Desktop Goddess # 12

Kabhi kabhi mere dil mein khayal aata hai

ki zindagi teri zulfo ki narm chhao mein

guzarne pati to shaadab ho bhi sakti thi

Yeh ranj-o-gham ki siyaahi jo dil pe chhayi hai

teri nazar ki shuaao mein kho bhi sakti thi

Magar yeh ho na saka

Magar yeh ho na saka aur ab yeh aalam hain

ki tu nahi, tera ghum teri justaju bhi nahi

Guzar rahi hai kuchh is tarah zindagi jaise

isse kisi ke sahaare ki aarzoo bhi nahi

Na koi raah, na manzil, na roshni ka suraag

bhatak rahi hai andheron mein zindagi meri

inhi andheron mein reh jaaunga kabhi kho kar

main jaanta hu meri hum-nafas, magar yun hi

kabhi kabhi mere dil mein khayaal aata hai

I was watching TV day before yesterday when Katrina Kaif's Slice (mango juice) ad was shown during a break. The ad campaign is aptly titled as Aamsutra; on lines of Kaamasutra for the uninitiated (though I doubt if there is someone in that category). The way she slithers on a couch uncorking the bottle and drinking that lucky mango juice it sure is an eye-candy ad for guys and definitely reminds one of KS teachings *ahem*. I am not sure if the lines above go well with the ad or post but Katrina likes her pics with her hair untied (5th grader GK stuff :p) and if not for Salman who would not love to be in her zulfo ki chhao :). Thanks to Rajbir for the lyrics.

She & Me - Part IV

In the midst of a hot summer month, a sudden change in weather with white and dark clouds hovering in the sky and making the atmosphere pleasant. Me and She sitting at their favourite spot and thinking about the weather…
Me: *looking at the sky*
She: *also looking at the sky*
Me: Do you know what is perfect on such a wonderful day?
She: Yes, a long romantic drive and a tight hug
Me: Well I was thinking about a big playground and a football match
She: *looks at Me*
Me: *looks at She* Do you think we will think alike anytime?
She: Who wants to think on similar lines? Forgot that opposite poles attract? *smiles*
Me: *gives a tight hug*
She: My long drive?
Me: I didn’t get my football match so you ain’t getting the drive
She: Devil!

Me: *adjusts the fake horns with a wicked smile*

I was listening to a song and a line from it goes like this
Life is a gamble boy
so you better know to play your cards right
and if you gonna take a chance

then you better know to stand up and fight

Cast(e)away

How good is good enough I ask myself. Seriously I am tired of this ‘good boy’ image now… yeah I can see you raising your eyebrows… but I have this invisible crown on my head which reads Family Idol. You may not notice the crown… I already said it is invisible… but you may notice the efforts put in to carry it properly all the time. Like King Henry IV said Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. I don’t want my cousins to look up to me as a great person whom they want to ape. I don’t like telling my cousin to attend his college regularly because I never did but still everyone in the family tells him to attend the college like good old Sudeep bhaiya did. I don’t want my cousin brother at home to like my clothes and ask me which coloured tee or shirt he should buy ‘coz my clothes are selected by my friends so I don’t have a good taste. I also don’t like anyone wearing my clothes. Anyways ranting here won’t help the case but I want to do something bad, real bad. At least then everyone will not expect only good stuff from my side and paint their own faces white in horror saying OMG! IS that you Sudeep? We never expected this from you. I see myself doing something of this sort in the next few months and might be this will lead me to being an outcast in the family or maybe the whole society as someone warned me. But heck I am going to do it and have fun. I don’t care if I have a few major dents on my goody-goody image. I suddenly remembered how Spiderman changed his red attire into a black one in the third part of the movie… ha ha. Seems the music list in the media player also knows what is going on in my mind. The song playing is
Seene mein jalan aankhon mein toofan sa kyu hai
Is shahar mein har shaks pareshan sa kyu hai

Seems everyone out there has a crown eh?

Finally I went to see a doc today for my sore throat ‘coz it had got worse over the past 2 days. Keeping mum was the only option to avoid the coughing. Took the medicine in the morning and it worked coz I am back to speaking in spurts. Want to thank Ekta for her post, though I read it a few days late. Also to Sakshi for her Durex condom testers' post ‘coz we guys had a good laugh here. Now that blogspot is blocked seems I will be putting in comments for other posts here itself. Hmm… on that thought I will take your leave. Have a good weekend… err or maybe bad weekend :D. I will be back to tell you about the bad part success or failure and maybe the encounter with a seems-to-be-a-pimp and foreigners on a recent trip to Mumbai.

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.

The cat is out of the bag...

Remember that curiousity kills the cat. But still Dachshunds are cute.

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!

Hindi Chini, bye bye

Today morning I was going through Navdy’s post and remembered I had not seen Russell Peters perform since quite a long time now. So I went to YouTube and was watching clips of his show where he was mimicking a Chinese shopkeeper. I had to pause it in the middle as we all were called to the cafeteria for a send-off of a colleague. Currently, we are hosting 2 employees from our company branch in China and since they had worked earlier with this girl, they were also invited for the send-off (not everyone is asked to attend if that’s what you are wondering). I was sitting with my desk partner at a table when these Chinese friends enter and immediately my mind went to the Russell’s Chinese shopkeeper saying “Hey! Be a man” and I was trying hard not to laugh (on Russell’s accent, no offence meant to anyone here). Then I see the Chinese girl looking at us and telling her male friend something and they both come walking towards our table. I whispered to my friend that in case they sit here at least we should wish them a happy new year (thanks to Elaine for reminding through her post). Those guys came at our table and the guy says, “You both are Europeans?” Hearing this I just couldn’t control my laughter and almost brought the roof down. I am not sure what they both must be thinking about me but I just couldn’t stop myself that time. Last year one of my colleagues had shown me a mail from his friend. He had sent some of our group photos to his friend and she had written back to him “Great to see that you work with an American there”. I was staring at the reply with a puzzled look and the friend said “Yeah, you look like one”. Now I am confused… :D

Have a nice weekend everybody and here is a link of the video :-)

She & Me – Part III

‘Me’ is considering suing me since I am not publicizing his brushes with the ‘She’ category on this blog. I hope a trilogy would suffice since the so-called brushes are quite rare, but ‘Me’ is expecting a at least a seven-post series on lines of Harry Potter and wants me to carry it further as well. Duh!! Well I was talking with ‘Me’ yesterday and I spotted a red rash on his left arm. On enquiring ‘Me’ said it was a ‘love bite’. Sheesh! I was very much sure that it was a bite but definitely not a love bite. Prodding a bit ‘Me’ revealed this incident, which reminds me of some wafers advertisement (I forgot the product name).


She: *smiling* Hi
Me: *smiling* Hey! Did you know Sania Mirza is jealous of you?
She: What?
Me: Yeah, a bit. I had... what happened to your hand? *pointing at the bandaged hand*
She: A bee sting
Me: Bee??
She: I was in our garden with P when…
Me: Ohh! So you girls were talking about the birds and the bees in the garden *smirk*
She: *throws something* Very funny! Actually we were talking about you.
Me: *avoiding that something* Hmm… So a bee got jealous and poked you.
She: Oh God! I was working in the garden.
Me: Well bees are always attracted towards flowers *wink*
She: *blushing*
Me: That’s why I am wondering why on earth it came and stung you *sarcastic grin*
She: *frowning* Let me show you how it felt after that bite
Me: It was a joke… aaaaaaaaaggghhhh!!!


Girls won’t take sarcastic comments and boys will be boys. And thus prince charMEng stayed single.

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.

Desktop Goddess # 11

Na hai yeh paana, na khona hi hai

Tera na hona jaane kyu hona hi hai

Tum se hi din hota hai surmayi shaam aati hai

Tum se hi tum se hi

Har ghadi saans aati hai, zindagi kehlaati hai

Tum se hi tum se hi

Aankhon mein aankhein teri, baahon mein baahe teri

Mera na mujhme kuch raha hua kyaa

Baaton mein baatein teri, raatein saugate teri

Kyu tera sab yeh ho gaya hua kyaa

Main kahi bhi jaata hu tum se hi mil jaata hu

Tum se hi tum se hi

Shor mein khamoshi hai thodi si behoshi hai

Tum se hi tum se hi

Finally I am washing off my exam-sins by posting a Bond gal :D. Denise Richards... aahhh!! I can't remember the name of her Bond movie though I can vaguely remember watching a scene of her in a long pipeline with Pierce Brosnan. But can I mention Denise Richards and not remember her Wild Things... I mean her movie Wild Things! It definitely remains one of my all time favourite movies and not only for the *ahem* nice scenes but a good storyline. The song mentioned actually doesn't have any relation to Denise but heck it's my blog :P. My current favourite song with haunting lyrics and music (playing in the side bar as well). Denise and the song, both rock!!

100 years.. only?

Heavy workloAd. frequent fights with Project manager. new peoPle to work with. devoid of energY. Boring trainings. real-lIfe friends now virtual friends. virtual fRiends nowhere in sighT. Heartbreak. dilemma. mba Dream. exams. boring studies. failure? marriage? dAmn..studies not boring. but no time to studY

Now I know why it is famously known as the quarter life crisis. I should go and search one mail on that in my inbox, might be relating to it will bring down the anguish by re-assuring that everyone goes through this phase. This is the probably the third time I am celebrating (well!) my birthday on this space… yeah third time (First and second). I have so much to write and yet somehow time slips away and when I have time words evade me. 16th December birthday post coming after 5 days *sigh*. Well anyways let us hope for a bright and cheerful year ahead and might be I should try skipping some work to update this space often ;-).

CATastrophe

Who will bell the CAT you ask eh? I don’t know who will but what I know is that I definitely won’t be among that lot… this year at least. Yes, this year means I am going to attempt it next year as well. My friends have been attempting to crack the supposedly toughest and trickiest exam for the last 3 years and that too after studying a lot. Did I study? Oh yes I did but only for 13 days before the exam. But I did study seriously for those many days except for the fact that the paper setter knew what I was studying and decided to ask questions from the topics I had left for option :(. Seriously I was skimming through the paper trying to find questions on geometry and number system. Luckily that was the case with Mathematics only and the other 2 sections went fine. Now if they didn’t have sectional cut offs I would have hoped to bell the CAT but alas… now I know what to study (or not to study) for the next year so I will be prepared. I just hope that the paper setter doesn’t read my blog.

This image is related to the post somehow. Those who are aware of world politics might get the joke (no personal issues with any of these personalities).

I also attempted the IIFT, Delhi exam a fortnight back (the last post was from that). Those guys don’t have Pune as their test centre so had to go to Mumbai (Vaibhav’s city for Sean’s reference) with a colleague. His cousin studies dentistry in a college there so she managed to get us a room to share with her friends… in boys’ hostel and I had thought she had arranged in girls’ hostel! Kidding, I knew it was a boys’ hostel and though I had been to my college hostel rooms with my friends living there I had never stayed there overnight so the ‘hostel experience’ was new for me. I tried hard not to think of being bound to the dentist chair and getting my tooth pulled out under the pretext of ragging. But the ‘seniors’ there were so timid that later my colleague and I felt ashamed for pulling their legs... seriously those guys were very sweet, probably they are taught to be so to become a good doctor. The room where we stayed was quite clean; might be I had expected it to be in a huge mess and it was not that much so it looked clean. The walls were replete with posters of all the femme fantasies in bare minimum. When I slept my legs were touching Maria Sharapova’s long legs and Bipasha Basu’s bare torso touched mine on the right. Sometime past midnight the guy with whom we were sharing the room barged in and woke us up to announce that a bomb had been found in the nearby railway station. So he advised us not to go for sight-seeing. I was like dude we are here for an exam not sight-seeing. My colleague had a restless sleep after that but I slept peacefully. I don’t know whether the reason was being tired after the travel or Maria and Bips giving me company. The exam was on Sunday and we were told that the traffic on road would not be heavy but we hadn’t thought that it would be so less that even a taxi was not in sight. Somehow we got hold of a taxi after walking a bit. The much fancied fast-pace life of Mumbai was evident from the hustling crowd at the railway stations. For a person like me who has been brought up and acclimatized to the laid-back life of Pune, it was no less than a horror. Trying to alight from the local trains was itself a Herculean task. Somehow we passed away the weekend in Mumbai among the bomb-scares (hoax or not we don’t know), exam terror (real, I can vouch for that) and I really didn’t have the energy to meet anyone in Mumbai so called up all those whom I had promised to catch up with and said “Hey, maybe next year I will be attempting this exam again, so please not today.”

How horrible is it that the exam for the colleges for which you are not eligible is much better than the earlier ones! I was not aware that to appear for JMET one has to have 60+ aggregate percentage in engineering (damn! 60+??) and the form didn’t mention it so I had filled it up. After one of my friends told me about the eligibility for a call from the colleges I decided to attempt the exam for practice (I have other exams lined up as well) and to my surprise and dismay it went off extremely well. That’s life eh?

By the way, blogspot is giving me troubles (not blogger though) and I am not able to comment on blogs so please bear with me for a while to comment on yours’ and reply on mine.

S - O - R - R - Y

The entrance exam season for MBA courses kicked off in great style with the CAT 2007 on 18th Nov. I will write more on that in the next post but after that I gave IIFT, Delhi exam. This exam has a GK section in addition to the maths, logical and verbal sections and whoa! it was a lengthy paper. So I didn’t manage to reach the last page of my GK section, in time, on which the questions were as if drafted only for me :(. In one question I had to match the creator of Calvin & Hobbes cartoon characters (Yashita stop grinning)… yes the same characters which open all the posts on this blog. Another question asked the candidates to match Bond girls with their movies. I could match the names of the actresses with their faces in my mind but I have not seen a Bond movie yet. Yeah no need to revisit the earlier sentence.. I am yet to see a Bond movie. I know Pierce Brosnan was the previous Bond guy so when I saw The Thomas Crown Affair movie on television sometime back I was quite amused and confused seeing ‘James Bond’ stealing. Later a friend told me that it was not a Bond movie *ahem*… I hope Bond fans are not reading this post. A few other questions which I could have managed to answer just slipped out. Moral: Never read the unattempted questions after going home.

So I would like to tender heartfelt apologies to Mr. Bill Watterson and James Bond & his babes. As a punishment I have been reading my C&H books daily, for at least 1 hour before sleeping. Also I will be updating the Desktop Goddess series with a Bond girl and might watch a 007 movie in near future. Yes, I like to inflict nice punishments on myself ;-) This post is dedicated to Watterson :)

Jack and the beanstalk(er)

Hi! How are you dear?

Who is this?

I did not send you my new number? Now guess

This was the rough start of a chain messaging with an anonymous number who one fine afternoon messaged me. I don’t know how to frame this sentence correctly but... the person insists that he/she/it is a female and knows almost everything about me. Added advantage is that she is single *ahem*. Now I am quite sure that it is some friend who is playing a prank coz I don’t have my mobile number displayed anywhere in public and more so coz I changed my own number a few weeks back. My first suspect was Aditi coz I had played the ‘stalker-on-cell prank’ on her with help from her sister Pooja he he he… it was fun :P. But then now it seems she is not the culprit :D. So who might be the person on the other end? I don’t know and don’t want to know coz the person is really smart in her (let’s stick to one pronoun) replies and if her identity is revealed then I would lose fun in those replies. Now I am safely assuming here that she is someone I know but what if she is really a stalker? He he... now if that person is reading this space by some chance I am not calling you a stalker but just thought of this so chill! Why I am thinking this is not coz of the anonymous sender but recently the newspaper was swamped with stories of stalking. Cyber stalking is not a new phenomenon but with media coverage and public awareness more and more stories are coming forth. But a new trend has started that whenever a crime under this is reported everyone blames the social networking sites like orkut, facebook etc. for this. I mean it is right up to an extent that we meet and tend to get close with unknown people but turning these sites into a scapegoat is not the solution. In Mumbai, a rich man’s son was murdered after being kidnapped by his new found friends on orkut. So when the news reports were being widely publicized, my cousins were ‘scrapping’ on orkut. Dad was at home on a leave and he got curious from the news reports that what the hell is orkut all about. So he finally managed to convince my sis that he wanted to know about it. When he came to know that I was also a member of orkut he was like “Really?” Probably my dad still thinks that all I know is MS Word and Excel… he he he. I knew this day was gonna come and I had already spruced up my profile and mainly removed the link of this space. I don’t have any particular reason to keep this site away from parents and relatives but yeah I would like to keep it that way. Luckily there is so much in the profile there that he never managed to read it. I know we have digressed from the stalking issue. I was talking to a colleague last week and one of her ardent admirers (she might have many coz she is pretty) had created a fake profile of hers on orkut. Generally fake profiles contain objectionable matter but this profile was kept so clean that none of her friends had an idea that they were talking to her stalker and not her. Luckily she and her boyfriend managed to nail the person and a simple threat worked. But the need of the hour is strengthening of laws to curb this stalking menace. Some people are demanding banning of orkut in the wake of these cases but I don’t think banning a site is the solution. Remember the ban on blogspot by the government? It is quite a debatable issue and what we can pray is that everyone is safe among the stalkers roaming around in the virtual and real life.

I am going on a 2 week leave for preparing for the exam on 18th of this month. After that as well a couple of exams are lined up. So won’t be around for a while... all of you take good care of yourselves and keep smiling.

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.

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!

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

Every story has a line..

and every line has a story

One of my colleagues requested me to keep all my whiteboard lines saved somewhere and this is one place where I can easily do it though I have been clicking them as and when I change them. But some of the lines which came into my mind but did not make it to the board have to be mentioned somewhere. So here is first part of the lines I can remember.. will be updated as and when I have new ones. Disclaimer: I think all the lines are original but if there is any copyright infringement then yeah go ahead and sue me. Just make sure that I win the case :p. Many say that some of the lines are obscene but I would defend myself by saying that many say pornography is obscene but there are people who say it is an art. It is just a matter of one’s perception :D

It is almost 2 years that I had put up this one on my desktop in office and later had created a good one by merging some pics but sadly it got lost during the machine upgradation. But later didn’t do anything using pics until last week. It has been two and half years in this company and I am sitting in the same place since the first day and have had more than a dozen cubicle partners till date. Even now as teams are being shuffled people are being shifted to different places. So I used one of my childhood pics and added to it..

If you sit in the same place for a long time, you start thinking that you are the king.. or you really turn into one :-)

Sometime back my friend had forwarded me a text message which read..
‘Board outside a red light area: Married men not allowed. We serve the needy, not the greedy.’
This message had me smiling for its sheer creative brilliance. Later I wrote..

Seen outside a whore-house: Tit for that

I have been attending workshops of my class on weekends, and trust me after every workshop I feel attempting the upcoming CAT exam is even more difficult. One such geometry workshop later we guys came out swearing and some of us decided to grab a beer at a nearby bar. I too joined in coz it had a TV set and India-Australia match was being aired. Since I don’t drink one of my friends came up with a nice nickname for me, ‘tea-toddler’ instead of teetotaler.. he he. I remember someone asking me in a party the reason for not drinking. “Driving?” he had asked. I had said, I don't drink so that the sloshed up gals have a sober guy to make out with, which later went on the whiteboard. Now you know why the gals were drinking a lot that night ;-)

Then there was a government ban in some country on kissing and my take on that had left Keshi & Kathy hot.. with anger of course :D
If it is not allowed to kiss in public places is it ok in private...?

Ha ha.. I got the most brickbats in company for this one.

Pam and Rick got a marriage license this week and there was a discussion in my cubicle on the movie King Solomon’s Mines so..
If you can’t be King Solomon then give a try to be Rick Salomon

If you don’t know who Rick Salomon is then you will have to catch the next flight to fly down to Paris and stay for one night there :D

Have a nice weekend :-)