My space.. my world! A book of my life with a few chapters thrown open to the world. When I will be famous, I will compile this as my auto-hagiography. So read it here, else pay a huge price later to get a copy for yourself ;)
Eric Foreman says "Life is like a train. It's bearing down on you and guess what; its gonna hit you. So you can either start running when it is far off in a distance or you can pull up a chair, crack open a beer... and just watch it come."
Letter writing is an art but the timing of the letter to be written and delivered is more important. One who masters this, is a real artist.
How many times have you thought or dreamt of doing nothing and laze around like Garfield? I do that every day but yet don’t succeed in it. This Sunday I managed to do nothing at all :-). Well one always does something while doing nothing. I got up at about 12:30 when a friend called up to ask if I would accompany for a movie which I later politely declined. I wanted to go to bed again just to break my earlier sleeping record but then somehow dragged myself to brush and make a cup of coffee (with banana wafers and moong ki daal). Yes, I believe in healthy breakfast :D. Then I settled down again with a book in my hand ‘The 3 Mistakes of my Life’ and switched on the TV. Just 8 pages into the book I preferred to catch up a movie as Cameron Diaz was a beautiful option in the movie The Mask than the person who had tried committing suicide in the book. Plus it was dubbed in Hindi (though I don’t like dubbed movies) which actually made it hilarious with voice imitations of all Bollywood actors for Jim Carrey’s role. After that there was another in English starring Sylvester Stallone and Antonio Banderas in which the guys are (separately) hired to kill someone. I don’t know the movie name and watched only about 30-35 minutes of it (Google says it might be Assassins). Then I switched on the computer and dragged a couple of oldies in the player and sang merrily along with he he. I hope the neighbours don’t complain when my parents are back home. Later decided to skip lunch and got myself a good shower. It is a wonderful feeling to know for sure that no one will bother you reminding to come out of the shower in time. This is one of the few differences between Calvin and me. After that I settled down again to solve the crossword in The Sunday Express. Dad called up and asked me to meet the kitchen trolley maker and tell him to complete the work by this weekend. So had to get up and visit the person who promised to complete it by this weekend. I think it was a fake promise and he will take one more week. While returning I decided to have pizza for dinner. Going by the trend of the day I should have ordered it but then thought of baking my own 
It is not that we get such a day now and then, so one needs to think wisely in order to spend them ;-). One of my friends had this status line on messenger:
The mystery gets solved. The dilemma is dealt with. The choice is made. Neo is happy. And then comes another crossing and another fear. The Oracle says life is always full of dilemmas and crossings, it is just that we concentrate on one or two, which we feel are the important ones out of the whole lot.
Updates from the company Table Tennis matches:
Have a great weekend folks :-)
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? :-)
A tête-à-tête with a circus clown…
How is the circus life?
Tough! Less people are coming to watch the circus these days and survival is becoming a challenge every day.
Why did you become a clown?
I like to make people laugh. Seeing a smile on the faces of people is a wonderful thing.
But if your life is so tough how do you manage to be content by making people smile? And more importantly how do you manage to make them smile if your life is sad?
Hmm… interesting question. The people who come to watch a circus do not share the sorrows of their lives with me. But I am aware that they are here to forget all that and have a good time. A clown’s important task is to make them forget all the pain and keep them smiling from the moment they enter the circus tent till the moment they step out. You know sandalwood? When you rub a sandalwood piece it gives out a nice smell. We clowns remember this and even when our lives are not so happy we make sure to make our customers happy. At the end of the day, we neither know the suffering of people coming here nor we share any of our problems with them, so what really matters is the sharing of a few smiles which gives me a peaceful sleep at night. I think everyone should be like a clown in their lives – expect less and give more.
I walked out a bit wiser from that short conversation. A joker is important in a circus and a pack of cards as well. Are you a joker in your life?
Move over reality shows; IPL is here to bring the TRPs’ down for the tear-jerky soaps and song-and-dance shows. But IPL is itself turning out to be a huge reality show; agreed it is ‘real’ but it is becoming more of a show these days. Where is cricket you ask? Well cricket is definitely there but the media attention is more on the stuff that sells in public and cricket for sure takes a backseat in this. Harbhajan’s tight slap to Sreesanth, the we-are-the-moral-police brigade hitting it out at the teeny-weeny costumes of cheerleaders, racism accusations within the cheer-girls squads, public spat between the team owners and team captains, ICC code-abuse with owners in players’ dressing rooms etc. IPL has been there, done that and seen all. 
Saturday, 10th May 2008 will go down in the annals of history as freedom day. Probably! 
Kabhi kabhi mere dil mein khayal aata hai
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…
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
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 :)
A/B styled update… 
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!
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 
‘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).
10-01-2008 and 16-01-2008
