Happy Diwali!!

Wish you all a very happy Diwali. A bit late in wishing all of you but most of you will pardon me for that. Some of my maternal cousins were here with us this time. It was fun supervising the kids bursting crackers and taking them to the roof to show the brightly lit city and the wonderful display of fireworks over the city horizon. Scrumptious Diwali goodies to gorge into and 2 days of holiday… bliss! Not all was good this Diwali though… some parts of India had terrorist attacks while some didn’t need terrorists as the people have started fighting amongst themselves. With some persons aiming for political supremacy the common man has been made to suffer. My heartfelt condolences to the family of the boy, who was gunned down by the Mumbai police. Instead of lighting lamps during Diwali we are more desperate to snuff out the light out of someone’s lives. I hope God gives all of us sensibility as well this time along with the wealth which comes with the festival of Diwali. Have a nice weekend everyone.

The game I never played...

We are having our company's annual cricket matches (inter-department). For the last 3 years I was a team member of the spectator gang cheering our players and jeering at the opponents. This year one of my project team members added my name in the playing eleven and last Sunday I found myself on the cricket ground on the other side of the rope. I love watching cricket but I have never been able to play it; all I can do is field well. Our team bowled and fielded well to restrict the opponents for 85 runs but our lead batsmen returned to the spectator stand as quickly as they went in to bat. God knows what struck me when I stood up and took up a bat lying nearby and walked in to bat even when some 'I-bat-well' players in our team refused to go in. Well I did not turn out to be Bhuvan from Lagaan but scored 20 runs (highest by an individual in that match :D) which included 4 hits to the fence. We lost the match by 8 runs but all of us were smiling 'coz we had tried our level best. At the end of the day I was happy to show my 2 bruised knees back at home. I had been waiting for this moment for the last 3-4 years... glad to find my normal self back :)

Happy weekend and Happy Holi to all. Enjoy the festival of colours and may your life be filled with loads of myriad colours.

Dirty Dancing!

Traditional dress – 1200

Entry passes to the dandiya party – 200

Dancing with a bevy of beauties – Priceless

Some things can’t be bought with money, for everything else there is Master Card :p

Have a great weekend all of you!

Big Brother!

Can someone please pass a few racial comments against me so that I can win 1,00,000 pounds (only prize money mentioned) like Shilpa Shetty? No wait.. what use is hearing comments here if I don’t get to live in with Danielle Lloyd. So I will wait for the official Big Brother invite.. until then I will be a brother at home.

Yesterday was Raksha Bandhan (thanks to wiki I don’t have to explain).. some of you might be surprised that this festive occasion was in last month, but for some reasons not known to me our community celebrates it yesterday on Rishi Panchami (no wiki entry on this). Like all the years down the lane I would have sent money orders to cousin sisters but this year we have my uncle’s daughter at our place for her studies so the ‘holy-thread tying ceremony’ (phew!) was to take place in real. I got a shock of my life when mom said that I had to bring a gift and just giving money won’t do. I remembered Aditi & Pooja’s brother (from their rakhi posts) complaining why the sisters don’t have to gift the brothers. I wasn’t expecting a gift here but dreaded the thought of getting a gift simply coz I suck big time in choosing a gift. That too for a girl!! I was trying to remember last time when I had picked up a gift for a girl.. it was when I was around 9 yrs old. Mom had bought something and I had ‘picked it up’ from home to gift it.. yeah that’s how close I am with girls on this planet lol. These are the times when you really wish for a girl friend to drop by from the sky and help you get out of this situation. But smart that I am I didn’t look skywards and decided to take sis out and let her choose what she wants. But smarter than me my mom is who said that it should be a surprise. WTH! I love surprises.. but in pranks, not for gifts. I mean just imagine the look of the person who gets a horrible surprise gift and ditto for the person who gives it. So frantically I messaged a few girls I consider myself close to, to suggest me what to get for her. They all messaged back that it was a difficult question and they were the wrong people to ask about gifts. Great!

I attended my Sunday afternoon classes and hoped that somehow everyone at home would conveniently forget about the festival. Coming out of the class I saw that I already had 2 missed calls from home. Mom asked me what I had decided to get and I said I had appointed a 5 member committee to mull over the topic and they will get back in a few days. But mom was not in a mood to laugh at my sick jokes and gave me an address of a store of her friend (mom of a student of my mom) who could help me select something. Mom was so precise in giving the address that I couldn’t even whine that I might not find the clothes store. Off I went to the store..

Just at the entrance of the store I forgot the name of the lady and fearing that mom would come out the mobile and smack me down I didn’t call up home and went inside. Luckily I remembered the student’s name and asked the cashier about his mom.. his in the sense the student’s and not the cashier’s. The lady was on a holiday. It seemed that the entire female species was up in arms against me yesterday. Still I went to see if I could get something and a sales-boy asked me what I wanted.
Me: I am looking for a short kurta for a girl
SB: *starts piling up tops of myriad colours*
Me: *dude this has so many colours.. doesn’t help to be colour blind*

I kept staring at the kurtas laid down on the table for 2 minutes hoping that one of those would spring to life and hug me crying out ‘Take me home, Take me home’. Sadly that didn’t happen and suddenly I noticed that the size was too big for my sis so I asked the boy for medium size. I saw a pink one and told him to pack it. 5 mins and I was done! I felt elated and as a buffer gift I also picked up a box of assorted chocolates. Sis was delighted to see the kurta coz pink is her fav colour she said. I didn’t lose the opportunity to say that I knew it was her fav colour so had spent time searching for it.. didn’t I mention I am smart :D. We guys (2 cousin brothers were also present) devoured more than half of the chocolates ;-). All in all I heaved a sigh of relief. Bugged all those girls I had asked earlier that I had shopped for a wonderful gift in flat 5-7 minutes *drumroll* and then slept peacefully.

Lessons learnt yesterday:
1. Surprise gifts can bring a smile on the receiver’s face unlike pranks

2. Don’t waste time in choosing clothes and instead simply pick up 2 boxes of chocolates as gift when you know that you be eating more than half of them MUAHAHAHA :D

Merry Xmas!

Merry Christmas to all of you! May the love and peace of this festival be with you all always. I have a few Christian friends but never had a first-hand experience of the festival in terms of the festivities and decorating the Christmas tree. It has always meant holiday season for us coz my family and a family of a close friend of dad have always taken trips at this time of the year. If any outing is not planned then roaming around the streets of the Camp area with friends and then settling down in some place and chatting away for hours. From last two years one of my friend’s desire to gobble a turkey takes us to Polka Dots where I dig in the scarce veggie food but the main attraction for me there is their Death by Chocolate.. aahhh! This year I neither went to any part of the country nor roamed on the streets troubling the fake Santa Claus and also didn’t have my share of the chocolate dessert. This whole week went in attending innumerable dinner parties.. some or the other reason but I was almost eating out of home. So loads of pics to be uploaded on the pics blog. Yet to upload the b’day celebration pics too but now I think I will be uploading them in the new year itself coz finally Goa booking has been done and I will be leaving on 28th midnight to return on the 1st Jan night.

How many believe in Santa Claus? I remember watching Joey’s nephew Michael saying “It is just basic math. It would be impossible for Santa to visit all the children in the world in one night...”. I was not that bright child to figure it out coz I used to keep socks under the pillow.. yeah we don’t have stockings here.. and it would be filled with something the next morning. Once there was a small jeep and then one time a chocolate bar. But when I started keeping it every night my parents made me sit down and explained that they were doing the whole stuff. I don’t remember what my reaction to that was but now I hope I didn’t think that my dad was Santa Claus and our family was into wrapping gifts and delivering it :D. Kidding.. I sure wasn’t dumb :P. If you still haven’t seen the movie Polar Express then do watch it. I would like to believe that there is a real Santa.. now if people can believe in ghosts then why not Santa.. with a sledge pulled by reindeers galloping down the snow-clad roads and distributing gifts to children who behaved nice the whole year. Now behaving nice the whole year clause would automatically strike me off the list and if you are thinking Santa is only for children I would say come on 24 is young.. very young. Also there is a child in every person.. so wake up that child within you and join me to say Merry Christmas. I am not greeting for the new year now coz I am hoping to squeeze some time for one more post before I leave for Goa.

Before I forget, here is a link forwarded by Suraj related to a post below here. Liz surely needs to mend her ways before she invites me to her wedding. We will wait for her wedding bells.. for the time being Jingle bells jingle bells.. Jingle all the way. Do share pics if you celebrate Christmas. God bless all!

(Con)fusion at Crossword!!!

A rather long post so if u don’t have time you can go to the last paragraph directly..

I had ample free time in the afternoon on one day last week and the computers on which net is accessible were busy as usual so a friend and myself decided to check out the Crossword store which is at a walking distance from the office. I had already made up my mind to buy one of the Calvin & Hobbes books and the friend also had 1-2 books in his mind. It was the first time I had gone to this Crossword branch so was quite unaware where the sections were located at this place. So ENQUIRY COUNTER 1 was the place the man at the cash counter pointed me to ask my doubts. There a gal (lets say gal no.1) was sitting tapping at the keyboard on her desk. I asked her where I would find a C&H book.

Gal No. 1: You want the whole collection or a single book?
Me: Single (I knew the whole collection costs somewhere around 7000 bucks)
Gal No. 1: Go to the Humour section located there (pointing)
Me: Thanks! The section for Shantaram?

Gal No. 1: In the Best Sellers’ section over here (pointing)

Thanking her I went off to the humour section and browsed through 3 C&H books. Finally settled for one of them and then checked out Shantaram (it is too fat). The guy whom I had come along with, A, had already taken Robin Sharma’s new arrival and was pacing here and there looking for me. I waved to him and called him over and told him that I wanted to buy Shantaram too but maybe next time or from the roadside vendor, so I was finished and we might move back to office. He said that we have to spend at least 30 more minutes there coz if we go in early then his lead would allot him extra work. Thinking how to spend time there, I remembered that the Crossword branch near my house only had plastic wrapped copies of Laetitia Casta’s book and this being a bigger branch might have one unwrapped copy. So back to the Enquiry Counter 1; another girl this time (gal no. 2); I go on:

Me: Err.. I don’t know the name of the book but it is on Laetitia Casta. Can you find it for me?
Gal no. 2: What did you say it is on?
Me: It is on Laetitia Casta.. supermodel Laetitia Casta. It probably contains her photographs and the size of the book is around this much (showing her by hands)
Gal no. 2: What is the author’s name?
Me: I am not aware of it.
Gal no. 2: So how will I find it?
Me: Well you could enter the name in that comp and probably it will give some result.
Gal No. 1 arrives there with half sandwich in hand n the other in her mouth
Gal No. 2: He is searching for some book on casting..
Me: No no.. not casting; Laetitia Casta.
Gal No. 1 nods and I am happy that she knows what I am looking for. She starts typing in the name.
Me: The spelling is wrong. It is l-a-e-t-i-t-i-a.

Gal No. 1: (munching) l-a-t-e or l-a-t-i?

Now generally if someone is munching n speaking I would tell him/her to first swallow that thing but I controlled myself and repeated the spelling slowly. The search threw up a book in the Fashion section so I followed Gal No. 2 who took me and A there. A was visibly bored by that search and was continuously asking me what I was searching for. I was explaining him who Laetitia was and how amazing she looks.

Gal No. 2: You speak marathi well.
Me: Yeah.
Gal No. 2: You don’t look like you can speak marathi.
Me: Err.. *thinking whether I have to say thanks or what*
A: Can you please leave his marathi skills and improve your skills in finding a book?
Me: *LOL* (I just couldn’t control my laughter)

Gal No. 2: *glaring at both of us*

She somehow fished out the book and gave it to us. To our luck it was an unwrapped copy so we pulled two dice shaped stools and drooled over the gorgeous photos.
A: Why don’t you buy this one instead of that cartoon thing you have taken?
Me: Look at the price of that book. It would be a delight if someone gifted me that on birthday
A: *looking at the price* Ohh.. that is expensive. Yeah someone should gift it to me too.
Me: Hey see there *pointing high up the rack* .. Pirelli photoshoot book? Wow! I wasn’t aware that they had a book besides the famous calendars.
A: What is that?
Me: Just take that book out. I used to watch the shoot on FTV.
A kept carefully the Laetitia book aside reached up there and we started seeing the pics of the models. We didn’t notice that 2 aunties had come in that section and as I saw up one of them was glaring at us seeing the assets of the models jumping out of the book.
Me: Chee chee! What type of dirty books you read A! *got up and went towards the payment counter*

A: *confused and trying to hide the book*

Now this thing didn’t end here but I got a cashier in front of me who had joined the earlier day and was not used to the software they had for billing. But since this post is becoming too long so won’t trouble you more with the conversation that went on there. That guy was literally on verge of tears and continuously said sorry for keeping me waiting. I thought in my mind ‘It is ok dude! I am working on a software for past 1 year and still find new things ‘bout it everyday. You just joined in yesterday’. Of course didn’t tell that to him.. aakhir mein Nana Patekar jaise sochna padta hain “Image Image!” By the way, I am still unaware of the Laetitia book name and author and some models definitely look better in clothes than naked (from Pirelli).

On Sunday I got to attend a kathak-salsa fusion concert and it was superb. I had seen kathak before live but had seen salsa only on screen and it was even better when they had the dancers of both the types perform together. The classical side of music had tabla, flute and a sitar while the western music was with guitar, drums and synthesizer. The flutist and the drummer were awesome. If my friend is reading this then it was really nice attending the program and yes I was not bored at all since you feared that. If my friend is not reading this even then it was nice lest anyone would point that out.

The pics blog has finally been updated with pics from the trip and a few earlier ones. I don’t understand why blogger should have word verification for writing posts. Also does anyone know how to connect Hello software and beta blogger? I am not able to use Hello for beta blogger. Happy Navratri to all and may Goddess Durga bless us all. Have a good time playing dandiya.

Hiiiiiissssssss...

It was Nagpanchami on Sunday. Nag means snake n panchami is 5th day.. don’t know wht 5th day is but ppl worship snakes on the Nagpanchami (snake being one of the creatures alongside one of the most powerful gods in Indian mythology). There were some pics in the newsppr of ladies celebrating it so I assume tht it is a more female-sided day so no wonder I don’t know anything about the festival. But snakes do evoke some memories frm the past. Dad being a zoologist, his office had (when he was in Pune) insects n animals of all size, sex, caste n creed.. okk at least the first 2 I guess. There were beautiful butterflies to ugly beetles, creepy snakes to grasshoppers, crickets, praying mantis n wht not. I have had my wonderful share of scaring gals in school during my science projects when mostly I used to take an empty box of sweets n arrange all those insects in it. Of course they were dead but not all knew tht fact n it was real fun. But, before tht as a kid I also wasn’t aware tht all those snakes were dead n kept in spirit for preservation. I always thought tht they were alive n were kept in special mineral water which kept them alive for many years. I never used to venture in tht area of the office n used to keep myself happy watching the butterflies n moths.

The first time I came across a live snake was when I was in 7th grade I guess. Tht time dad was a member of an organization WILD. Tht organization had caught some snake-charmers (don’t know wht is charming ‘bout these ppl) who sewed the mouth of snakes n then made money by either making them dance on tune of bin or skinning them. The whole lot of snakes recovered frm them was kept in an exhibition to spread awareness about snakes in the masses. I was roaming around keeping a safe distance frm the exhibits when one of dad’s frnd recognized me n said “Hey this is Dr. Sharma’s son.” Now god knows why but this statement prompted one guy frm the organization to come forward n place a huge python on my neck with the python’s neck region in my right hand. I can’t forget tht feeling till date. I was shivering n I could feel my palms going wet with sweat. Luckily tht lasted only for few seconds but in such situations the few seconds also seem like long hours. (Off record: I later boasted ‘bout handling a live python alone n tht ‘live’ word was said with due stress :D) The point is tht m in awe of ppl who can handle those poisonous n non-poisonous asps. I always take my lil cousins to the local snake park to show them how they take out venom. The snakes there are in deep pits so no problem of being scared, but yes snakes are scary n far far away from being cute. Take my word for tht.

Weekend was meant to be fun but the incessant rain did play a bit of spoilsport. Met a lot of buddies in this whole week. Two of them were in India on vacn frm France n US. Another was here frm Singapore while two frm within India frm Banglore n Hyderabad. Lotz to talk, lotz to eat n lotz to learn too. Watched Omkara movie which is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello. It was nice but Saif took away the whole movie n might sweep the awards too. Also watched (or say re-watched if permitted to use the word) Saving Private Ryan, Apaharan n half of Chronicles Of Narnia. Finished off the season one of 24 n still I have dreams of Elisha Cuthbert being kidnapped again n again n me being her sole saviour. I was wondering if I had too much on hands before Saturday evening came but now wonder how could I squeeze all this too along with getting up at 1 on Sunday. Amazes me!

Out of context.. today’s evening made me very very happy.. it is past midnight but m still smiling :)

Merry Christmas!

Wish u all a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year :)