffic, the pollution, the nosy relatives, the house-hold astrologer, the T.V. which runs shows which are rip-offs of the "Brady Bunch". I have no privacy, there are so many mosquitoes, I don't want to do the house-hold chores...... The litany is simply endless.
I turned back to the end-paper to read the profile of this lady and it says that she was born in Kolkata but went to the U.S. as an infant and grew up in Canada and California. She simply has not lived in India!!! Her idea of India is as quaint as it is unreal. She calls her characters Lina, Durga and Kali. The handsome guys in this book are quaintly called Raja Prasad and Dev Prasad (Have you EVER run into anyone with names like these). They also go into jungles to hunt on an elephant and have an army of servants in tow to keep the mosquitoes away. According to her Hindu marriages ceremonies finish with the bride and the groom taking "Seven STEPS" (as opposed to seven pheras).
I don't think this lady is qualified to write about India. She is simply milking her Indian name to come across as an authority on something she does not know. She wants to give an exotic setting to her romantic comedy.
These are the sort of people who perpetuate the myth of our country as the land of snake-charmers, Sadhus, cholera and dysentery.
Besides I don't think she has a very good notion of her own country (now I mean the US). According to her, if your sister is in need of a shoulder to cry on, the only thing you can do is to drive across the state and have an emergency jogging session in the Golden-Gate bridge park!!!!
Now comes the funniest part.
The heroine Lina is a match-maker by profession. She has an interview with this Bengali financial analyst. According to him (Lina says),
"I am active runner (sic). I enjoy sports, meditation, golf, travel and gardening. I like the outdoors in general..... I want to settle down with attractive and motivated woman(sic again..), a professional girl, beautiful inside and out, with similar family background who can complement and enhance my family.
My father is a well-reputed family physician. Retired, of course. My grandmother is an intelligent and pious lady. My family prefers a girl of Brahmin roots."
(Here Lina writes, "Stuffy upper crust")
"I prefer woman nineteen to twenty-fourish, no older."
("In other words, his personal flight attendant").
"I am a hard-working professional, building my career in the finance industry pursuing CPF course.... I have a Master's Degree..."
"Your annual income?"
His face reddens. "Fifty thousand to Seventy-five thousand"
Now we come to the lady Lina herself.
She is a wheatish complexioned, twenty-nine year old matchmaker. She has a scrawny build. And she works for a company called Lakshmi Matchmakers (And therefore earns nothing worth shit). I do not know much about how she looks but she used to have a boy-friend (another quaint name here) called Nathu who died in a car-crash. She has a gay guy called Harry as a friend. And nothing in this book makes me think that she is in anyway intelligent and well-read. In fact she comes across as a rather shallow and dogmatic creature.
And look at the guy who ends up finally pursuing her:
This guy called Raja Prasad. He is a tall, dark and handsome prince (are'nt they all). He has muscles all over his body (probably in his head also if he is chasing a girl like Lina and not some princess). He is (of course) rich. He runs a granite factory, three orphanages and sundry other charitable institutions in India. Plus he spouts sundry astronomical fundae five minutes after meeting Lina. To raise funds for the orphanages, he come to the US every now and then and while he does that, he stays in the best room of the Hilton and get chauffeured around in a Rolls. He has been engaged when he was a baby to this princess called Sayantoni. He has three palaces in India and they all simply crawl with servants.
After reading all this I could not help but laugh. The author seems to think that this is a match made in heaven! And look at how this all ends:
Lina cannot leave the US. Raja cannot leave India. So we are at a dead-lock. Raja finally gives in and moves to the US because he feels he needs to know her better.
In the end of course we have our Lady move to India. She lives in a palace, gets a retinue of servants and lives happily ever after.
Give me back my "History of the Battle of Stalingrad" Again!!!
And Madam...please please stop writing. Take matchmaking as a profession, but spare us this shit!
Monday, November 12, 2007
Bad Dreams
Have you ever had bad dreams???
A few days ago, early morning I had the most vivid and worst dream of my life.
As with most dreams, after a while you don't remember too much of it, but this much I remember:
An underworld gang is sitting down to a meeting. Someone says something and two guys start looking sheepish. Then they start running. One of them gets shot in the leg and collapses. The other chap (for some reason) stops and looks back.
Suddenly the scene changes and we are out in the open. The chap who had earlier stopped and looked back is herded on the footpath and then gets bludgeoned to death with a hammer.
I would not go into the vividness of that scene but let me just say that even recalling it now makes my skin crawl.
I woke up with a start.
For the next few days, I was scared of falling into deep sleep lest the same scene repeat before my eyes....
My God! I hope such dreams do not repeat themselves!!!
A few days ago, early morning I had the most vivid and worst dream of my life.
As with most dreams, after a while you don't remember too much of it, but this much I remember:
An underworld gang is sitting down to a meeting. Someone says something and two guys start looking sheepish. Then they start running. One of them gets shot in the leg and collapses. The other chap (for some reason) stops and looks back.
Suddenly the scene changes and we are out in the open. The chap who had earlier stopped and looked back is herded on the footpath and then gets bludgeoned to death with a hammer.
I would not go into the vividness of that scene but let me just say that even recalling it now makes my skin crawl.
I woke up with a start.
For the next few days, I was scared of falling into deep sleep lest the same scene repeat before my eyes....
My God! I hope such dreams do not repeat themselves!!!
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Diwali Reminiscences
I close my eyes and I am taken to my non-descript looking home in Ghaziabad.....
The door-bell rings. I run to open the door. There is another guest waiting to wish our family a happy Diwali. He has a big box of sweets. I let him in and get him seated on our worn sofa in the living room. While my mother engages him in conversation (my Dad is at work), I serve the gentleman tea and some snacks.
After taking a few sips of water, he glances at his watch and hurriedly wishes us goodbye and all the usual wishes of the season. I show him out. Just as his car purrs to life, I run back to the living room and get busy opening the box. Burfis are my favourtie....
Me and my Mum sit and make cotton "Diyas". After getting through making some hundred cotton wicks, I get tired. My mother then gives me and my elder brother the princely sum of fifty rupees and tells me to go and buy whatever crackers I want. We spend a blissful evening deciding which ones to buy. Its not easy. The good ones are costly. Quality v/s Quantity.....
Big day!
We all take a bath and get ready for the Puja. I put on my freshly cleaned shirt and trousers. We sit down in the small "Puja Room" while my Mum does the usual things. I wait impatiently for the ceremony to end. At the end of the ceremony, I get a "Pan" leaf, a few "batashas", one "burfi" (as many as I want actually but I have fallen sick after having too many of them already) and five rupees. I go and touch the feet of my Dad and he wishes me happiness in my life. We all sit down to light the "Diyas". My Dad is very punctilious with the wicks and the oil. He takes a lot of time to light them and after lighting them, he gives me very precise instructions on where to place them. I am only twelve. I need clear instructions.
Then me and my brother spend the next one hour burning the crackers. The neighbours come with more sweets and from my house-hold I am inevitably the one who has to go to every household to deliver sweets from our family. I don't mind. The next door neighbours have a beautiful looking daughter.
After finishing off the crackers, I go to the terrace and look at all the rockets lighting up the sky. Someday (I swear) I will grow up and have so much money that I will not run out of crackers to light up on Diwali! After the cracker-fest dies down in my neighbourhood, we have dinner. After that, my Dad sits down with his drink, my Mum sits down with her knitting and I go to buy a pack of Lay's chips with the five rupees Mum gave me during the Puja. (Masala flavour is my favourite).
Today when I open my eyes, I see myself in a room in a non-descript apartment in a foreign land. I want this festive season to be over soon so that I can get on with life. I have grown tired of Lay's chips and besides they are unhealthy. Crackers are banned here, but in either case I have lost the craze I used to have for them. My parents still get a lot of sweets but now the stack of boxes bewilder them. They mostly give the boxes away to the household help unopened. And for the life of me I cannot figure out why I used to count days to Diwali while I was at school....
I wish I could close my eyes and go back to my non-descript home in Ghaziabad again....
The door-bell rings. I run to open the door. There is another guest waiting to wish our family a happy Diwali. He has a big box of sweets. I let him in and get him seated on our worn sofa in the living room. While my mother engages him in conversation (my Dad is at work), I serve the gentleman tea and some snacks.
After taking a few sips of water, he glances at his watch and hurriedly wishes us goodbye and all the usual wishes of the season. I show him out. Just as his car purrs to life, I run back to the living room and get busy opening the box. Burfis are my favourtie....
Me and my Mum sit and make cotton "Diyas". After getting through making some hundred cotton wicks, I get tired. My mother then gives me and my elder brother the princely sum of fifty rupees and tells me to go and buy whatever crackers I want. We spend a blissful evening deciding which ones to buy. Its not easy. The good ones are costly. Quality v/s Quantity.....
Big day!
We all take a bath and get ready for the Puja. I put on my freshly cleaned shirt and trousers. We sit down in the small "Puja Room" while my Mum does the usual things. I wait impatiently for the ceremony to end. At the end of the ceremony, I get a "Pan" leaf, a few "batashas", one "burfi" (as many as I want actually but I have fallen sick after having too many of them already) and five rupees. I go and touch the feet of my Dad and he wishes me happiness in my life. We all sit down to light the "Diyas". My Dad is very punctilious with the wicks and the oil. He takes a lot of time to light them and after lighting them, he gives me very precise instructions on where to place them. I am only twelve. I need clear instructions.
Then me and my brother spend the next one hour burning the crackers. The neighbours come with more sweets and from my house-hold I am inevitably the one who has to go to every household to deliver sweets from our family. I don't mind. The next door neighbours have a beautiful looking daughter.
After finishing off the crackers, I go to the terrace and look at all the rockets lighting up the sky. Someday (I swear) I will grow up and have so much money that I will not run out of crackers to light up on Diwali! After the cracker-fest dies down in my neighbourhood, we have dinner. After that, my Dad sits down with his drink, my Mum sits down with her knitting and I go to buy a pack of Lay's chips with the five rupees Mum gave me during the Puja. (Masala flavour is my favourite).
Today when I open my eyes, I see myself in a room in a non-descript apartment in a foreign land. I want this festive season to be over soon so that I can get on with life. I have grown tired of Lay's chips and besides they are unhealthy. Crackers are banned here, but in either case I have lost the craze I used to have for them. My parents still get a lot of sweets but now the stack of boxes bewilder them. They mostly give the boxes away to the household help unopened. And for the life of me I cannot figure out why I used to count days to Diwali while I was at school....
I wish I could close my eyes and go back to my non-descript home in Ghaziabad again....
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Steve Jobs' cheek!!!!
Mac OS X Leopard got released a while ago.
Apparently the new OS has a new set of icons for generic things.
This is the one for a PC
Cruel I must say....
This was ripped off from here. Do take a look. Its long and technical but nice...
Apparently the new OS has a new set of icons for generic things.
This is the one for a PC
Cruel I must say....
This was ripped off from here. Do take a look. Its long and technical but nice...
Thursday, October 25, 2007
The experience of a common man with "The Indian Face of Global Banking"
"The Indian Face of Global Banking".
That's the motto of ICICI Bank. I am a hapless Indian stuck with a lot of accounts with that bank and I don't think I can handle so much Global Banking.
It all started when I came to Singapore (It usually does these days...)
I was living in Bangalore previously and maintained a "Resident Savings Account" with ICICI. When I came to Singapore I technically became an NRI and to keep my account running to pay EMIs etc, I had to convert it into an NRI account.
Now began the problem.
I called up the phone banking service. All the calls were attended promptly by young sounding voices which quickly took on an American accent as soon as I informed them that I was calling from Singapore.
I called up thrice to double-check what forms I had to fill to do the necessary conversion. They all said the same thing: Fill a simple form, attach a few documents, send it along and the conversion will happen in two weeks.
I did the needful.
Two weeks after sending the forms along, I received a very nice email saying that now I have fill another five page long form and also write a letter requesting the de-linking of my investment account.
I wrote a stinging reply pointing out that I had called up the phone-banking service and they never mentioned any five page long form.
The same chap replied on the following lines:
Sir, We are sorry for the inconvenience caused. Please fill the form given in the following link (which turned out to be a dead one). Alternatively you can download the attached form and send it to us.
Closer inspection of the attached form revealed that it actually was a form spelling out who I wanted my money to go to in the event of my death!!!!
Was that ICICI Bank officer trying to send me a message? (You better update your nomination! You might need it if you come to India!)
I replied in an even more stinging language to this gentleman. In reply another lady wrote back with a plausible looking form attached.
While I sat at my desk and stared at this form (Its five pages and I don't want to fill it), another nice gentleman from ICICI called. He wanted me to take a premium NRI account. When I told him the above story and also what he could do with that offer, he replied, "Sir, RBI rules require you to open this premium account also".
Now I lost it.
I told him in no uncertain terms of all the different versions of the rules and regulations I have been hearing from different officers in different departments of ICICI Bank. I also told him that if according to rules I have to open that premium account, I would like the process stopped and I would begin the process of closing my accounts fort-with. He put me on hold and came back fifteen minutes later (while I listened to some ICICI Bank jingle again and again) and went back on his earlier claim about the rules requiring me to open that premium account.
One funny portion of the conversation went like this:
Me: Your phone banking executive told me that I will only need to fill a one-page form. Now you are telling me that the process requires me to fill a five-page form.
He: Sir its possible that the process might have changed.
Me: So what's the guarantee that it will not change again while I fill this form?
He: Sir, processes don't change!
Me: (Sometime later) You told me that RBI rules require me to open an NRE account, now you are saying something different when I wanted to close the account.
He: Sir, this account has a lot of benefits, you get tax-free returns, you can send a lovely gift to your loved ones, you don't need a minimum balance, it can give you a blow-job....blah .... blah...
Whew! I will fill this form and humour these guys, but if they create any more problems, I am closing my accounts. I wish there were some way of talking to the top bosses of that bank and show them what their organization does....
That's the motto of ICICI Bank. I am a hapless Indian stuck with a lot of accounts with that bank and I don't think I can handle so much Global Banking.
It all started when I came to Singapore (It usually does these days...)
I was living in Bangalore previously and maintained a "Resident Savings Account" with ICICI. When I came to Singapore I technically became an NRI and to keep my account running to pay EMIs etc, I had to convert it into an NRI account.
Now began the problem.
I called up the phone banking service. All the calls were attended promptly by young sounding voices which quickly took on an American accent as soon as I informed them that I was calling from Singapore.
I called up thrice to double-check what forms I had to fill to do the necessary conversion. They all said the same thing: Fill a simple form, attach a few documents, send it along and the conversion will happen in two weeks.
I did the needful.
Two weeks after sending the forms along, I received a very nice email saying that now I have fill another five page long form and also write a letter requesting the de-linking of my investment account.
I wrote a stinging reply pointing out that I had called up the phone-banking service and they never mentioned any five page long form.
The same chap replied on the following lines:
Sir, We are sorry for the inconvenience caused. Please fill the form given in the following link (which turned out to be a dead one). Alternatively you can download the attached form and send it to us.
Closer inspection of the attached form revealed that it actually was a form spelling out who I wanted my money to go to in the event of my death!!!!
Was that ICICI Bank officer trying to send me a message? (You better update your nomination! You might need it if you come to India!)
I replied in an even more stinging language to this gentleman. In reply another lady wrote back with a plausible looking form attached.
While I sat at my desk and stared at this form (Its five pages and I don't want to fill it), another nice gentleman from ICICI called. He wanted me to take a premium NRI account. When I told him the above story and also what he could do with that offer, he replied, "Sir, RBI rules require you to open this premium account also".
Now I lost it.
I told him in no uncertain terms of all the different versions of the rules and regulations I have been hearing from different officers in different departments of ICICI Bank. I also told him that if according to rules I have to open that premium account, I would like the process stopped and I would begin the process of closing my accounts fort-with. He put me on hold and came back fifteen minutes later (while I listened to some ICICI Bank jingle again and again) and went back on his earlier claim about the rules requiring me to open that premium account.
One funny portion of the conversation went like this:
Me: Your phone banking executive told me that I will only need to fill a one-page form. Now you are telling me that the process requires me to fill a five-page form.
He: Sir its possible that the process might have changed.
Me: So what's the guarantee that it will not change again while I fill this form?
He: Sir, processes don't change!
Me: (Sometime later) You told me that RBI rules require me to open an NRE account, now you are saying something different when I wanted to close the account.
He: Sir, this account has a lot of benefits, you get tax-free returns, you can send a lovely gift to your loved ones, you don't need a minimum balance, it can give you a blow-job....blah .... blah...
Whew! I will fill this form and humour these guys, but if they create any more problems, I am closing my accounts. I wish there were some way of talking to the top bosses of that bank and show them what their organization does....
Friday, October 19, 2007
You can get in anytime you want but you can never leave...
So said a very dear wing-mate of mine on Yahoo Messenger a few days ago when I informed him that these days I have switched to a Mac.
I must admit that I feel the same.
I have always used a Windows/MS-DOS PC. That's how I came to know computers. I remember very vividly my confusion the first day in IIT Kharagpur's Communication's Lab when the LINUX machine there refused to entertain my 'DIR' command.
Before that I did know that there is this thing called the operating system and that there are varieties other than MS-DOS and WINDOWS.
I first came across a Mac in Georgia Tech where a maverick professor installed only Apple computers in his lab and threw the other machines out. Then the difference did not hit me.
After that first brush, I just heard bits and pieces about Apple Computers. And all those bits and pieces were not very encouraging for me to even consider a switch. Most of the times people brushed off Mac's with the argument that once you buy it, you are stuck.
"You have to buy software for it all the time since free/pirated software is not available"
"Any documents you make on a Mac will not be compatible with any other types of machines and since most use Windows, stick to it"
I heard a lot of arguments on these lines.
But one fine day, I decided to buy a laptop. I also decided that I don't want something that everyone else has. I wanted something different.
So I plumped for a Mac. (Besides all that, it also turned out to be one of the cheaper lappys on offer)
Four months after making that decision, I don't regret it at all. My Mac is a wonderful piece of work. It works great. Its user-interface is mind-blowing. It looks gorgeous and has a very long battery life. Also, I did not need to buy any extra software. All the stuff I needed was available for free on the net. My Boss did hand me a "gray" copy of iWork but I have not used it much. I am quite happy with OpenOffice. And you know, in the four months this baby has been with me, it has NEVER hung on me!
Not that it has been entirely plain sailing. I have had major problems with my chat clients. Yahoo messenger for Mac OS X does not have voice functionality and there is no Google Talk client for Mac. I have had to do with iChat configured for Google Talk and it is less than perfect.
Having said that, I still would plump for a Mac any day.
Today my room-mate brought home his newly purchased Dell with Vista. While he sat beside me and I set it up for him, I had some difficulty hiding my distaste. Its slow, it has a lot of flab (the AERO interface), the 3D view, widgets and search look like direct copies of ideas pioneered by Mac. Plus for all this you have to put in 2 GB of RAM and it still works with hiccups while my Mac OS zips along with half that RAM.
I have never been a computer fanatic. I could never figure out what made people queue up in front of computer stores waiting for the new software/processor release. I know now. The new version of Mac OS "Leopard" comes out in less than a week and though I will not be in the queue on the first day, I will definitely buy it in a couple of months after it gets released in Singapore.
And yes, I got in the Mac band-wagon when I wanted, but now I cannot and will not leave...
I must admit that I feel the same.
I have always used a Windows/MS-DOS PC. That's how I came to know computers. I remember very vividly my confusion the first day in IIT Kharagpur's Communication's Lab when the LINUX machine there refused to entertain my 'DIR' command.
Before that I did know that there is this thing called the operating system and that there are varieties other than MS-DOS and WINDOWS.
I first came across a Mac in Georgia Tech where a maverick professor installed only Apple computers in his lab and threw the other machines out. Then the difference did not hit me.
After that first brush, I just heard bits and pieces about Apple Computers. And all those bits and pieces were not very encouraging for me to even consider a switch. Most of the times people brushed off Mac's with the argument that once you buy it, you are stuck.
"You have to buy software for it all the time since free/pirated software is not available"
"Any documents you make on a Mac will not be compatible with any other types of machines and since most use Windows, stick to it"
I heard a lot of arguments on these lines.
But one fine day, I decided to buy a laptop. I also decided that I don't want something that everyone else has. I wanted something different.
So I plumped for a Mac. (Besides all that, it also turned out to be one of the cheaper lappys on offer)
Four months after making that decision, I don't regret it at all. My Mac is a wonderful piece of work. It works great. Its user-interface is mind-blowing. It looks gorgeous and has a very long battery life. Also, I did not need to buy any extra software. All the stuff I needed was available for free on the net. My Boss did hand me a "gray" copy of iWork but I have not used it much. I am quite happy with OpenOffice. And you know, in the four months this baby has been with me, it has NEVER hung on me!
Not that it has been entirely plain sailing. I have had major problems with my chat clients. Yahoo messenger for Mac OS X does not have voice functionality and there is no Google Talk client for Mac. I have had to do with iChat configured for Google Talk and it is less than perfect.
Having said that, I still would plump for a Mac any day.
Today my room-mate brought home his newly purchased Dell with Vista. While he sat beside me and I set it up for him, I had some difficulty hiding my distaste. Its slow, it has a lot of flab (the AERO interface), the 3D view, widgets and search look like direct copies of ideas pioneered by Mac. Plus for all this you have to put in 2 GB of RAM and it still works with hiccups while my Mac OS zips along with half that RAM.
I have never been a computer fanatic. I could never figure out what made people queue up in front of computer stores waiting for the new software/processor release. I know now. The new version of Mac OS "Leopard" comes out in less than a week and though I will not be in the queue on the first day, I will definitely buy it in a couple of months after it gets released in Singapore.
And yes, I got in the Mac band-wagon when I wanted, but now I cannot and will not leave...
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Trying to uproot an addiction...
In my twenty-six years of existence, there have not been many things I have been addicted to. There was a time when I could not live without taking my nightly walk and listening to Aerosmith. That time lasted for about six months. I still have that pair of CDs here but when I look at them, I can only vaguely recall the passion I felt for its music. Its like meeting an old girl-friend long after the relationship is over and wondering what drove you to the heights of passion you experienced.
Anyway, I don't like being addicted to anything. These days I am addicted to this book called, "The Namesake". I don't have much work at office these days. Whenever I come back home (which is very early these days), I see that book lying on my cupboard. I have to try very hard to control my impulse to grab it and read it for the umpteenth time.
This is an effort to get over my addiction... After all the library lease runs out this week!
I still have not been able to figure out how book-reviewers think up the balderdash they churn out either in panning or apotheosizing a tome. Get a load of this:
"Against all that is irrational and inevitable about life, Lahiri posits the timeless, borderless eloquence and permanence of great writing"
or even better:
"The Namesake is a quietly moving first novel... Intensely absorbing....locates the universality in precisely evoked individuality"!!!!
This is my humble effort to review this gem. And if you are looking for words like that, please read no further.
I liked this book because the author, with great insight, laid bare what an immigrant feels when he leaves behind everything he calls his own to start a new life in a foreign land. To begin with, you yearn for your Mom's cooking, the surly auto-drivers on the streets of Bangalore and the "Musambi Juice" you used to drink at that shop in Brigade Road after a few beers on a Friday night. And you yearn for something else: A feeling of belonging.
As time passes, the yearning goes down and slowly, the bonds that though strained, still bind you to your motherland, give way and you become part of a diaspora. You have still the remnants of an erstwhile identity. Your children have none. Gogol is neither a 100% American nor a 100% Indian. He can either try to reinforce his American identity and be "More American than the Americans" or try to get back to his Indian roots and be a "Born again Indian". If he does nothing, he will be an "American Indian". Try as he might, he will not be able to evade one of these labels.
Though Gogol has it easy. Atleast he has a well-defined cultural system or a way of life to identify with in India. A "diasporaic" Bihari-Gujarati in Singapore has not even that.... (Thank God taking the next flight to Bangalore will not label me a "Born again Indian"!!!! Too early for that!)
My most favourite character in this book is of course, Ashima. The book begins with her and almost ends with her. She loves her family and makes 67 Pemberton Road a place which wherever they might be, Gogol and Sonia will always consider home. She is emotional, yet strong. She is the most help-less creature in this book but touchingly so. She reminds me of a help-less mother hen who is drenched in the rain and none of her kids are around to help her. That she gets up and helps herself does not in anyway decrease her vulnerability. At the end when she is left all alone, she makes it a point to pick up the pieces of her life and live her life herself without being a "burden" on either of her children. This requires a lot of courage.
I am always touched by the reference to a "teary" Ashima going back home after dropping Gogol off to college for the first time while he, un-caring, goes about doing the formalities required in changing his name.
Parents are like that. So are the children.
The focus of the book is primarily on Ashima in the beginning and on Gogol at the end.
Gogol strikes me as a slightly irresponsible child in the beginning but he quickly matures into an adult who can share his happiness but keeps his sorrow to himself. That Christmas eve, he discovers that his marriage is over but he keeps it to himself lest he ruin the holiday season for Ashima and Sonia. What are most touching are the little things he does for Moushumi.
"Occasionally, in the apartment, he finds odd remnants of her life before he's appeared in it, her life with Graham - the inscription to the two of them in a book of poems, a postcard from Provence stuffed into the back of a dictionary, addressed to the apartment they had secretly shared. Once, unable to stop himself, he'd walked to this address during his lunch break, wondering what her life had been back then."
Its very difficult not to be moved by the pathos of his love which is re-paid by nothing else but submission on the part of Moushumi. Moushumi being a free spirit cannot last in that situation for long and does not.
And that's the tragedy of life and love.
Anyway, I don't like being addicted to anything. These days I am addicted to this book called, "The Namesake". I don't have much work at office these days. Whenever I come back home (which is very early these days), I see that book lying on my cupboard. I have to try very hard to control my impulse to grab it and read it for the umpteenth time.
This is an effort to get over my addiction... After all the library lease runs out this week!
I still have not been able to figure out how book-reviewers think up the balderdash they churn out either in panning or apotheosizing a tome. Get a load of this:
"Against all that is irrational and inevitable about life, Lahiri posits the timeless, borderless eloquence and permanence of great writing"
or even better:
"The Namesake is a quietly moving first novel... Intensely absorbing....locates the universality in precisely evoked individuality"!!!!
This is my humble effort to review this gem. And if you are looking for words like that, please read no further.
I liked this book because the author, with great insight, laid bare what an immigrant feels when he leaves behind everything he calls his own to start a new life in a foreign land. To begin with, you yearn for your Mom's cooking, the surly auto-drivers on the streets of Bangalore and the "Musambi Juice" you used to drink at that shop in Brigade Road after a few beers on a Friday night. And you yearn for something else: A feeling of belonging.
As time passes, the yearning goes down and slowly, the bonds that though strained, still bind you to your motherland, give way and you become part of a diaspora. You have still the remnants of an erstwhile identity. Your children have none. Gogol is neither a 100% American nor a 100% Indian. He can either try to reinforce his American identity and be "More American than the Americans" or try to get back to his Indian roots and be a "Born again Indian". If he does nothing, he will be an "American Indian". Try as he might, he will not be able to evade one of these labels.
Though Gogol has it easy. Atleast he has a well-defined cultural system or a way of life to identify with in India. A "diasporaic" Bihari-Gujarati in Singapore has not even that.... (Thank God taking the next flight to Bangalore will not label me a "Born again Indian"!!!! Too early for that!)
My most favourite character in this book is of course, Ashima. The book begins with her and almost ends with her. She loves her family and makes 67 Pemberton Road a place which wherever they might be, Gogol and Sonia will always consider home. She is emotional, yet strong. She is the most help-less creature in this book but touchingly so. She reminds me of a help-less mother hen who is drenched in the rain and none of her kids are around to help her. That she gets up and helps herself does not in anyway decrease her vulnerability. At the end when she is left all alone, she makes it a point to pick up the pieces of her life and live her life herself without being a "burden" on either of her children. This requires a lot of courage.
I am always touched by the reference to a "teary" Ashima going back home after dropping Gogol off to college for the first time while he, un-caring, goes about doing the formalities required in changing his name.
Parents are like that. So are the children.
The focus of the book is primarily on Ashima in the beginning and on Gogol at the end.
Gogol strikes me as a slightly irresponsible child in the beginning but he quickly matures into an adult who can share his happiness but keeps his sorrow to himself. That Christmas eve, he discovers that his marriage is over but he keeps it to himself lest he ruin the holiday season for Ashima and Sonia. What are most touching are the little things he does for Moushumi.
"Occasionally, in the apartment, he finds odd remnants of her life before he's appeared in it, her life with Graham - the inscription to the two of them in a book of poems, a postcard from Provence stuffed into the back of a dictionary, addressed to the apartment they had secretly shared. Once, unable to stop himself, he'd walked to this address during his lunch break, wondering what her life had been back then."
Its very difficult not to be moved by the pathos of his love which is re-paid by nothing else but submission on the part of Moushumi. Moushumi being a free spirit cannot last in that situation for long and does not.
And that's the tragedy of life and love.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
More "The Namesake"
Been reading that book again.... Looks like it will take me at-least a dozen more re-reads to get it out of my system.
"The thought of Christmas overwhelms Nikhil. Last year they went to Moushumi's parents' house. This year they will go to Pemberton Road. He no longer looks forward to the holiday; he wants only to be on the other side of the season. His impatience makes him feel that he is, incontrovertibly, finally, an adult".
I can say the same thing for myself. Only it would'nt be Christmas but Diwali....
"The thought of Christmas overwhelms Nikhil. Last year they went to Moushumi's parents' house. This year they will go to Pemberton Road. He no longer looks forward to the holiday; he wants only to be on the other side of the season. His impatience makes him feel that he is, incontrovertibly, finally, an adult".
I can say the same thing for myself. Only it would'nt be Christmas but Diwali....
Friday, September 28, 2007
Now WHO would have thought of this!!!!
Sometimes the Singapore Government simply leaves me speechless!
Thursday, September 27, 2007
What to do?
All right! So its done!
I had my first tape-out in my new outfit yesterday.
Can you imagine a tape-out without nights-out? One in which at no point of time you think that things are out of control? Well this one was like that. We got into tape-out mode one week ago, but tape-out mode was just another extra hour in the evening. Everyone still managed to leave work at seven. Only at the last day I had to stay till three and that too because I had made a mistake in firing a really long simulation and had to fire it again.
Now apparently the entire team has a "rest-period" for six weeks while the chip arrives.
Six weeks!!!
A colleague of mine was telling me the other day that silicon can be expected only six weeks after release to fab. I innocently asked him what people do in that period. He looked at me in confusion, looked at his compatriot with the expression, "what's with this guy?" and says "Nothing of course!!"
Then it was my turn to have the expression, "What's with this guy?". But its true! For the next six weeks nothing has been planned. I guess I will catch up on my reading for a change.
Have you noticed how boring it is to land up at work and have nothing to do? I sit and gawk around. Then I check gmail. Then I check rediff. Then timesofindia.com. Then a few blogs and in fifteen minutes I do not know what to do next.
I tried searching about string theory to put myself up-to-speed on the developments but gave up on it in five minutes. They talk pure Swahili!
********
Today this associate of mine e-mailed me from Bay Area. The signature on his email read:
(Particulars changed to protect identity)
ABC Kumar
Converters Group
XYZ Semiconductors
San-Diego USA
"Arbiet Macht Frei"
(Arbiet Macht Frei loosely translated from German means "Works makes you free". This was the motto of the Aushwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp)
I think he is over-worked.
I had my first tape-out in my new outfit yesterday.
Can you imagine a tape-out without nights-out? One in which at no point of time you think that things are out of control? Well this one was like that. We got into tape-out mode one week ago, but tape-out mode was just another extra hour in the evening. Everyone still managed to leave work at seven. Only at the last day I had to stay till three and that too because I had made a mistake in firing a really long simulation and had to fire it again.
Now apparently the entire team has a "rest-period" for six weeks while the chip arrives.
Six weeks!!!
A colleague of mine was telling me the other day that silicon can be expected only six weeks after release to fab. I innocently asked him what people do in that period. He looked at me in confusion, looked at his compatriot with the expression, "what's with this guy?" and says "Nothing of course!!"
Then it was my turn to have the expression, "What's with this guy?". But its true! For the next six weeks nothing has been planned. I guess I will catch up on my reading for a change.
Have you noticed how boring it is to land up at work and have nothing to do? I sit and gawk around. Then I check gmail. Then I check rediff. Then timesofindia.com. Then a few blogs and in fifteen minutes I do not know what to do next.
I tried searching about string theory to put myself up-to-speed on the developments but gave up on it in five minutes. They talk pure Swahili!
********
Today this associate of mine e-mailed me from Bay Area. The signature on his email read:
(Particulars changed to protect identity)
ABC Kumar
Converters Group
XYZ Semiconductors
San-Diego USA
"Arbiet Macht Frei"
(Arbiet Macht Frei loosely translated from German means "Works makes you free". This was the motto of the Aushwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp)
I think he is over-worked.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Monday, September 17, 2007
This can happen only in Singapore
This morning I received my mobile phone bill. I was quite flummoxed by the in-ordinately large bill when I noticed that according to the mobile company at least, I have spent a major part of my month in Malaysia and was therefore on international roaming.
International Roaming??? Hell I have been doing nothing but waking up in the mornings and going to work!
Well this is how it panned out: My office is in the northern part of Singapore. The Malaysian border check-point is a fifteen minute drive from it. So its quite normal for my stupid cell-phone to catch hold of the Malaysian cellphone providers' network which has a stronger footprint.
My boss smilingly assured me that if I wanted to talk on local call rates to anyone in Indonesia, all I had to do was drive fifteen minutes in another direction from my office. Now I am thinking..... If I were to drive ANOTHER fifteen minutes towards the East, would I catch hold of some cellphone base-station in the Andamans??? That would solve my calling-home problems right away!!!!
International Roaming??? Hell I have been doing nothing but waking up in the mornings and going to work!
Well this is how it panned out: My office is in the northern part of Singapore. The Malaysian border check-point is a fifteen minute drive from it. So its quite normal for my stupid cell-phone to catch hold of the Malaysian cellphone providers' network which has a stronger footprint.
My boss smilingly assured me that if I wanted to talk on local call rates to anyone in Indonesia, all I had to do was drive fifteen minutes in another direction from my office. Now I am thinking..... If I were to drive ANOTHER fifteen minutes towards the East, would I catch hold of some cellphone base-station in the Andamans??? That would solve my calling-home problems right away!!!!
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Man! I hate shopping...
If you ever want to torture me, all you have to do is hand me some cash and tell me to go and buy myself a wardrobe full of clothes. When it comes to buying books and music CDs I can claim to almost enjoy the process but when it comes to buying shirts and shoes, all I do is grit my teeth and try to get it over with as quickly as possible. I have gone to limits like going to work in shoes with my toes sticking out for a fortnight while waiting for a guardian angel to come and buy shoes for me with no intervention on my part (except having to pay the bills of course).
Nothing like that ever happens of course..
I always have the feeling that if I buy something:
1. It won't fit me when I try it out again at home (as if I were a Complan boy who gains inches in minutes)
2. I won't like the shade when I wake up next morning
3. While trying out all the permutations of shirts, trousers and shoes, the sales-woman is sniggering at my taste in clothes..
4. ... or is laughing at the ratty socks I am wearing (which need a replacement themselves but I have yet to come round to replacing them..)
So the shopping pattern with me is normally ... six months no activity....one day enough shopping to fill my wardrobe to overflowing... six months no activity....
Last week I bought myself a pair of shoes (along with three shirts, two trousers, one T-shirt and another pair of shoes...). Next morning I got a feeling that the shade of the pair of sport shoes is decidedly feminine. Then it turned out to be one size too small.
Normal occurrence with Kanan Saurabh whose idea of buying shoes is
1. To rush in a shoe-shop
2. Stare psychotically around him
3. Pick a pair at random
4. Hand a fist-ful of bills to the bemused cashier and
5. Rush out for dear life...
Buying a replacement is among my week's to-do list right now. But ... Man! I hate shopping...
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Could it be????
Just compare the two:
Hyderabad blasts:
Date: 25 th August, 2007
No of bombs: 2
No of killed: 42
Class of target: Soft (Civilians)
Rawalpindi blasts:
Date: 4th September, 2007 (10 days later)
No of bombs: 2
No of killed: 29???
Class of target: Semi-hard (Defence employees)
Now I am thinking, is it tit-for-tat?
Is this an indication of the Indian guys FINALLY waking up and saying that two can play at the same game, and that we can play it better than you???
Monday, September 03, 2007
Foot in the mouth and other stories....
Today we were having a dinner at work. All of us were there: me, my colleagues and my boss.
The conversation somehow turned to how this particular woman made it to the most powerful women in the world list. She is a politically well-connected lady whose meteoric rise coincided with her making those political connections. Someone said that her previous venture was a major flop. She managed to screw up the enterprise but still made it to where she is at present.
To this someone said "Yeah, it does not matter what you know and what you do..."
And I unthinking-ly chimed in saying, "All it matters is who you know and who you do...."
The topic of the conversation changed in record time....
*******************
Today in the local bus, an African-American couple had to dis-embark pell-mell at the first place the bus stopped with their precious cargo.
Toilet paper rolls.
Three sacks of it.
They could not handle the sympathetic looks they got from every direction. While they were sitting in the bus (and while I was sitting behind them), a couple of Tamil aunties got very solicitous.
"Americans leh!! Local food very spicy no!!!"
A Chinese uncle very hospitably asked, "Got them at an offer lah???"
Five minutes later, the couple were outside the bus.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
This is why I love ACDC
Just follow the guitar in this
And the drums in this one
One of the hallmarks of this band is Angus Young doing all sorts of things on the stage in a school boy uniform. You will see that in the first video, though in that he is on a van.
The lead singer (Bon Scott) in the first video is not the one who sings in the second one (Brian Johnson). Bon Scott died in typical rock star fashion out of a suspected drug overdose.
Anyway...why am I giving you this history lesson. Listen to the two songs and enjoy. If you need more, catch hold of me when I am in India this December.... :D
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Chak De
Saw this movie a few days ago. Came back extremely impressed at the progress Indian film-makers have made. In the 1980s-1990s, all they churned out were the "masala" movies where lissome lasses gyrated around trees and hunks pranced around in shiny white shoes and green slacks.
Now I see that the movies have become a lot more meaningful. Of course there have been the usual clutch of movies which are very similar to the genre I outlined above but there has been a steady stream of movies which are eminently watch-able. The movies I have seen in the past few weeks are: Chak De, Shoot-out at Lokhandwala, Honey-moon Travels. I forget the others and the list is not really very long as I am no longer in a place where I can watch new Hindi movies everyday. You can argue that in Singapore only the REALLY good Hindi movies will get screened. That apart, the list of movies that I have mentioned...well all of them turned out to be really watch-able. They all had meaningful story-lines which were right out of the ordinary and you could not guess what was coming next.
Take Chak-De for instance. The topics this movie touches upon are all very real and have been adeptly handled. This movie reminded me of Swadesh. But in a different and more pleasant way. In Swadesh, the director was simply preaching. He took a lot of topics. Laboriously preached on them. Checked thoroughly to make sure he had not left anything out and then signed off the movie with an ending which was equally idealistic and equally implausible. Here the director touched upon other topics (sorry state of affairs of our sports associations, the way every Muslim in our country has to prove his patriotism every step of the way, the way women are still viewed as house-hold help). He though did not preach but made a story-line which was watch-able, entertaining and inspiring. He also threw in major points about how to lead and motivate a team.
Swadesh is still a victory for Indian cinema as it went off the beaten track (though it went over-board doing it), but Chak-De is a coup-de-grace.
India turned 60 a few days ago. A commentator on rediff said that it has been remarkable achievement that we have stayed a united and strong country for all these years. If you look at it the odds against us are many. We don't have a common religion, a common language, script, culture...anything for that matter. You go from North India to South India and you would feel a culture shock which is not very different from what I felt coming from Bangalore to Singapore. Indeed you ask a Chinese what being Chinese means and you get a one line answer: It means speaking Chinese. You ask that same question to an Indian and you get a book: The Discovery of India. There is no direct answer.
The divisive pulls are many. Among the factors which has kept Indians together is Indian (or rather Hindi) cinema.
The entire interview in rediff is given here: I quote the relevant passage here:
"One of the greatest compliments to Hindi films mentioned in my book is that Manipuri insurgents banned the screening of Hindi films in Manipur because it would integrate them more with the other Indians. This is an extraordinary tribute to the uniting influence of the Hindi film"
Its definitely an achievement that one of our strongest media is slowly coming out of the clouds and starting to look at the major problems and handicaps which stymie us as a nation. The first step in solving a problem is appreciating that the problem exists. If through movies we realize the problems we face, I am sure we would find a way to solve them
Amen!!!!!
P.S.: Don't worry guys, I am not transforming into a political analyst. But thinking on these lines is definitely a change. I will be back to pub-reviewing very soon.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
I wish there were more hours in a day....
Yesterday, I woke up at 11. Then I went for a trek in the Macritchie Reservoir (I am not sure I got the spelling right). It was not too much of a trek really. More like a walk across the jungle. Still after almost four months of living in a concrete jungle with nothing else in sight except high-rises, roads, cars and buses, its nice to get out in the open and look at monitor lizards....
Came back at about six and then set off directly to go pub-hopping in the Clark Quay area. First we went to this pub called the Crazy Elephant. It was a nice place with moderately priced beer and "comfortable" music. What I liked most about that pub were the two wide screen television monitors on which they displayed the weirdest and the most obscene set of jokes that I have ever come across.
The beer there was nice but the pub was too full of loud-mouthed Australians for my liking and two of my buddies did not like the pubs version of a "Chivas Regal Jug". It was a big jug full of water, ice-cubes with traces of Chivas Regal Whiskey in it. So after a round of drinks we decided to go pub-hopping.
We did not do much of hopping. Just hopped right across the Quay to this place called Brewerkz. That outfit brews its own beer. The music is again "comfortable" (Boo! Hoo!!!) but the service is nice, and they have a set of really wide screen television screens but this time they were displaying the EPL matches live.
We drank beer and scotch and cheered for Chelsea as they tried every dirty tactic in the book to keep Portsmouth at bay. A school buddy of mine dropped in to say hi but since he had two women in tow, he decided he was better off without this pack of rambunctious and lecherous IIT-ians. So five minutes of hugging and back-slapping and he was off.
Just after half-time we all left. I got home at half-past one in the morning after having a really fun and active day. Fell straight into bed.
I wish all days were like this. I wish I could work like a dog, party like an animal and sleep like a log. The only problem is that The Maker has given me only twenty-four hours in a day to do it all in......
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
More James Clavell....
I have been reading this book called Whirlwind by this author. In this one (for a change) he writes about the uprising in Iran which ousted the moderate Pahlavi dynasty and installed Ayatollah Khomeini as the ruler.
He paints a very scary picture of a country in the grip of Mullahs rousing an illiterate populace into violence with the temptation of martyrdom and heaven a martyr goes to after that.
That got me thinking...
Pakistan is right next door. Its also in the grip of Mullahs. There are thousands of unemployed youths willing to take up arms and become martyrs eventually. Can something like what happened in 1979 in Iran happen there? Possible.
But how does it affect us you might ask?
The Iran-Iraq war lasted for 8 years. In the eight years Iran lost an estimated 500, 000 people while Iraq lost some 375, 000 people. Both the countries fought because of only Shia-Sunni differences. And both the countries were not even nuclear weapons states....
Friday, July 27, 2007
Is absolute happiness a myth?
This is regarding this post
Well probably. But there are moments when I have gone down on my knees (figuratively) and told The Almighty, "Please God! Enough!!! I don't want anything more".
Like this one time.....
I had just joined my first job. I got my first salary. Collected a set of REALLY crazy friends. (My friends would vouch for the fact that I have had the good fortune of having absolute crack-pots as my roomies...). Went to a place in Bangalore called ITPL on a Friday night. Had pizzas and beer. While returning from that place, slightly zoned out, I had said a prayer of thanks to The Almightly for letting me see so much happiness.
Or this other evening about a year later when we moved into a new house spacious house we rented and invited practically everyone we knew in Bangalore for a house-warming party. Some twenty guys turned up and we between ourselves finished off two bottles of tequila and other assorted liquor. That night at 2:00 am, I had decided that the world is not a bad place after all. Fifteen seconds later I had gone to sleep on a the floor right in the centre of our new home after shoving aside atleast three pairs of legs.
Then we had once gone for a trek to Sakleshpur. We walked for about half a dozen kilometers before people started conking out and giving up. Then while we waited, (and while I cussed, raved and kicked) it began to rain. It drizzled at first. Then in five minutes it started coming down in heaping hand-fuls. We all took off our shirts and danced.
So I guess there IS something called absolute happiness. But it comes in flashes. It shows you a glimpse and goes away before you can reach out and feel it properly. Now in these less-than-perfect times, I remember those fleeting glimpses of heaven and sigh.
Absolute happiness in not a myth. But is it a curse?
Friday, July 13, 2007
Encounters
I really do not know how to describe this. Should I describe this as, "An Encounter with another Indian" or "An Encounter with a Singaporean" ?
But I go too fast....
Singapore has this funda of food courts. Its a covered up area where there are tables to eat on and a lot of stalls selling all sorts of food and drink. Invariably there is a stall specializing in Indian food. There is a food court beside my office where I typically have breakfast and lunch.
I got friendly with the Indian stall guy as I invariably have my breakfast there. After a few weeks of innocuous Hi's, we two had long chat the other morning while I put away my Sambhar Dosa.
Five minutes into the conversation our man started denigrating India and Indians. We are still in the stone age. We have not progressed. We Indians (I mean me and my compatriots still unlucky enough to be in India) will never progress. .... blah ... blah....
Ten minutes of this tirade and my patience was at an end. I asked him when he had been to India last. He replied quite proudly that he was born in Singapore and has not visited India even once. I told him that probably it was not correct to voice such opinions then since he has not seen the amount of progress my country has made.
He comes back with this anecdote, "A few years ago, Atal Behari Vajpayee had come visiting and I had gone to his address. That fellow could not even stand and speak properly. Worst of all, his body-guards were carrying Smith and Wessons' pistols. What a country you have man! You are still in the stone age. Your prime minister is protected by such outdated guns!!!"
I can of course go and argue about the merits and demerits of Smith and Wesson's pistols but that would be missing the point. He was just trying to prove to me (or probably to himself as well) that he is better off selling dosas as a hawker in Singapore than in India. He did not forget to mention that his wife is dimly related to Finance Minister Chidambaram (That relationship begins and ends with both of them being Chettiars)
Denigrating your own country and culture and holding up something new-fangled happens all the time. And not only among Indians. I just gave up reading this book called, "The people's republic of Desire" by a lady called Annie Wang. She paints a pathetic picture of Chinese "noveau-riche peasant" women in Beijing and Shanghai who would do absolutely anything to get a Caucasian Husband/Boy-Friend and an American passport. She writes and I quote, "First-class girls marry the Americans; Second-class girls marry the Japanese; Third-class girls marry the Taiwanese or the Hong-Kongers; Fourth-class girls marry the mainlanders".
This reminds me of a similar sort of book written by a lady called Vinita Daswani called "For Matrimonial Purposes".
The common thread in these books are that the Chinese and Indians are treated as impudent upstarts who want to get into the rarefied Western culture and the authors have this holier-than-thou attitude simply because they were born or educated in the US.
Besides a rather cutting example is the movie called "Bride and Prejudice". Getting a US visa is considered the touchstone of having "arrived" in this world. Oh Woe!!!!
My only point is that how educated is this behavior. How can someone consider himself superior to another person simply because he holds a different coloured passport? Just that! Nothing else! Is there something wrong in the value systems that we have which makes us renounce everything that made us what we are as soon as we get our passport stamped in a certain way?
Anyway... enough of this tirade.
News from my side. Me busy "laying"-out my PLL and having major trouble with it. I wish I could call upon the help of Anantha or Rajesh like I un-thinkingly used to do at all hours of the day and night in my earlier job. Besides that, reading books and feverishly house-hunting. Played squash the other day with a college friend of mine and found it an enthralling sport. i hope to play that or Badminton regularly as soon as I get settled in my new house. Also found a nice pub the other day which plays a sort of live rock. Will write about that (hopefully) later.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Patience
Patience means holding back your inclination to the seven emotions: hate, adoration, joy, anxiety, anger, grief and fear. If you don't give way to the seven, you are patient, then you will soon understand all manner of things and be in harmony with Eternity.
-- Yoshi Toranaga - noh - Minowara
"Shogun" by James Clavell
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
The pleasures of public libraries
One of the things I like most about Singapore is the chain of public libraries here.
I read books voraciously. In Bangalore, to satisfy my appetite for books I used to buy books every other weekend (What a pleasure that used to be!!!). Of course it was big drag on the monthly budget.
Here I find that that "fixed cost" can be taken care of rather simply by becoming a member of the National Library Board. Now suddenly I have three floors of books to choose from (apart from a floor of DVDs, VCDs and Video Cassettes). The first time I entered one of their branches close to my office, I felt like I was entering Alladin's Cave.
I guess I will have a lot of fun now especially with their History section.
There is only one pity though. I am only borrowing the books, not buying them for keeps. I wrote about books becoming friends in an earlier post. I will have to say bye bye to my new found friends only after three weeks of getting to know them....
I read books voraciously. In Bangalore, to satisfy my appetite for books I used to buy books every other weekend (What a pleasure that used to be!!!). Of course it was big drag on the monthly budget.
Here I find that that "fixed cost" can be taken care of rather simply by becoming a member of the National Library Board. Now suddenly I have three floors of books to choose from (apart from a floor of DVDs, VCDs and Video Cassettes). The first time I entered one of their branches close to my office, I felt like I was entering Alladin's Cave.
I guess I will have a lot of fun now especially with their History section.
There is only one pity though. I am only borrowing the books, not buying them for keeps. I wrote about books becoming friends in an earlier post. I will have to say bye bye to my new found friends only after three weeks of getting to know them....
Sunday, June 10, 2007
No subject
When in silks you came and dazzled
Me with the beauty of your Spring,
You brought a flower to bloom -
Love within my being.
You lived with me, breath of my breath,
Being in my being, nor left my side;
But now the wheel of Time has turned
And you are gone - no joys abide.
You pressed your lips upon my lips,
Your heart upon my beating heart,
And I have no wish to fall in love again,
For they who sold Love's remedy
Have shut shop, and I seek in vain.
My life now gives no ray of light,
I bring no solace to heart or eye;
Out of dust to dust again,
Of no use to anyone am I.
Delhi was once a paradise,
Where Love held sway and reigned;
But its charm lies ravished now
And only ruins remain.
No tears were shed when shroudless they
Were laid in common graves;
No prayers were read for the noble dead,
Unmarked remain their graves.
The heart distressed, the wounded flesh,
The mind ablaze, the rising sigh;
The drop of blood, the broken heart,
Tears on the lashes of the eye.
But things cannot remain, O Zafar,
Thus for who can tell?
Through God's great mercy and the Prophet
All may yet be well
Thus wrote Bahadur Shah Zafar shortly before his transportation to Rangoon after the fall of Delhi in the 1857 mutiny. One of my colleagues used to exhort me to start appreciating poetry. I never listened to him. Now when I read such lines and something stirs in me, I remember him.
I have just begun reading "The Last Mughal" by William Dalrymple.
Its a pity that an Englishman needs to come to India, learn our language, unearth a treasure of previously un-researched work lying in the National Archives bang in the centre of Lutyens' Delhi and write a book which sets the record straight (atleast I hope so) about something that happened in India in 1857 which is so much a part of our national fabric.
Even today historians bicker about whether it was a general rebellion, a sepoy mutiny or the "First War of Indian Independence".
Apparently all of the arguments in that debate are based on the material provided by the Britishers while thousand of Urdu documents lay rotting in the vaults in Delhi and no one bothered to look!!!!
Either ways, I still cannot forget this poem as I turn off my light tonight to go to sleep.
Good night!
Me with the beauty of your Spring,
You brought a flower to bloom -
Love within my being.
You lived with me, breath of my breath,
Being in my being, nor left my side;
But now the wheel of Time has turned
And you are gone - no joys abide.
You pressed your lips upon my lips,
Your heart upon my beating heart,
And I have no wish to fall in love again,
For they who sold Love's remedy
Have shut shop, and I seek in vain.
My life now gives no ray of light,
I bring no solace to heart or eye;
Out of dust to dust again,
Of no use to anyone am I.
Delhi was once a paradise,
Where Love held sway and reigned;
But its charm lies ravished now
And only ruins remain.
No tears were shed when shroudless they
Were laid in common graves;
No prayers were read for the noble dead,
Unmarked remain their graves.
The heart distressed, the wounded flesh,
The mind ablaze, the rising sigh;
The drop of blood, the broken heart,
Tears on the lashes of the eye.
But things cannot remain, O Zafar,
Thus for who can tell?
Through God's great mercy and the Prophet
All may yet be well
Thus wrote Bahadur Shah Zafar shortly before his transportation to Rangoon after the fall of Delhi in the 1857 mutiny. One of my colleagues used to exhort me to start appreciating poetry. I never listened to him. Now when I read such lines and something stirs in me, I remember him.
I have just begun reading "The Last Mughal" by William Dalrymple.
Its a pity that an Englishman needs to come to India, learn our language, unearth a treasure of previously un-researched work lying in the National Archives bang in the centre of Lutyens' Delhi and write a book which sets the record straight (atleast I hope so) about something that happened in India in 1857 which is so much a part of our national fabric.
Even today historians bicker about whether it was a general rebellion, a sepoy mutiny or the "First War of Indian Independence".
Apparently all of the arguments in that debate are based on the material provided by the Britishers while thousand of Urdu documents lay rotting in the vaults in Delhi and no one bothered to look!!!!
Either ways, I still cannot forget this poem as I turn off my light tonight to go to sleep.
Good night!
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Hello Again...
Hi,
This is being blogged from my brand new laptop. I have had a craze for Apple Computers for a long time now and suddenly I am the proud owner of one.
I just bought this macbook. Its looking nice and whatever I have come to know of it delights me. Still there are a few errant issues that I am facing (you know.... how the hell do I install and run software... no google talk... no "My Computer"...no "Start Button"). But these are all normal traumatic events that one faces after having used a PC for a long time.
This is my first post from Singapore. While leaving Bangalore I had promised everyone that I'd keep them all up-to-date with frequent blogging. Looks like that is not happening. Oh well.... best laid plans....
A few things I noticed here:
1. This is an extremely clean city. We Indians who have a healthy disregard for public hygiene are in for a shock because everything here sparkles. You try to change that and you get a fine. Not that I have seen anyone being fined here but even the spectre of paying an amount I would have to toil more than a month to raise sends shivers down my spine and the waste paper bag back into my pocket
2. Metros run, buses are not congested. Their idea of rush-hour crowding does not include the concept of a free body massage by other passengers jostling and pushing into you.
3. Roads and city layout remind me very strongly of what I saw in USA or Canada. I guess they re-used the same designs or probably even the engineers and planners.
4. Food..... sigh!!!! Its all Chinese and the Chinese have a slightly irritating habit of eating absolutely anything irrespective of whether it is alive or dead, has vertebrae or not or has sex or not. They actually pride themselves on being able to eat anything. "I have eaten weirder things than you" is a common boast. One Chinese colleague assured me that he had eaten brains of a "live" monkey with a spoon. I guess that's an entirely new dimension of the phrase "Bheja Khana" in Hindi.
I guess if I really get down to it, I will write a book about the culture shock that I am experiencing but that will have to wait.
Do I miss India? Absolutely! But I do it more because of the people than because of the food or anything like that. So many people who were just an STD call away are further now. I miss Purple Haze, I miss my gang in Bangalore and I miss the prospect of catching a train and landing up home. But beyond all that, I like it in here. The work I am doing is good and interesting. And I have enough money to buy a laptop like this without worrying over-much about what it would do to my yearly budget.
If only the women start paying a bit more attention to this lonely and homesick geek!!!!
This is being blogged from my brand new laptop. I have had a craze for Apple Computers for a long time now and suddenly I am the proud owner of one.
I just bought this macbook. Its looking nice and whatever I have come to know of it delights me. Still there are a few errant issues that I am facing (you know.... how the hell do I install and run software... no google talk... no "My Computer"...no "Start Button"). But these are all normal traumatic events that one faces after having used a PC for a long time.
This is my first post from Singapore. While leaving Bangalore I had promised everyone that I'd keep them all up-to-date with frequent blogging. Looks like that is not happening. Oh well.... best laid plans....
A few things I noticed here:
1. This is an extremely clean city. We Indians who have a healthy disregard for public hygiene are in for a shock because everything here sparkles. You try to change that and you get a fine. Not that I have seen anyone being fined here but even the spectre of paying an amount I would have to toil more than a month to raise sends shivers down my spine and the waste paper bag back into my pocket
2. Metros run, buses are not congested. Their idea of rush-hour crowding does not include the concept of a free body massage by other passengers jostling and pushing into you.
3. Roads and city layout remind me very strongly of what I saw in USA or Canada. I guess they re-used the same designs or probably even the engineers and planners.
4. Food..... sigh!!!! Its all Chinese and the Chinese have a slightly irritating habit of eating absolutely anything irrespective of whether it is alive or dead, has vertebrae or not or has sex or not. They actually pride themselves on being able to eat anything. "I have eaten weirder things than you" is a common boast. One Chinese colleague assured me that he had eaten brains of a "live" monkey with a spoon. I guess that's an entirely new dimension of the phrase "Bheja Khana" in Hindi.
I guess if I really get down to it, I will write a book about the culture shock that I am experiencing but that will have to wait.
Do I miss India? Absolutely! But I do it more because of the people than because of the food or anything like that. So many people who were just an STD call away are further now. I miss Purple Haze, I miss my gang in Bangalore and I miss the prospect of catching a train and landing up home. But beyond all that, I like it in here. The work I am doing is good and interesting. And I have enough money to buy a laptop like this without worrying over-much about what it would do to my yearly budget.
If only the women start paying a bit more attention to this lonely and homesick geek!!!!
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Snooping around
Well I would call it that...
I have just disabled the profile visitors thingy on my orkut profile...
For lay-men, it implies that anyone can now look at my profile without me getting to know who. The better part is that I can also go around looking at the profiles of all the girls I have crushes on without them getting to know that I have been up to some mischief. (Is that a good thing????)
I turned it off just for kicks with every intention of turning it back on again sometime. But now, I don't want to. Its fine the way it is.
Today was hectic. All sorts of stuff got carted away from my place. My TV, refrigerator, "my" DVD player, all my books and my rags.
Its a strange feeling.....
Oh well!!! Man proposes and if God does not dispose, the girl's Dad opposes.....
I have just disabled the profile visitors thingy on my orkut profile...
For lay-men, it implies that anyone can now look at my profile without me getting to know who. The better part is that I can also go around looking at the profiles of all the girls I have crushes on without them getting to know that I have been up to some mischief. (Is that a good thing????)
I turned it off just for kicks with every intention of turning it back on again sometime. But now, I don't want to. Its fine the way it is.
Today was hectic. All sorts of stuff got carted away from my place. My TV, refrigerator, "my" DVD player, all my books and my rags.
Its a strange feeling.....
Oh well!!! Man proposes and if God does not dispose, the girl's Dad opposes.....
Monday, April 30, 2007
I have grown up in life!!!!
Helloz!!!!
The subject line is because my Dad offered to share his drink of "100 Pipers" with me!!!! I had waited an age for that momentous event to happen....
Anyway, I am busy in wrapping up things here in Bangalore before I go home to unfrazzle my frazzled nerves for a fortnight. Then I take a flight and land up in Singapore.
Dad came here on a whirlwind trip to take a look at how his youngest progeny was getting along. He took a peek at my apartment, was suitably appreciative, had assorted edibles for lunch and dinner, drank cups of tea which I made and offered to share his drink with me.
It was nice on my last day at work. Lots of people came and shook my hand and wished me luck.
I did not know I had so many friends there. I will miss you guys!
The subject line is because my Dad offered to share his drink of "100 Pipers" with me!!!! I had waited an age for that momentous event to happen....
Anyway, I am busy in wrapping up things here in Bangalore before I go home to unfrazzle my frazzled nerves for a fortnight. Then I take a flight and land up in Singapore.
Dad came here on a whirlwind trip to take a look at how his youngest progeny was getting along. He took a peek at my apartment, was suitably appreciative, had assorted edibles for lunch and dinner, drank cups of tea which I made and offered to share his drink with me.
It was nice on my last day at work. Lots of people came and shook my hand and wished me luck.
I did not know I had so many friends there. I will miss you guys!
Thursday, April 26, 2007
No subject
I'm not a perfect person. there are many things i wish i didnt do
But i continue learning. i never meant to do those things to you.
And so i have to say before i go, that i just want you to know
I've found a reason for me, to change who i used to be
A reason to start over new, and the reason is you
I'm sorry that i hurt you, its something i must live with everyday
And all the pain i put you through, i wish that i could take it all away
And be the one who catches all your tears, thats why i need you to hear
I'm not a perfect person, i never meant to do those things to you
And so i have to say before i go that i just want you to know
I've found a reason for me, to change who i used to be
A reason to start over new, and the reason is you
I've found a reason to show a side of me you didnt know
A reason for all that i do, and the reason is you
Don't worry I just flicked the lyrics from Hoobastank. . . . . . . They are nice!
But i continue learning. i never meant to do those things to you.
And so i have to say before i go, that i just want you to know
I've found a reason for me, to change who i used to be
A reason to start over new, and the reason is you
I'm sorry that i hurt you, its something i must live with everyday
And all the pain i put you through, i wish that i could take it all away
And be the one who catches all your tears, thats why i need you to hear
I'm not a perfect person, i never meant to do those things to you
And so i have to say before i go that i just want you to know
I've found a reason for me, to change who i used to be
A reason to start over new, and the reason is you
I've found a reason to show a side of me you didnt know
A reason for all that i do, and the reason is you
Don't worry I just flicked the lyrics from Hoobastank. . . . . . . They are nice!
Friday, March 09, 2007
Patience
A few days ago, there was a nice article in The Hindu about writing a novel.
This gentleman called Amitav Kumar has just published a book and wrote an article about what the writing was like.
It was long but interesting. The major idea I took away from it was that it requires a great amount of patience. A full evening can be spent in writing out a character sketch and you still might not be done. From where I come (where every task has to be accounted for in hours) this sounded like the height of inefficiency. But then I realized that I was missing the point.
Writing a book is not about efficiency. Its about creating a work of art. That requires time.
Since then I have started thinking that I find the idea of going through that labourious process rather interesting. Character sketches, plots, similes, metaphors, first drafts, second drafts, third drafts...... If not anything else, this process might just end up teaching me patience.
Talking about patience, I just happened to watch a chinese tea-ceremony on television. Do watch it and you would feel the tea-bag, hot water, sugar and milk powder affair is a blasphemous act.....
I should go home...
This gentleman called Amitav Kumar has just published a book and wrote an article about what the writing was like.
It was long but interesting. The major idea I took away from it was that it requires a great amount of patience. A full evening can be spent in writing out a character sketch and you still might not be done. From where I come (where every task has to be accounted for in hours) this sounded like the height of inefficiency. But then I realized that I was missing the point.
Writing a book is not about efficiency. Its about creating a work of art. That requires time.
Since then I have started thinking that I find the idea of going through that labourious process rather interesting. Character sketches, plots, similes, metaphors, first drafts, second drafts, third drafts...... If not anything else, this process might just end up teaching me patience.
Talking about patience, I just happened to watch a chinese tea-ceremony on television. Do watch it and you would feel the tea-bag, hot water, sugar and milk powder affair is a blasphemous act.....
I should go home...
On books and music
This other day I got this strange idea.
Music (cassettes or CDs) is like a mistress. You love her, you cannot live without her. She consumes you but six months later you get bored and you move on.
In this case to another album or another band. You keep the music for memory's sake but once the magic has worn off, well its worn off.
Books on the other hand are like friends. You get to know them. You are wary at first about what you are getting into. But as you get to know them better, your friendship grows. You go through them (the books I mean) but you never finish them. You always keep comnig back to them for solace, advice or just for a few laughs.
Talking about friends, a bunch of them have been a great help lately. Very self-lessly one chap has gone out of his way to help me in something important. Even though we knew each other only vaguely when we were in the same milieu. God bless my friends!
I miss Delhi and home.....
Music (cassettes or CDs) is like a mistress. You love her, you cannot live without her. She consumes you but six months later you get bored and you move on.
In this case to another album or another band. You keep the music for memory's sake but once the magic has worn off, well its worn off.
Books on the other hand are like friends. You get to know them. You are wary at first about what you are getting into. But as you get to know them better, your friendship grows. You go through them (the books I mean) but you never finish them. You always keep comnig back to them for solace, advice or just for a few laughs.
Talking about friends, a bunch of them have been a great help lately. Very self-lessly one chap has gone out of his way to help me in something important. Even though we knew each other only vaguely when we were in the same milieu. God bless my friends!
I miss Delhi and home.....
Saturday, March 03, 2007
A new bookshop in Bangalore
No no! Its been around for ages. Its just that I ran into it (or rather insides it) a few weeks ago and now I am a fan!
Its called The Bookworm. It specializes in second-hand books and sells them at dirt cheap prices.
The books don't look second-hand. The book seller only insists they are. I don't have a problem with that. I get them at a third of the price I would normally pay for them.
Especially now since these days I seem to be perennially out of cash.
Its called The Bookworm. It specializes in second-hand books and sells them at dirt cheap prices.
The books don't look second-hand. The book seller only insists they are. I don't have a problem with that. I get them at a third of the price I would normally pay for them.
Especially now since these days I seem to be perennially out of cash.
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