heights and fears !!!

I was watching a documentary on NatGeo last time I was home. The documentary was about an insanely passionate guy (otherwise why would he be on NatGeo, smirk ;-) ) who was into rope walking at extreme heights. He was shown practicing all alone in serene jungles first with low lying ropes just tied across two trees and then once across a serene lake with the rope barely 5 feet above the water surface. He is fond of doing it all with barest of equipment, just a waist belt preventing him from falling is what is visible.

He then climbed on the rope tied across two huge hills and started walking across trying to balance himself through the use of his body movements and carefully placing one step after the other in dance like rhythm. One can easily see the amount of courage and concentration that goes in here and people with humanely sense won't even dream of doing of this act. In the background this guy spoke one excellent line which rings in my mind every now and then. "I had practiced the same moves trying to walk over the rope on ground at two feet height, I was doing perfect and now when I am trying to do the same at several thousand feet, I feel the jitters and the journey becomes so arduous. At the height nothing else changes it is the same rope but it is I which has changed." How true !!

boys will be boys

Today in the class I happened to notice a notebook left by someone under the table. Just the usual notebook with pages covering notes from every subject till date scribbled carelessly. I think the owner was tired of carrying the same notebook for more than a year. All his efforts for finishing the 100 odd pages of the notebook had gone for a toss, inspite of it being used in all 3 trimesters probably for 4-5 subjects and finally he had to abandon it under some table. It all sounds like the start of a movie where hero is abandoned in the pram of a decrepit orphanage with just a gold locket around the infant shining bright in dark night, and the camera zooms in on the arm of the child where his father's name is engraved. This name is the only pehchaan of our hero and will help him being recognised by the goon leader who had killed his father (I happened to get to this link while searching for the above plot of a typical bollywood movie).

All this may be a little far fetched and the owner would take back his beloved notebook the next day, the story is not about the notebook but about what was in the notebook. I happened to frisk through the last pages. Don't you remember how since childhood you have been using the last pages of your notebook to calculate compatibility of some girl's name with your name (the one who accompanied you to school daily in the cycle rickshaw and you could never get a chance to sit next to her because of her nose dripping kid brother) or played zero kaanta (don't know the angrezi name) with your friend or passed messages to your beloved girl and stared at her handwriting for an infinite time back at home. The last pages of notebooks have always been a witness to the art showing professors, teachers and peers in their best (comical, sleazy ...) form. I know you would be thinking of going back to your school notebook and reliving the memories. The protagonist of our story (the notebook) too had some words of wisdom depicting desperation or just pure fun, the words were mocking someone in rythmic lines (I wanted to reproduce the lines here but some sense of public responsibility or just the fear of repurcussion restrains me).

The essence is what the title here says, boys will be boys, whether they are studying in primary school or graduating from an elite institute. Though unrelated to what those lines depicted, I am reminded of all the songs of the likes of 'hatheli per tumhara naam likhte hain mitaate hain ...' etc. The pictures of sonu loves geetu embedded on rocks in matheran, the tetrahedrons on marine drive, under shah jehan's takht in red fort or engraved on the college desks formed a collage in front of my eyes. Am not sure if only guys do all the writings, but usually the public engravings are courtsey to them. At least the kissas that I am aware of, all started or at least accenuated with these writings on the wall / desks / notebooks, Should all this also come under the purview of the debate on public display of affection ;-) ?

just another story

Rohit was watching the trees passing by from the window of his compartment. He was finally going back from mumbai to his home forever. He had seen a lot of life in these two years, the girl he had been talking to every night for the last two years does not belong to him or may be she does or may be she never did. He was never sure of their relationship for the last two years, may be there was no need to know the kind or type of the relation they ever had, they were just talking, she met him only thrice in these two years in pune which in itself is a place to excite the most impenetrable souls, he did want a relationship but it never developed. This is the problem with two different souls (though it's true there are only two different souls in a relationship always), they think differently. It does not happen the hindi cinema way in which they just met once and love at first sight was never to keep them apart.

He thought as in the hindi movies, she will not ever deviate from her indian nari self and even if she is meeting someone she is supposed to shy away from the real relationship or divert his boyfriend's attention to the innocent bunch of roses on his dining table when he only wanted
her body and nothing else. He knew it does not happen like this, but there was something hidden in him which wanted him to stay hopeful, you can call it the spirit of indian heroes of the likes of akshay kumar of namaste london or ajay devgan of hum dil de chuke sanam . He thought he would win her over, but somebody from inside shouted "get real dude" !!!

He thought the real love in his eyes can never do bewafai to them, but they were talking on phone and she could not see the truth in his eyes. He did propose to her in the most traditional ways possible: in front of a mandir, on her birthday, he tried to bring in the real emotions into his eyes and told her what all he could. He does not even remember if he ever told her the whole truth. He thought he did.

He did not get any answer and not even a single chance to meet her again, to show her his truthful eyes. He was very much impressed with her innocence and honesty, she never talked about his job, his status, he was what he talked only and nothing else. He never thought that it was necessary to wait and watch for the nice occasion ... he wanted to say, so he did. He never thought she had her own life and a group of friends, they were not important to him. Her last birthday when he proposed to her had changed their life. She did not accept neither did she reject him but they were no longer the same. He does not even remember what it was like to be friends with her. For the past one year they were only exchanging the duniyadari walaa hi hello, how is work, both of them knew something was missing.

Yesterday he called her probably for the last time, it was his habit to call her in the wee hours of the morning when he could not control his emotions. He usually would not get any answer and would talk the next day over gtalk, again the same hi, hello, why did you call etc. This time he did get some words from her, she wanted him to call her the next day. Probably yesterday was the last time, he was not expecting any answers now. He was tired of this relationship.

He was not sure of what was to come in future. He did not want to talk to her anymore and probably he won't. He had planned to not call her on her birthday even, but I know he will. These words stood out from the song running on his winamp ' ham koi waqt nahi hain hamdam, jab bulaaoge chale aayenge ...'

'Loved and lost' or 'lost and loved'

She was like a fresh whiff of fragrance from first drops of rain, had the rythm of a ripple created when a child pops a stone into unsuspecting water of a pond and the depth of a clear blue sky with a lonely bird flying in the distance. she was always a little shy with a permanent smile on her face and the way she looked at him, it sent shivers down his spine. She had that unmistakable marathi beauty and her permanent smile revealed a somewhat irregular teeth structure which reminded him of yesteryear's cine actress mausami chatterjee.

Their conversation started with a fight over bad infrastructure in mumbai and why should one travel for one and half hours fighting one's way out amongst the madding crowd. He was trying to tell her what it means to travel to school by a fifteen minute ride on a bicycle and go out in a cycle rikshaw for buying vegetables with parents. As she was born and brought up in mumbai, she was trying to boast of the clockwork discipline with which local trains run in mumbai and how they have enjoyed their days on local stations with friends. The friendly banter did not last long and soon they dig their heads back into the laptop screens and started hitting keys modifying their respective excel sheets. He had joined the organisation on a temporary assignment and she was an analyst working here for the past one year or so. They talked very irregularly then onwards and just exchanged furtive glances now and then. He knew there is no point taking things further as he would be gone back in a month or so and he could never gauge what she was thinking. Before leaving he wanted to at least ask her for a cup of coffee but either she was occupied with her friends or he was just short of words and ended up asking her about the weather or location of printer on the floor, and could never ask her email id or any other contact. May be he wanted it that way, to just remember her smile, her hands carelessly brushing against his own, her presence sitting on the chair next to him, or he was short of courage or just did not want to disturb her sanctity, thinking that he would not be able to have her. The last day of his assignment came and went. He left Mumbai. They never met again.

Not every love story has a happy or sad ending, it is better to just leave some meetings at a beautiful juncture.

transition

All my bags are packed and am ready to go (to the other hostel ). The news is that summer internship is about to come to an end, rains are here in mumbai and I would be gone home for a week or so before the next round of match (the second year) starts (don't try to relate these pieces of information). There has been a lot of learning and unlearning in this 2 month period and discovered some of the poshest and rarest of eating joints in south mumbai, more about that in some other post.


Here is the view from my new room ( I know it is something that you should feel envious about :-) ).

Egg jam !!

This is one slide of the infinite numbers of presentations that we are supposed to study in a matter of 5 days (on paper we are supposed to understand them in lectures spanning a 3 month period but the effective 5 days of exams are the only ones we can spare). Though we were not supposed to reproduce this diagram verbatim but it being in our course itself cries out some message. Today was the first day of the grind and by the time we finish up the marathon sessions we should be out of energy. What is the efficacy of this whole exercise of examination. I know the philosophy behind teaching but can there not be any other effective way rather than making one go through two years of classroom lecture sessions, case study discussions, project and presentations, followed by a fast track examination session. Make people read subjects of their own choice at their own pace, rate them on the basis of only innovations and new ideas generated out of the whole cauldron of varied subjects. Professors should be there to guide them, inculcate spirit to study and that's it. Why should one study what all and every thinker on this earth had to say about a concept.

Sorry folks it's time out now !!! I have to go and cram what Mr Gary Dressler has to say about "Scientific selection models", "Motivation" and "Appraisal". Meanwhile you can ponder on this :

"ERPII is an application and deployment strategy that expands out from ERP functions to achieve integration of an enterprise’s key domain-specific, internal
and external collaborative, operational and financial processes" ... but why ?

Glass is half full or half empty !!

Just some random pics picked without consideration of chronology or alcohol content (% v/v). There are many more but am sure you can't handle more than this in a day !!

Pictorially ... continued

The Vihar Lake is a property of the entire Mumbai city but this view is our proprietary !!!

Top view of our campus !! The smoke is not coming out of our mess chulhas but somewhere else.

And to add randomness to the collage, here is one more. The location of the pic is not important I guess.

Pictorially yours !!!

Not my creativity but that of the autorickshaw driver. I dunno if some hesitant guy/gal used the visual clue as an innuendo for his/her partner.

Taken by my artistic friend (;-)) at Prabhadevi.

Intezaar

I was standing in front of the gate which was throwing off a constant whiff of cold air, not sure if the sole purpose was to keep me cold in the mumbai heat or just to keep off the flies and mosquito or (here comes the real one) just to keep the temperature difference maintained without putting undue pressure on the air conditioning inside. There was a policeman sitting on the chair and his sole duty was to ensure that this door is just a one way track, he was asking all the jovial kids and pareshaan aunties that they will not be allowed in once after they left through that door. There were constant bargains happening at this door by aunties and also the people who had come to recieve their loved (hopefully!!) ones, please I have to take that trolley from my daughter, can you please call my uncle who is standing there. I just now noticed that the doors were automatic and were trying to perform their duty of closing every now and then but to no avail, the flow of humans kept the lid opened forever.

One weird thing was that there were two similar gates for the exit at terminal 1A, obviously the sole purpose is to ensure smooth flow, but then if the driver is standing with placard on one gate and the guest leaves from the other one the whole exercise of pick-up goes for a toss. In order to avoid this the democratically inclined waiting junta had decided to give all the recognition to one gate, if you want to feel important and pretend by reading all the placards that there is someone waiting for you, you must take that particular gate. There was NDTV on TV just above the other deprived gate. I was appreciating the strong financials of Indian corporates and trying to grab the rates from the scrolling red and green arrows depicting the fall and rise respectively of the stock when I noticed a small kid in tattered clothes keeping a vigilant eye towards the floor looking for empty mineral water bottles. He was totally oblivious of the fact that Stock had fallen 200 points on a single day. He then went to the red colored local call booth hanging nearby and just casually sifted hand through the coin holder to look for some leftover coins. He did not get anything, even he must be cursing how careful the folks had become. He left into oblivion only to come back after a 10-15 minute stint.

At Airports,one sees loads of emotional partings and reunions. The saying 'To part and then to meet is a part of life' gets incarnated. I had gone to pick-up a friend at the airport and not to compare the stark red color of each and every Kingfisher's crew (why they only have air hostesses and no stewards or may be I am selectively blind) and think that this one had a brighter dress and tighter hair-dos (u didn't get it, right !!) as I ended up doing for a good one hour. My friend did land up a little later.

P.S.: In bollywood an actor is as good as it's last friday release. Same is the case with blogs, you are judged with what you said last.

just random

My friend told me "Nobody loves you does not mean nobody ever will ... ", nice thought but then it is also said "Justice delayed is justice denied" .

:-)

Crib Crib Crib ...

There are times when one feels that the whole world is on the kill for you, for no particular reason or fault of yours. From the heavens of recognition and comfort I've fallen into the terra incognita amongst the bunch which seeks happiness in shooting from the lips alone and as it happens in all the zombie movies once bitten the person falls prey and joins the rat race. ( writing this post is a proof ;-)).

Kabir (not sure) had said (loosely translated below) :

Keep your demeaners near you,
dwell them in your own backyard,
Without much effort,
it keeps your character clean and sparkling.

Need to look inside my own girebaan for reasons ... may be ...

The good, the bad and a beautiful life.

kuch is tarha teri palkain meri palkon se mila de ...
aanson tere saare meri plakon pe saja de,
To har gharrii har waqt mere saath raha hai,
haan yeh jism kabhi door kabhi paas raha hai,
Jo bhi gham hai yeh tere unhein tu mera bata de,
kuch is tarha teri palkain meri palkon se mila de ...
annson tere saare meri palkon pe saja de

Mujhko to tere chehre pe yeh gham nahin jachta,
Jayaz nahin lagta mujhe gham se tera rishta,
Sun meri guzarish ise chehre se hata de,
sun meri guzarish isse chhehre se hata de

kuch is tarha teri palkain meri palkon se mila de ...
aanson tere saare meri palkoon pe sajja de,
kuch is tarha teri palkain meri palkon se mila de

- song by Atif Aslam,beautiful lyrics and even more beautiful singing.

Yesterday I was watching The Holiday - a mushy and somewhat girlie, romantic movie. It is an awesome movie but somehow it reminded me of why does it not happen in real life that good meets good and after a little tussle everyone lives happily ever after. The bad meets the good and then they are torn apart by fate or due to the sheer force of negativity in each other. Usually the bad has guts to pick up rags and move ahead but the good gets a dent on his psyche to last very long. Even here good and bad depends on which side of the fence you are. Each human being is a complex combination (just like the nucleotides on the double-helical of DNA) of sins, morals and the most complex third dimension is time. Don't know how to end this post ... so here it ends jlt.(just like that :-))

Maximum City

"Tujhse hai zinda yeh dil ka shaher ..rozana rozanaa ... "
This is what Bachchan sahab is singing right now and am thinking not about my dil but the shaher, that is this Mumbai. I know googols of keystrokes have been keyed for describing this metropolis but still its vastness and bhaagti jindagi never ceases to invite thoughts.

I had been to Mumbai earlier during my college days but it was a temporary sojourn always, so the city never looked the way it did last year in June when I knew the stay is going to be longer than a few years (2 years of MBA + dunno how much more). The entry of our train into Mumbai, I think just before Virar, reminded me of the entry of hogwarts express into the clouded and spooky mountainous terrain of Hogwarts (Please don't chuckle, I didn't make this up just now.Try coming to Mumbai in the rainy season around June and you would know). Hogwarts it is not, but the college is a lot green and musty thoughout the rains.

The experience of local trains, lifeline of Mumbai, is a learning in itself day after day. There is a large group, amazingly women also, who love to hang on the railings of train compartments, even if seats are available. Am not sure if they are planning out Abhishek and Aishwarya's wedding or thinking of Shilpa Shetty's troubles , with the air gushing wildly through hair they gaze incessantly into the horizon. I can not dare comment on those who are sitting on roof tops. Each local train is carrying at peak hours what seems to be a million people in the 12 dabbas. The people in trains are either happy or just plain expressionless. Not sure what comes first, the quest for survival or finding happiness in small things in life or may be there are perfectly intertwined. In the lives of a majority of Mumbaiites, am sure one can not separate the moments when cribbing for good life (comfortable travelling to work-place is one important parameter to good life I think) yielded gradually to condescending existence.

One can see an excellent juxtapositioning of contradictions on local stations. The bottom 2 feets of walls and footbridges is reserved for 'rang de lal' cadre of paan / paan masala folks and on the other hand are shiny white glittering posters of Kumkum and Dulhan TV sops. I am sure earlier generations of pan masala chewing people in order to try out some newer dart boards would have tried spitting on the hoardings as well but due to awkward results of such an exercise the posters have stayed enviously white and shiny.

Once I was amazed to see two middle aged men coming back from office in the local, sitting close to each other and singing. When I took a seat next to them what I heard was not at all possible in any other city except for our Filmy Mumbai. Each one was having a book of lyrics of Mukesh and were very intently singing the songs with passion and once a song was over, they flipped pages and had quite a discussion on what should they pick next.

The life and the thoughts do not end here and am sure Mumbai will bring in lot more ... to this blog and to life ;-)

Do's and Dont's

Not the typical do's and dont's listed on the polythene bags enveloping new electronic gadgets : do not swallow or feed to cows or offer as gift to kids under 12 but just some random comparison of lifestyle changes from being a bored s/w engineer to an upcoming (funny word) MBA.

Things I DO (can't say I love all these but still)

• No time table for sleep, but there is some thumb-rule : never before 3 and not after 6 (in the night ;-0).
• Learnt the trick to sleep on chair.
• Jeans is the daily wear now.
  
• Get to Crib with friends for each rupee spent on autorickshaw or bus.
• Can afford to keep stubbles for weeks.
• Wear chappals throughout the day.
• Re-realized the importance of 'Pen is mightier than Keyboard'. Had almost forgotten how to write using pen and paper. In CSC amidst loads of copy and paste the only writing that I did for almost 3 years was marking pencil corrections on printed requirement docs or solving crosswords from TOI. Now with 2 economics, 2 HR etc courses in my pocket you can imagine the reams of paper I would have gobbled.
• Eat umpteen number of Vada Paav, get up close and personal (hope you are not misunderstanding me) with Mumabikars in locals, wait till eternity in BEST bus to reach a 12 KM distant location ...
  

Things that DON'T (or things I miss) happen in college now

• The $ sign which used to come up ringing in the eyes every start of the month.
• Miss my friends back in Noida, here it is more 'If you don't beat the shit out of me I will' attitude.
• Missing the punjabi / jatt language of dilli, chhole bhature in breakfast, hot jalebi after dinner, Gajar Halwa; Sutta in cold, foggy delhi december night, domino's pizza in office after a back breaking code/test/deliver weekend frenzy ...

PS: readers are welcome to add to the list ... i know it's a boring post but please bear with me, everyday is not a sunday.

Love is in the air

Not sure about the air but on the IP (lcoal chat client) and mails there is a lot of love. Everyone is nostalgically remembering their first love or the first departing and sending along the songs from Shiamak Dawar, Raja Hindustani, Bryan Adams to Bon Jovi (I have collected more than 15 songs of various genre and taste and I am loving this emotional chitrahar). Some hearts are brimming with regret and some others are chirping with love.

I had thought that will not sell out my pen / keyboard to these multinational conspirators who are capitalising on the softest nerve of human heart and will not write on this issue but I lost. All the corporate affairs are based on using one or the other of human fallacies and feelings. Be it jealousy of 'neighbour's envy, owner's pride' fame or fear of retirement blues for the pension plan adverts. It is only the interplay of emotions which drives our lives.

Talking of first loves, I remember the girl from my class 8th or 9th. Daughter of a military man, she was really beautiful and she (dunno why) had a special liking for me. Our group of friends used to come early to play cricket but for me cricket became a thing of the past and we used to sit in class and talk of some idle things. Now it all sounds too kiddish but there were such emotional upheavals with each and every day that I can still feel the chill. Then came the climax of my story, this girl was caught by our class teacher for fiddling with her report card to get her parent's signature. I was one of the studious guys and it just happened that I stopped talking to her (so mean of me !!). Next year she moved to another school, I heard about her once in a while but now there's no trace of her.

Some things are just priceless and are for sweet memories only !!!

P.S.: In retribution to the above I have reduced my studies and am making sure that my report card is never again a thing of pride for me.

"Your survival fight or a fanciful flight,
Your first kiss or memory of lover you miss,
An ecstatic win or the friend's grin,
A trancing shout or winning a bout,
The most beautiful dawn or a sleepy yawn,
Say it all with us .. Airtel Express yourself."

The collage was a part of our entry to create print-ad for various succesful television campaigns (ours was Airtel - Expess Yourself ). The entry was not selected :-(.

sabkuch.com is taken .... nothing's on my plate

I just finished sending a mail to someone on yahoo and saw an advertisement saying get domain names for as cheap as $1.99/yr from yahoo domains, obviously I was curious to give it a dekko. To my surprise, I keyed in some arbitrary words and found that www.kutta.com and www.kameena.com (no such site exists may be because of the fear of saffron brigade who can make a fuss out of anything on internet from orkut communities to bloggers) have already been taken :-)) ... it is not that I wanted to beat bill gates and the google wallas with hindi abuses or that they are the only things that come to my mind. I had earlier tried indiadekho.com / indiaride.com / indiafurniture.com / vidya.com etc nothing was available and (please don't smirk) in this quest I did not reach any websites which Indian censor board won't approve.

It is true that with the success stories like guruji.com, yatra.com and many more, no space on Indian vernacularscape would be left untouched. So people get going and book your slot in the web world if you have some sellable idea to be executed in a year or so.

Pyar ke Regional Effects !!

I know I shouldn't be writing this often to avoid indigestion of the vast expanse of my reader population but I had one pressing issue at hand. Just now read that domain maximus' writer Sidin got married to a punju girl. I was a regular reader of his blog (can't say that I grew up reading his blog but would have contributed a good 3-4 % hits out of the half million of his hit count). Last I'd read when he left his cozy job at ATK and planned to write, organize quizzes on his own.

The story is not about him but about marriages across the border (north-south, east-west and all other combinations). It is a happening phenomena these days as people are travelling all across the land for studying and jobs or may be because there is some conspiracy by the HRD ministry for improving gene pool of the nation. I know a lot of folks in close vicinity some of whom have seen victory and some others met defeat against the cultural wall.

I remember my farewell visit to the house of a colleague couple of mine (a mix of UP banda and Mallu bandi). They had a baby girl of about 6 months and both the grannies of the baby were present in the house. Both of them were coochie cooing the kid in their mother tongue. Once the baby cried it got to hear some mallu lullabis and a little while later was bashed in plain hindi for being a little too boisterous. The baby must be cursing them - 'Arrre baba pehle ek do words to seekh lene do mujhe kam se kam araam se' and things would get worse when her mom and dad would throw the burden of angrezi.

One more love-struck couple (MP ka banda and Bengali bandi) : their parents have agreed for the marriage but now when things come to brass tacks they are finding it really difficult. The families are having trouble finding a common ground about nitty gritties like number of sarees, mode of marriage, vegetarian vs non-vegetarian feast. They have booked friends to be ready for acting as a witness to the court marriage. I am looking forward to it, it's been long since I witnessed a court marriage (last was that in 'Sathiya' I guess).

I remember while travelling from mumbai to delhi some 2 years back, along with us in the same compartment was a marathi baraat who were coming back with their punjabi bride. The bride and groom were playfully enjoying their journey while on the other side was one KK-series-wali-not-so-good-lady murmuring to our neighbours the usual doosri-taraf-waalon-ki-burai. How tough it would have been for the two to bring the Jai Maharashtra and Sada Punjab to the same table.

I think we have come far from the days of 'Ek Duje Ke Liye ' and things are smoother for the love torn souls. We now have Mallika Sherawat and Rahul Bose in PKSE discussing the peculiarities of Dilli ki ladkiyaan versus Mumbai babes and stories of clans fighting over marriages are left for Priyadarshan comedies only.

News time

snippets :

* I was coming out of the mumbai airport in an autorickshaw after booking tickets to delhi, basking in the glory of India Poised / Globalisation / WTO / privatisation of airports (and lots of other things) and feeling elated at having given some meaning to my life by winning a free air ticket. On the traffic signal I saw one girl about 6-7 years old, in tattered clothes and was begging for some money. She put her face close to the window of the merc standing just next to my rickshaw and by folding her hands around her eyes she peeked into the car and was continously murmuring 'hey madam please ...'. She did not get anything and once the light turned green she left towards the road divider and went over to the other side of the road. Don't know why I did not feel any pity rather one thought struck me : will this girl ever be able to ride a car let alone fly on an airplane. I am sure any benefits of the progress and development that the country makes are infinite years away from lots of people like this girl.

* Had the luck to listen to Nandita Das at WIMWI in their cult fest. The people from dramatics / classical music / theater etc have an eerie calmness about them. She was perfectly poised and talked at length about her life and her style of choosing only the most remote and unknown movies, her social service. Especially touching was her narration of incidents which took place when they had arranged for a game of cricket and tour to pakistan for a group of street children.

* In the campus, people have gone crazy over solving case studies and other contests and are busy pocketing decent (worth one party) sums of money. I have full confidence that some of them have still undiscovered pschizophrenic problem, they have invented imaginary colleges and are solving case studies of their own making. They have wasted gigs of memory for only powerpoint and MS word documents . Even Google would have surrendered to their searching apetite.

and so the life goes on and so do we ....

Run Mumbai Run !!

I felt proud at being a part of the Mumbai Marathon this sunday. It was a spectacular display of corporate revelry and citizenship. Mumbai looks beautiful while running - it is running daily in any case - but this time people were running for somewhat selfless reasons. Daily people push and jostle with each other for a window seat in the local train or a piece of floor in the compartment just sufficient to put a foot. At times folks are expressionless as the cast of 'City of the dead' but still living in Mumbai one can know very soon that it has got a heart - just ask for directions from someone and he would make sure that you are on the correct bus / train and people in general are there to help except for the autorick walaa who would want the best slice of your skin.
Apart from the gorgeous Kingfisher and Standard Chartered cheer leaders there were other feel-good sights as well like the persons on wheelchair (some of them very beautifully dressed) and some Amrish Puri style dads pushing and ecouraging there kids - run beta run only the last kilometer is left !! .
I was not aware of the enormous amount of charity that gets generated through this.The runners can get corporates to sponsor you and the money gets donated to various NGOs. It makes it even more worthwhile to run - you run for your health, for revelry, for fun, for citizenship and for a noble cause. This time we were running for no cause or may be
there was a subliminal cause of being associated with the society.

Am back with a kahani :-)

Many cubic meters of water has flown down the volga ( don't ask why volga, jlt ) since I last sat down to write on the blog.

Something weird happened on my trip back home in december. After the exams I was all spick and span, ready for the mumbai delhi flight and had made sufficient arrangements, or so i thought, to fight the cold in delhi but the civil aviation ministry, the low cost airline industry in india and god of rains indra (don't know who takes the responsibility of fog. It is close to clouds and rains so let it be him please) had other plans. Please don't close the window, it is not the usual stranded-passenger-struck-@-airport-cursing-on-Aaj-Tak story, it's different. Amazingly the flight was on time. The in-flight crew was courteous. This is inspite of the fact that she refused to give me change for a rupee 500 note for a 60 rupee lunch package which consisted of one small sized samosa, which people back in delhi would gulp in a single bite, two cookies and two slices of bread with butter and if it wasn't for my papi pet I wouldn't have spent that handsome load of money on this packet . My neighbour and I started off on a good note (the pun intended as the lady sitting next to me helped me with the change). After about an hour, the flight attendant came with a box full of boarding passes of all the passengers and said they were offering 3 fortune free return tickets for the lucky winners and he went to some kids for taking out the names.

The winners started making their miss-world-winner-esque awe and ooh gesture, one dropped a tear and some other winner jumped in the seat only to bump his head in the overhead bin. All the people in close vicinity turned to catch slightest glimpse of the winner (so that while getting down they could show their children look betaa !! this is what winners look like, this guy is only next to sachin tendulkar in achievements ). Only one more winner was to be declared and when I heard my seat number I did not know how to react, the flight attendant came and collected my details. Congratulations started pouring in from the remotest corners of the country/flight despite of the seat-belt sign on people came to give me a hug . (No please don't smirk, I don't know how to look awe struck in Aishwarya Rai style and I definitely did not bump my head on the overhead bin you can ask the lady sitting next to me on 4D seat ).

I was feeling like Manmohan Singh would have felt if he ever won a lok sabha election ( again you are not allowed to question my analogies, this is MY BLOG ok ?) (the analogy was corrected after someone pointed out, see comment) but the climax was yet to come. The captain announced that due to inclement weather conditions we can not land in delhi and none of the airports were ready to let us in and hence we were flying back to MUMBAI, everybody gave a sigh of disbelief. The announcement came as a shock to some as if Ayesha Takia had just dumped them. GoAir was ready to fly us back to delhi the next day and nothing much could be done at half past 12 when we landed back in mumbai and so after a dinner of bread omlette I had to go back to my hostel . My meeting with the 'dilli ki sardi' had been delayed. Nonetheless I went to delhi the next day and then after a rocking party in CP went to my home later and now this trimester is one 'GURU' and one visit to Kashid beach old :-).... more on that later ... stay happy !!!