One cycle completes, another begins!

It's been a long, rather a very long time, when I had last written something...No excuses, it's just that many other important things kept me occupied. But a very special reason has pulled me back!

Mumbai, Sunday, 23 May 2010, 0900: It was my nephew (Nachiket's) janeu (thread) ceremony. I along with my parents were at the venue quite early as we had to participate in preparations, after all it was a home function. I was about to reach the hall on the second floor, when a speeding Priyanka (my cousin) bumped into me. Before I could see anything, she ordered "Go and see if the caterers have arrived"..."oh man!", I said. I was already in the scheme of things. Nothing to worry though, my marriage had given me enough confidence that I could handle, and even take out, any sort of job, from anyone. Confidence paid and I could accomplish a few preparations only to see my sister happy about it.

Everything was ready and the pooja began. A big havan had converted an otherwise AC hall into a 45 deg. C boiling furnace. With everybody busy in either taking part in the ceremony or the preparations or gossiping, it looked as if the heat didn't matter to many. Or maybe, I am not used to such temparatures anymore!

Quite interestingly in whatever ceremony you talk, mama has to play a crucial role. Isn't it? It was my turn now, as Nachiket's mama. Didn't take much time to play my part in all the rituals but this made me realize one thing. And that was "One Cyle Completes, another begins!". Incidently, Nachiket's grandfather was my mama. I was with Nachiket performing all the rituals and could remember each and every single thing that my mama and mami had done for me. Things like going to Gurudev hotel to enjoy delectable idli-dosa, or taking me to films or giving me all the magzines for small kids and what not. It was really an emotional moment for me. It was, as if, I could almost see him in front of my eyes...

The function got over and I started for the airport. Sitting in the local train I wondered, life had now given me the chance to pass on all the love I had received from my mama-mami. I thought, would Nachiket remember us (his Chandani Mami and Chand Mama as he calls Deepti and me) when he is in my shoes? Will he remember me 20 years from now? Something struck me and I made a promise to myself; I will be there with him whenever he requires and give him all the love possible. That's a promise, I sincerely hope, I live upto.

10 suspense pact minutes…

I was waiting…

He was sitting in the chair, perfectly hassle-free….
Just then, a dark, red-eyed and robust looking man arrived and splashed water on his face.
He then captured a blade and put under his chin…
Small droplets of blood came out…
For next few moments nothing happened…

Again a splash of water on the face and the barber moved away…
Man stood up as he was done with the shaving...

An action pact event: Reaching Suji’s reception!

A day when everything went wrong….is what happened to Prithvi and me last evening. It was Suji’s wedding and reception day. It was a weekday and obviously it would have been difficult for both of us to have attended the wedding. So we decided on making it to the reception that was scheduled from 7-9 pm at Guru Narasimha hall, Bull Temple Road, Bangalore.

3:00 pm: Prithvi pings me on the gtalk to decide the itinerary. It was decided that Prithvi would start from his house at 6:30PM, pick me up from the office entrance, we would then go to the forum mall, buy a good gift for Suji and from then on would leave for the gathering. Sounded like a plan! I contemplated if 6:30 would have been late, but then felt even if the function time was 7 pm, such gatherings were always delayed for some good reason. :)

6:30 pm: Prithvi calls me to inform that he has started. It meant I leave as soon as possible because he would have taken lesser time and fuss to make it to the rendezvous.

Real excitement starts from here on! Fasten your seat belts!

6:32 pm: I start shutting down my system with no luck. This was nothing bizarre as I had installed an operating system on my machine that was produced by Microsoft Corporation and we all are aware of how Microsoft could help us while devastating us at the same time. :) First, I tried to fix the issue by going through all the tedious and weird error messages patiently, but it was already 6:40pm and I was getting late. The word endurance was thrown out of my dictionary and I decided to hit the help button by opting for a hard shutdown. Crude way of doing things, but they work! :) To hell with the laptop, I said, hoping that the machine could boot up the following day.

6:42 pm: I was at my office reception. Pressed the button of the lift for the ground floor. If you’re working in EGL Campus and Pine Valley building, you would very well know that the elevators here don’t follow any algorithms that they are supposedly designed for. :) I could hear 4-5 noises of elevator coming to 2nd floor but none actually did. Finally, one lift opened in front of me and it felt as if it was sent by some heavenly power because it came without making any announcement of it actually reaching the 2nd floor.

6:45 pm: I was out on the campus walking towards the road where I was supposed to meet Prithvi. What worse could have happened? Yes, it started raining. So typical of Bangalore! :) Instead of now walking briskly and enjoying the cool weather of namma(our) Bengaluru, I had actually started running. If that wasn’t enough, a call from the home made things clumsier and by the time I could finish talking to my parents, my mobile alerted me that Prithvi is calling me; it seemed he had already reach the meeting point.

Prithvi made me cognizant of our first real hurdle. There was a huge traffic jam on the intermediate ring road. Oh man!

7:15 pm: We were still stuck on the intermediate ring road. The worry of not reaching in time had started to just creep in to our thoughts; but we were content not to have thought about it as yet. Somewhere, on the back of our minds, we knew that once we reached Sony World junction of Kormangala, things wouldn’t be as gloomy. We had diverted our minds to other talks that related to work, life in Bangalore and as always on switching jobs and how to get a fatter pay. Typical software engineers! :)

7:35 pm: No more hiccups from the sony world junction ensured that we had reached forum mall. I took out my wallet to check my financial status only to find that I had one shining 5 rupee coin in my pocket. Shining, as if to tell me that your worth is not more than 5 rupees! I didn’t bother to think about it as saving time and taking out money from the ATM was the trade. I asked Prithvi to come to Nik-Nish shop where we were supposed to buy the gift for Suji, meanwhile, I thought of encashing my debit card. If everything would have gone well, I wouldn’t have thought of writing this blog! You must have guessed it by now, there was a long queue in front of HSBC ATM and Nik-Nish shop was closed. Damn! It took me around 20 minutes to withdraw the money. We then went to Landmark stores and started scouring for a nice gift. Gift? Thats really dificult to get, you know! Joke book? Nah! Cooking book? Nah! Child care? Forget it! :) Finally, god gave us some sense and we bought a lord Ganesha’s idol. Looked perfectly apt.

8:15 pm: It was getting really late now! We were on our way to the Bull Temple Road. Huge traffic near the Lalbaug made us wonder whether we would actually make it to the hall in time! Would any of our friends be there when we reach? we contemplated. Shwetha was our only hope. We called her to tell that we would be there at the gathering in the following 20 minutes or so and to tell her to wait near the gate and guide us through. On the contrary, she said she was on her way back and would have reached home pretty soon. :( Ggrrrrr! Traffic was really sickening us now.

8:45 pm: We finally reached the place, found Varsha, another friend of ours. She was a rel life saver. She guided us through out. We met Suji and Girish (Suji’s husband) at the stage, congratulated them, took the photograph as an evidence of our presence, gave the gift that we had purchased and had a nice delectable dinner. Who doesn't agree that we attend receptions for good food?! :)

Suji was really very happy; the smile on her face couldn’t stop a bit. Wishing her a happy married life!

If you are thinking this is the end, you are wrong, you are in store for some more.

9:45 pm: It was almost quarter to ten when we started our journey back. You must be thinking, what else could have happened now? It was the gas problem. Not that we had gas problem, but it was the auto that didn’t have gas to run on. We had to look out for some options of transportation and the journey thereafter was a smooth sail. :)

Phew! Quite an action packed journey it was. But we were really glad that we could attend the function, see the smile on Suji's face. It was worth it!

A male on Karbonn mobile turns female :)

Now this is something really new!

It was fairly a wonderful and refreshing holiday in Mumbai last week; helping parents with their business, enjoying the home porch, the garden, the swing, act of breaking coconuts, meeting friends at the alumni meet and what not. Phew! Come Saturday and I realized I had to join office on Monday. Office? Truly boring after a joyful week, isn’t it? Anyway, quickly, I picked up the phone and called one of my colleagues, Harish, to check out what was going in the office. This would have prepared me, both mentally and physically, to resume the office. What happened next will definitely entertain you as much as it amused me. :-)

Saturday, 1910 hrs, Home, Mumbai
As I mentioned, I had called Harish. The phone rang and a soft, effeminate voice from the other end saying “Hello” bewildered me. Harish stays alone in Bangalore and unfortunately has no girl friends. :-) So it was kind of unexpected for me to hear a female voice. But you never know; anything can happen in seconds. Hey, that reminds me of TATA DOCOMO advertisement and the charming girls in it. :) As I said, life is full of surprises, so I continued, “Hello, can I speak to Harish?” On that, I got a response like, “Hey Chetan, this is Harish only. Didn’t you recognize my voice?” A bit of thinking made me conclude that this was some kind of trick on me. So I started laughing and said, “Please give the phone to Harish, I know this is some kind of ploy to annoy me”. The reply that I got, frankly irritated me. It said, “Tell me Chetan, this is Harish only”. I was really furious on Harish now, as I had called him for something important and his behavior was irritating me. I banged the phone and never called him again. I got his call twice but I was so livid that I didn’t bother to pick it up. This was on Saturday.

Cut2: Monday Morning 10 AM, Office Cafeteria, Bangalore
Our team’s custom or rather habit is to gather in cafeteria for a cup of coffee and then start working. The same happened yesterday. I reached the canteen and sat on the table where the team was chatting. I was unhappy with Harish and didn’t want to speak to him. Just then, Shirish, one of my teammates said, “Chetan do you know this cool feature in Harish’s phone?” Harish again, Oh man! I said to myself, but remained neutral and pretended to listen. Shirish was talking about Harish’s new phone that had the ‘Voice Modulation’ feature where in one could adjust the voice between ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ and whatever you speak would come out in that voice. So if one enables the ‘Voice Modulation’ feature in ‘Female’, irrespective of your sex, the voice would be converted into a female one. “Cool”, I said. Harish added that he had changed the mode of operation inadvertently and was using the handset for a week making a joke of this uncommon but fantastic feature. “Tiiinnnn” a bell rang in my head and I could relate what would have happened on Saturday. It was Harish who must have been talking but because of the phone setting I could hear an unfamiliar but a cute female voice!

Funny! Interesting! Whatever you say!

For people interested in technology:
This is a Karbon, K series mobile phone. Picture below.

Picture taken by Chetan Giridhar

Mumbai - Trip to the clouds - 3 July 2009

The Built Up
It was almost 6 months ago when I had last been to Mumbai. People, who know me, would be really astonished with the time period. But that's the way it goes. Ostensibly, I was a bit too busy with other stuff that included a promotion at work and a perpetual grapple for a home loan from SBI. Having said that, handling 3 projects in a quarter is not everyone's cup of tea :) But, I guess, it was time to recuperate myself and enjoy the rains at Mumbai. My cousins Nimish and Bhairavi (from Nagpur) had also arrived for their vacation to Mumbai; aai had promised them a trip into the clouds. Believe me it’s possible, well almost. You would come to know how, but you need to read this blog throughout..he he he...

The trip
It was early morning on the 3rd of July and after having a filling breakfast, we started on Mumbai-Pune highway towards the hills. It was raining very heavily and supposedly, we had chosen a perfect day for a perfect monsoon trip. The milieu was fantastic; nice cool breeze, rain water trickling on your face and the coveted odor of the earth were all an integral part.

N.D. Studio
It was only around 8 kms that we had travelled, when we started discussing about the N.D.Studio that is built very near to the highway. My mother happened to tell us that "Jodha Akbar" movie was shot here and the sets were still standing and were pretty much visible from the outside. It was both, a bit of curiosity and interest; we turned to the studio. Coming so close, who would remain content with just a view? Few phone calls from my mother to the top officials made way to a guided tour of inside. Lucky we!! Slowly, almost all the sets, from the Jodha's palace, to the set where Akbar has a tussle with a mad elephant, to the Akbar's darbaar were captured in our cameras. We also got an opportunity to witness a Marathi serial being shot. It was based on Shivaji Maharaj and it was no surprise that they had chosen some sets of Jodha Akbar's to depict Auranzeb's abode in the serial. We could recognize some of the Marathi actors but were too shy to take their autographs; rather we didn’t want to disturb their work. As it was a guided tour, we were made aware of some of the technicalities of movie making from the directors themselves. We realized that movie making wasn't easy as it seemed. As I write this blog, radio mirchi is playing "Kehne ko jashne bahara hain...." a nice coincidence, isn't it?

The Hills
Cut2, we were on the highway again and a seemingly endless association with the rain began. Travelling further on the highway saw us at Khopoli, a town at the foot hills. We decided to have batata(potato) wadas from the famous Hotel Ramakant. For benefit of some, Hotel Ramakant was the most visited eatery on the Mumbai-Pune old highway as the food there served as a perfect fuel for the commuters to start ascending the ghaat. Expressway had dampened the business, but we chose not to break the tradition. A nice cup of tea and soon we were on the hills.

While climbing we could see the dark blanket on the mountains and as aai had promised Nimish, we were heading for the clouds. The zigzag, snake like road and every curve leading to a valley made the travel very thrilling. The greenery, the waterfalls, the dark clouds, the red soil and the zephyr was unrealistically a deadly combination. Soon we were at Khandala, the place where we could see the clouds while ascending. It was very dark and raining very heavily now. Certainly we were among the clouds; all we witnessed were the dark clouds below and above us. A real visual treat, albeit it was really chilling and we were literally shivering. But it was such a heavenly experience!! An experience that would remain with us for a long time to come. Nimish, was the happiest person on Earth. Obviously his dream of visiting the clouds was fulfilled in some regards.

A fifteen minute decline and we could get a bird-eye look of Khopoli town. The rains had stopped and the environment was crystal clear. Sun shone brightly; we knew what to expect now! Yes it was a nice rainbow amidst the hills. What better site we could have asked for!

Summing Up
The whole trip rejuvenated us a lot and we have now decided to have similar trips every year. Don't hesitate to join us. You're always invited... More the merrier :)

Singh is King!! – Verdict 2009

Well, finally 2009 elections are complete and as we all would have found out, its Congress or rather UPA all the way!

In one ways of many, it was good that the people of India voted for a single party in large numbers. This will ensure that there is almost no scope for a tussle between regional parties and either of the major national parties (BJP or Congress) in order to reach a magic number of 272; in turn ensuring a stable government. A good indicator to the people involved in the ‘bull fight’; sensex should leap up.

Second of the reasons as to why the verdict 2009 was a good one was, in this situation of global meltdown, when the terrorism is at its peak (terrorists are virtually at our door steps), it was obvious that the incumbent government was better equipped to handle it. Surely, the new government will take time to regroup and rework on the policies to follow, in such crucial circumstances.

Talking about the outcome, if you have followed what the TV programs and the analysts, that were keeping track of the elections, had to say, none had expected such majority votes for the UPA and Congress in particular, from the electoral. Out of many reasons, the only reason that could be considered as the main cause of UPA’s excellent showing, in my opinion, would be Rahul Gandhi’s work. I believe he understood that the higher percentage of electoral was youth and wooing them would eventually mean a higher amount of vote bank. The policy seemed to have worked and Rahul Gandhi’s youth congress was successful in delivering the goods. In the end, its the numbers that matter.

The image of our Prime Minister, of being a 'honest politician' supposedly worked. Also, you wont find a more qualified guy than him, look at his resume! Clearly Singh was King as far as the Elections 2009 were concerned.

Heartiest congratulations to Dr. Manmohan Singh and UPA for their second term. Hope they do well for India, together.

Note: this is completely an objective view.

IPL Season 2

Indian Premier League Season 2 started on Saturday 18th April, 2009. This time’s show was no less pompous than the last years’. The only notable difference being, this time round the venue was South Africa and obviously the excitement that cricket gets in India was a bit missing. After the election row that took place in India, seemingly, “Show must go on!!” was what the organizers including the audiences worldwide felt; hence the location of the event became immaterial and the interest remains perpetual.

Commissioner of the IPL Mr.Lalit modi declared the tournament open and the games were on their way! The first four matches included some extra ordinary performances by the legends of the game who were supposedly “not made“ for playing T20 matches. To begin with, the performance of master blaster, Sachin Tendulkar, in the opening match was fabulous! 59* valuable runs from him made it possible for the Mumbai Indians to reach a total of 160 odd in the process helping the team to win the match against Dhoni 11. Second match saw Rahul Dravid with a very well calculated, fast, sparkling 66; again a match winning one with Kumble scoring the best figures in T20 with 5/5. Wow!! Shane Warne wasn’t behind too. His magical leg spin trapped almost all the batsmen in his web. He was getting better with every ball bowled. On the contrary all the young players, so called the great hitters of the ball, failed to impress. Too early to conclude here...

In a way, its good that IPL is being played in South Africa, as it shows true value of a player; flat Asian wickets don’t do any good to the talent. Also this would help IPL to take a more global stage than ever.

All the best to IPL Season 2 and hope we enjoy it better than the 2008 season! May the best team win.