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 !!!

Tere Mere 'Status Message'

'The higher you go, the more of your rear is exposed ...'

The easiest way to attract your friends' attraction is to keep a whacky status message in your IM and people will definitely ping back with concern 'kya hua ' 'aisa message kyun likha' without a good message you are just another blinking dot on their IM space and will not be noticed. You did not exist yesterday and it is this status message that gave you the CPR.

I will list down some attention grabbing status mesaages ( courtesy Gtalk and yahoo messenger and of course my friends )

'koi meri neend bhagaa de ...'
'kabhi kabhi yun karna main dantoo aur tum darna ...'
'jaag uthaa insaan ...'
'kaise bhoolegi mera naam ..'
'rain drops keep falling on my head ...'
'original gaon ki biwi' - don't ask me why would one want to be the biwi of a whole gaon ;-)
'no wucking forries'
'karm kar phal khareed kar khaa'
'I met myself and lost'
'Live one day at a time' - as if I was skipping every alternate day
for the ever questioning kid 'exams kyun hote hain' 'why me'
the crapiest 'why fart and waste when you can burp and taste' eeks
left for readers to guess 'i feel like ...'
informative ones 'feverish' 'trying to study ..' 'left for da day' 'in the loo' 'scratching my back' - the last two were not actually seen on the messenger
and then some cryptic ones which only they understand
'MTV bakriyaaan ...' 'Bugs says 'I'll bite you' ' ' Aunty khush huee '

unfortunately one can't keep history of status messages and thus am not able to reproduce some of the fundoo ones which couldn't stay up in my head. Copying status messages has become a cognisable offence, which result in severe bashing by the owner and public ridicule 'saale i have heard this status message before' 'you copied his message ... chi chi ... may you rot in hell' as if you just can not feel the same feeling twice or can't have the same thought somebody had at another point in time. Here is a beautiful message I got on our internal messenger

'Sumday sumone might come into ur life & luv u the way u've always wanted. If ur sumday was yesterday, learn. If ur sumday is tomorrow, hope. If ur sumday is today, cherish.'


P.S. It is really amazing, in the meantime I was writing this post and went back to Gtalk to check for some more messages at least 5-6 people have already changed their statutes. This is a fast world :-) need to hurry

the Innside story

It is 10 minutes to 2 in the watch hanging on the waist of a bald guy who is grinning widely over some joke which the lady stading close to him must have whispered. There are beer casks being loaded on a horse cart in some distance. All the folks there have some familiarity about them, some Goan touch. They are a part of the murals painted by Mario Miranda in the Cafe Mondegar or Mondy's ( can google or search orkut for their fan following ). My friend was telling me something about his German client who was causing some problem over his last delivery of some piece of code. I just happened to look at the dish on the table next to us. It was some bland preparation of noodles. What would it be tasting ... obviously bland what else. The tables were so closely interspersed with each other that it gave an appearance of the bogie of a local train.

It always happens that things start glittering and the music which was hitting the ears earlier now turns into melodious background score and all the hullabaloo created by the co-beerers (don't click the dictionary s/w on your machine and start cursing me ... i know it is not a word ) on other tables sounds like sweet chirping. All this happens once you are down a few glasses of beer and then you tend to make a beeline ( not a peeline ) for that important part of the pub /restaurant .... which is usually alloted the most elegance out of the entire interior or exterior design of the place. It usually has the most wittiest of lines or pictures.

I remember there was a message on one men's restroom at a pub 'Do not throw cigarettes in urinals it makes them soggy and wet and thus difficult to light' ( So caring naa ... ) This is informational for girls because I am sure there can not be so much creativity on their side of the wall ( usually the two share the same wall ... now don't let your imagination go wild ) . It is said that you judge a gentleman by the kind of shoes he wears and a place with the kind of restrooms they keep. The restaurant owners put special creativity to the signs that they put on the doors of the restrooms. I know for sure that this is in order to confuse the innocent folks who are already a little high on senses of their own. Thank God I have remained a winner uptil now in this game of wits. Instead of writing clearly they would put a symbol of a girl with skirt and guy with pants. I am amazed what would the people from mountains do on looking at these signs where both the genders wear the same kind of long coat kind of thing and what about the girls wearing pants ... at times they will put the pictures of raja and rani from the mughal period or king and queen out of a pack of cards to let you loosen your bowels with royalty ... till this it is fine but then in one other place they had put 'MAM' and 'MOUCHEE' .. can you guess which one is which. I'll help you out .. the 'MOUCHEE' had a moustache and 'MAM' had i think lips ... the Restaurant is called MAMOUCHEE ...they serve excellent Lebanese food.

I dunno why I started off on loos but now that you have stood with me uptil now ..lets do a high five ( not the way sukhi and DJ do in RDB but a cleaner one ) and bye bye
p.s. the title is also courtesy Mondegar's innner sanctum

Add colors ...

This is one collage I made for one of my presentations on the topic of advertising. Advertising is an interesting field
and one of the most innovative one.





Not much words today just some more advertising colors ( in fact a single color ) from the posterior.
















and some more which unfortunately could not become a part of the collage




















:-)

Naina thag lenge .....

This is a song from the movie 'Omkara', the movie very beautifully captures the interplay of emotions which are coming as essence from the Bard's play. It has been very beautifully ( controversial ) mingled in the western UP setting. The characters have come out starkly bold and precise. Langda Tyagi steals the show no doubt about that.

We've had numerous discussions in which most of the folks tried to persuade me that the movie is utterly distasteful. They also argued that the movie is not a feel-good one rather on the other extreme. I do not understand why would people accept irrational crap coming out of the mouth of Samuel Jackson in Pulp Fiction but do not want anything which is closer to us and seems distasteful. Langda Tyagi is a representation of someone which is not us.Though we might associate ourselves with some hollywood character who uses the F word in all possible forms of verb, noun, adjective and what not but Bipasha Basu saying filthy words is distasteful. Why ?

Why does the smugness creep in ? We start compartmentalizing ourselves in the biggest possible sphere which is safe, rich and contains no filth and leave out the dirt and poverty out to other folks. The states, the language or geographical regions become bigger than us. I know I am responsible for my own conduct and otherwise at least the whole of India ( if not the entire humanity ) belongs to me. If Punjab is rich it is not only because it is endowed with rich earth but also because poor labourers go and till the fields every harvesting season. We can very easily say that the rickshaw pullers don't belong to me and the Jet Airways Hostesses in stark red are my own but it is not true.

All in all the movie is good and i loved the screenplay. The title of the post says that one could be deceived with looks .... the eyes might take you to the neverland but then you might also fall flat on mother earth.

I would like to end the post with a joke. A friend of mine was telling me that when one of his friends went to Japan they were making a lot of noise and became a nuisance for the co-passengers in the tube. One person comes up and says 'You Indians, Keep quite
!!'. This guy retorts " We are not Indians !! We are from Pakistan" .... I would be leaving for home tomorrow for a week's Diwali Vacations !! Stay Happy !!

subah ho gayi mamu ...

It was the laziest morning today, so far i mean. I got up and barely finished the daily ablutions ( which on an average take 10 minutes ) in 5 minutes. Even sun was shying off in the clouds. Reached the start of our daily "chalo bulawaa ayaa hai ..." journey at the doorway of millions of stairs which the lesser mortals say are 96 in number. I am sure there is some conspiracy going on and someone increases a flight or two daily but how would someone manage to do this when the whole is campus is up till 5-6-7 AM. I saw a tindy ( meaningless word don't bother ) doggy who was stretching and yawning, it was doing all this acrobatics to tease me, to make me think over and compare his royal lifestyle with my own . One or two more souls were trying to crawl upwards. Everybody had a different theory in one's mind about the ever increasing number of stairs.

In the elevator four of us exchanged blank stares, everyone challenging the other to take pains of speaking a word.No one did. I could make out from all the faces that they must have slept at dawn. Lecture started and I was getting confused as to how I was thrown off into a garden from the classroom every now and then. I realized I was finishing off my siesta too early and those were not the odd signals coming from outer space captured by SETI radars but the result of my snooze. One after the other they kept coming on to the crease and when all the overs were bowled it was 1:40 ... time for lunch and then put the snooze button back to ON till devil in the form of my groupmates wake me up to finish one or the other Presentation / report ...zzzz...

All work and no play make jack a dull boy

And am not dull, so am playing with the crowd the investophiles, the startegies etc etc @ http://mastishk.nitie.net/ .....

Earn, Yearn and the Oligopoly

:-) got summers in E(arn) and Y(earn for more). I know as little about consulting as Mallika Sherawat would know about Oligopoly. But just got through somehow, as they say you need to win the inner battle first rest all follow.It did for me.

Dunno if the above simile makes any sense but this is what is going through my mind at this Brahm Muhurat of the day when the entire crow(d) of crows is waking up for their daily shit parade and am on the bed with various polies. It is only due to the shitty nature of these hundreds if not thousands ( I would not settle for anything less than 999 in that case ) of crows and their other avian cousins that the main road leading to academic block in NITIE is called the PPO road. Here PPO means something else, which could drop on the best part of you ( no not the one u r thinking !! ) at the most inoppurtune time. I had a cat fight with one black ( no part of it was not black i assure you ) crow very recently who was finding it hard to pee and poo on the famed PPO road but needed a more serene and academically elevated environs of my room. Had to shoo him off after a full fledged exercise of around hour or so.

Enough of crowing .. Ms Oligopoly is waiting for me.

Ceteris Paribus Condition

'All else being equal'

The whole outside world is stand still and it is chaotic motion here in our lives.Things are moving so fast in here that within a matter of hours a company comes in conducts interviews, leaves the campus, we finish a case study, solve problems for next day's tutorial, have group discussions in class over case studies, sleep over the fin accounting lecture, gorge off paratha and juices way past midnight ( all these events do not necessarily take place in this order or they may also, I am not too sure ) . In the outside world things are still moving at snail's pace i guess, don't have too much time to look outside this jungle. All in all this jungle is fun !!!

The jungle is full of all sorts of sleep deprived creatures going through the whole rigmarole over and over :-) with newer and tougher deadlines and conditions.

Hi from Mum-bhai

Wrote a mail to my ex-colleague

"At 3 AM now, just felt like pouring out some words back towards my beloved NOIDA.I have been missing the cozy comfort of CSC.It was really easy to get up at 9 and reach office around 10 or 10:30 but here being able to climb the '96 steps to excellence' ( our acad section is on a hillock ) plus another equal number of steps in the acad building and the hostel at 8:55 or 9:00 AM and face the professors one after another fighting an untiring battle of 1.5 hours each with the drowsy students seems like an uphill task.It was easier to put your views on the Nortel Phone over to Steve than it is to shout it out loud in a case study discussion.All in all I am feeling the pangs of missing cool comfort but I really feel it was important for me to shake myself off that frigid comfort and get bare in front of the world and am enjoying it.I feel it is really important for every one to take risk and come out in open .... CSC is cozy very true but there are institutions and people outside who deserve you more :-). This is not a lateral recruitment drive for some other company or college but just felt that way ... .I feel greatly indebted to all of you for being very good and trusted friends.

I know the scene is so dynamic that by now half of the floor must have been filled with newer folks and the per capita beauty of CSC must have risen to greater heights ;-) .Enjoy karte raho and all the very best for all your party sharty ... sunaa hai Nainital ka trip ban raha hai .. great hai !!! All the besties !!!"

I actually feel that it was important to shake me and my ideas to the core that knowing and perfecting the art of one small area of business or rather such a small portion of life does not mean anything.It is important to move on and visit newer frontiers.

Go on sailor ... !!

life @ NITIE

Back here after a long time, first it was the black out of blogger by ISPs and then things were pretty hectic.

I am still not able to get the hang of things in true sense, life has been running at fifth gear since the day we arrived in Mumbai.The incessant rains and extreme greenery of the junglesque campus of NITIE has very much become a part of me.We were taught about the ins and outs of b skool life very early, the instructions were loud and clear no more sleep and rest.Things like group activities, case study presentations, committee selections etc took most of the time of our first month here.

I got to know the varied and very talented junta here, the people can sing and dance at the drop of a hat and create humour or satire through street plays or mime any time ( mostly creativity flows after 1 AM in the night ).Now people have started consuming Gigs and Gigs of movies, friend, Joey, the most unheard of classics of hollywood and what not ;-).

The morn comes ( without the sun ... still monsoons here ) and begins the race for beating the clock and reaching class in time ( we have to climb '96 steps to excellence' to reach the academic block plus another equal no of stairs in the hostel and acad bldng ) where all of the profs are ready with their surprises ( as if we are going to get awed with more than expected surprise tests or case studies ).Backbenchers try there level best to remain as unobtrusive and mute as possible so as not to disturb the class and in return enjoy the soporific environs of NITIE.I can assure you that no other B skool in India has got more beautiful view from within the class with high rises of Hiranandani silhoutted on the Vihar/Powai Lake.

and the race continues rather just started ....

Itz a jungle out there

this is the new delhi sky at dusk ... while we were coming back from our tiring trip from Sariska Tiger Reserve,Rajasthan.The place is close to 37 KM from Alwar which is infact 140 KM from Delhi.The reserve should be renamed as a peacock reserve as even the goverment servants in 'Tiger Den' shamelessly declare to the tourists that there is not even a single tiger left in the jungle ... all poached down by the famous Sansar Chand.Though the place is pretty retro, we enjoyed a few drinks at the bar which reminded me of the era when Naseeruddin Shah and Saeed Jafri sang "huzoor is qadar bhi na itraa ke chaliye .." 

The Great Wall of India

This weekend I have been watching television in marathon sessions interspersed with the inevitable breaks for lunch and drinks.There has been an overwhelming coverage of Indian Cricket these days on Television.There were at least 2-3 interviews of Dravid accross different channels and he appeared to be extremely learned in terms of leadership or team work fundas, avoided the volleys of Greg-Ganguly contorversy and other such questions as if they were well read Bouncers from inexperienced pacers.Rajdeep Sardesai correctly pointed out that Dravid was sounding so knowlegeable that he should take up profession of taking leaderhip seminars or lectures once he is retired.

Cricket is everywhere, in discussions on News Channels where Sidhuisms continue unabated ( inspite of the fact that these days he is getting lots of airtime elsewhere also e.g on Laughter Challenge ), people are SMSing to make Raina, Dhoni, Powar upcoming heroes, the reporters are invading houses of these new age heroes asking the most cliched questions "Aap Kaisa mehsoos ker rahe hain ?" ( at least the smaller towns of UP are in news for some good reasons and not for operation Majnu etc ), Kumble is there on the Sunday Times of TOI, one private airliner promoting Delhi-Goa flight allowing common men to get shoulder to shoulder with the men in blue.

In all this hoopla at times one feels do we have any other sports in India. Alas ! very recently the commonwealth games were finished and we were able to perform decently i guess.Shamsher Jung was adjudged the most outstanding athelete of the games winning 7 medals , I would love to see how his family ( his wife too is winner of gold at the same games ) is celebrating his success, most of us don't even know to which city he belongs.There were so many other winners who have won laurels but they are not at all being put in limelight.What makes heroes ? I think these days it is the media which makes rules as to what hogs the limelight and who bites the dust of anonymity or is it the other way round ?


p.s. : the title of this post is credited to the CNN IBN interview of Dravid.

Chasing away boredom on this weekend, lazy afternoon !!

A friend dictated his visit to Amsterdam / Europe as scary and full of revelations which made him like his motherland more and more .It is just the conversion factor ( $ to Rs ) which is driving people crazy.According to him the whole of europe seems full of perverts , ppl *ing everywhere in and arnd Eiffel tower, on subways and where not, it is so risky travelling alone or even in a small group, there have been horror stories of people getting robbed and all.Am sure this is not the full picture but at least some corners of the picture are dark. I guess it is just the alien effect, aliens in any place are equally precarious.They are so much out of context in the host country that things are bound to have a different shade.US folks coming to India find things eually chaotic, they feel that on roads here traffic is coming from all direction and in all forms ( from local made bullock carts to the Mercs ) on the same two lane road.

All this thing came to the mind my this week's marathon TV viewing session watching 'Chasing Liberty'( a la 'Dil hai ki manta nahi' girl leaving home in search of answers and falling in love etc etc ) , remember one more movie 'Euro Trip'( Tagline: No actual Europeans were harmed in the making of this film). I guess even the americans have a mysticism,romanticism about Europe, may be 'cause they trace their roots to Europe.

p.s. : all the above statements are purely a result of the concoction of my tidbits of knowledge.No harm intended to any nation/race/spcies/genus/kingdom.

Atulya !Bharat a la Incredible !ndia

I am not going to advertise the tourist hegemony of India or praise the oddest possible Yogic Calisthenics which is shown in the advert as if it is a daily morning act in front of Taj .I think you all can imagine what would be the most probable morning picture in Agra with the Taj in the backdrop, some kid shitting carelessly in the open very much unaware of Shah Jahan or Yoga.Here are some of the incidents that I came accross recently :

• I was waiting in line for getting a train reservation and as usual there were at least 150 persons in a relatively smaller room insufficient even to house 15 cows if they were placed as per PETA's guidelines, but alas there is no one fighting for treating human beings humanely.After a wait of close to 2 hours I was relieved that there was only one person in between me and the cancelled ticket money ( another long whining going on in my mind of why even after paying a 100 bucks or so extra for booking the ticket online I can't get it cancelled in a similar manner ).The ticket clerk asked the chap in front of me why he hadn't specified his flat / house number in the specified place, he said he lives in Jhuggi Jhopri colony so he doesn't have a house number but then the clerk remarked that he had mentioned a mobile number he grinned widely and displaying his Nokia 3315 said "haan mobile phone to hai naa !!".
• I went to a friend's place and while I was comparing his cook's elegance with that of my cook's brazen ways one thing came up which took me with great surprise.He told me that they were late in paying the cook his salary in time once or twice due to one reason or the other when the cook was a little irked and the third time he asked them "Sir ! why are you taking so much pains of withdrawing the money from ATM etc. Do one thing, here is my ICICI account number just transfer the money online I would check it myself".Now the trend in there home is that as they make other regular payments to Hutch or their credit card they are now paying their cook's salary online.
  

Incredible isn't it when way back in 1998 before joining my Engg college I had hardly any knowledge about Credit Cards or Internet or even ATM cards ... India rocks and we will soon be making a killing in terms of retail, banking, insurance and what not and we are going to the witness to all this !!

Therez no spoon !!

Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead only try to realize the truth.
What truth?
There is no spoon.
There is no spoon?
Then you'll see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.


I have left out the dream of studying at an IIM and will take up one of the colleges ( got two options in Mumbai ).Want to defer the battle to the real corporate world ... letz just jump the bandwagon and see what I can make out of life !!!

Was talking to one person about his GD/PI experiences .. he said you know almost all the people that came were more or less like us, they were ordinary people ..it was Dejavu same words which one of my frnd at IIM* ( he finished out his term this april and was all over the news channels for taking his own road by abstaining from the recruitment process ) told people in there are more or less like us !!! I know buddy they too are human beings only .

Is it something like there is an old story, everybody made the king believe he was wearing the best of dress when he was actually naked. May be the analogy is not entirely applicable but it certainly happens that this whole hysteria or hoopla makes people supreme confident, each and every human being ( say media,junta,peers etc etc ) contributes his cents. This whole brings out supreme human beings out of those pious citadels called IIMs.

There is definitely a supreme system (the Profs,the curriculum, the peers) which bring out an excellent human being out of IIMs.I salute thee ( from the outside of course !! ).

Tiranga day ( belated though ) !!

I distinctly remember those sonorous voices of Jasdev Singh and some others elegantly describing the gala displays of military might of India on Republic Day Parade in the commentary on doordarshan, when as kids we used to get up early in the morning and get ready by the time the national flag is unfurled and we heard "Jana Gana Man .." standing in attention.He would call the beautifully attired soldiers "Hamare Ran Bankure" and other such adjectives for technical innovations of Indian Military.

I had the honor of listening to him live on the Rajpath this Republic Day and watch the entire paraphernalia in person.What was very much evident at the parade was that it was the result of rigorous preparations and efforts of a great lot of people ( the performers, military personnel, the beauracrats and thousands of police staff engaged in security arrangements ).I would like to give all of them a 10 on 10 for excellent arrangements and a nice display of clockwork like arrangement.It is really nice to see something "sarkari" working flawlessly on time.The bangs of 21 gun-salute , the deafening roar of mirage, synchronised footsteps of groups after groups of soldiers will be memories worth remembering.There were two foreigners nicely dressed up in Indian dress with full accoutrements ( bindi,chudi,sari etc etc ) enjoying the republic day immensly and lots of other foreigners were watching in amazement while the whole paraphernalia passed accross the Rajpath.

Some people call it "a lump in your stomach" as yesterday Barkha Dutt described on NDTV her feelings on hearing the national anthem or watching the republic day parade but I view it as a crystal clear feeling of pride and honour.

And finally my day ended with "Rang de Basanti" - a must watch !!!

This post was meant for 26th Jan ...but it's ok if i post it now.I've watched a rerun of "Rang de .." today and it was as frothy and youthful as last time ( I know it is obvious .. the movies hasn't changed :-) )

Happy birthday to me !!!

Itz my birthday today !!

Had a mast party at a restaurant which serves all sorts of continental , now i can't recall names of any of the dishes - , salsa, jalpenos, boiled spinach in white sauce, Chef special soup inside a big bun with breads served along side ... one had to be extra cautious not to break the bun at an inappropriate angle to let the flood of soup gushing- only thing i can remember now is the few drinks and "happy b'day" calls from some very good friends.

The cliched "Therez life after CAT" mails on groups make me think a lot ... 0/6 IIM calls .. other results awaited .... and I am waiting too :-)