Is this real or is someone playing a prank on me ..







I swear I did not use Photoshop :

“Reaching the lobby doesn’t count , because nobody gets tickets to get to the lobby.It doesn’t count if you don’t get to the top“

My training continues in top gear. People are actually shocked when i tell them that my training duration is 1 yr. Work, Training, Office; no matter what people call it, its the same at the end of the day. You are always counting down days to the coming weekend. And most importantly you waste no time in squeezing in that extra bit of comfort into your life ,before and after the day’s work ,especially during travel. I m one among the million commuters in the city who tunes into FM on the cell , unmindful of all the noise n traffic which is effectively drained out(along with the conductor’s cries of “Pude Chala, Pude Chala( marathi for “Move,It”) thanks to the music on full blast. The hapless bus conductor has to do some serious throating.



Damn amusing..if u were to observe these things while travelling in mumbai.

Fortunately for me,my work timings are such that I literally get to choose my seat in the bus. Absolutely no crowd at all (touchwood!)on my way to work. But the return story is a different one if I work till late hours. The traffic and the sweaty fragrance inside the bus doesnt make things better.

Its a real sight to see guys getting tossed and jostled around courtesy that startlingly sudden break. Much worse if the guy is sandwiched between females (u know, like right at the front, near the “Ladies Only” seats). If he fails to hold on properly he ends up bumping into the aunty standing behind him. As he turns around to apologize, he is greeted by a real,cold glare from her; a look mostly reserved for chain-snatchers,murderers,rapists and the like. Hehee..as if the poor guy did it on purpose.

Then there are these hilariously stupid guys who take an eternity searching for their wallet in their pant pockets only to realize they dont have one. After a good 10-15 minutes of searching in their shirt pocket, they fork out a crisp 100-rupee note for a mere 5-rupee ticket in a “Keep the change!” style( The note held between the tip of the index and middle finger ). The conductor, obviosuly not impressed by the whole exercise, makes no secret of how pissed off he is and gives him a real mouthful along with the 100 rupee note.

Then there are the college dudes who prefer to be the back-benchers even in the bus no matter how much space there is at the front,playing with their cell phones and having a great laugh occasionally. The girls, on the other hand, engage in what appear to be real path-breaking discussions interspersed with an occasional chorus of giggles which makes a few heads turn.

Then there are the people who seem completely oblivious to whats going on inside the bus because they are so busy watching out of the window. Window seat is always the prized one, be it a bus,rickshaw or bike.

There is momentary silence as the bus comes to a halt at the signal. The silence is however shortlived. Suddenely, as if from nowhere, we are interrupted by the famous bollywood number “Dhoom Machale” (a Ring tone). It is followed by a loud “Hello,.. Haan, harish bhai.. bolo…acchaa” , as if to show the whole bus that he’s got a cell phone and that too with handsfree! To top it, he gestures with his hands, while talking. You get really irritated and want to remind him that the person at the other end cannot see through the cell phone. 5 minutes on, the conversation is at its loudest best and the junta in close proximity is sulking and silently cursing the guy under their breath. Just makes one wonder how Technology can be a real pain in the a** !! By the time he is finished with his talk, he has ensured that the every person in the bus knows who ‘Harish bhai’ is.



Then there are the guys (heroes) who are hell-bent on showing that they are completely different from the rest. They stand on the step-board (’local train’ ishtyle)with acres of space available inside. Its a blasphemy for these people to board a stationary bus; the thrill they derive out of catching a bus on the “running” is unmatchable. They always exit through the entry door and vice versa. When you hear the conductor spewing expletives and unmentionables, you can sense that the ‘heroes’ are there somewhere in close vicinity.

One more tribe of bus commuters are the ’surprised’ kind. Ya!The people who wear that perenially surprised look like they have seen a celebrity in the bus. You remove and open your wallet to pay the bus fare and they examine every action of yours which makes you feel like Mukesh Ambani.

Finally its time for me to unboard and I make my way through the maze of standees to the exit door.

Thats life!



Regards



Vishwesh

It was one of those dinners that happen way too infrequently nowadays.

Fungus was there. The author and the missus. Pastrami completed the four-umvirate even though he was only half the man he is normally. Bags under his eyes. Shoulders slumped in exhaustion. Mouth pursed in that weird way of those who have worked 36 or so straight hours on an investment banking deal that will yield rich dividend in time.

(While I sympathized with him, inside I leapt for joy. The more he worked, the more he made bonus and the more he paid for Long Island Iced Teas at the Hard Rock Café. He rounds his credit card bills to the thousands you see.)

Alas money is not everything. Nothing can buy back sleep once lost. Not even a lucrative buy back option. (Got it? Got it?)

But also it was Pastrami’s birthday celebration redux.

Earlier this week he had spent the night of his actual birthday hunched over his laptop at the office doing the things he does on tough deals. Making term sheets, creating spreadsheets, downloading porn, playing Poker on Facebook, hitting on the ladies in HR. They call it ‘the grind’. A party had been out of the question till the deal had been closed and both parties signed on the dotted lines.

Thankfully a couple of days later he emerged from his professional tapasya an exhausted but satisfied man. A quick round of phone calls later we were all at Tamnak Thai. Heinekens were being sipped. Pastrami was awake but looked grim.

Normally, regulars at this blog will know, Pastrami has a tendency to slip into precarious predicaments. There was the infamous time when his family realized he was gay. Also I did poke him in his eye once with my stylus.

But this time we assumed him grimness came from just having worked like a dog all through his birthday.

“Pastrami the usual?”

“Hmm…”

Thai green curry and steamed rice. The missus, another veggie but one bored of Thai green curry all the time, demanded a change. She ordered a refreshingly different Thai red curry.

These veggies I tell you…

Fungus wasted no time in ordering a herd-killing spread of lamb, pork and chicken. All cooked in the Thai fashion with generous helpings of lemon grass. Also much chilli.

We dug into our food with feverish gusto. (Note: The food would reciprocate fiercely the next morning. We are talking Krakatoa here. Lava. Pompeii. It still hurts. Freaking magma.)

Pastrami continued to be silent. He chewed in slow motion. He was completely quiet except for a brief moment, which gave us hope, when he asked for a diet coke. But he went back into his shell again.

“Dude. Something wrong?”

“Hmm…”

“Bad day at work…?”

“Hmm…”

I reached for the Thai Red Curry. The missus dissuaded me with the pointy end of a fork between the third and fourth knuckle.

“Arrey yaar. What is this reticence? Why don’t you talk to us? We are your friends no?” I said fighting back tears bravely.

“No I don’t want to. It’s embarrassing.”

Whoa! Embarrassment and Pastrami? A blog post loomed. If only he would open up. And I could type.

Fungus chirped up: “But tell no? Sometimes it’s good to share things with friends.”

Pastrami took a deep breathe. And then narrated his short but lively tale while we sipped our Heinekens and tried not to think of permanent tendon damage.

Pastrami had been called to attend a meeting with his boss late the previous night. The meeting was at a client’s office and it had something to do with Corporate Finance or Slump Selling or some such topic I remember flunking with aplomb.

The whole team, some seven or eight people, stuffed into a small conference room. Once everyone was settled Pastrami’s boss flipped open the laptop and began the presentation. Pastrami was expected to note down the client’s reactions and questions.

A few moments into the presentation Pastrami notices that the client CEO’s laptop screen has quickly moved into screensaver mode. The way they sat in the room, only Pastrami could see it.

The screensaver was a version of a recent Swimsuit Calendar. The CEO had one of those VAIOs with 19-inch screens and vivid life like images on the LCD screen.

Pastrami is only human. He was distracted. In the beginning he pulled his eyes away to the excel sheets and models and Powerpoint on the large projector screen. But in time he began to anticipate each model on the screensaver. The way her hair blew in the wind. The way the sand stuck to her bum. The way her voluptuous…

“Pastrami! What do you think of the slideshow? You’ve been quite interested in it! Which parts did you like?”

The client CEO boomed with a smile on his face.

“What?” Pastrami frantically clutched at conversational straws.

“What do you think of the slideshow? Anything you liked in particular?”

“Well…”

“Don’t be scared of your boss. Give me your honest opinion…”

Pastrami figured this guy was a real stud. Not harm in playing along if it meant the deal would go through.

“Well I really liked Deepika’s picture. Sheetal was a little too aggressive if you ask me. That little tigress! Sarah Jane would have rocked. But that’s just my opinion. Ha ha ha!”

The room reverberated in deathly silence.

On the drive back Pastrami’s boss spoke to him: “He was referring to my…”

“I know…”

“You thought?”

“Yes…”

“Oh shit…”

“Yeah…”

“Little Tigress… damn…”

“Hmm…”

Just as he ended the story the Tamnak Thai people brought in the cake we had ordered for him. There was a candle on it that had already been lit.

And around the candle our message:

“Happy Birthday Pastrami! May 2008 be your year with the LADIES!”

He flinched.

We winced.

“Happy Birthday Pastrami!”

“Shut it…”

Sigh.

p.s. Do a good deed today. Sign up at GiveIndia and support one of the certified NGOs there. You don’t have an excuse not to.

Color colour what kalar do you see ??





hello people, this is my art attack!!!!

Berkeley’s point of departure is that the mind perceives ideas. These ideas are:

(1) Ideas of sense, such as colors, smells, shapes, and so forth;

(2) Ideas of reflection, such as ideas of volition, pain, sadness, and so forth;

(3) Ideas of the imagination, such as unicorns and chimeras, as well as dreams, etc., which are merely a combination of (1) and (2).

what do you perceive of the image ?



let me see??

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Of course it cannot be of either.. None of them exist!

But we do. And there is no mystery about us. We’re humans after all!

But don’t you think that friends can be more mysterious than strangers?

This post is total crap . So please don’t read this . :P :P

Hmmmm , then why am i writing this ?

Time pass . :P

I have always wanted a time machine . How nice it will be if you can chumma go forward write any test or exam and then go back prepare well, and then do that properly . How nice it will be if you can if you can screw up anything to any extent and then finally with a click of a button , everything gets fixed and you are back to square zero with no harm done to anyone. Hmmmmm now i guess a time machine will be the only thing i might needing. Like once i have that, anything and everything can be done without any fear or worry . :-)

If you can’t get what I’m saying , think about this . you are travelling in a crowded bus and somehow you have lost all money you had. (Let’s make this some 20lakhs if you don’t mind losing 10 or 20 bucks .) How nice it’ll be if you get a time machine and you go back to any point and get anything you want.

Looks funny but i want it . RIght now .

4.30 AM. The day was Tuesday, May the 11th, 1999. The King for twelve years was dethroned! An enigmatic personality was born. Here she is, 8 years into her life, dictating and commanding things to her parents and to her unfortunate brother, Rivat Hanss. Meet A.R.Sriranjini or Harini as I like to call her. The first look of her in the hospital got me fuming. ‘She is very fair!! She cant be my sis!’ I cried to my mom, only to get an answer that girls are always fair and boys are better off with a darker complexion. I dumbly believed that then. Suddenly I found that my mom and dad had no time to tell me stories in the night (yeah even at twelve I liked listening to stories!). Slowly, I was being ignored and she was attaining glory. Yes I knew that she was going to be pampered a lot. But I never expected my life to take a hit. I started accepting things and my career was shaping up. Soon I was away and was not able to assist her in her pedagogy or her life in general.



But during these holidays I have had time to monitor her activities and was shocked to say the least. She enjoys absolute freedom at home. Be it changing TV channels as and when wished, taking money from the shelf and getting anything she wants, or making my mom plead before her to do a thing! The mom I once feared and thought any other child would. She has no respect for our words, takes an independent decision always and has this ready made cry if we oppose it. The fact that we are better off financially than some ten years ago isn’t helping her much. My parents want her to get all the things I was deprived off in my childhood. I tried admonishing my parents a lot of times and all I got back was ‘she is a child’. Yes her activities are innocuous still but over the years it can become dangerous if not controlled.



The first question she asks whenever I return home from hostel, greeting her with a nice sweet five star, is ‘anna when you returning to college?’ and she is very possessive generally. Doesn’t share a biscuit also with anyone. And of late she has become possessive of the pet name ARS too! (One of the reasons I switched over to a new distinct name). She interferes in anything and everything I do. Sees my messages, sits besides me whenever I am online and is pestering me now also to come and check something. Three days ago she called me up from school(has memorized all our nos) to come take her back complaining of fever, stomachache and what not. Already I was angry that she woke me up from my deep sleep (11AM) and when she started jumping around, watching TV, playing with neighbors after returning home, I couldn’t stand it. But when I look at her school diary that has my name as her guardian, my eyes moisten. Whatever said and done, she is my sister and I have a moral responsibility to take care of her. I have learnt a lot from her too (that watching pogo and chutti tv is a good way to spend time!). Above all I love her more than I love anyone else!! :) :)

Is there such a thing like this?