Face value

I have this peculiar habit of scanning faces, the pretty and the not-so pretty ones too, in public places. Not only looking at the faces, but as to what they are doing, and thinking on what they might be thinking. I assume everyone does that, but instead of generalizing I will say that it is my habit. So at the lunch table in the cafeteria one day when the discussions veered off to how incompetent the project manager is I preferred to look past the table occupants and spotted a face amongst others. I knew I had seen him before somewhere and that too before joining this company, but I was not able to register where. I do boast that I have a good memory of recollecting faces and at the same time I regret that my memory of remembering names is very weak. So I wondered that if I smile at the familiar face either he would recognize me with my name and I would be fumbling remembering his name (which happens most of the times) or I would smile and he would be like why is this guy smiling at me when I don’t know him (which also happens many times). So I did not smile or wave at him, but still was thinking where I had seen that guy. Then while leaving the cafeteria we were about to cross each other and I saw that he was looking at me with a similar where-have-I-seen you look. I smiled weakly and he said, “Sharma?” The face-recollecter narcissist in me poked fun at me again that the guy standing in front not only recognized my face but was also remembering my name. After some small talk we left for our offices. He also was not able to remember where we had met, but later it struck me (by the way he addressed my surname) that we were in the same tuition class 11 years back. Had it been only his voice or full name instead of his face, I don’t think I would have recognized him.

This power of (or dependency on) the face came out strongly in the project I completed recently. We had about 200 team members working from different locations and different companies, over different time zones. Out of these 200 around I had met only 8-10 people who were from the floor opposite to mine. While talking to the remaining ones during the conference calls I used to imagine their faces. I used to associate known faces to these unknown people based on their voices, names, locations and my imagination over the last 10 months. The problem was when the known people used to meet me and I started calling them by the names of the unknown faces since I had mapped their faces to the names I was talking to the entire day. Last week my onshore counterpart sent a few photographs of a party the team there had attended. On the call I asked him where he was standing in the photograph; the picture I had in my head was completely the opposite of him. Now when I talk to him after that day I am not able to co-relate the real face with that voice as I am used to the mental image I had created over these many months. Among the blogger friends I have so far imagined I had told Sayesha that before visiting her travel blog where she had posted her photograph I always thought her to be like the actress Sandhya Mridul. I have still not heard Sayesha’s voice so associating her with the actress is a different story altogether, but even today the first image that comes to my mind when I read her blog is of the actress and then her real face.

Plotting!

Last week someone jumped up two places in my top 10 persons to-be-killed list.

Life is not just the part before death

When I was a kid I used to go to my mother’s native place every summer holidays. I had lost my paternal grandparents quite early; I do have a faint memory of grandmother, but none of my grandfather. So my maternal grandparents were the ones I was very much attached since childhood. As a kid I was always overjoyed at the prospect of going to their place because it meant being pampered (as the only grandchild that time) by them and also getting to play games with my maternal uncles, who were yet to get married and so had more time for me he he. I used to help grandfather in performing the morning puja and would tell him to bring me a big watermelon while coming back home. While coming from work he really used to bring a huge watermelon even if it meant carrying it and the bicycle along from the market to the home. When I grew up old enough to understand the distance he had to walk with the watermelon I used to tell him not to bring anything, but he still kept on bringing them because he knew my love for watermelons and more than this love it was his love for me.

Later when mom used to tell me the hardships grandfather had faced while growing up I remember crying each time I heard the stories. In his early teens he had lost his father and elder brother, and being the eldest surviving son he had to bear the weight of supporting the rest of the family. They lived in poor times and education was for the privileged class, so he started a menial job in a garment store along with his younger brother. Many times they slept without food in their stomachs, but they were hell bent on following the principle of honesty and never did they stray to a path of earning money illegally. Gradually he set up a tea shop which later started serving misal-pav* as well. Working hard over many years the brothers set up a full-fledged misal-pav outlet. They did not have (still do not have) any outsider chef/cook to prepare it, but had mastered the art of preparing the misal themselves. The space for the shop was small, but the tasty dish had a long queue throughout the day. Standing near the hot stove the entire day (grandfather worked till he was 69 and his younger brother still works this hard at the age of 70) they used to churn out delicious misal and keep their customers happy.

Honesty and hard work were two important lessons which grandfather always taught his children, grandchildren and anyone who was associated with him. Not only his talks but his entire life was a paradigm of these two principles. Generosity was another virtue for which he used to get bouquets as well as brickbats. With the shop doing well he used to generously donate money to the needy. A poor man was fed well at the shop without asking for money. He used to tell that he had himself experienced going without food for many days, so when in a position to help others one should not turn our backs to them. And he used to say that helping others should come from the heart and not just to please God or someone else. These traits had earned him so much respect and friends from all classes of the society. Around 500 people had turned up at his funeral which had farmers to politicians. I think I have around 200 to 300 ‘friends’ on Facebook and Orkut, and I wonder if even one-tenth of them will show up in mine.

A year ago he had started having problem with his eyesight and a few tests revealed that he had cancer in the second stage and it was spreading rapidly. We consulted a lot of doctors and every doctor dissuaded us from opting for chemotherapy treatment as it would not help and in fact would cause him more pain at this age. On learning about the disease he straightforwardly said that a good lifespan is of 60-65 years so whatever he was living was a bonus life and being satisfied he had no qualms in leaving the world. I have seen a few cancer patients losing their mental balance in the end. Grandfather was calm and composed till his last moment (His younger brother and my mom had a major role though in keeping him calm by talking of all good things in his life and the struggle he faced so far which will guide the next generations to stand tall in failures and not get dejected at any point). On Saturday, my wife and I reached the hospital where he was admitted around 10 days back. He was on a ventilator that day and his tongue was tied to prevent it from blocking the throat. He smiled looking at us and raised his hands to bless us. I remembered the conversation I had with him the previous weekend when I had spoon-fed him in the same hospital room. About an hour later he went in to a coma and passed away the next morning. During the last day rituals, the dead body is sprinkled with (holy) water from the Ganges and clothes are changed before proceeding to the cremation ground. The priest who was in charge of the rituals pulled grandfather’s arm so mercilessly while changing the clothes that in spite of knowing that he won’t feel it my cousin brother and I asked the priest to do it slowly. The dead body is subjected to so many things in a short span of time that I started wondering if the rituals hurt the deceased person’s family more. I advised a young cousin to remember to care for a person when that person is alive, because repenting for not having done something for them after their death is of no use.

Last month he would have turned 74. I miss him a lot and hope that every young family member grows up to become a good person that my grandfather had envisioned.

* The Wikipedia article is in a very rudimentary form. Better description and images can be found out online.

Desktop Goddess # 16

Ek ajnabee haseena se yuh mulaaqat ho gayi
Phir kya hua yeh na puchho kuch aisi baat ho gayi

Jaaneman jaane jigar hota main shaayar agar
Kehta ghazal teri adaaon par
Maine yeh kaha toh mujhse khafa woh jaane haya ho gayi

Khoobsurat baat yeh chaar pal ka saath yeh
Saari umar mujhko rahega yaad
Main akela tha magar ban gayi woh humsafar
Woh mere saath ho gayi

I still remember the face of the plain-clothes policeman stopping us in that isolated lane of Prabhat Road about 11 years ago. We were three friends travelling on a two wheeler heading to the home of my friend who had a computer and an internet connection. In those days a computer at home was rare to find and an own internet connection was a novelty a very few could afford. It was afternoon time and we had bunked our college lectures to see what our friend had discovered online. Desibaba and a few other sites were a treasure trove for the young testosterone charged males when nudity was only in English movies and pornography had limited access. I think that was the time when we guys had started loving Pamela Anderson. And no it was not just for the boobs, maybe lack of babes. Be it the Baywatch craze to see her running down in the shiny red swimsuit or staying awake till late night to see her in Barb Wire even if the interesting scenes were grayed out by pixels. I think the time when I lost interest in her was after the overdose of her home videos. Also by that time there were so many new models with beautiful faces to fall in love with that Pam lost her charm like a young Hogwarts wizard would without his wand. I had thought I won’t be reading/hearing about her in these years, but seems her name is cropping up everywhere. If you are following me on Twitter you might be aware that a couple of months ago I came across an employee with the name Pamela Anderson. We colleagues joked about the ways the real Pamela Anderson would use to promote the company’s brand image. A week back I was going through a mock-up presentation of a new application being built. It had a screen where the user had to fill in details of his/her family members. One of the enterprising architects of the application had filled in Pamela Anderson in the name field and in the relationship field ‘mother-in-law’ was keyed in. The next screen had a comments section and one of the comments read, “My mother-in-law is cruel”. The newspapers are flooded with Pam’s photos since last 3-4 days as she was getting ready to enter the reality television show Bigg Boss. Can we expect Pam-Ashmit tape? Well these guys can do anything for money, don’t they? It might be seen as a nice move by the channel and producers to boost the show’s TRP, but I would prefer watching KBC.

P.S.: The police officer did not fine us there itself. He took the details of the friend who was riding the 2 wheeler. The friend later got a notice from the court to pay the fine. I wonder where those two guys are now, should find them on Facebook maybe.

I got engaged!!

Nice title for the first post of the year, isn’t it? Though like the last time I am not misleading anyone by the title :). By now most of you know and have seen the pics as well but well to let my blog know that on October 18^th (yeah I know I post quite late) I got engaged to Neha. We have been together in the same company for last two and half years now. Yep, I know I have to take back my words from that last post on people working in same company and getting married :-). But it has been a fun ride till now… the entire secret love affair thing and hiding it from other colleagues, confronting parents with the news of intentions to get married when they were thinking of other marriage proposals, being a good boy in front of in-laws (well I am good but you know..) and then facing the barrage of questions about future plans from parents and in-laws and then later from friends on the entire story how it started, who proposed and how etc. Phew! Looking back at the last two years it feels good that all pieces of the jigsaw puzzle* fell in the right place, somehow. The engagement ceremony too was a good experience as I never knew I had so many relatives ha ha. That too when, only the close ones were invited for it. I dread the fact that I am going to have a tough time recalling names of everyone in the marriage reception and plus names of relatives from Neha’s side as well… sigh!

I am not sure if it is a good time or not but before the engagement or marriage one starts remembering all the excess… err ex-s and the crushes till date. The infatuations which we thought were true love and the gut feeling that no one in this world could make us part our ways. When I was mailing the invites for the engagement pics, I did send out the link to all such. I remember the girl from college with whom I always thought of getting married to. Looking back it makes me laugh because I hardly ever talked to her. Then there was this one from school days on whom I had what we call now a childish crush. That time I could never think of any other girl and was dead sure that she was the one for me. On seeing her mail after ages I did not think I would be glad to read that she is married and doing well; in fact I was happier that I am with Neha. There have been umpteen crushes and the fond memories (some not so fond) associated with it. Such is life and memories! Well the marriage is set for March and we would need all your good wishes for the future.

I just had a look at my archive section and found this post written a year back. Memories, I tell you :).

*At the mention of jigsaw puzzle I remembered a story book I got as a birthday gift from my parents. It had a nice image of a jigsaw puzzle land and a boy who sets out to solve the jigsaw mystery. I distinctly remember that I loved that book a lot, sadly mom gave it later to a cousin (who must have thrown it away after reading). Did I mention memories?

Pssttt.. lemme tell you a secret

I was going through my reader last week and noticed that the number of unread posts from PostSecret had gone up as I had not checked it since quite a long time. I find this site quite intriguing. It sometimes amuses me, it sometimes saddens me, and most of the times it makes me feel that people are so talented to put down their secret so creatively. I had seen the PostSecret link many times on various blogs but never bothered to check it until one idle day when I subscribed to it. Going through a few posts had me hooked to it instantaneously. Till date I have gone through hundreds of secrets of hundreds of people spread all over the world and I am amazed by the courage people show to jot down their secrets which otherwise could have stayed buried forever. Amazed just for the fact that I never reveal my or someone else’s secrets. Secrets are just meant to be secrets, is my view. Might be it is this view point that many people show confidence in me to open up their hearts and minds. I have been stomaching many such secrets since school days and luckily I have been able to keep them with me. In spite of the fact that many people have shown me the skeletons hidden in their closets I have never had the urge to share my secrets with anybody. Not my parents or cousins and not even my best friends. I remember Sean writing in his post that it is confusing how much to reveal on the blog about his relationship. Blogs are double-edged swords as Parag had said, and it is difficult to keep the nosey-parkers in real life away if one starts writing minute details on the blog. I had successfully kept my relationship under wraps and now that I am marrying her next year I can openly discuss about it without caring for the real life pesky characters analyzing each post here to know who she is. Yes, I heard your congratulatory wishes and sincere thanks for that :). I have already conveyed the marriage information to my close blogger friends and a few guessed it right even before I could tell them. How much do you reveal about your life on your blog? Or to your closest friends in real life?
I got an e-mail today on eagles and one paragraph in the mail was:

When an eagle grows old, his feathers become weak and cannot take him as fast as he should. When he feels weak and about to die, he retires to a place far away in the rocks. While there, he plucks out every feather on his body until he is completely bare. He stays in this hiding place until he has grown new feathers, then he can come out.

We occasionally need to shed off old habits & old memories that burden us and add no value to our lives.

We skim through the old items in our households and throw away articles, which we had thought we would need some day but till date never used them. Life could have been better if we could do the same for the thoughts and memories in our minds. Try weeding out the garden of your mind from today and let colourful flowers bloom to make your own life colourful; after all we get only one life to live, don’t we?

Images from PostSecret

Just weight and watch!

Mom and Dad are coming back home today after one and half months of stay in Jabalpur. I bet the first thing my mom will be saying after seeing me will be Kitna dubla ho gaya hai!! (You have turned skinny). No matter how much fats or weight kids put on, mothers (in general) will always think that their kid is not having food probably :-). But seems that I really have put down weight ‘coz the pair of jeans which was perfect now looks like a low-waist jeans without a belt :D. I checked my weight at a recent blood donation and initially I was confused whether to feel happy or sad on losing 5 kgs. But then intelligence prevailed and I chose to be happy ;-). I fail to understand why losing weight is an achievement with the female species but when it comes to males we should be all bulging biceps and pumped up or have a beer belly. I never liked tole-shole and cannot imagine myself with a nice rotund belly. I might not have a perfect six pack set to flaunt on the Dard-e-disco song but I m happy with my flat stomach and lean (yet athletic I call it :p) frame. But someone is having an inferiority complex these days and constantly egging me to put on weight. I have now got quiet used to the Have you lost a lot of weight? question hurled at me and I patiently tell them that I am aiming for size zero after watching Tashan (I swear I did not see the movie, really) :D.

How to lose weight you ask? Well let me tell you a story before going on to answer. Yesterday evening I was heading home and while passing the hotel Radhika on F.C. Road I remembered Parag’s post that being in the U.S. he missed eating S.B.D.P. from this place. Somehow my bike read my mind (aliens, I tell you) and from the next signal she (the bike) took me to the hotel. So watching the rains I sat over steaming hot cups of espresso coffee, wonderful plate of S.B.D.P and an interesting conversation… I was not alone, she was also there (here she is not the bike, dumbo). I was feeling heavy on a heady conversation and the puri and dahi were as if acting like intoxicants. Reaching home I got engrossed in the book The Three Mistakes of My Life till a point where I noticed that around 20 pages were missing. Out came the newspaper in front of me as if it was waiting for this opportunity (again those damn aliens!). So I read Harsha Bhogle’s column and a few more articles and was skimming over pages when I realized I should have dinner since the SBDP was meant to be just a starter. Looking at the watch I was shocked to see the hour hand on 2 and minute hand on 12. That meant 2 a.m. IST. Sorry, I don’t know what that means in other time zones but here it means 2 a.m. I remember eating a packet of bakharwadis at around 3 a.m. while doing the submission work for the civil subject in the first year of engineering but apart from that I had never eaten something that late though I have been up many times way past midnight. The hunger pangs had really set in by now but blowing whistles (of the pressure cooker) at such an hour was not a good option as the neighbours still love our family. A drawer of the kitchen cabinet opened (not the aliens, I opened it) and two Maggi noodles packets were shining brightly in their yellow suits seducing me to rip their pretty suits apart and have a steamy hot dinner. Well I should confess that I find Maggi noodles as an aphrodisiac *ahem*. By 2:30 a.m. I was done with my dinner and feeling satiated with the events of the day I went to sleep thinking what to tell my mom the next day if she asked what I had for dinner. Hmmm I am still thinking. Oh sorry I totally forgot to answer your question. Well some other time ;-).

Have a nice weekend!

Amnesia

Nothing could be better on a rather dull day than to receive a mail from the cute HR girl declaring the company Table Tennis tournament this month and then me remembering the last post and the ensuing fracas on it and then having a nice laugh. O Navdy babes, where art thou? Memories and more memories! Don’t we live for such times? :-)

Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose - The Wonder Years

This year I have registered for the T-shirt painting competition as well. I wanted to take part in the singing one as well but these vocal cords in our entire family I tell you *sigh* :D

Yesterday it poured here heavily throughout the evening. Did I tell you I love rain and hate it as well? No? Ok then forget it. It is time for the colourful umbrellas and raincoats to put some colour on the city streets.

I completely forgot that this space completed 3 years of existence in January. Wishing It's MY Space a belated happy birthday. The first two anniversaries are here and here. The reason I remembered this was a post by a blogger completing 1 year in the blogsville. So thanks to that girl, who will probably never come here to read this. I have started loving her posts and I really look forward to them popping up on my reader. I also love the fact that she posts regularly. There was one time when I used to drop in here regularly. Did I mention memories?
Memory is what tells a man that his wife's birthday was yesterday - Mario Rocco

My blogger dashboard tells me that this is my 251st post.

Life is a fairytale

Saturday, 10th May 2008 will go down in the annals of history as freedom day. Probably!

Sir Teabing was responding to Sophie's query:
Meaning that history is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books - books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, "What is history, but a fable agreed upon?"
It remains to be seen who will be the winner and loser; or will history just repeat itself?

Attempted Live Blogging...

A/B styled update…

I am sitting at my company desk and frankly speaking I can go home now and check the installation scenario tomorrow morning. I can also stop scribbling this random post and put it off for some other day. But I am not in a mood to leave the office today. Might be by the time I reach the middle of this post I might just lock the computer and leave. Let’s see...

Race saanson ki song from the movie Race is playing at a blaring level in my ears in a loop. I loved this song. I generally play songs at medium volume but today is an exception. Yeah sue me! I saw National Treasure 2 and Turista movies last month. The recent kidney scam in North India reminded me of Turista.

I am removing the bulleted format, Sean. I don’t like bullets; paragraph is fine for me. But still your bulleted post looks much better.

Mom reached home now and called up to ask if I was coming home for dinner. There was a dinner party somewhere today and I skipped going there. Luckily I saw the cell display blinking otherwise I would have missed the call. Accidentally I dropped my cell on the floor a month back. The vibrator stopped functioning. Cell vibrator… you and your perverted mind. I always keep my cell on silent mode so since a month I have not been noticing incoming calls. The list of missed calls is increasing each day and people have started thinking I am avoiding them. I am too busy and bored these days to call them back. I hope I don’t have to explain the reason of my absence, to each of them.

I was talking to a friend a few days back about some incident and we both noted that a lot of time has passed since then. Time is flying a bit too fast these days it seems. I am totally confused. There seems to be no decision left to be made on instinct or time to do something out of the mundane routine.

The installation failed… yay!

My Google Reader unread posts count has reached to 560. I wanted to post a few things on Google Reader earlier. Another pending action item eh? I am also planning to start a WTF series. No, seriously WTF! But it won’t be related to the F word. I have 3 parts ready in my mind.

The developers are uploading their builds and they have thrown the bandwidth into a haywire. Blogger is throwing up an error. I will have to publish this post tomorrow. Also I don’t have a C&H strip ready for this. Some kind of live blogging this was. Ciao!

Back again today! Wow… what a bleh mood that was. I was really in a very good mood yesterday morning and something happened down the evening time. Sheesh what a depressing post this turned out to be when I read it today. Anyways I am posting this un-edited. Today I am back to my cheerful self because I am aware that tomorrow I am going to a cousin’s marriage and I will be one hell of an irritated chap by the evening. Happy weekend to all of you!

P.S.: Race song trailer link

P.P.S.: I remembered one of the good text messages I have received on 'marriage'. Old people used to annoy me at weddings, pinching my cheeks and telling me that I am the next. They stopped doing it when I did the same to them at funerals. Old people beware tomorrow… Muhahahaha!! Damn tomorrow is a wedding not funeral.

Maslow shopped at Piramyds...

Since a few months when I have a problem and I am trying to find an answer to it, I find myself seated on the bench of Piramyd shopping mall on SB Road. I find myself looking at the huge building of the mall and the even taller buildings of some IT companies surrounding the mall. Awed by the immense concrete structures and the cool breeze blowing steadily with that whoosshhh sound I find myself dwarfed by them and the problem seems like a speck of dust on the huge glass panes of the buildings. Might be the winds are trying to blow away those specks of dust and then the next gust of wind brings dust back onto them from some other place. I find myself looking towards the starlit sky and the crescent moon wondering about the life in those places. I find myself staring at the huge cut-out of a Maria Sharapova look-alike model with 2 buttons of her shirt open and playing peek-a-bra with everyone in sight. I find myself wishing that she would come out of that larger than life poster and take my hand into hers’ and assure me that everything will be alright. Out of the blue I find a hand clasping mine and a look of assurance which says I am not alone. The winds seem to stop dead in their tracks and the buildings fade into oblivion. I find myself staring into deep eyes of a lovely face. And then I find myself.

It seems I have disliked the shopping malls for quite a long time now; if not the interior, these days the exterior has developed a liking for me and vice-versa. Wishing all my friends and near-n-dear ones a Happy Valentine’s Day!

ScaryHairy encounter on a date!

10-01-2008 and 16-01-2008

I think these are two dates (dates as in calendar dates) which I won’t forget for quite a long, long time. In fact if I say my whole life, it won’t be an exaggeration. Hmm… yeah I won’t forget them till the last moment. Some days you just want to hold on to the hands of the clock and not let them tick along and might be try dragging them back so that the day doesn’t turn into night and then night into dawn. Let me give it a try. Damn it! I broke my wrist-watch and it is digital. Ok sad attempts at humour aside, I am going through a B-phase right now… Sean’s famous B-phase. I sincerely hope that he doesn’t come around and comment on this part but for others B is for bald. Yes Sean, let’s say it as bald ;-). Sean had shaved off his head completely and I am thinking of doing the same in spite of the fact that if I wait for a few days… ok few months it will automatically be a barren land :D. This thought did not come into my mind due to the exam results, which have started pouring in but by seeing a colleague. This guy just passed from here when I was typing the initial lines. He has this weird curly hair (of course curly hair on his head, you and your dirty mind :D) and the first thing I want to do, if permitted, is to take a razor and shave off that Medusa-kind look he carries. Some girls here have nicknamed him ‘Wazz the program?’ from the Lays wafers advertisement. I really dislike curly hair esp. on cute looking girls; I mean natural curls at the end of locks looks good but totally frizzy hair like the actress Kangana Ranaut is a total turn-off for me. Rohit and I were leaving the XAT exam test centre last Sunday and spotted a girl coming out of the St. Xaviers Church (quite an X-factor coincidence) and she had this all curly hair and for the first time in my life I was like ‘Wow!! Her curly hair is so amazing’. We guys were so besotted by her beauty that we hardly took off our eyes away from her while discussing the essay topic “Consequences of Gender Imbalance – Third World War”. Talking about turn-offs, wet hair sure turns me on :). It is not those Bollywood rain-dance-wet-bodies scenes I am pointing to, but only wet hair. Hmm now girls know what they should try next time :p. By the way, did you know that Medusa was a beautiful nymph before she was turned into a snaky-haired monster? Now I wonder how beautiful she must have looked with long flowing wet hair.

The only problem I am facing in the B-phase is open discussion or not even discussion but free flow of my own thoughts. Sean could post it easily and asked for suggestions and opinions probably because he uses a pseudonym. Blogging with a real name is sometimes a huge problem. Every line in the post is broken into pieces and read between lines and then the worst part is the barrage of questions. Day before yesterday one of my colleagues walked up to me and said “I heard you wrote a nice article on Taare Zameen Par on your blog.” I replied “Review, yes but nice I am not sure. But how do you know that I blog and who told you about my blog?” It is a bit intimidating when you don’t want people to know a few things but still want to post about it. Though it always amazes me that I don’t have qualms on sharing this with the people I have never met… the virtual friends. Might be coz I can choose to ignore when they play the curious cat which sadly the people in real life don’t seem to gauge when to stay away and what not to ask. Well as someone quoted 'One has to pay a huge price for being a celebrity'. Ha ha… I am next to Narcissus, ain’t I? :-)

Last month, one evening I was sitting with a friend on a bench near a college and we had such a great conversation as if we were best friends knowing each other for many years. Just a couple of hours of the talk with him and we both confessed that it felt great to vent out all the thoughts and seeking an opinion of someone and plain discussion on things which mattered and hardly mattered to us. Though I think it was the environment that made it better… I can’t remember the last time I had idly sat on a star-lit night not thinking about client interactions and work deadlines. For a change we both talked on say 50 topics and didn’t touch the work aspect. He later laughed and commented, “You digress a lot. Look what we had started talking on and where we are ending this conversation with.” I don’t know why people keep saying that to me often. Take this post for example… I started it with 2 dates and I am ending it with them :D. Happy weekend folks!

10th Jan 08 and 16th Jan 08!

Mhen the stars bescenbeb…

Quite a long time since my last Bollywood love-hate relationship post was written on this space. Actually been busy with classes and exams on weekends so hardly had been catching up with movies. The last movie I had seen till a few days back was Jab We Met and that too forcibly. I mean watching a Kareena Kapoor movie in a theatre is blasphemous. But trust me when I say that I loved watching Kareena for the first time in a movie (and in general as well). I had gone to the movie just for the sake of accompanying and was expecting crap but what I got in return was one wonderful movie and a very melodious track which I can’t stop playing now and then. I thank the people who forced me to join them :D. Last week I saw Taare Zameen Par and I was floored. Not watching Aamir Khan’s movie in a theatre is blasphemy :D. For the second time in my life I cried in public and I was not the only one who was shedding tears because literally everyone in the theatre was sniffling. A dyslexic child of just 8 years is labeled as a duffer by his parents, teachers and peers. He fights a lone battle with each and everyone until he finds a saviour in his arts teacher. This movie doesn’t preach and doesn’t have those long boring sermons in the end and yet it convincingly delivers what it wants to. Darsheel Zafary, who plays the role of the child, is sweet and has quite an expressive face even when in one scene he is blankly staring down in the void from his school terrace. In another scene when his elder brother in the movie asks him how he dared to roam on a busy street all alone he replies Bindhaas with a grin laced with confidence and the no-worries attitude of childhood. Aamir Khan who essays the role of his arts teacher never lets his character overshadow the kid’s role. Prasoon Joshi’s lyrics score a homerun and especially the track Maa is heart touching especially while watching the movie. This movie definitely is now listed in my favourite list and one of those which can be watched over and over again. That makes Aamir’s tally 5 with Andaz Apna Apna, Sarfarosh, Dil Chahta Hai and Rang De Basanti already there.

Apart from being good, this movie brought back fond memories to me. On my right there were 2 kids (probably in their 8th-9th grade) from my school and had directly come to the theatre as they were in their uniforms. During one scene in the movie, when the English teacher was scolding the boy on top of her voice the kid next to me promptly uttered "Shirish Patil madam". She was my Science teacher in school and remembering her yelling at us like that just made me smile that day. I recollect only one day when we students had seen her smiling… though can’t recollect the incident that made her smile. The drawing competition in the movie reminded me of the numerous drawing and painting competitions I had taken part in as a kid. Those Sundays’ when dad used to drop me at the venue (mostly it was Saras Baug) and then sitting among hundreds of children I used to showcase my ‘talent’ on the blank drawing sheet. I never won any competition then but have loads of certificates of participation :D. I was (and ‘is’ as well) never good at drawing and being slightly colour blind had many a times painted trees brown (under the guise of modern painting :P). But mom and dad had always praised my scribbling and had diligently enrolled my name in all those competitions and waited in the afternoon summer heat for me to enjoy rubbing crayons or dabbling with water colours… coz every child is special and so are you. No matter how old we are there is still a child within all of us… pamper him, respect him and don’t let him out in this bad world :-).

This is the last post of the year 2007 and I would like to wish all of you a very Happy and Prosperous New Year. I sincerely hope that the New Year brings lot of happiness for each and everyone in this world. And like I say every year please don’t mix drinking and driving... have a great time folks.

Walk away if you want to…

I got this sms today morning:

‘When you become too close to someone, you come across their imperfections and your future relationship depends on how you handle these imperfections’

Quite true, isn’t it? When we get close to people we tend to take them for granted. We think that we know them so well that they will react in such a way in a given situation and when they don’t it is like a whacking blow to the impression you had formed of them. Remember the movie Maya Memsaab? The lead actress is full of impressions and in her own fantasies of what her lover might do when he reaches home. But when the lover comes home and he doesn’t directly start making love to her like she expected she is buried deep in despair. We get so attached to people that when they walk away from our life we find ourselves looking for a friendly shoulder to rest our head on. Sadly one finds that there are no more shoulders around coz he/she was so attached to the person who left that he/she completely forgot about other people. Might be even in times when they needed his/her shoulder or a hug or just a simple smile. Why is detachment so difficult and why do some people have this brilliant knack of detaching themselves at the blink of an eye. I was attached to only a few people but I find that I have started clinging on to more people more and more in the last few years. I hate this coz when they get detached I find myself bumping into them and leaving me feeling like being stripped naked on a busy street. Aahhh the nonchalant lot! Might be I expected them to hug me and they just smiled, might be I expected them to talk to me when they just said a Hi and walked away, might be they were busy or in trouble which they didn’t want to share with me lest I get entangled in their problems. Yesterday night the clouds were thundering in the sky and my mind was bogged down by innumerable thoughts not letting me study for the exam coming up. Luckily it rained only on the earth. I have observed that I have started to think a lot more than I used to. Thinking is good but not when it makes your thoughts dominate and suppress your actions. I have observed that I have started to think before I speak. I am not that sarcastic anymore to people, to situations and to life in general. I am not anymore that Sudeep who used to speak out frankly what his mind used to convey the tongue. Now it is comes via the brain where it is filtered. Might be this is good but I hate this Sudeep. I don’t want people to like me for what I am pretending to be. I am fine even if they don’t like me for what I am but no not for the pretence please. I have started letting out my secrets to people. I have started giving them access in my life to such an extent that they question about it every morning. I think I might be his clone… I have to go and find that original Sudeep.

Ek aankh maaru toh…

Last weekend I was thanking my stars that I rarely had a problem with my eyes till date coz I am really scared of anything bad related to eyes. Seeing people suffering from conjunctivitis in the company and wearing goggles all day long I prayed that the October heat doesn’t affect me and the conjunctivitis virus keeps away its eyes from me. But the Gods were not with me this time and I woke up this week with a swollen red eye... yeah only one eye so it was looking weird. But by evening both eyes were affected and 3 days I had to stay back at home till the infection had subsided. I also joined the goggle group in the company after that for a day until the eyes returned to normal size. The experience of having conjunctivitis for the first time was not so bad coz I had heard that eyes pain a lot and it becomes difficult to open up the eyes due to the sticky matter which comes out due to the infection. Luckily there was slight pain and almost nil sticky matter except that tears were rolling out so much that I felt that someone had left a faucet open in my head. Frankly speaking I was bored sitting at home… not that I mind holiday but sitting at home I neither could read nor sit in front of the TV or computer. So finally after laying down idle for a long time I decided to clean my cupboard... which is actually called my study cupboard but it is never used for anything remotely near to studies and instead I use it as a storing space... well my parents prefer to call it a dumping ground but that is a different story altogether. Even though it does look like a mess I can easily find a said thing lying in there but if it is neatly arranged then I just don’t like the look of it.

I started off with taking out all the things lying there one by one and in a matter of a couple of hours the whole room floor was bustling with things I hardly remember seeing them last time. Then cleaned the whole space and arranged the things properly… yeah properly as in a stacked manner. I mean I was going to be at home full time for the next couple of days so just throwing back the things in would have been hazardous to my health... not that it had any radioactive materials but just because mom was at home as well. I was sure that this look would last for just a couple of weeks so I didn’t mind rearranging the things. But I found some stuff which I wanted to mention. The first thing I got hold of was the Placement brochure of my engineering college. It was a namesake placement brochure because I can’t remember a single student getting placed while graduating using that book. My batch was one of the greatest batches of our college… ok fine I will be modest… it was the greatest and not ‘one of the’ :D. Where else you would get a batch that rarely went to the college, had their professors admitted in hospital for chest pain coz of the trouble the students gave, won accolades for the college in almost all the extra-curricular events but were lagging far behind in studies? I sat down sifting through the pages and was trying to remember which guy was doing what nowadays. Most of my batch mates are abroad doing their post-grads’ and I couldn’t recognize 2-3 people simply because I had never seen them on the playing ground where we all spent most of our time. I remembered the day when the college had called a photographer to click our photographs for the brochure and some guys had come dressed in suits. I had forgotten that a photography session was scheduled but was lucky to be in a shirt… I mean not in tee, not that I roam around topless.

Then I got my hands on an old black diary… no not the little black book kinds ;-) … but my company diary. Inside were scribbled dialogues for the skit we had performed on the Foundation Day. I sat down recollecting the time spent writing those dialogues with the co-hostess and how later she got hit on her head by a swinging door the day before the show and we had to search for a new hostess. A few pics of the show were uploaded here then.

I never throw my I-cards so found many of them from college to classes for engineering and then the CATIA course identity card I did after graduating but never collected the certificate. I also found my exam admit cards for 10th and 12th grade. It is fun watching the progress your face makes in the pics on all of these. It is not like the evolution of a Neanderthal man but still…

It was a good time spent sorting all the stuff and recollecting things related to them and for that time I totally forgot about my conjunctivitis as my eyes were busy looking at the fond memories. Still I have not yet opened the drawer containing my collection of rocks, newspaper cuttings, stamps, coins, matchboxes, greeting cards… I am definitely going to have trouble moving stuff when we shift to our new house in a couple of months.

By the way in case if anyone was wondering from the last post what’s on the whiteboard it is:

It was not conjunctivitis; those were the side-effects of a roving-eye

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

Maktub!

Links galore in this post..

Just 2 posts below I had written how Sanjay Dutt has been sent behind bars and Salman Khan is still free. Now, the former has got bail and the latter has been sent behind bars. But it won’t be surprising that by the time I publish this post the latter one would also be on bail.

I would like to say sorry to Paulo Coelho and all fans of his book ‘The Alchemist’ for taking the ‘creative liberty’ and turning the wonderful book into a double entendre. Niraj and I were bored one day and while chatting the discussion on the book took an ugly turn (pun unintended) and at the end of the chat session the whole meaning of the book was turned over and we were laughing our assess off. As a penance, I would be picking up Paulo’s few books and read them like a fan of his and maybe his fans will say Paulo, forgive them, for they know not what they did. Sick jokes apart, I had given up reading this book after the third page, the first time I had picked it up but then took it up again after a couple of months. I liked it though the last few pages are quite debatable one coz of personal interpretations. Any suggestions for his books (or any other author for that matter) are most welcome. I have heard about his Eleven Minutes and The Zahir. I got myself Robert Ludlum’s The Bancroft Strategy last week but haven’t been able to get past the cover page. By the way, here is a video on YouTube wishing Paulo on his 60th birthday.

During breaks many of us here play Text-Twister game and I love solving anagrams. Whenever I find time in office I check out word lists and the origins of words and at home too I always have a dictionary within reach. I realized that I know many words but can recollect meanings of very few of them and rarely use them. Anyways that didn’t decrease my word-appetite and a few days back I found this site and I have been hooked to it. Also I found out a very hilarious raunchy tale here on the phrase ‘the whole nine yards’.

I sometimes wonder how will I die.. well could not think on how I was to be born so this is one thing I can think over, right? So if I don’t die a natural death I am quite sure that I will be murdered by people on whom I am belting non-stop sarcastic comments. One message from unexpected quarters last week made me realize this and I died a thousand deaths in just a few days sulking out of it. So now I remind myself that Words and knives can have the same effect; use both of them carefully. By the way I always thought that having a few good friends is better than being a public figure. But people want you to be ever-smiling for them, wishing them good morning daily and chatting with them in their cubicles like best buddies. If you care for them it is not enough.. you have to show it. I am trying to learn this new art and it is difficult even than the Permutations and Combinations chapter in maths which had tossed up my brain for a while. I had a wonderful home-made chocolate cake today so I am happy even after a very hectic working day.

One evening during a discussion on movies I got almost killed by my team-mates just because I hadn’t watched Sholay, Lagaan and Swades (3 blockbuster Bollywood movies). So last week luckily 2 of the movies were shown on TV and now only Swades remains in the list to be watched to save my life. I was searching for 3 of my all time favourite oldie tracks and luckily found them. One of them, Jaaneman Jaaneman from Chhoti si Baat, is playing on the mp3 widget on the right sidebar. You can hear the second one Aawaz di hai from Aitbaar here on eSnips and 3rd one is (hopefully) embedded here below. Thanks to my 2 cousins, who are here nowadays, I have to watch all those stupid singing competitions. I was of the opinion that whoever sings better than me is a good singer (unfortunately that accounts to almost 98% of the population) but I am sure Indian Idol sucks.. big time.. those kids sing songs which doesn’t suit their voice (the guy with French beard sings good though). Instead watch Voice of India on Star coz the contestants are 100 times better than what other channels have on their shows. And what’s wrong with the judges everywhere.. I mean everyone is being Anu Malik on these shows.

Damn.. that video was giving me some wonderful errors in html so here is the link on YouTube :.

She & Me – Part II

Let me tell you one characteristic of this ‘Me’ character. He has what he likes to call ‘photographic memory disease’ and can remember 8 out of 10 randomly already seen faces but sometimes will fail to recollect names of people he works with everyday. In his defense he says he is so fascinated with names that it is difficult to remember them. Well I never denied that ‘Me’ was a hell boring character! ‘Me’ has had many instances where he has remembered faces of people and smiled but the people couldn’t recollect his face (or at least pretended not to :D) and many many instances where the people recognized him but he couldn’t recollect their names even though their faces seemed similar. So he had decided not to smile first and wait for people to smile at him (note that is smile not laugh :D) and not to ask anyone ‘Hey were you in such-n-such college/school’ or ‘I think I have seen you before’ for the fear of being labeled as an opening line for the opposite sex. But one evening he accidentally broke the rule..


A few days back ‘Me’ entered the class which was almost packed with a few seats at the back and a few in the first row vacant. Being a back-bencher all his life he didn’t even think of sitting right under the teacher’s nose and settled down in a chair in the last but one row. Glancing through the corner of his eyes he spotted 2 girls on his right giggling over some conversation and one girl on the left chair reading some book. He hoped he was in the right class because none of the faces seemed from his batch (2-3 batches were clubbed for revision). After a few minutes:
Girl on left (She): *says something*
Me: Err.. Sorry?
She: Are you a student?
Me: *thinks that her face is similar* Well in this class yes but otherwise I am working since last 2 years.
She: Ok! It is good to see some professional because my batch had all students and they..
Me: *interrupts* Hey you were sitting in the first row in the Test Room 14 during the test on last Sunday, right?
She: *smiles uneasily*
Me: *Damn!! Looks around to find Sayesha’s rolled-up hypothetical newspaper to whack his own head*
She: Yes..
Me: I .. err.. I just recollected seeing your face. *shit*
-silence-
Me: *another person who thinks I am a stalker.. Welcome to the club*
She: Where do you work?
Me: *relieved that she is talking again* X company
She: Software?
Me: Well kind of.. what about you?
She: blah blah..


Fortunately for ‘Me’ the conversation for the next 20 odd minutes was not odd. She turned out to be a consultant in stocks and shares and luckily ‘Me’ was a bit aware of current stock market trends so the discussion was interesting. She even suggested some names of companies that ‘Me’ should get shares of for long term investment. And as Yashita wrote that it is a ‘liberating experience’ to talk to people from a different profession ‘Me’ was also happy that ‘She’ didn’t ask which platform or which domain do you work on coz ‘Me’ is fed up of software engineers asking the same thing and probably the only thing. Frankly speaking ‘Me’ neither works on any domain nor begs on any platform.. old boring joke yeah! Many a times I remember people from blogs while coming across something related to their old posts and mail them that ‘Hey look what I found or I thought of you that time when I saw/did something-something’. And after hitting the send button I always wonder that whether the person will think I am stalking them or trying to get too close to their private lives in real. Even in this post I made reference of old posts of two blogger friends.. but they have already labelled me a stalker lol.. kidding. So if I remind you something next time then please remind me to say ‘Welcome to the club’ to you :)

Whts ur pretext?

Last month Miss Universe 2007 took place and you might be aware already that Miss Japan was the winner. When I saw the news that she won the title the first thought in my mind was not that why didn’t Miss India win but I remembered that 2 years back Sean (AnonymousBlogger) had come to my blog for the first time and read the Miss Universe 2005 post which Miss Canada had won. Then I made my grey cells work and I remembered how each one in the blogger list on the right side-pane had met me in the blog-world.. be it me going to their blog or them coming here. Also I could remember almost all posts and comments so far. Frankly I thought and still think this is quite weird but yeah I do remember most of the stuff exchanged here. Now call this weird or not but some people land up on this blog in a weirder way.. I am not talking about you all who read my blog but who don’t read but come here searching for something else.

Reading Sitemeter is absolute entertainment as what people search for. As I had previously put down some searches, here are some popular and weird ones as why the counter on the right keeps on ticking.

Most of the non-readers come here coz they are searching for the sexual err.. social networking site ‘my space’. Now it is quite clear that they stumble upon here since the blog’s name is ‘It’s my space’. But the searches are not for just Myspace but people search for ‘How to tilt your profile in my space’, ‘Pics for my space’, ‘How to make the font bold in my space’, ‘The lady in my space’ etc. I was quite confused earlier as to what is my space until I opened an account on that site just to check what the hell was there in that which kept attracting people. Just for the record I only have 2 known online friends there (both bloggers, Squishy and Veggie) and I really don’t know from where the other requests keep pouring in and spam my inbox. I would recommend orkut if you are interested in networking and Myspace if you are interested in getting spammed by bots.

Another popular search is for the marathi songs or the lyrics of Salil Kulkarni and Sandeep Khare. I have a document of lyrics of the songs of these guys so if anyone coming here for that and reading this you can ask for it. Some people are also coming to listen to ‘Mi baburao boltoy’ song but sorry neither I have the song nor the lyrics. Quite a number of people are searching for the name of the model in ‘Aaja Piya’ remix video. For them, her name is Shyla Lopez and she is sexy ;). Don’t ask if she is related to JLo :D. Apart from searching for C-grade Bollywood movies some people are also coming here to see Rakhi Sawant and Mika Singh kiss.. absolute gross and you won’t find it here people.

Other search topics were:
I just wanna die in your arms
Amboli ghats (pics blog)
Girivan (pics blog)
Hot gals in pune
Tattoo of Carlos Moya
Is kaajal advisable on babies? (now where the hell that came from??)
Ragging pics (pics blog)

Swami Ramdev – sleeping back problems

So what was your pretext of coming here? :D

Lahanpan de ga deva..

I want to learn again how to enjoy rains and not frown on getting wet thinking of sitting in chilled cubicles.

I want to go on long vacations again.. Summer, Diwali, Christmas whatever might be the reason but regular and long.

I don’t want the stress of reviewing people’s performance and the unnecessary thoughts whether my review will decide their future.

I want to hurt my knees and elbows while playing, get my clothes soiled and I want to see my mom frown looking at me in this condition smiling innocently at the doorstep.

I want to go to the terrace and lie down leisurely watching the eagles soar high up in the sky.

I want to sing Happy Birthdayyy.. again and wait for my piece of cake and wafers instead of partying in some new high class restaurant watching friends getting drunk.

I want to go and play rugby again just to bang my head on that adjacent wall to make sure that this time the wall cracks open instead of my head.

I want to go on a trek or go for a jog in the nearby hills rather than sweating it out on a treadmill and elliptical.

I want to go to school again with all my classmates and have a wonderful time again.

I want to go back so that I can have another chance of doing things which I thought I couldn’t do or were not for me.

I want to be a chubby kid for elders to pull my cheeks

Damn.. I really want to be a kid again. How ironic is that when we are kids we want to grow up fast and now we want to go back and be a child. Saint Tukaram (I hope I am correct coz my history is quite weak) aptly had put down Lahanpan de ga deva, mungi sakharecha rava.