Just a few observations…

A dead white woman comes into the picture….again…

I had this really long conversation with a friend of mine, we’ll call her the Attractive Afghani. This friend of mine has a connection with Afghanistan, as in a personal one. So anyway, due to her prior life e.t.c., she’s about as poles apart from me as can be, and yet we’re still extremely good friends. (Yea yea, opposites attract, and all that).

Anyway, what surprised me, is the extent to which the stuff Ayn Rand predicted about certain people’s behaviour is so true.

My friend, I love her to death regardless, leans towards the left..well she doesn’t lean so much as do a high-speed shuffle. Lean implies a pivot in the centre. There’s no center here…. I mean this woman is a pure communist in every sense of the word. It came as a shock to her that I don’t ‘believe’ that “Supply & Demand” is totally controlled by the government everywhere.

Now this wouldn’t matter so much, but the thing is, my friend works for the Red Cross, or used to work for them.  Now Ayn Rand predicted that people who do Social Work, usually end up with a low opinion of humanity and end up with a huge chasm of guilt within them. And surprisingly enough, this is what came out of the long tiring debate that I had with my friend. A belief that human beings are just lowly, greedy petty parasites out to feed off each other and the Earth. I tried to explain that those definitions should be reserved only for communists, KEkta Kapoor and Bollywood music producers, but she remained unconvinced. I argued long and hard with her, but to no avail. Example: I am a greedy exploiting pig because I want to buy a Merc, not a Maruti. Why can’t I just be happy with a Maruti, she asked me. She asked why can’t we just be produce enough to meet our basic needs and be happy.

So I asked her, as I have asked lots of people before  – please enumerate the basic needs:

Is a car with power windows extravagant? Air bags? What is enough? She answered it should get you from point A to point B. In that case, most cars are luxuries…

Someone said something about being able to provide basic healthcare for all at some point in my debates. What…is basic healthcare? Immunisation of which diseases? Is the ability to get an aspirin, but not a blood sugar check basic? Or below basic? How does one decide these things? There is this idea that everyone is entitled to a basic level of services, but my question is – who decides what those basic levels should be? There are two choices – either you have a government rich enough to meet all of your medical needs – in which every medical need is basic. This is the ideal solution, and one which every country should work towards. Healthcare (and Education) do need involvement from the government. They should not be left ENTIRELY to the Invisible Hand. BUT NEITHER SHOULD THEY BE ENTIRELY STATE-CONTROLLED. So if you don’t have the money to provide that kind of healthcare, STFU, and let the market help provide what it can, at the prices that it can.

This was just one of many topics. I asked my friend, time and time again, to elaborate, in simple steps, how my purchasing a Mercedes Benz exploits people. She wouldn’t do it. I told her I could explain, in very simple steps how my purchasing a Mercedes Benz employs people, and puts some money in their pockets. But that debate went nowhere. Sigh.

On Happiness

Where I get philosophical

So basically, I’ve discovered to figure out if one is happy. Huh? Don’t you know when you’re happy? Well see, it’s like this. Happiness is such an intangible sort of thing. Is one happy after having an orgasm? Possibly. After eating chocolate? Probably. Abusing a substance? Artificially. Ok, ok enough of ramble.

Phoenix/TTG’s definition of Happiness

Happiness is being able to say:

I could be dead tomorrow, and it wouldn’t matter me

Yep. That’s it. Anti-climactic, possibly but I don’t think so. Of course, once can criticise that statement and poke holes in it. But too bad. It’s late at night, and I’m too lazy to ramble more.

Resurrection

I am almost whole again

This voice has spent the last 16/17 hours reconstructing his blog. It is almost done. What’s left to do?

• Enable all of the outgoing links, which currently point to an odd place
• Enable the viewing of all the images embedded in the site
• Inaugurate a new design?

One thing that is causing me great regret is that there are 2 posts which seem to un-recoverable. This is a shame. It takes away from my complete-ness. The reason completeness is so important is that I feel as though I couldn’t continue writing into the future, unless I had the cushion of my past. Well, I have it now. Restored to almost full glory.

In other news, unrelated, I have 2 sets of relatives from USA over these days, and we just saw the Academy Awards.

The First One (part 1)

On girlfriends and reminsicing about the naughty 90s…

TTG STATUTORY HEALTH WARNING: This post is a personal ramble more for autobiographical purposes than for winning Booker/Bastiat prizes. Ergo Caveat Lector…

A short vacation

So I’m off to Bombay for 4 days…

…where I will get to see lots of celebrities and ‘High Net-Worth’ Individuals at an art exhibition being hosted by my sister. I will also attempt (for the 7th/8th time) to try and keep an open mind about the place, and see it the way everyone else sees it. I have been unable to do that thus far (if you’ve read any of my previous blog posts, that would be pretty obvious). I’ll do this by wandering the city by myself in search of….er.. I have no idea. Well maybe I’ll just walk along Marine Drive ogling at couples and pretending to be a Shiv Sena gangster. Or not. It’s 9.30 am and I am very sleepy. Yawn. So the to the 3/4 lurkers out there contributing to my hit counter, I’ll see y’all on Monday, or later.

Just so that it’s recorded…

Basically….

I had a dream last night, where I dreamt of a kazaki (cossack?) girl who used to be in my school. I thought I had a crush on her in school, but it only lasted for about a day – had to do with being dumped by first girlfriend…  This kazaki was a bit _too_ decent for me…

Anyways, she had nice eyeliner in my dream, and all we did was have a passionate conversation. I wish knew what it meant…. dreaming about somebody you haven’t even given more than 5 minutes thought to in over 11 years…

Ah well. I will go look her up on Facebook…

I’m smart, and now I have backing for it too

Brahma Chellaney thinks I’m smart

At a recent conference held on India’s Energy security, Brahma Chellaney took a break and went for a walk with a friend of mine. He was questioning why we Indians revere everything done by the British, and how, in his view, we should level Rashtrapati Bhavan and all of the New Delhi Area. On hearing this ‘radical’ opinion, my friend was reminded of me, and she told Professor Chellaney – “I have a friend who feels exactly the same way” to which Prof. Chellaney is said to have responded: “Your friend is a smart guy.”

*pats self on back*

Of course…. this is all hearsay, and completely unconfirmable, so don’t sue anybody over it….

Urban Pind (squared)

On Delhi

Pind is Punjabi for gaon which is Hindi for village.

(So the title is such because most people consider Delhi to be a pind. An Urban Pind.  )

Went to Urban Pind last night for the first time ever. Was quite impressed with the place, they’ve done it up well. Plus, it was ‘expat’ night last night, though honestly, these days, any night is expat night in most of the bars/clubs/pubs in Delhi (and elsewhere too I assume. Lots of white people travelling through India these days). The crowd was good, the music kicked ass, and a good time was had by one and all. I attribute some of this good time to my previously-mentioned colleague A. Somehow, whenever I go out with her, I end up having an excellent time. There will be a post on our fun trip to Bangalore soon, which will explain more. Or not

 Anyways, just the whole night scene Delhi serves to remind how this city has been on the ascendant for a while now, until the next plunder. Allow me to explain. I have become obsessed with Khushwant Singh’s ode to Delhi called “Delhi, A Novel”. I don’t think it’s in print anymore, but I highly recommend you get a copy. While Bombay will have its Midnight’s Children and its Maximum City, Delhi has “Delhi, A Novel”. It’s when you read that you really begin to understand things. How many ‘big’ cities rose (and fell) 100 years before Rome? After reading the novel, you get to see a cycle.

1) Foreigners invade Delhi.

2) Delhi-ites fight back

3) Foreigners murder lots of Delhi-ites, plunder the city, and then govern their kingdoms from there.

4) They then proceed to get increasingly decadent, going native, all the while falling further into complacency

5) Go back to 1)

Sure, in the old days we were dealing with Mughal Emperors and such like. Then we had the British. Now we have ‘ministers’ some of which are Prime and others are just Chief (with some Foreign & Home thrown in ) But the cycle continues. They invade, they plunder, they go native, and then they get invaded again.

And thus the story goes on as it has for a 1000 years.

It’s interesting what prompted that ramble. I was busy drinking my Vodka Tonic in Urban Pind, when a bunch of ‘Expats’ decided to order some Hookah (or Sheesha if you prefer) and were passing it around. Another bunch of ‘expats’ – the Mughals were doing that in the same place about 800 years ago.

Some things never change.

So here I am

where’s here? Here’s there of course, where else?

If you actually look my last post, you will know that I went back and read some of my old posts, and what I realized is that I need to blog. Not to get laid or to get a book deal, but because the blog actually ends up turning into a little autobiography, one way or another. What was the mood at the time. What was I thinking? (The “what was I thinking” feeling comes up often, especially when I see the woman_who_I_thought_was_my_girlfriend_but_she_did_not-related posts).

So yes, where am I? Well it’s been 2 years, and I am still travelling to Gurgaon to work. Only, I’m working in a building that didn’t exist 2 years ago. I am also travelling on a stretch of road* which used to take me 1.5 hours to cross on a good day (2 years ago), and now only takes 45 minutes. That, my friends, is called progress. I am car-pool-partner-less now, but not alone in the car.

The Colleague

I take a female colleague with me, whom we shall call A. Me and A have an affinity for the song Umbrella by Rihanna. We sing it at the top of our beautiful voices, when we’re driving back sloshed from a night out at Cafe Morrison (erstwhile Gourmet Gallery in South Ex)or Saket Buzz or Vasant Vihar Opus-but-now-the-new-so-called-Turquoise-Cottage.  Now, now folks it’s nothing like that. A is getting married shortly. Yes yes, this situation resembles a mess I got into in Melbourne, which resulted in the Delete Blog button being pressed, but it won’t happen this time assure you. Her fiance is a nice guy, worth marrying by the looks of it.

The Job

I work for a ginormous Multinational company whom I shall not name, but shall call Big Blue. If that rings a bell, don’t give yourself a cookie, because it doesn’t require much effort to figure out who I am talking about. Big Blue is cool. It lets me work from home (although I haven’t fully taken advantage of that). Big Blue let’s you take a day off without having to ask for permission (but if you do this often enough, you and I know both know what would happen). But you see what’s interesting is that to an extent, I was working for Big Blue, even when I wasn’t. HUH?

Well you see, Big Blue got kicked out along with Coke, Common Sense & Prosperity in the 1970s, by our good Christian Hindu Fundamentalist George Fernandes. Now, when Big Blue left, its assets were appropriated by Indian entreprenuers, as were Coca-Cola’s. Thus we ended up with these oh-so-pure Indian brands. Campa Cola, Thums Up – built on the corpse of Coke. Ex-Big Blue employees banded together and created their own firms as well. One of them, called Hindustan Computers Limited (now a US$ 4 billion enterprise, apparently) went on to do quite well. I worked for it from 2002 to 2005. Then I worked there for 2 months in 2007. And then I left it, to work for Big Blue. So I’ve never really left Big Blue you could say.

Wow, what an awful ramble. But I’ll leave it here to remind me of how much my writing has deteriorated.

*ok ok, it’s actually National Highway 8, which will take you Bombay if you let it. And being the Original Delhi-ite, I would never let it do that to me!

Revisting Past Glory

Man, I never realised I was good…I actually find my old posts interesting.

So to the few people who accidentally stumbled onto this blog instead of AyatollahKhomeini.com, allow me to introduce myself to you. I am TTG, erstwhile blogger, victim of a sting operation of the Delhi Times (circa 2005), and chaser-after of the now almost famous eM. In that previous life, I was a very prolific blogger. But quantity does not equal quality my friend. Don’t believe me? Well, if you’re a single woman in Delhi, go stand at your nearest street corner, and shout at the top of your voice – “I NEED SEX”. The result will be a substantial quantity, and as for quality… well…

I digress. I was at work today, researching an unlisted company (i.e. not on the stock market, and therefore with no publicly available information) when I stumbled upon a site called The Wayback Machine. Which for some bizarre reason has archived my site. Only some of it. The beautiful obituary I wrote for my grandmother is lost forever, along with her. But there were other posts which are still there. Go and have a look if you’re tired of sending Valentine’s Day cards to yourself. Some of my posts were so good that they engaged even me! Imagine their effect on you! Anyway, let me then announce to the world at large, that I hereby begin the TTG Atlantis Setu Samudhram Recovery project. I need to get the blog posts from The Wayback Machine site, and get them uploaded onto this site. This is a massive task, requiring:

•  7000 slaves,
• a beautiful wife who is played by Aishwarya Rai and who dies after giving birth to my 14th son child
•  and an architect whose hands I will eventually cut off so that he may not repeat the task ever again.

Oh wait. That’s been done before! Damn you ISKCON Temple, always stealing my thunder!*

*If that joke went straight over your head, there’s not much I can do to help you understand it except maybe this might help

Odds & Ends

Tis a slow weekend

 

That stupid “It’s Raining Men” song is going through my head, due to the Maruti SX4 ad. How the F am I supposed remain heterosexual if I am accidentally caught singing that song ? (Although, in this country with its skewed sex ratio it ain’t that far from the truth…but then nobody says Hallelujah because of that…)

The Delhi govt. has done some interesting things, lately, and I wonder what the consequences will be. The drinking age has been lowered from 25 years of age to 21. Finally, a case of laws beginning to match reality.

 

(Obligatory Ivy-League Alma Mater mention). My university’s motto (in Latin) was:

 

Leges Sine Moribus Vanae

Which translates to: Ceaser suffers from gas because he ate a burrito last night. Kidding. It actually translates to: Laws without morals are useless

And I’m sure Ben Franklin came to that conclusion after looking into his crystal ball to see some of the laws framed by the Indian government.

(End of Alma Mater mention)

The other interesting thing the Delhi government did is make it legal for women to work as bartenders. Of course, as has been mentioned a trillion times before, India is a free country, but only in name many a time. India suffers the Asian confusion of considering “Freedom from..” instead of “Freedom to”.

By framing idiotic laws like preventing women from working in bars, India has given you freedom from drunken men molesting women. By preventing people under the age of 25 from drinking, India gives youth the freedom from inebriation (or parents the responsibility of actually raising self-reliant human beings). So, just like we got Freedom from the British, all of our laws are designed to give us freedom from things. Newsflash: They don’t work.

Instead let’s try a different approach – women should have freedom TO work where they choose – so let’s repeal the stupid law that prevents them from doing so. (I’m skipping the alcohol example because I think we all get the point.

 

Just saw a Discovery Channel documentary on the Delhi Metro. I knew it was a Big Deal for the country and the world in general that the Delhi Metro exists and functions, and the show just went on to prove that. I was especially impressed with the Delhi Metro control room, which looks like those cool sci-fi control rooms you see in so many Jerry Bruckheimer movies, big screens and men in ties.

I am attracted to a woman at work. She’s a hottie, and she works as an auditor for the Quality department. Now people working in the Quality department need to have a certain trait. This trait is Anal-Retentiveness. Shame she works in the Quality department. We could have had a passionate affair, having sex by the coffee machine and on my boss’s desk after hours. Ah well. She’s a long-legged single-eyebrow raiser, which really turns me on. I can only raise one eyebrow by screwing my face to make me look constipated. Even then, nobody is sure I’m raising an eyebrow or trying to poop my pants.

I hope my company lets me resign on Friday.If not, I’ll be back here to bitch. Oh wait. Even if I do I’ll be back here to bitch.

Leadershit Skills

Me, as manager

I would hate to have me as a boss. I’m passive-aggressive, I don’t lead by example, and the boss-me spends lots of time socialising with the higher-ups. Yep, I wouldn’t want to work for me.

Mercifully, I don’t have to, and for the poor shlubs who do have to work under me, well, I get paid to get the work done, not to make friends (although arguably, ‘teamwork’ is a necessary skill)…

At least this confirms that I definitely belong in the consulting field, and not the general management field. We can leave that for the ‘leaders’. Whenever I get stuck on problem, I kinda sit down and think “What would so-and-so do?” where so-and-so are my ex-boss, my dad, and my brother-in-law. Why my brother-in-law? He’s big-time hotshot. Real big. He’s the head of South Asian operations for a multinational bank. Unfortunately, having someone like that as your brother-in-law means people expect great things from you, like owning a duplex apartment in Malabar Hill, like he does. Personally, I’ll be happy if I can just make ends meet, honestly! (confessions such as these restrict me to a certain class of woman as a potential mate…ah well).

Anyways, notice has been given, and I’ll be leaving soon, so at least I don’t have to live with me as boss for too long.

Just a complaint

I am the poorest rich man I know.

(NOTE: rest of this post is in poor taste, Caveat Lector)

I raced out of my house today, and went to the pump to fill my car’s tank. Halfway through the fill, I realised I didn’t have my credit card on me. I told them to stop filling, paid them 300 bucks, and left my drivers license and pan card with them. Went back home to pick up some more money, returned, and gave it to them.

That leaves me with 10 rupees in my wallet. No lunch today. Oh well. And my bank balance currently stands at -110 rupees. God I hope I get paid soon – (even after which – there are debts to be paid). Argh.

Like I said, the poorest rich person I know…..

A rant on slave labour

I can’t leave my job….

So this is a general ramble.

First off, I have now been rejected by Google twice, within one year. This, you have to admit is a remarkable achivement. It’s even more remarkable than applying to ISB three times, getting admission on the third try, and then foolishly rejecting it for the Melbourne Business School. But such is life.

On top of that, I have realised just how chained the Indian labour market is. We all know that the Indian Labour market is horribly over-regulated, and this is why there are no jobs here – although in this booming economy, that’s not quite so true. But let me put it like this – I joined my old company – HCL basically because I didn’t want to be unemployed while hunted for a more appropriate job. Right now, I am a Project Lead. This means I get yelled at by a few people, and yell at a few more. But I want to get an MBA job, which means I get yelled at by one person, and yell at a lot of people. So anyways, I found a job that will allow me to do that – I will be joining IBM as an associate consultant.

Ok, so far, nothing more than the regular self-absorbed post you can expect from me. Now what pisses me off here, is that even after having spent only 14 business days at HCL, I am chained to them – I HAVE to see off the entire 2 months of notice. This is fucking ridiculous. In (semi)civilized parts of the world, I would have been out in a week. But nope. This is the Communist Republic of India. Where you still have to take permission from the government to fire people. Which means you will think 1000 times before hiring someone. Which meansn once you have thought 1000 times and expended all that effort in getting someone, you will put them on probation for 1 year, in case they DO decide to run away. And it also means you will try and keep them in your company, so you’ll tack on a 2 month notice period. And if you break that 2 month notice period, the company can file a suit against you – or make you pay the 2 months salary that you would have got had you stayed those 2 months…!

And then they say Slavery has been abolished.

The Boy Who Read?

Notes on the Boy Who Lived, with spoilers

First off, am I the only one who has no life and who bought his reserved copy at 11 am today, and finished the book by 2.15 am of the following day? I see no reviews from anyone else on Google Reader…

There is a vague recollection of some interactions with humanity and the outside world, let me go check my pensieve….argh,never mind!

So to answer the burning question on the potential reader’s mind:

Harry, Ron and Hermione DO live happily ever after, but there were points in the book where I thought one or more of them was definitely set to die and thinking I’d stop reading if any of them did. But they saw the light of day.

Second, JKR was true to her word, and did not do a “Gandalf” with Dumbledore. It would have been nice to have him back. But his death was explained away brilliantly. This woman…she does know some magic. (C’mon, gime some points for getting in so many cliches in such a short period). It still annoys me though, because there was TONS of evidence throughout the books to show that Dumbledore wasn’t dead. The most obvious being the fact that he told Draco Malfoy that a death could be faked, just minutes before he himself died. I’m c’mon people. DOn’t be so unobvious.

You can’t mention Dumbledore’s death without mentioning the Murderer.

Did Snape redeem himself? That was one of the better parts of the story. There are some odd parts, some draggy parts, and parts that I disliked. I thought Ginny & Neville would have a much bigger role than they did. But they were a bunch of sideys. For shame! And I was especially annoyed to see that Prof. McGonagall, being a member of the Order and all, has no role at all to play. For Shame x2!

And I can say I’ve had my fill of death, thanks.

However, in short, the last book was totally worth the wait! But there are a few things – it is definitely written in a more mature style, complete with a few minor cursewords here and there. I can just see some parents getting annoyed about that.

Full Circle

Where I am

About 20 months ago, I walked out of my my old company, happy to be free at last from the drudgery of IT work, and off to do an MBA in the land Down Under. But here I am. Back at the very place I left, in a slightly higher role, responsible for managing 5 frustrated software engineers, a few of which are older than me too…but the same company all the same. Things have changed of course, the company’s CEO is attempting to turn things around and the company has an “Employees First” motto. On the day of joining, we were subjected to clips from a 3 hour DVD, with CEO spilling his guts to us. Lots of MBA-Speak, and I was left wondering if the software engineers in the group spotted it for what it was. There are DEFINITELY more women being hired. It almost looks like it’s a 50-50 ratio. They’ve even put up a matrimonials site on the Intranet. But many things haven’t changed. I joined the company on Thursday. Today is Tuesday. I don’t have a login id for my computer. I don’t have a company ID. I don’t have an employee code. Basically, here I am sitting at my desk, using ‘valuable’ company resources and time, typing out on a blog, because I can’t function in any constructive way at work. I can’t check my company mail, run any of the stuff I need to get my new job done. So here I am.

Google Interview Rejection…

Just realized I do have something to add…

Ok so, being a hotshot MBA (almost) and all, I applied to Google, just for the heck of it, coz they were hiring for Google India. I applied for the role of Account Manager in Delhi, and Product Manager in Bangalore.

So I get a nice e-mail from the HR person in Google Bangalore saying I have been selected for a phone interview with a Google Dude, who will be calling me from Mountain View, California (Google HQ).

My first reaction when I got this e-mail was.. “OH SHIT!”. While most people would be happy, I’ve heard that Google asks some the worst questions out there. I mean they really try to screw you. Apparently. Well they didn’t really try to screw me. I was just terribly unprepared, and so couldn’t answer the questions they had. What did they ask?

Well, i was being interviewed for a role regarding Google’s AdWords. What are AdWords? Those little tiny ads that appear on the side, and along the top of Google’s search pages, are displayed based on the keywords you enter into the search bar. AdWords also powers the ads that appear in Gmail. Anyhoo, he asked me if I knew what AdWords were, and I said kind of, and then he asked what they were, and I blabbed nonsense till the point where the interviewer had to break it down for me in chunks, i.e. “If you were starting afresh – where would you place ads on the page?” and then “How would you determine which ads can make it to the top of the search listings, or which ads appear first”.

Y’argh, I struggled with these basic questions big time. Lesson #1 – PREPARE PREPARE PREPARE!

Then the next question asked went as follows, and I quote now:

Imagine it’s 1996. You are working for Microsoft. Bill Gates comes up to you, and he says there’s this new company called Netscape that is up-and-coming and he’s worried it will kill Microsoft. So he asks you destroy Netscape, and you come up with IE4 and hand it out for free and kill Netscape

Now fast forward to 2001. Bill Gates comes to you again and says there’s this company called Google, which is up-and-coming, and may be a threat. He says he wants you to destroy Google. How would you do it? (Legally, of course).

Naturally, this questioning is asking you to figure out where Google makes its money, and what its weaknesses are if any. I answered this question very poorly as well, but it was agonising, both for the interviewee and interviewer, having drag all this shyte out of my mouth. I have to say, the interviewer was a tad bit rude in his tone, but then, considering how dumb I was, I’m not surprised.

Finally, the dude asked me if I knew what a “session” was (in terms of web programming). But I was just so dulled and drained from everything else I couldn’t even answer that. So there ends the Google Interview. Argh.

Nothing to say

Interesting – I haven’t written crap and I’ve got 317 hits on my counter. Anyways, my exams end on the 8th of December. Then I shall resume the role of blogger un-extraordinaire….

My Perfect Lover

This one’s for Scout & RTD2

Side Note to anybody from MBS who is reading this: No, I’m not in love with her.

So since it was my birthday last week, I threw a party. Now I hate throwing parties, but Bombay Boy forced me into it, saying something about freeloading off other people and their parties, and not throwing one in return.

So the highlights of the party included lots of debauchery. A certain woman walked in and announced loudly to everybody that she broke up with her boyfriend, to anyone who would listen. <SARCASM>I wonder what she was trying to achieve by that admission</SARCASM> . She walked away with a partner towards the end of the night…

The French Finesser decided to avenge the mess I made outside his apartment last week. His bathroom was taken, and I was awfully drunk, so I tried to make it to the elevator, and failed, so threw up right outside his doorstep – hey at least it was outside. But he still had to clean it up, so he was pissed off. So when I threw my party, he walked into the bedroom, and threw beer all over my bed while I was otherwise occupied, the son of a bitch.

I attempted to smoke my first cigar along with my Birthday Twin (the Balinese Beauty), which we received as a joint present.

The Sexy Singaporean was drunk, and throwing herself at every man. And the irony of it, the day she was finally throwing herself at me, I had to resist her, because of my decision (see below).

I got twenty-f-ing-seven birthday bumps. Ouch. My back hurts.

Ok enough rambling, it is also after this debauch party, which will go down in history for a lot of people, that I discovered a woman who comes close to being my perfect lover. I would not have thought that such a woman could exist. But she does:

1)She shouldn’t be too thin, nor too fat. Just a teency-weency bit on the plump side.

2)Her birthday should be on the same date as me, so that I never have to remember it.

3)She should have no qualms about calling me up, asking me to dinner, and then picking me up in her current boyfriend’s Toyota Camry.
4)She forgives ..ahem..’poor performance’ with the following quote:

In my experience, it takes three trials & three errors to know a woman’s body

(It was the first try).

5)She appreciates that you don’t get something for nothing, so in exchange for being helped with her Stats homework, she sends porn, without being asked to.

6)She’s blunt and forward enough to say: My boyfriend is out. I’m alone. Come over.

7)That she’d rather spend the cold winter day half naked under covers, than doing anything remotely constructive.

I never realized how fun much it is, to be ‘The Other Guy’.

Oh and on an unrelated, self-promotional note, there’s this post (Sniff, sniff, sniff)

Further From The Womb, Closer To Death

Happy Birthday to Me

This Voice just turned 27 (you wouldn’t be able to tell it from the writing, I know I know). I was about to say that I feel old…”VERY OLD”…but it’s been done before

And as I go through the 2 year old list of things that I was supposed to have done (reporduced below):

A quarter century has passed me by, and I still:
1)Don’t own an island in the South Pacific
2)Don’t own a villa on the Med
3)Don’t run a multi-billion-dollar company which threatens to own the World
4)Don’t run that Indo-American Film & Theatre Production House with my aspiring director friend (Anita), and closest non-relation (VeriKa)…
5)Haven’t got my MBA

And so I blog instead…..

So what’s changed? Only #5…. …well it’s on its way to being crossed out…

Happy Belated BlogDay

Yea Yea Yea

This blog turned 2 years old on the 10th of May (see the category “First Post”). In that time it has gone through makeovers, sting operations, abusive comments (and abusive posts), rants, ramblings, gratuitous pictures of women and other various oddities.

I wasn’t quite sure how to celebrate BlogDay. Should I just dedicate one of the 10 beers drunk on the 10th of May to my Blog? A picture of a cake? A rant? Should it just be ignored?

Couldn’t decide.

So instead, I’ll leave you with a picture from a recent road trip.

Now, that, my friends, is an Apostle. Well, it’s one of Twelve..er…Ten..er..Eight? Basically there were 12 limestone formations, called the 12 Apostles, along a road called The Great Ocean Road in Oz. They, unfortunately, are crumbling away, but that leaves for some breathtaking rock formations.

(more posts coming soon, as the road trips have come to a temporary halt…)

End of Term 1

Only 3 more to go…(Celebrating a small victory)

And what a term it’s been. At the start of this term, the introductory Prof said

Celebrate the small victories

So I am. Another prof said

Despite anything anybody may have told you or you may have heard, may I just say that Australia welcomes you, and with open arms

What a contrast from my introduction to America, which went something like this: “Stupid Immigrant, feeding off our government, stealing our jobs, daring to criticize the greatest country on Earth”. Of course, 75% of the 70 people in the MBA class are International students so maybe it’s pandering to your audience.

Went for lunch to an Italian Restaurant on Lygon St. with Freddy Mercury, the Sexy Singaporean and a few others.

This is Freddy Mercury. A Parsi/Bawa from Chennai, and a reasonably good friend of mine. Knows English and Tamil, and something which pretends to be Hindi. Has seen almost no Bollywood movies ever. When asked to sing a Bollywood song, this is what he broke out with:

Mera Haathi Mera Saathi, Kab aayegi tu

Thus causing enourmous howls of laughter. While we’re on the subject of haathis, the serious lack of Punjabis and North Indians here has also led to a corruption in the name of the only reasonably decent Indian restaurant around here. It’s called Kake di Hatti (complete with the picture of little baby ‘kaka’ wearing a red turban at the entrance). But when Freddy attempted to say it:

Haathi ka kakka? Haathi ki tatti? Kakka and Tatti?

Well regardless, the food was good. He lives in the same building as me, and his flatmate is Bombay Boy, whose pic I haven’t put up yet, because all the ones I have of him are too embarrasing (sleeping with hairy belly sticking out, bending over to get pen but looking like he’s giving his neighbour a BJ, you know that sort of thing).

(Gratuitous Pic of Sexy Sing below)

Ignore the guy next her. He’s Dowry. As in, he’s a sticky close friend which caused Bombay Boy to remark “Yeh to Dahej mein milega” – i.e. if I were to marry the SS (no thanks), he’d be along in the Dowry. Anyway, so we were walking to the restaurant for lunch, when SS yells “Look at that, there is a DILDO growing on this tree”. So we dismiss it as a regular SexySingaporean-ism (of which there are too many to quote), but then I look up, and sure enough, a large fake penis is hanging from the tree. And it turns out, that there are four of them. In Australia, it seems, they grow on trees. I shall take a picture and post it up soon. I took one with my cellphone, but it didn’t come out right

Hmm, what else… In order to foster “teamwork”, “people-skills” and other stuff, you’re put into groups of 5-6 people at the start of term, and then are forced to submit a few group assignments in your various subjects. Those groups are called Syndicates, and here’s my syndicate, doing what it does best. Drinking.

There are a few more posts coming, just thought I’d whet the appetite. I have 2 weeks of break, and nothing to do during those 2 wks, so expect a few rants and stuff.

In the meantime, I leave with my regular diet. A jug of beer, and potato wedges with “sweet chili” and sour cream. Sweet Chili has no chili and lots of sweet. It’s a popular flavour here in Oz. You even get Rice Cakes with that flavour. (ignore the ciggys. I’m a non-smoker)

Ta for now, for a day or so.

Message for Scout – I have answered this tag before, but was gonna answer it again in a different way. So hang on.

Journal Entries

Based on previous posts, I think you can expect low quality from this one too…

This blog is hereby renamed “Tarun’s boring life and sordid lovelife journal” from here on in. There’s not much left to blog about. See, the thing is, one gets so drained from the classes, that one is no longer in the mood to be angry and ranting – plus being frustrated in other aspects used to help fuel the anger. In case it isn’t clear, here are the classes I’m taking for this term:

• Accounting (for Managers) (Argh)
• Managerial Economics (Argh)
• Data & Decisions (i.e. Statistics. Argh)
• Marketing (for Managers)
• Managing People for High Performance

As you can see, it’s enough to keep one busy. So instead, I’ll just narrate the events of a party last Friday.

So I lied when I said I wouldn’t be mentioning the Sexy Singaporean again, I figure I’ll de-introduce her gradually. 

So this Friday was ‘Fiesta Latina’, yep a Latin Party. When the Peruvian Pair (which consists of the Perfect Peruvian and her husband (unfortunately)) invited everybody to this party, I fired back with “WHen I do the Salsa, it looks more like the Nacho sauce, and less like the actual dance”, but the Husband replied with “Don’t worry, all of us will just be hanging around the bar anyway”, so I said ok I’ll come too. 

So I walk in to the party with my flatmate, and check out the scene. Tis a nice party.Observe if you will, in the corner sits the Sexy Singaporean, in a pink top and a towel skirt. What pray tell is a towel skirt? I have no idea, but it looked like she’d wrapped a towel round herself, so I call it a towel skirt. 

Now, in the “Dummies Guide to Picking up women”, it states that you should “play it mean, keep them keen”. SO that’s what I did. I danced with every woman that night except the SS. Net result? Well she danced with recently-made friend and fellow classmate – Bombay Boy (who is in direct competition with me for this woman. He’s a hardcore Shiv Sainik. We’ve had a lot of almost-violent fights, but more about that some other time).  Anyway, nothing happened between the two of them, and Cinderella-like she disappeared at midnight, like she always does. 

So because I’m a total bastard, today I send her a message saying: “I’m hurt. No, not only am I hurt, I am deeply offended. You didn’t even dance with me at the party”.

Her response: “You didn’t ask”.

Note-to-self: Don’t mess with 28-year-old Singaporean woman.

(Once you’ve got up off the floor laughing, allow me to continue with this journal entry).

So mid-way thru the party, the French Finesser decided to play a trick on some of the other guys hanging around the bar. He tells the bartender – 3 shots of tequila, and three shot glasses with water please. Bartender returns with the request. This tequila happened to be clear like vodka/water and not yellow like the one I’ve known. DOn’t know why. Maybe this one had no piss in it Anyway, net result, French Finesser had 3 shots of water, and another classmate of mine (a Parsi dude who looks like Freddie Mercury-who-was-also-Parsi-BTW) ended up having to be dragged home by me and Bombay Boy.

So after the party, we all wandered around an area in Melbourne called ‘Brunswick Street’ which is where everybody hangs out to grab their Souvlakis and Slice-of-Pizzas after some hardcore clubbing. Suffering from a major ‘Munchies’ attack, we’re trying to hunt down a place to eat, and we run into LastGermanStanding Boy and girl-mentioned-in-previous-post-who-rubbed-up-against-me-at-the-local-bar. (There are reasons for not mention her nationalistic alliteration – I don’t wanna ruin her rep). 

LastGermanStanding Boy is obviously making a move on the very drunk woman-mentioned-above, and in the middle steps TTG and tells her: “You’re a very mean girl. You just danced with me once tonight”.

So girl unlocks from LastGermanStanding Boy, and locks on to Tarun and starts kissing him and cooing: “Is this mean? Is this mean?”. Ahem. Tarun is a little taken aback, and most hot-blooded males’ reaction is to pounce. But as has happened to me on Numerous occasions I tend to freeze and get shocked that here’s a woman actually behaving like she’s attracted to me (or very drunk? Heh). Now LastGermanStanding Boy is standing there with a very I-wish-it-was-WWII-and-you-were-a-Jew look on his face..and I was dying of starvation. And TTG thinks equally with his stomach as much as his you-know-what.

So he tried to have his cake and eat it too shall we say, by dragging girl with him to pizza place, but girl stayed rooted due to drunkenness. Drunk Girl? Pizza? Drunk Girl? Pizza? Argh. Pizza. Well in all fairness, LastGermanStanding Boy got there first.So I had to unlock, and leave Drunk Girl to LastGermanStanding Boy, and go on and eat not-so-good Pizza and drag Parsi friend home in a cab. 

The End.

Note to Thungachi – I have been getting your e-mails, and apologies for not replying. I do have a lot say and will reply in another day or two – PROMISE!

Heteromosexuality

Argh

Apologies to those who were expecting more frequent blog-posting, the but the issue is that people in my business school have discovered this blog, and some of them read it too. Most of them save it for a weekly class we have called “Managing People For High Performance”. As you can expect, it’s best to be surfing the web during that class (We have wireless net access throughout the school, and laptops are allowed – nay required- for many classes).

Farewell-la

Here, we say goodbye to The Sexy Singaporean. She will no longer be appearing on this blog – mercifully she hasn’t discovered it yet… I think. Why goodbye? This is why:

You go out to a Thai Restaurant with her,  The Incredible Indonesian (otherwise known as the Balinese Beauty – see the previous post for pictures of SS and II) and the Magnificent Malay( who has not been photographed yet).

Anyway, so over an unfuckingbelievable dinner, the Sexy Singaporean proceeds to make fun of one’s lack of biceps, and punjabi amount of hair…She even offered to wax me…

Sigh.

Another Moan-And-Groan

I’ve discovered why it is that I’m single.

Note-to-self- when sitting on a bed in a woman’s room, if that woman is sitting next to you, and she’s previously told you she thinks “she’s falling in love with you (just kidding”), and she mentions something about how some of the girls got together and voted yours truly one of the better-looking guys in class (second to an Italian), and she’s been teasing you about being gay (and you shoot back with – “well let’s go to a private room and I’ll show you just how gay I am”)…you’re supposed to make a move. Otherwise, she ends up going out with a guy whose name, if pronounced as it is written, would be slang for masturbation. But it’s not the woman that bothers me, it’s the principle of the thing – i.e. missing the signals. 

2nd Note-To-Self

When a woman starts rubbing up against you in the local bar, mentioning how “she doesn’t have game” and you compliment her and tell her that she has lots of game, and when she makes you promise to come back when you go to the bar to get drinks, and ahem, continues to rub up against you, it’s a signal. Argh. 

WTF?

(and Laugh Out Loud)

Ok, WordPress (or some mysterious hacker – whom I shall call Fucker just because I’m an abusive bugger) keeps displaying a “Happy Diwali” post at the top of my blog, even after I’ve DELETED the bloody post.

Well I can’t be bothered to fix it, I have an exam at 9 am tomorrow – yes on a Saturday. Sniff Sniff.
A belated Happy Holi to everybody.

And a 1% chance with the Sexy Singaporean. Went for dinner with her yesterday. Asian women are all the same, be they South Asian, or Southeast Asian. Over some ‘Mee Goreng-no-seafood-no-egg’ (basically chicken and spicy thick noodles ), she went at me rapid-fire:

“Where’s your family,do you have any siblings, why did you leave America, do you like it here, will you go back, where is home for you, why do you want to work in singapore, don’t you likie Australia, Singapore is expensive if you’re single, when can I see your apartment”.

Phew. I wonder what the results of that evaluation are (no I didn’t show her my apartment. It’s dirty.)

<!– –>

More nonsense

(and a picture)

Melbourne, from my balcony

Ok, so since I have wasted far too much time being me, the Sexy Singaporean now looks on me as a brother. Argh. And the other e-mailer, well it looks like she really was just kidding. Women are just out and out weird.

In the meantime, done some more assignments, read a few blogs, and went to a few parties.

Benefits of Globalisation and the Internet.

Quotes of the Year

Yes, I really don’t have anything better to do. Sorry guys!

Quote of the Century
“You blow me, I blow you!”

Context: I walked in to the b-school canteen, trying to avoid 2 of my friends who are some serious nicotine junkies. So I was just kind of bitching about smoking to The Sexy Singaporean. So she says, in her singsong Singaporean accent: “Ya, I don’t like it when people smoke either, so when they start smoking, I start smoking too”… So I’m saying “…Ok…and why is that…?” And then she starts gesturing wildly in front of her face with her two fingers in a “V” and she goes…”You blow me, I blow YOU!”. Was in splits for the rest of the day. Kept repeating that comment to everybody until people started looking at me funny.

The second quote is a bit of mystery. I can’t quite figure out whether I should “do” anything about it. Well it’s not a quote – it’s an e-mail:

you’re so funny man. i think i’m falling in love with you or something. no just joking not inebriated like you. well just wanna ask if you could forward the picture you sent me to K. i accidently deleted it and she just wanna see it that’s all. oh by the way data&decisions on monday was so confusing nobody explained it to me like you did. i think you should do a part time here. hahahaha. see ya

Is that a hint? Or is it just somebody being funny (it’s a very gorgeous South-East Asian girl). Any ladies reading my blog out there, please to comment and help me. I’m very dumb when it comes to these things (or over-smart?)

ButterChickenLit is where it’s at, man.

Oh and here are some responses to the comments on the previous post

Autumn Stone – do u live in Melbourne? If not, not much point in getting my e-mail eh?

Brown Magic – no ma’am this is me passively looking, not actively. If I were actively looking, then I would be doing things very differently. I didn’t really expect the bartender to call me back. It just a “Fun thing to do when you’re 7 beers down”. As for the Nepali waitress, to quote Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, the day you stop looking is the day you die.

RT – didn’t think you’d be much impressed, pleasantly surprised. As for sounding like my mother, ok so I confess I could have been a little bit more intelligent about my spending habits, but it’s hard when you’re used to getting reinforcements at the end of the month

Karma – sorry for dropping of the map, net access is limited, and have been busy giving exams and stuff. This leaves me with limited time, and I use that more to say what I want than respond to other people – because the “Say What I Want” is therapeutic.

Parth – where have ya been!

Pareshaan – apologies – see the comment I left for Karma

Some Pictures

Call it a little advertising for MBS (Melbourne Business School)

School Sweet School

Pub Sweet Pub, right next to School Sweet School.(Clearly MBS has its priorities right!)

Home Sweet Home – Trinity Apartments, which is also right next to the School and the Pub. Will show more pics from inside my apartment – it’s got a gorgeous view of the city, and is in the angle, second from the top. I’ve ended up sharing with someone, however. (It’s a 2 bedrm).

Ahem. These signs are found in all Public Transport – note the circled part…..how the F am I going to survive in this country?!?@?!?@?!!@###!

So it’s bright Summer’s day and you’re out with your family friends. You go to a place called Sugarloaf Resevoir, and you sit down at the restaurant, and order a cup of coffee. So yer sitting having coffee, and you see a bunch of ducks walk by in the distance…..so you take a pic. And have your family friends laugh at you for being a FOB. BAH!

Observe if you will a Sexy & (Bold) Singaporean – or rather The Sexy Singaporean. On being told that I was taking pics to send back to India, she made the following pose, with the following quote: “Let me show off my boobies, to piss off all the women, and entertain all the men”. She’s a real tease I tell you. “I’m single, but not looking-la!”. But most of the men are chasing after her – even the married ones! Oh, and she said that a handsome man like me should be acting in Bollywood movies. *Grin*

Now we have the more coy Incredible Indonesian. She was almost going to be my flatmate, until I found out that she has a boyfriend(outside of MBS). Bah! Oh and the fact she doesn’t really wanna live another guy…I wonder why…

Class Participation is 20% of your final grade. This means every prof needs to know your name. Hence the big sign in front of my seat (do you really think I’d be sitting there advertising it otherwise..? Ok…maybe I would be…)

OK, I think that’ll do for now, I have a 10 minute presentation to prepare (and the topic, of course, is Blogging!). So I shall leave you now, after having wasted more time on this than I should have (I am soooo scroooooed).

Buh-bye. Next post will have some city photos.

TTG-on-the-barbie

Salaam Namaste from Melbourne(short post)This not a what I learned in the City post coz I ain’t really seen the city yet.

But from what little I have seen of Australia, I love it.

What i love even more is that Dual Citizenship between Australia and India got legalised last year. So this means that when they do institute private sector job reservation quotas in India, I won’t have to change citizenship to Pakistan, I can just flee to Australia instead.

Oz seems like America without the stupidity.
Ozzies don’t think they’re the centre of the universe – they even know there are other countries outside their own.

Ozzie women are hot, and ozzie Men are not. This means I’m in with a chance.

Imagine an America where everybody drives on the correct side of the road, and you have Australia, complete with suburbs and wide freeways going thru the middle of nowhere. They even have roundabouts here.

Now I just need to find a place to live…I wonder how long I can depend on my family-friend’s hospitality.

Oh – and most importantly – the cellphone service here is just like India. The true mark of civilisation – fully regular decent GSM 900/1800, no incoming charges, and cheap prepaid. Joy.

Ignore the read more, you blasted people from the lands Up-Over.

Oh and that’s “Mel-bun” not “Mel-born”. Wokay?

Complexity (and Delhi Blogger’s Meet Announcement)

Lots of rambling

STICKY POST. Updates (however sparse, below)

I’m panicking. I have to book an airline ticket. I have to find a place to live. I have to pack. I have to fulfil a few goals I’ve recently set for myself. I have to meet a few people, and defy a few curfews

I’m suffering from ‘CrapBlogger’s block. (Do crapbloggers actually suffer from blocks? Do androids dream of electric sheep? Does the crud that develops in the corner of my eye every morning have a name, or is it just called EyeCrud?). Some people have ACTUALLY called me up and told me they check my blog first thing in the morning for updates. Guys, I really have nothing to say these days. So I’m filling in with autobiographical stuff instead. Maybe things’ll change in the New Year, or maybe when I get to Melbourne… who can say.

Amit Verma is going to be in Delhi on the 2nd of Jan, and there is going to be a Delhi Blog Meet in his honour. Saket/Vulturo is heading back to Bombay to take up his new job the day after. And it will be the last Delhi Blog Meet that I will be attending for a while as I go off to Melbourne to sell my soul (get an MBA) and qualify for a lower rung of Hell. Hey at least I’m in the VIP Lounge. The Lawyers and Socialists, Delhi Auto Rickshaw-walas and MCD officials are still a few levels below me :-p. I wonder if I’ll get to meet Nehru when I’m there…
Anyway, come one come all, to see the Tamasha, when Free-Marketeer Amit Verma clashes against Shivam Vij, and also has his impressions of TTG changed.

Mere ex-rival ki shaadi hai.
Ok here’s some boring personal information. Since I went to high-school in Delhi, I have more High-school-related stories while I’m here. So anyway, in my High School (twas a very SMALL and Private school), there was a competition between some of us…sort of. The guy who was #1 in class had held that position throughout, so we never challenged his might. But the #2 position was up for grabs, and there were 3 people in contention for that slot. By the time we graduated, I was the one who got it. Ha. Without even putting any real effort into it. But there were two other guys vying for that slot. One of them was like me, a not-much-effort-type dude. But the third guy…he was insane. He used make a note of all of OUR grades after every exam, he used to slash his wrist when the woman he loved wouldn’t return the lurrrvee..he used to get help from IIT professors to study Physics (and I still beat him. Stick it in yo-face!). (In school, he had a thing for a woman who is now a newsreader on one of them fancy English-speaking channels, I think it’s NDTV 24×7).
Anyway, he’s getting married this Jan, and it made me realize that my time is coming soon too. You see, I’m 26. This means that by Indian standards, I have hit marrigeable age. Many an old crone has checked me out from head to toe and asked me pointed questions about my job and salary filing it away for future match-making. Mercifully, my parents want me to actually be “settled” before I get married, so they keep pushing away offers, saying that their son has to get his MBA before he can get married. This means that I have till May 2007. The day I graduate, I will probably be expected to get on a horse and ride to Verma’s Banquet Hall (or the Maurya Sheraton..). Somebody is gonna have to explain to my parents that I don’t plan on getting married until I’m 35. And I would like to have slept with the woman before I marry her…. The thing is, that I’m a late bloomer. I had my last milk tooth out when I was 12. I learnt to walk when I was 2, or something. Right now, I have not learnt enough about women to prevent ending up as my wife’s bitch. I’ve just barely escaped a Delhi-Woman’s grasp and her mind games (and her new Italian Sausage). And women who don’t want to hold power trips over you are a rare and beautiful breed (you know who you are )
Does anybody else foresee a little family trouble on the horizon? Argh.

Okay, I’m publishing this post, but I’ve realized that the quality of this blog has really really really degenerated. Don’t expect me to write again until something/someone lights a fire under my ass. I’m off to play SimCity4. Goodbye for now, and may you all have a Happy New Year.

The Shame Of It All

Sad New Year’s Story…This is what Saket would call catblogging.

Something about the change of year brings me bad luck…

So…since about 1991, I haven’t celebrated a decent New Year’s Eve party. 99% of my New Year’s “celebrations” are bizarre occurrences. Let’s add a another pathetic one to the list….

So I go to an …acquaintance’s place for a party…I know this acquaintance somewhat. It’s been a brief acquaintance. She knows I like her in a non-platonic way (although…the feeling is not mutual). I decide that I will make out with her before the end of 2005 (or in the wee hours of 2006).

So I get to her place, complete with a half-bottle of Tequila, sit down, hang out, drink and talk.

The usual stuff, you know, like drinking games, and small talk.

Enter Big Annoying Stupid Tall Assholic Retard Dude. (or BASTARD, for short). Every attempt of mine at getting the woman alone, is thwarted by BASTARD. I go to the kitchen? He goes to the Kitchen. She wants to get to her secret stash of Vanilla Vodka (eww), I come along….and BASTARD barges in as well.

So this is not going so well, but TTG decides he’ll find a way to dispose of BASTARD…

But he doesn’t. Instead….BASTARD manages to get the woman alone…and then they disappear out into the balcony for about 20 minutes…

Possibility #1 – They went out to discuss Nuclear Physics, and why Einstein might be wrong.

Possibility #2 ……It’s New Years. Acquaintance is Lonely….

Anyway, so while this is happening, alcohol is inducing brain-stew in my mind. I’m thinking: “[Bad-word-for-fornication]!I have failed in my attempt to display my evolutionary mastery over the other primates at this social gathering. I will be relegated to a group of low-quality hunter-gathers. Alas! Woe is Me!”

TRANSLATION: “FUCK! I suck! I’m a loser!”

After hanging out at this party, all of the people were supposed to head on to another party elsewhere. But TTG had to sit down and take stock of the situation:

There are no single women here (there were only 4 women including Acquaintance, and the other 3 came with their boyfriends – this country has too much COCK I tell you!). Acquaintance has found her partner for the night. The party we’re going to may be no better..so…is there any point in hanging around here?

Further, being curfew boy, I have actually had a gazillion arguments with my dad this past festive season…
Is there any point in risking worse relations with my father without any potential for “action” tonight?

The word NO came blasting through the ethanol-induced haze in my mind.

So while Acquaintance and BASTARD were busy discussing the Benefits of Gene Therapy and Effects of Global Climate Change alone outside, TTG decided to put on his shoes and get his goonda jacket.

“Where are you going?” asked a sloshed chap.

“Oh just to go get something from my car” I replied.

And he drove back to his Cousin’s party…with his ‘tail’ between his legs.
Of course Acquaintance being a naive woman with oh-so-friendly intentions and all calls TTG about 30 mins later, wondering where he’s got to:

“I thought you said you were going to spend New Years with us” said she.

TTG’s mind is screaming – “YES, BUT IN A DIFFERENT WAY!”. But instead his voice responded with “I did spend New Years with you”. (I was at her place till 1 am).

Awkward pause…..”….Ok….” said she.

“Ok, bye” Said I.

The End.

Waking up today in the morning, hungover, and scrooed, I realise maybe they were just discussing Particle Physics, however unlikely. But it’s too late now. Argh. To be free of Self-Esteem issues and to just have a good time. How difficult is that really? Now, how to face Acquaintance after all this? (Mercifully, I’m leaving soon!) Alcohol, you’ve betrayed me once again in my hour of need. That’s it, I’m turning to Cocaine instead.
New Year’s Eve/Day you’ve done it to me again too. But no matter. The rest of the year will be better. I think.

Now that all’s been said and done, I can even go forth and reveal who the acquaintance is.

But as you can see, they WERE discussing particle phsyics. Ah well.

Yea, Me Too

A Year End Post…

Look 2005 has gone. Welcome to 2006.

The End

Ok hmmm, do I have any New Year Resolutions? No, not really.

Any past regrets from the last year? Some.
Anything special I want to share about the past year? No, it’s all on my blog anyway.

What the f am I posting for then? No Idea.

Happy New Year everyone!

What did I do last year for New Years? Well I’ve been back in India since February 2002. But between Feb 2002 and September 2005, I have had no social life (part of this is because of a very unhealthy 3-year long relationship with a nasty female canine – yes, Bestiality…). So…last year, me, my sister, my cousin and his wife went to a restaurant called ‘Ploof’ in Lodhi Colony and had dinner. After dinner, we drove around like a bunch of fuckfaces, and ended up celebrating New Years on Aurobindo Marg, midway between Jor Bagh and Green Park. Now just like there is a Barista ‘Creme’ in South Ex, an upmarket Barista, there is the Cafe Coffee Day Lounge in Green Park….all the waitresses there (and I mean ALL of them) wear the shortest skirts I’ve ever seen and all have bleached hair and all are tall and model-like. So after celebrating New year’s on the middle of the road we went to the CCD Lounge and had a coffee there.

Twas the strangest New Year’s ever. This year I hope it will be better spent.. let’s see how it goes..

Isa Da Heppy-Burday

(Punjabi for Merry Christmas)

I am on strike. I simply refuse to rant. It must be the festive season. Actually, maybe it’s because I’m just generally Happy, with a capital H these days. I regret to inform you that I’ve mellowed out…well let’s see how long it [bad-word-for-fornication]-ing lasts.

Observations:

The fastest a Hyundai Santro Xing (not the eRLX model) can do on the NOIDA toll road is 140 Km/H before the Engine says Uncle (and Aunty too).

The fastest a Honda City (new model, but not VTEC) can do on the NOIDA toll road is 180 Km/H but then I ran out of Toll Road. Boohoo.

It’s cold.

Patrix, your 2 posts on your return to India sucked. But not for the reasons that Vulturo is afraid of. Oh if I were just a little unhappier, this post would be a rant

A blogger who shall remain nameless(not Dilip D’Souza) actually dared to reject a comment I had left on his blog one day. And it was the most innocuous comment too. It said: “Hey Samit, nice meeting you at eM’s Party. BTW, since I’m referring to you on my blog, just thought I’d let you know”. Just publishing it here so that the truth is not lost to anus of blog history. Or something.

Saket’s new name is 12DrinksAhead. Further, the !$#@#!$@#! dared to call my blog a ‘CatBlog’, when he was only OneDrinkAhead. I swear by the blood of a squished malaria-bearing mosquito, I will have my vengeance, and then some.

Aanchal, nice Christmas/Birthday party.

Last of all, The Trump Card – This is what I bring out when I’m on my last ditch attempt at getting a woman to date me:

Me, aged 2.5 years old. Photo pasted in passport which got me to Hong Kong.

“See..now if you go out with me, we might fall in love and get married, and then YOU could have a baby as adorable as that picture”.

Little TTGs running around all over the place. Oh what a fantasy!!!!!

ignore read more (after you’re done pulling my cheeks…ahem, the UPPER ones!)

Oh and a question to the rare people who actually visit my blog:

“King Kong” or “Chicken Little”? Which would you see and why. Discuss.

More random stuff

Of Horse Woman, and other trivial matters (I ripped off somebody’s blog name! The shame of it all I tell you!)Ok, so first off, I’ve been terribly sick with a cold for the past 3 days. Why? Because I haven’t bought new winter clothing since 2000. The connection? Well I only have two sweaters, and two sweatshirts. The sweaters make me look like a grandpa (they’re my dad’s), the sweatshirts make me look gay. So whenever I go out, I wear a shirt, with a T-shirt underneath and my gangster jacket (If I’m unshaven, I think it makes me look like a goonda). Thing is, that isn’t enough for Delhi weather these days, so I got an awful cold, and have been totally out of it.

Related to that point, is cold medicine. Cold medicine makes one drowsy. Along with the sleep come some of the most bizarre and intense dreams. Having taken the first dose of medicine after a trip to Turquoise Cottage, I dreamt about TC the whole goddam night. The only thing missing in that dream was a wild orgy. But that could be because I don’t remember all of it…. The next day I was re-reading Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead just because I can, and the dreams were full of people talking in those solemn mind-reading tones you find in those books.

I’m going blind.
NO, not because of masturbation, you freaks! Because my monitor is on the blink.
Here, take a look:

The image is squished. Can anybody tell me if 17″ monitors are available for around Rs. 4000 anywhere in South/Central Delhi? The sardarji we buy our computer stuff from tells me that a shitty 15″ comes for 4600, and I think he’s ripping me off. Looks like I’ll have to get my butt to Nehru Place soon…

The Return of HorseWoman.
Who is horsewoman? HorseWoman is a woman I met 2 years ago. She’s my mother’s cousin’s girlfriend’s daughter. I’m completely serious. Anyway, I met her, and I thought she was hot, but I was very much into my ex-girlfriend-who-wasn’t. Since there wasn’t much happening with my girlfriend-who-wasn’t, we decided to take a break. During that break, I called up horsewoman, and met up for coffee, because I wanted to show my girlfriend-who-wasn’t that she shouldn’t be taking me for granted. Biatch. Now horsewoman is very hot (tall and fit), but there are a few issues…if you haven’t guessed it yet…she’s obsessed with one thing, and one thing alone…Do I really need to mention what it is she’s obsessed with? And I mean obsessed. Her phone’s wallpaper has horses, the sms tone is a horse neigh, there are posters up in her room, and of course, she is an expert rider….ahem… the er… fact that she’s good at riding studs….is the part that appealed to TTG. (Plus the fact that horse-riding breaks hymens…so…..). Look, this is a male blog. This is how this male thinks. Get over it. Anyway, so we’re out for coffee, and we run out of things to talk about really quickly. Now TTG knows something about everything, so he usually mentions a buzzword here and there, and that gets the conversation flowing….but when it comes to horses…I had to give up. After asking idiot questions like “What kind of horses are native to India – did they originate in Arabia” and other such stuff, I had to quit. I almost reached a point of desperation and was about to ask her loudly in the middle of Barista: “CAN WE GO MAKE OUT NOW? We’ve talked for 30 minutes, that should at least equal a tentative first kiss?”. But I restrained myself. Anyway, to cut a long story short, me and horsewoman met once again, we went out to Steel with her friends, but Horsewoman is a decent woman who doesn’t drink, and she didn’t dance much, and she didn’t seem to want to make out either…so after Steel, I drive her back to her place…and instead of opening the door and getting out of the car…she’s sitting there waiting….awkward moment, because I’ve already decided that (yech)I’m still in love with my girlfriend-who-wasn’t and can’t really get myself to make any moves…so she’s waiting…and I had to just like say “OK, well BYE…” and then she opened the door and left. HorseWoman, I just want you to know it wasn’t your fault.

I think HorseWoman suspected I was psycho, because after that night, we never went out again, but she did call me over to her place a year later to do some psych tests for her project (her undergrad major was psych)…This must have been some form of revenge…(trust me, it wasn’t an attempt to seduce me).

Anyway, after that she disappeared, and we didn’t speak to each other again, until I figured I’d re-establish contact with her this September, in an attempt to get over my ex-girlfriend who wasn’t. So we finally go out for coffee today (after 3 months of phone-tag. She’s busy in IAS coaching classes, and playing games, clearly!)
She’s as hot as ever, and she no longer just talks about horses. She’s looking at a few potential men right now to get into a serious relationship with. I tried to convince her that you’re only young once, and flings are the way to go…but she didn’t seem to buy it. Sigh. And now I’m on my way to Melbourne.

Update:
I’ve just realized…that to this day, I have never asked HorseWoman what her last name is…or even when her birthday was/is….Just goes to show where my priorities lie…

Which brings me to my last point. I got my visa today. Yay. AUSTRALIA, HERE I COME!

Ari Ari Ari (Adipa!)

My Theme Song

Ok, so the last few posts have been absolute crud, and this is because, I am actually suffering from Blogalysis/Rantalysis

Blogalysis: n. An inability to blog brought on by having too many topics to blog about, and not knowing which should be brought to the fore.

Rantalysis: n. An inability to rant brought on by feelings of immense anger/hatred/frustration felt on reading a Socialist/Communist/”I’m in support of Free Markets but…”-ist

Anyway, so since I’m suffering from these -alyses, I decided to pick another frivolous topic.

If your blog had a theme song, what would it be?

Now, while a lot of people will give profound and spiritual answers (some song by Dylan, or The Doors, or Hendrix, or U2), you have to understand, that I’m Punjabi. So instead, I’ve decided that the honour for the TTG Blog Theme goes to…:

Baraa Barsi – Bombay Rockers

Basically, if I were a little more shameless, I’d have that song playing in the background everytime you visted this blog, but I have some standards, however sparse, so I’ll just ask you to pretend it’s playing everytime you visit my blog.

Baraa barsi is some Punju folk that the dholwalas always sing in Punju weddings. They make up verses, each dedicated to family members, (so when they sing the verse with the word ‘Mama’ in it, the Maternal Uncle bounces out of the circle into the middle and does the Indian Wedding Uncle Dance (usually with some Scotch in his hand, OF COURSE).

ooooookkkkkkkkkkkkkkk…..that being said, The Bombay Rockers have of course, remixed it in their Punjabo-Danish fashion, and I hereby declare it the Theme to Voice From A 2.5-World Country.

Now if I was a famous blogger, I’d have started a new Blog meme, and tagged 4/5 people. But you see, I am an elite blogger, and therefore, have no such pretensions :-p. But if you DO get inspired by this post, remember to link back, complete with bend-over-backwards-praise.

BTW, Yes, I am fully aware about Operation Duryodhan (Gratuitous Link), and I have nothing to say, because all has been said about that. And of course, there was the whole goddam after-party post

I even wrote a whole rant about it…but there were so many cusswords in it, that I got a notice from Blogger saying I needed to pike down (ok, not really).

The Yumnam Effect

A “Page 3 of Blogging” style post…

Went to a party last night. Met Samit Basu there. The conversation went as follows:

Me: Hi
Samit: Hi.
Me: You’re Samit? Samit who?
Samit: Samit Basu.
Me: Oh cool, Duck of Destiny right? Congrats on your Book Launch. By the way, I’m TTG
Samit: Ah yes of course, you’re the Elite Blogger!

Samit is a lot younger than he sounds on his blog. I was expecting a 36 year-old, and got a 26 year old instead.

Anoushka Shankar is back with her ex-boyfriend (the one she’s been with fer 10 years or so), the old half-breed Goat! Will these two lay off each other and give the rest of us a chance. “Tango” (friend and blog commentor) is gunning for the boyfriend, and well we all know about me. Tango was meant to sell me to Anoushka tonight…but she(Anoushka) was liplocked…

Hmmm what other gossip do I have….none at the moment…

Delhi Blogger’s Meet – December

The position is filled, the show is on..

STICKY POST. UPDATES BELOW

The DBM for December is being organised for the coming Sunday. Your Host has the scoop on all of it.

We shift back to Central Delhi – good ‘ol CP, to a pub called DV8, where I have never been. So if you’re in Delhi, and fancy yourself a blogger, feel free to join. If ya don’t like Sharaab and Smoking places, feel free to suggest an alternative to the host before the big day.

A few things:
1)I will be wearing a ‘wire’, or a ‘bug’ so that the entire contents of the meeting will be recorded, and podcasted to see off possible print-media-induced spats.

2)I will be frisking EVERYONE at the entrance, to make sure you don’t have any media credentials.

3)In case you haven’t figured it out yet…I’m just kidding. Except for the frisking part :-p

PostOnTheRun

Phew! Much Too Much Happening!

Ok, I don’t know if I’ll ever get to blog about the hings I wanted to blog about this week, so I’ll just jot them down real quick:

1) My Father’s best friend passed away this week. They’d been friends for 30 years. Death remains a mystery. The seed for a blog post is there, but I don’t have the time to get around to it

2) Me and ‘tango’ (see the comments for for on the last few posts so find out who Tango is) went to see a film…called….’The Film’…and we had the WHOLE THEATRE to ourselves (no, nothing naughty happened). Have to blog about this too

3) I have an ISB interview on Saturday/Tomorrow/Today depending on when you’re reading this. This is the 3rd time I’ve applied to ISB, and the 2nd time I’m being called for an Interview – but really, what do I have to lose?

4) Saket/Vulturo has been selected to be part of the IndiBlogger’s jury. This is good – we have ‘one of our own’ on the jury. Now I won’t need to resort to bribes to make sure that the award swings the way I’d like to see it go – in this light – I would like to propose that the IndiBloggies should function like the Oscars, not the f-ing FilmFare awards. Let everybody who is a blogger, propose who gets nominated, and who gets voted. This is a massive logistical task. I’ll do it once I have a well-paying MBA job hopefully 17 months from now – but in the meantime, couldn’t someone else give it a shot?

Anyways, I have to run now, tata and all that.

Help Wanted

Looking for a host(ess)

Wanted: One (fe)male blogger/semi-blogger/undercover-journalist-from-a-reputable-newspaper to host a Delhi Blogger’s Meet.
Said host must be Elite, to carry on a newly-created tradition. All non-elite bloggers need not apply.

Candidates must have a thick skin – as you may receive significant Press Coverage, equaling that recieved by middle-finger-invoking-Team-India-Coaches!

Candidates must also make claims that his/her blog meet represents all of Delhi, so as to offend the maximum number of people possible in the shortest possible amount of time.

Blog meet is expected to be on either the 3rd or 10th of December, but the Host is free to change this date.

Host must also decide upon an interesting venue.

Previous Blog Meet info can be found below:
September 2005
October 2005

and … of course…

November 2005 Update
This position has been filled (see comments). That was QUICK!

Nishel – My Belle

Promotion/Pimping.

I need to get me a fur coat and an old Cadillac.

Hey folks, above you see an old high-school friend of mine. Her name is Nishel. She’s of Bihari origin, but is based out of the UK. Nishel wanted me to do a whole blog post on her. Why? Did she attempt to prevent the adulteration of petrol? Nope. The upliftment of the Dalits? Nope. But basically because she’s hot, and she’s single.

And she also sent me the following mail:

why arent i on your blog? i want to be on your blog! put my pics on there!!!

Now I wouldn’t have done justice to the poor IIM grad, or to any Social Workers, but I think I can do justice to her.

So this is Nishel, who’s based out of London, UK. Apart from a whole bunch of interesting things, she’s helped manage the Tommy Hilfiger stores here in Delhi, and was responsible for handling the opening of the Moschino store in Mumbai. So guys, if any of you happen to be in London, and think you match her criteria, leave a comment.

(Yea, I had a big crush on her, but she won’t go out with me. )

DhanyavaadDena

Thank You
Ok, so I’m not American. I don’t even really like Turkey (it tastes like fake Chicken, if ya ask me). And Cranberry Sauce…er…I can take it or leave it alone.

Anyway, thing is, lately I’ve made some new friends here in Delhi (yes, it’s possible :-p).

They consist of the following – an ABCD woman – S, a regular American dude (white) – M, and a Columbian woman (who’s lived in Washington, DC for awhile) – A.

Cold Turkey
So the thing is, these crazy foreigners were really missing Thanksgiving (well A wasn’t). So they figured they’d hunt down some place here in Delhi that would be doing a Turkey dinner.

The response wasn’t very encouraging – None of the 5-Star hotels knew what Thanksgiving was, and no turkey dinner there. The American Diner wasn’t hosting anything special for Thanksgiving either. It turns out there are only 2 places in all of Delhi (India?) which serve turkey – The first is Subway. The second is the Oberoi Charcuterie in Vasant Vihar. (Well there may be other places, but these are the only two I know).

So anyway, S succumbed to a viral, so she was out. That left me, M & A. I told them that since they don’t want to be eating Butter Chicken on Thanksgiving, we should go to The Olive Bar & Kitchen (yes, it’s the Delhi version of the Bombay one).

So we get to the Olive Bar & Kitchen place, which happens to be hosting a private party in the outer area.

WPP
It is at this point where I shall now discuss WPP – White People Privilege.
My two friends got to the place before me, and on entry, they were asked if they had a reservation, to which they replied that they did. After being asked that question, they were let in to the Olive Bar, and instead of proceeding to their table, they gate-crashed the private party (which was easy to do, because you had walk through the pvt party to get to the inner part of the restaurant). So they were munching on free kebabs and wine for about 10 minutes, until I arrived. Now as fair-skinned and ‘non-Indian-looking’ as I am (there will be a rant about this soon), I’m still Indian enough (is it the beer belly? ). So not only was I asked if I had a reservation, I was escorted to my table personally, so that I could not accidentally get to the free wine/food. Now, my friends had to join me inside, because we weren’t part of the private party, but I lied pretty easily, and told them my friends were from the party, so could we just attend the party first, and then eat dinner later? There were no arguments or anything – this could only be accomplished due to my friends being foreigners. I’m sure I’d be refused if we were all brown!

The Blog Mafia
So we had a delicious dinner at Olive…and midway through dinner, I spot a North-Eastern-looking shrimpy-boy standing outside, in the private party…. yes, it was my Nemesis – none other than James (Bond) Ranjan Yumnam. So I point him out to my two friends (who read the whole story about this), and M – who is about 6′ 3″ or so, and well-built says “Let’s go and kick his ass dude”. I was a little hesitant at first, wondering what I’d see in the paper tomorrow, but I came around
So me and M walk up to the Old Goat, and my friend proceeds to trash the guy’s ethics, and says how he’s surprised that he can make money out of lying so much, and then terminates things by calling him a cocksucker. (I stood silently by while this happened). We then proceeded to return to our dinner.

An interesting night….

Best.Scam.Ever.

Does anybody have 3500 rupees to spare?

So here’s what I got in my e-mail today….

Thanks for your interest here are the details for you:

THE GROUP

We have a group of hot sexy fun loving beautiful gals, men and couples from India and NRI visiting India,who want to have Erotic fun with decent broadminded gals,men,couples.They do not need any compensation. They just want to share their wild hot fantacies and maitain privacy at the highest level.

You may accompany them for movies,Fun parties,pleasure trips and hot fun.Our gals/cpls will never ask for money since they come from rich and decent families and belong to top MNCs,Modelling, Fashion world and own Business.

Here you need not to pay any amount to any member except one time annual membership fees. However If u wish u may be compensated handsome amount by our gals up to Rs. 4000 – 10000 per night for satisfying her erotic desires,However,it purely depends between partners.

Our gals and couples enjoy all types of kinky fun like oral, anal fun, threesome and group fun, fun in swimming pools, bath tubs, secret open places,swapping and lots of more … Most of members also get together several times a month for group fun and exploration of fantasies. So if you are interested in making fun relationship, you must be very extermely broadminded with all these interests.

SILENT FEATURES

We provide happiness through creating opportunities to meet wonderful companions and partners for pleasure n fun. We provides an environment and opportnunies for decent broad minded men, fem and couples to meet similar minded most refined men, females and cpls. We endeavor to provide a discreet and personal service.

Once you join, you may have fun with our members at your own place, at
their own place or at any place mutually agreed by both partners. You may also have fun at our nice secret places like farm house and luxury independent houses in Posh locality, provided by high profile members.

You can avail our services anywhere in India without paying additional payment. There will be no limit on the number of times for fun. We are absolutely determined to provide highest level of service, ensuring discretion,professionalism and integrity. We promise to be honest, reliable and friendly at all times.

MEMBERSHIP FEES

you need to pay membership fees Rs 3500 in advance.The membership will be valid for one year so you have to renew membership every year with the amount of 3500.This is only one time requirement after that there is no need to pay any amount to gals or us. Membership fees for singles couples are same.

Our members belong to decent rich families and need not money, they just want fun. For joining you have to pay only annual membership fees. After this there is no need to pay any amount to gals or us. Membership fees has to be paid in advance directly into Bank a/c by cash/cheque.

SERVICES AVAILABLE IN FOLLOWING CITIES ACROSS INDIA

Allahabad, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Bareilly, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Dehradun, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Goa, Guwahati, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Jammu, Jaipur, Lucknow, Ludhiyana, Kanpur, Kochi, Kolkata, Kochi, Mangalore, Massoorie, Meerut, Mumbai, Mysore, New Delhi, Noida, Patiala, Pune, Shimla, Trivandrum, Vadodara, Varanasi and Vishakhapatnum

HOW WILL YOU JOIN WITH US

We shall send a membership form through Email, in which we require some information from you. If Your form gets selected for our club then you will get assigned a member no. to recognize you among other members and bank a/c details. Then you need to pay membership fees in advance directly into bank by cash/cheque/transfer.

HOW WILL YOU PAY YOUR MEMBERSHIP FEE.

You would need to pay membership fees by cash directly into bank a/c.We will send u a/c details and bank name once your form get selected for our club.We do not accept membership fees personally. No contact reference and pics would be provided before membership joining due to our strict privacy policy.

HOW WILL YOU FIND A PARTNER

As you get registered with us we will send you profiles,phone numbers and number of pics for your selection. You need to select one or more pic and call to us then finally we will fix the date and time for ur fun. Few gals/couples don’t wish to provide their pics at initial stage. After developing some understanding through Emails they will provide you pics.

You may also directly contact with gals whenever and wherever u wanna fun she will ask your member number and immediately will give u a date for meeting..

PRIVACY

We have strict privacy policy since Privacy and secrecy is our first priority and we do expect same from our members. You must be free form all decease. We provide all details, contact numbers and pics only after registration. We do not provide Any reference and pics before registration.

At this stage we totally avoid t o giving our phone numbers and addresses due to maintaining privacy but as u get registered with our club you will start to receive all sort of things, Like our phone no. and address from all the places in india wherever our network exists.

SO IF YOU ARE INTERESTED

If you want to be a part of this group then ask for membership form which will send to you by email by mentioning Single /couple. After the filled form is received from your side then we will send you the member no. and Account details if your form has been approved for membership

Thanks

Gosh, this is the best ripoff e-mail I have seen in a long time!!!
Is anybody willing to lend me 3500 rupees so I can see what happens? (I have a feeling I’ll see my name in the paper when they find out I sent this ‘pimp’ 3500 bucks….)

<!– –>

Randomness

Can’t think of a sub-heading

Laloo has been kicked out of Bihar. Yay. But will there be any change? Who can tell.

I tried to export all my posts to WordPress But gave up 1/5th of the way. Too complicated, and annoying. wordpress.com doesn’t allow u to change the template. What’s up with that? If you’re giving free hosting at least give everybody full control.

Confession: I actually like the main song from Neal’N’Nikki. Yes, I need to get my head examined. ‘I’m the Neal, I’m the Man, Rockstar, Superstar…’. Argh. ‘Main tab bhi itna cool tha, jitna main aaj hoon…’. Sigh.

Being unemployed means you get to sit at home and download lots of pirated music. As depressing as ‘Yellow’ is, I downloaded it, and now I’m hooked to it too. Suggestions for good music to download will be appreciated. Anything to get Neal ‘N’ Nikki out of my head!

Saw Harry Potter on Monday Night. I actually thought it was a decent movie, though many people disliked it. Yea, Lord Voldy-Whatsit should have hammed a little less, and been a little more scary, and some things should have been explained better – like what priori incantatem is all about. And how come we weren’t treated to a little of the Quidditch World Cup Final? The dude who played Ron does a great job. Cho Chang does look pretty attractive.

Google Analytics, is interesting, but a bit slow in loading up. Interestingly it gives me the following map:

Or well maybe non-interestingly. I guess it should figure that Delhi people visit my blog the most, followed by B’bay. The most visits come from USA, but they are much more fragmented (naturally).

And finally there’s this:
Went to see the movie with an old female school friend. I realized that I was attracted to this female friend (shocking considering never really had any feelings for her before). But this friend is actually into Anoushka Shankar’s(The Sitar Playing daughter of Ravi) ex-boyfriend. The ex-boyfriend is a looker, being a half-breed/mudblood and all (He’s half Spanish, half Indian). Anyway, so in conversation with her, I found out that Anoushka is currently very single…but she’s in California. So apart from figuring out The Next Big Thing and learning how to use WordPress, I have to figure out how to get Anoushka Shankar to date me. (We actually met once, when she was not so famous, but I doubt she’ll remember me. Ah well).

Outsourcing. No Worries.

Why the World shouldn’t worry

Disclaimer: This post is based on no researched facts. It is completely based on the contents of my head. Read at your own risk

America, is of course worried about outsourcing to India, and how all its jobs are going down the tube.

But lest ye think that India is all ok about everything, there has been lots of talk over the past few years that India will lose its edge to China, or the Philippines, or Estonia or somewhere.

No.

This whole outsourcing thing will actually just cease to be an issue soon (for Americans) and Indians also need not worry. Here’s why:

1)Indian salaries are rising much faster than American salaries are falling
In the outsourcing industry (software, BPO e.t.c), the average pay hike, for the past 2/3 years has been a whopping 30% (no sources, this is just based on my anecdotal evidence). A pay hike is expected every year in the software industry! This when inflation is a low (by Indian standards) 4%! Now the SOLE reason for outsourcing is cost. If that cost advantage disappears, there will be less outsourcing. If salaries in India are rising fast (in this sector) eventually outsourcing becomes less lucrative. Another reason for this salary rise is a shortage of skilled workers in India!!!

This brings me to point 2

2)There is no other competition
If India is going to become more expensive, then the work should just shift to other countries which are cheaper right? No. Why? Because the uniqueness of India, lies in BOTH the quality and quantity factor.

India has a large number of qualified and engineers, and continues to churn them out. Other countries may be able to match on quality, but few will able to match on quantity. Quantity is an important factor, because of the way outsourcing works (in India). Put simply, it’s “Throw 2 billed engineers and 2 shadow resources on this problem, and get it done!”, i.e. have four people do the work while you’re only charging for 2. Even within that equation, those 4 engineers are making more money as compared to the pre-outsourcing days. No other country has the amount of qualified engineers that India does to enable it to perform outsourcing cheaper rates than the Indians! They may be able to sustain it temporarily, but the wages would rise faster in a smaller country than they do in India. So attempting to outsource (on a large scale, i.e. the type of stuff done in India) would be a very temporary phenomenon, short-lived.
Okay so quality and quantity. Now here’s another crucial factor: Time Zone.
The bulk of outsourcing comes from America. India is 12 hours ahead of 1 or 2 US time zones. What does this mean? This means that you can provide 24 hr support to American customers, and charge DAYTIME rates for the full 24 hours. While India is also handling US daytime customer service, the nightly stuff is what makes the huge difference. You have somebody who is (sort of) up and perky in their time zone, but working through the American night time. This makes it theoretically possible for an American company to get something like 18 hours of work done in an 8 hour workday, by farming problems over to the Indian wing after their office hours. While this is not something revolutionary, it is successful because companies who would not be able to afford this before can do so now! (Multinational corporations have been using timezones to their advantage for centuries, but now even without a global presence, smaller companies can make use of this).

Wait. If we’re talking population, what about the only other 5000+ year-old civilization in the neighbourhood?

3)What about China? Nothing.
India has nothing to fear from China in the software field. For lots of reasons.
One of them is English. Yes, we’ve been hearing for a while now that the Chinese government is pushing Chinese people to learn English. But this is already true of many people in India. English and Hindi are part of the Indo-European language tree. Chinese is not. It is much, much easier for an Indian to learn English, than for a Chinese person. This is not to say Chinese people will always suck at English, but this an obstacle in the way.
Another important language issue is the language of the operating system. In India, computers using local languages never took off, for a variety of reasons. But in China, Windows, Linux e.t.c they are all in Chinese. Now if your customers are American, they’re probably using the English version of Windows. If you’re in India, so are you. So What? Weelll, technically, an American company could ship its English product over to a Chinese company, but then there’s added overhead: If the American company’s software product is in English, there now needs to be an interpreter betwee n the Chinese developers and the English designers….and some things can be lost in translation. But in India, you learn Computer Science in English. And thus, certain things are instantly clear. Language makes a difference…

Ok now the thing is that determined Chinese can overcome this. But there’s another big hurdle against them. A Chinese worker is already more expensive than an Indian one!. I say this again, with no evidence. I base this simply on the GDP per capita for the two countries. China’s GDP per capita is higher than India’s. This means, in a very inaccurate sense, that China’s income is higher than India’s. This means that the cost of a Chinese worker (his/her wage) is higher than an Indian worker’s. So not only do Chinese not have the requisite large pool of English speaking graduates, but the ones they do have will already be more expensive than Indian ones.

Add lack of a decent legal infrastructure to handle IT issues, and the lead that India already has in Software/BPO, China is not a threat in this particular sector.

Conclusion
So..in conclusion, eventually outsourcing will peak, then drop, and that day is not far. Also, although I dismiss the competition, it doesn’t mean that they won’t get some small share of the pie. Eventually, faster than people think, outsourcing to India will no longer be the value for money it used to be, and that will be end of the large scale trend. In order for the Indian software companies to survive, they will have to “move up the value chain”, into the consulting biz, and also by developing their own products. Infy, Wipro and TCS already have their own products, and other big companies are working to develop their own, to shut up cynics, who constantly crib and question: Why doesn’t India ever produce a Google or a Microsoft? And consulting is already happening.
End result: India gains a reputation in a “knowledge” field, and if leveraged correctly. gets to exploit it as Brand India. As for the Americans, eventually the outsourcing will drop off, some jobs will move back, and Americans will eventually discover the Next Big Thing and ride the next wave.

Restoring one’s faith in Humanity…

Back to being me again…

Phew! Mercy! The visits have dropped off again. So… where was I before this whole mess started. Let’s see, I’d just finished hitting on The Compulsive Confessor. She was ‘impressed’ by my attempt, but she refuses to meet me Awwww. Ah well – her loss.

Now, let me tell you a common tale. It’s 4 am in the morning. You’re driving back to Delhi (from Gurgaon) on the M.G. Road. It’s just you and a (female) friend (no she seriously is just a friend!). So maybe you’ve abused a bit too many substances, or maybe it’s 4 am, or maybe it was just meant to be. But a bit of road divider had come off (you know, one of those huge stone blocks you keep wishing your car doesn’t hit)…. and your lovely Honda City goes right over it, causing both the right hand front and back tyre to puncture. And the rims ended up dented….

REALLY luckily, you manage to drag your car over the border, into Delhi. Right at the border, there are the usual slew of 8 men from the ‘Banas Sands’ company, who are responsible for collecting the toll from all commercial traffic entering delhi, and about 3/4 traffic policemen…

Now this situation, can get real frikkin’ messy in this city. It’s just you and an attractive lady, in a semi-big car. It’s 4.am. You wouldn’t pass the breathalyser if anybody tried to test you with it.

I rolled down my windows, and asked the guys if they had a spare jack (because my jack appeared to be busted). The policeman came up to me, and said, what would be the point, both my tires are busted (badly). He said why don’t you just leave the car here, and try and arrange for alternate transport. Now the thing is, I actually have a curfew of 1 am. And this curfew is based on faith. My parents are old. They sleep early. And my dad cannot see very well at night what with the high beam and all. So I really didn’t want to call home and ask for help.

So I asked the policeman if he could arrange a lift somehow. And he did. Without any comments about what happened to the car, without passing any curious comments about who my lady friend was, without asking for a bribe. He stood at the border, and attempted to flag down passing vehicles. 2 of them refused us. But just then, a call centre cab drove up. It was going to East of Kailash (my place, and my friends place are on the way). It was populated with a driver, and young woman who works for IBM.

I pulled out my wallet and was about empty the contents (80 rupees worth) into the policeman’s hand (as I figured he would expect it). He refused to take anything, and said, just come back early tomorrow to pick up the car.

We got into the cab and drove home (and I’m forbidden from going out late for a while… ah parents…!).

(We came back today to pick up the car, which was sitting exactly where it had been a few hours ago).

The point of this story? It’s 4 am. This is Delhi. We weren’t mugged. We weren’t molested. We weren’t murdered. The car wasn’t stolen. The policeman did his job without any additional incentive. Yes, there was a lot of luck on my side – my car busted near the border abd that we found a cab going in our direction. But it could still have turned out to be a very different night.

If there’s a God, thank you.
Dear Mr. Policeman, I hope you have a long and happy life, and I hope, that someday, I can make it up to you (for simply doing your Job? Yes, even just for that).

The Last Guy Standing (in Delhi)

Throwing down the gauntlet (in response to the Compulsive Confessor)

The Compulsive Confessor is an interesting Delhi woman who writes a lot about her sex- and other-life. She manages to get 50 comments on each blog post. Damn.

I don’t read her. Because I don’t figure in her life.

Anyway, she’s complaining about being single

She says there are no guys left in all of Delhi, because none of them pass her tests.

I’m afraid (and this might shock you a little) that leaves me with NO ONE. In this ENTIRE CITY.

I’m so dying alone, no?

Because I pretend to be a brash, aggressive alpha-male in the blogosphere, I take up her challenge, and I pass her tests.

Click on the read more…

I can’t stand words being mispronounced. I mean really, v is veee, w is when you round your lips together. No clasping of the lower lip with your teeth, just round your mouth. Therefore it is “Way” and not “Vay”. This pisses me off so much that many potential boys have been banished to the Kingdom Of Bad Pronounciation for it. (Ruled by the clan of people who say “My hair are..”. Hello? Hair is SINGULAR, how often do we have to go over that?) There was this boy once, a pretty young lad who I was quite warming up to. And then he mispronounced five words in the same sentence. Gently I pointed it out, but he didn’t react too well to that. If people just DON’T want to learn, what are you to do, right?

I have what somebody aptly called a neutralized English accent. I consider myself James Bond, with a Punjabi twist, so I believe that my pronunciations are correct, and my English will trump your English, anyday. The name’s Gulati. Bunty Gulati. I like my Scotch Whisky-blended with a hint of tulsi-a dash of coke-and-some-cinnamon-then-shaken, not stirred.

Call me Ally McBeal, but getting food on your face is a distinct no-no in my world. Ketchup on fries, not on your face. I hate ketchup anyway. I can’t stand the smell and the taste. This does not go down very well with some boys who like to mix up the ketchup and the mustard into one pus type puddle. Ewwwwwww. I do make some exceptions to the food on face rule though. Chocolate is good. A latte foam mustache is very cute–but not if you do it on purpose.

Food goes in mouth, not on face. Check. In case an accident does occur, the nearby napkin (NOT the pocket hanky) will be out faster than you can say ewww. Ketchup+Mustard is totally ewww. And I don’t dip my pizza in Ketchup either. Check. Chocolate is good. And I know a few kinky tricks you can use with Chocolate. But I’d rather demonstrate those tricks than blab/brag about them…

Tight jeans, worn up to your waist, with your shirt tucked in. Good Lord, boy, it’s 2005, not 1981 as you seem to imagine. And your tush isn’t that cute, and even it were that cute, it would probably look better in like loose jeans. Not baggy, mind you. Baggy jeans are for teenagers with spiked hair with the tops of their Calvin Klein chaddis showing. That’s just trying too hard.

Tight jeans. No. No. No. Baggy Jeans. No. No. No. Jeans which are one waist size too big? Yes. You get to say you’ve been working out at the gym-shym and all. Then… you can also shove your hand inside your pants and say.. “See – I couldn’t do THAT a month ago…”

People who don’t read. Or who say the only book they have ever read is a) Love Story b) The Da Vinci Code or c) Anything by Michael Chricton (I don’t think I spelt that right) or Robert Ludlum or whatshisface, the chap who writes a lot about hunting in Africa.

I read. Reading list includes, but is not limited to:

Freakonomics
Maximum City
Guns, Germs & Steel
Atlas Shrugged + Fountainhead
Shogun, Taipan, Noble House
Harry Potter (Yes, I see no shame in admitting this, or including it in a ‘Reading List’. Deal with it, buddy!
Lord of The Rings + Hobbit + Silmarillion
Alchemist + 11 Minutes
Da Vinci Code + Angels & Demons
Anything P.G. Wodehouse
Anything Roald Dahl
Tom Clancy (the old Stuff from the Cold War days)
God of Small Things (I HATE THE AUTHOR WITH A PASSION, HOWEVER)
Interpreter of Maladies
Impressionist
Suitable Boy (ok, so I’m 75% of the way through it)
Midnight’s Children

e.t.c e.t.c e.t.c.

If you’ve passed these high tests, there are also the smaller tests. What music you listen to. Whether you have any passions beyond making money. Whether you get on with my friends. Whether you like TC. That sorta thing.

Music I listen to – diverse. Won’t go in to details here.
Passion(s)? Yes, I have one or two of them. The first is making money without having to do anything. I’m waiting for somebody to start depositing US$100,000 into my bank account every month simply because they feel I deserve to be rewarded for being me. The second passion requires either a bed, a car, whipped cream, chocolate sauce and ribbed condoms for her pleasure.

I’ll get on with your friends. But they might not get along with me!

Ok, and here’s where I admit my first(and only) defeat. What, pray tell, is TC? Tom Cruise? Total Crap? Testicular Cancer?

So there is at least ONE man in Delhi which passes your tests. Bring it on, ma’am!

Update
ThreeDrinksAhead informs me that TC stands for Turquoise Cottage. I like TC, haven’t been there more than twice but I like it. So I don’t even have to admit defeat on that count! HA!

No response from Ms. CC yet… I take passing her tests isn’t enough. There’s a missing X factor.

Also a very big thanks to Vulturo and DesiPundit (looks like I’ll be donating something to them after all :-p). This post got me 183 visits on a single day !$@$!#@$! I usually don’t get more than 8!

Happy (Hindu) New Year

A Happy Diwali to One & All

Welcome to the year 2062. May it be as good if not better than the last one!

Azaadi (Freedom)

Naukris and Chokris

More personal rambling

In March 2000, a cocky young Punjabi man studying Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania was lying on the grass on a hillock on the Swarthmore campus in South Philadelphia. He was lying down, with his eyes closed, on a beautiful sunny spring day, waiting for the suburban train to arrive. There were only two words going through his head at the time, and they were – I’m Happy.

Why?

The gorgeous Trinidadian woman of Indian descent, with that cool singsong accent, had reciprocated his feelings for her, the previous day.

And that day, he had just cleared the final round of interviews for an internship with Amazon.com. They were offering him what in hindsight looks like a humble amount of money, but at the time was the largest amount of money he had ever seen against his name!
How do you think this interview has gone so far? he was asked, mid-way through the second round. His response: So far so good, I think. I made it into the second round, didn’t I?

In other words, he’d got a naukri and a chokri

He went on to work for Amazon.com, but hated his life in Seattle. Seattle, while a beautiful, beautiful city, can be very, very lonely. The young engineer still remembers those days of solitary confinement with some trepidation. Eventually, the loneliness led to misery, and the engineer’s work suffered. Add to this, some damn fools decided to ram airplanes into buildings on the other side of the country. All of this meant that after the Engineer’s OPT ran out, he would not be able to get an H1-B work visa. So he was laid off, and made his way back to India, no longer the cocky young engineer of March 2000.

In other words, no naukri, no chokri.
(Er.. the Trinidadian woman had disappeared a long time ago).

So returning to India in 2002, the young man remained unemployed for bit, but did not ever lose hope, because in the back of his mind he knew he’d get out of it somehow somewhere, sometime. He went to the gym and wrote common e-mails to his friends, showing pictures of the “New India” complete with angry rants (a pre-cursor to the Voice From A 2.5-World Country days). Then one day he got a call from HCL Technologies, they wanted to interview him. He went for the interview, and they turned him down. Then they called him back, and interviewed him again, and this time, he was accepted as a Stipend Trainee.

A Stipend Trainee?? After working for Amazon.com?! Well you see the thing is, in India, only 6 months of work-ex, even at the #1/#2 online retailer in the world isn’t really valued…Plus this engineer spoke with a strong accent (not quite American, not quite British, but definitely not Indian), and everything he said wasn’t really comprehensible. Further, they were afraid that, coming from America, he wouldn’t fit in, and probably expected a Mercedes(Benz) to ferry him between work and home.

Why did he say ’sweet’ of products and not ’soot’ of products? And what’s up with the letter Double-Yoo? Everybody knows it’s Dubloo.

But still, one of the managers had faith in him and decided to try him out. So began a new chapter, in a new company for the young engineer.

One day at the end of 2002, he went with his sister to a book launch – some Old White Dude had released some Kama Sutra-related book. Here he met a tall thin dark Jain woman, with her English boyfriend. He blanked out the English boyfriend, and concentrated on the woman. This must have had some mystical effect, because the English boyfriend went off to Costa Rica the next day, and thus began a ridiculously long (and ridiculously painful) relationship with the Jain woman.

So in effect, he’d got a naukri and a chokri

Three years, and one “Star Performer” award later, we move to 2005. The not-so-young engineer has stagnated in his job, and his relationship. The woman’s long gone, and almost forgotten too, with a little more time. The job? Well, he quit yesterday. Two months of being unemployed before another chapter begins, in a business school on the other side of the equator. Where you celebrate Christmas on the beach, and Shrimp-on-the-barbie has nothing to do with sea creatures on dolls.

No naukri, no chokri!

The cycle keeps spinning…

*Naukri, Chokri = Job, Woman in Hindi

Auto-Gratitude

Gratitude To My Car Pool Partner (I hope you’re not reading this)

When I joined HCL Technologies, I used to get to work by the company bus. This was the pre-Private Radio days (2002-2003). No Radio Mirchi, no Red FM, no Radio City (City Bajao!) – which means we were forced to listen to the driver’s cassette, with classic songs such as:

Lal dupatta Mal Mal ka
Main tumse milne aayi, mandir jaane ke bahaane
Chadti Jawaani
Kaanta Laga
Chod do Aanchal
Laage Chhute Naa

The very observant of you will have noticed that around the same time, EVERY ONE of these songs (except Laage chhute naa) was remixed, with naked bimbos squeezing their back sides, and sticking their ..ummm assets… in your face. Coincidence? I think NOT!

Anyway, our company withdrew the subsidy on the bus service, so instead of paying 500 rupees a month, we had to pay 1000 rupees.

(I should warn you at this stage that there is no point to this story. Just writing stuff down).

1000 rupees to listen to Main tumse milne aaaaaaaayeeeeee, Mandir Jaane Ke Bahane everyday for 20 days?!…I think NOT!

So another guy on the bus, a nice Surdy dude called DP decided to try and organise a Car Pool with me and a 3rd dude who lived nearby. We call had cars, so could alternate every day. We picked up two extra stragglers and a happy time was had by one and all.

Then one day, one of our car pool bunch resigned. His spot was taken by an attractive Bong woman, whom I shall call M.

The change in the Car Pool was drastic. There were no more Hindi cuss words while driving. The driving itself improved (marginally). There were no more perverted comments about the women in our company. We had to restrict our conversations to the weather, politics, movies, e.t.c. In effect, the presence of the woman had transformed us from Men into Ogres (or is it vice versa, I can never tell ).
I was the first one to break this new unspoken agreement, when we were driving one day and a cycle-wala decided to defy the laws of physics, with a loud “FUCK!”. There was then a tense silence for the next 4.29 seconds when the other guys were wondering what the M’s reaction would be…there wasn’t any.

Emblodened, the next transgressor of Traffic laws received the title “BASTARD”. The next one I named “BITCH!”. (Yes, maybe this borders on Tourette’s Syndrome…).

Anyway, I took that brave step, the men in the car loosened up a little, and although M never cursed herself, we took to it with gay abandon. It was a decent victory, in the War of Sexes.

Anyway, as time progressed, our Car Pool members resigned, one after the other, so that finally it came down to just me and M.

And I just wanted to say thanks to M, because M is forced into being cooped up in a metal cage (with me behind the wheel every alternate day) for 2.5 hours every day.

The dialogue always runs as follows:

ME:”Good Morning Ma’am”
M: “Good Morning Sir”
ME: “So how was your weekend? Mine was awful”
M: “Mine too. I saw ‘No Entry’ over the weekend”
ME: “Ah, yes, but the Question is…did the MOVIE…see…. YOU?!”
M: “Argh. yes the movie saw me”.
ME: “BASTARD, GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY!@@!”
M: “So are we taking MG road or the Highway?”
ME: “NH 8 of course, FUCKING MOVE, BITCH!#^@$%@! MG Road sucks”
M: “No it does not, NH8 Sucks”
ME: *Squeezes steering wheel really hard, attempts to rein in exploding vein* “WHY DO I ALWAYS get the idiots who want to drive at 2 km/h”
M:*Starts singing the opening to “Life is a Flower” by Ace of Base* “We live in a free world…”
ME: “Ah yes, but the question is..does a free world live in-”
M: “No, a free world does not live in me”
*Song ends*
M: *points at radio* “Why are we listening to this?”
ME: “There’s nothing better to listen to”
M: *Flips through the stations, comes to rest on a Punjabi song I start singing, quickly changes. “This is all your fault.”
ME: *45 minutes later, stuck in a traffic jam on NH8(The Highway)* “This is all your fault”
*Finally get into Kapas Heda (otherwise known as Hell on Earth)*
*Almost get hit by two Tata Sumos, 1 Qualis, 1 Innova, 3 cyclists, 2 motorbikes, one scooter and 8 pedestrians
ME: “Have I ever told you how much I hate this place?”
M: No
*5 minutes and 2 near-accidents later*
ME: “Have I ever told you how much I hate this place?”
M: No
*5 minutes and 2 near-accidents later*
ME: “Have I ever told you how much I hate this place?”
M: No

And then finally, we get to Work:
M: “Bye”
Me “Goodbye Ma’am!”

Anybody who can tolerate me for 2.5 hours everyday, not out of choice, for 3 years, deserves some thanks. So Thank You M. Especially for the past 2 months, where you’ve given me the support I needed the most. Thanks for tolerating The Vengaboys, and various other injustices to the word music, which were stored on my iPod.

And finally, M, it’s a shame you’re married. I’d be hitting on you, left, right and centre if you weren’t! :-p

Again, hope you don’t read this!

A Dandy March

I’m a ‘Marathon Man’!

Heh, despite all the arguments to the contrary, I don’t think Delhi is very (air-)polluted. In Mid-October (now), the wind cools you instead of burns you, it’s actually cold in the morning, and trees loaded with ‘Rath ki Rani’ are in full bloom, so the place smells BEAUTIFUL.

Anyway, this is a city of “broad, tree-lined avenues” and is one of the few Indian cities where green cover has increased over the last few years. So, why not hold a Marathon here? Well, a Half Marathon, to be exact. So between 7 and 9 in the morning on a lazy Sunday, they closed up the roads of Central (otherwise known as ‘New’) Delhi, and held three races. The first was the 21-point-something kilometre Half Marathon, which 5000 people took part in. The winners (who took slightly over an hour to complete the course) were almost all African – some Kenyan, some Tanzaniyan. The first prize was a nice and tidy US$20,000

But that’s not the race I ranfast-walked in.

After the pros, came the Senior Citizen Run (5 Kilometres), open to everyone above 55, I think. 5 kilometres long, and some very fit, and not so-fit seniors going at it. Finally came the Great Delhi Run ( 7 Kilometers). Me and my sister took part in this, and although we learned we’re not cut out for the next olympics, we also learned we can brisk-walk 7 km without stopping.

The weather was good, and Delhi was out in force, around 25,000 people in all. There were cheerleaders from Radio Mirchi and Standard Chartered , egging us on. 2 Helicopters, borrowed from the Military, patrolled the area, kept an eye on us for security and hovered low to wave at us. Kingfisher (of the Beer and the Airline), supplied all runners with free bottled water, ever kilometre or so. People lined the sides of the streets, to cheer, to watch, to enjoy (and probably to wonder what’s the big deal?).

And of course, Hutch’s brilliant advertising campaign. WHO is their agency? Those guys are truly brilliant. “Bunty bhi bhagega, Dadaji bhi bhagenge. The Colonel will run, Spot the Dog will run. Delhi will run”. Banners lining the marathon route read “Run.Jog.Walk.Crawl. But Finish”. “If you think you can’t run, stop thinking!”

An all round good time!

Divergence

Just some more personal rambling

Read only if you’re totally bored

So the way it works is that, in my mind, I have this vision of the woman I happen to be “seeing” (for want of a better word). When things are good, my mind’s vision and the actual physical woman converge, superimposing each other. When things go bad, they head in the opposite direction. When things end, there is complete divergence. There is the woman in my mind’s eye, as I want her, and as I would like her to see me. And there is the real actual physical person, who no longer has any relation or bearing to the woman in my mind. Eventually, all the memories get blocked out, a few stubborn ones persist, and some crop up at random times – when a song plays, when I drive a little too rashly, when I feel especially sorry for myself e.t.c. All this falls through a sieve, until only those memories which match the criteria defined by the woman in my mind’s eye remain. The result is a little pantheon of women in my mind, which share the same names and physical features as real living beings who’ve basically moved on with their lives. Like the mostly-pathetic person that I am though, I continue to rever the women in my mind, even though they no longer exist as I wish to see them. I don’t think I ever really get over them…

I have a theory, and the theory is that sometimes, there is only 50% convergence, but you keep optimistically hoping that the convergence will increase. In this hope, you spend 6 months, 1 year, 3 years, some people even get married, hoping for a convergence. If you’re lucky, maybe the convergence actually happens, not so lucky, you see the two different images diverging slowly, and realize it’s time to discard the image and “look for a new model”, as Vulturo says.

But how do you forgive yourself for ignoring the fact that from day 1, the images were divergent? That you kept trying to superimpose your mind’s vision on the real person, with usually terrible results. When your brain keeps telling you “these images don’t fit!”, but you keep telling it, “They will, they will, eventually!”. And then one day, you wake up and finally see jusy how far apart those images are. Divergence.

There ya go RTD2, my response to The Milkshake Challenge

Last of the short stories..

A little therapy (see previous post)

So she is with another guy. Does it really matter? What was left of our “relationship�? anyway? Phone calls, which only I used to make, at my own expense. What loss is there really, for me? None, except loss of face. The worst thing you can do to a man is kill his Self-Respect. Quoting Ayn Rand: No. The worst thing you can do is kill a man’s pretense at it, because true Self-Respect cannot be killed. She’s so right.

(Sorry, just had to cross the limit there. It’s not even a short story anymore. So what?)

“It’s not you. I just don’t feel like being physical with anybody right now”.
“That was the way I felt at that time. I meant it then“.
“If I find another guy, why can’t we still be friends? Don’t you see that what we have is beyond labels?”.

If you fall for this tripe, who is to blame, other than yourself? Can you really claim the “Purity of the Victim” simply because you chose to hope that even though the signs are bad, things will improve? Life is cruelest to the Optimist – but only if s/he stops being an Optimist. This is one more lesson learned. Be Optimistic. But listen to your brain. This should never have continued past 2 months. That it went on for 3 years is a travesty, and could be viewed as time wasted. But it served its purpose. Is there any point punishing yourself? You made a mistake – one which you’ve made before. So what?

Oh and one last thing:

“You’ve have gotten closer to me than any other guy has ever been”.

“Closer-than-ever” guy has known her for 3 years, and can usually tell what she’s thinking while she’s thinking it, and can sense when things are heading South (like they did).

Recently-met-lucky-bastard gets to sleep with her after having known her for about 2/3 months.

Is sex just sex? Who got closer to her? Yes, this exposes me in a poor, homosexual-type light, but it also exposes hypocrisy. To one man, she reveals her favourite colour, to the other, she reveals her body, and she gives herself to him. Who got closer?

One of them was just an over-glorified Best-Friend (”Let’s not put a label on our relationship”).

Again, you only have yourself to blame, if you believed this tripe. Time to move on, and find somebody who is less of a hypocrite.

Short Stories…

I’ve been tagged

Here’s my attempt at writing a short story, in 55 words. Not much of a story. But I think it says a lot.

After three years of love, hate, arguments, space, relationship labels, men & women, they were ready for a break. An indefinite break. Isn’t that the same thing as Goodbye, he wondered? Then Geetanjali walked past him, onto the dance floor. Perfume alluring, dressed to kill. *Smile* Yes, we need an indefinite break

Not the best I can do. I might even cheat and rewrite it. Ha!

Well instead of cheating I’ve just deformed the idea.

Here’s some more of the story

Did I love her?, he wonders, on an hourly basis. 3 years. How can I still be uncertain? Is that internal Void because of her, or is it simply because the last occupant has left, without a replacement? She may now be possessed by another, and equally possess that other. That drives me crazy.

* * *

Some random flashes of memory. Cuddling in a basement bed in London. Fighting outside a South Delhi multiplex. Getting a head massage in a New York taxi. Trying to figure out what life would be like if we were married. Married?! Fuck me! I’ve got places to go, and Wild Oats to sow!

* * *

In an old sci-fi classic, a character wonders: Why can’t I grieve? In the same tone, He asks: “Why don’t I miss her?�? Where is that dull ache? That feeling of being incomplete. Why don’t I feel it? Was it all for nothing? Then self-admonishment. You have reasons to be Happy. He realizes: I am.

* * *

He’s given his notice. Less than a month left before he is free. Being idle scares him. Being lonely scares him. But a new life beckons. Will I be up to the challenge? Yes I will be, this time. Having attempted to make his mark in the Northern Hemisphere, he now crosses the Equator.

I tag Shiv and Karma

Is Dumbledore Dead?

Some More Surfer-Whoring…
Every once in a while, this voice decides to do something shameless and underhanded. Specifically, attempting to boost site traffic in the hopes of becoming the most famous person in the whole universe. Now the hard way to do this is to actually write something of importance. The easy way, is to occasionally post an inter-office forward, or the lyrics to Bulla Ki Kaana (I have a feeling that about 50% of traffic to my site is to the translation for this song, :-p)

So in that vein I pose a question. But do NOT click on the read more if you haven’t finished reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I’m assuming there are some people out there who still haven’t been exposed to the “Security Leak”….

Is Dumbledore Really Dead?
My short answer is I don’t think so….
I’ll present my strongest argument first: Harry Potter is basically the latest incarnation of the same theme that runs through a lot of Western fantasy – of Fall & Redemption, of Coming-of-Age, Rites-of-Passage blah blah blah. Based on this theme, Dumbledore is not dead…

In Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi willingly let himself be murdered by Darth Vader, only to come back as a lecturing spirit.

In Lord of the Rings, Gandalf fell into Moria, battling the Balrog, only to come back as Gandalf The White.

The wizened Old Guide character always seems to take a fall and come back stronger…

I’m sure there are other series with the same theme, but I am simply just talking about my favourite two.

There many other parallels you can draw, about betrayal by someone who was thought to be good (Lando Calrissian, Saruman, Snape*)
The young,naive,humble and simple dude who is destined to become the Superstar (Frodo, Luke, Harry)
The cooler-than-the-hero sidekick (Aragorn+Legolas, Han Solo, Hermione?Moody?Tonks?)
The comic relief (Gimli+Merry+Pippin, R2D2+C3PO, Ron?Hermione?)
e.t.c.

Another theory is that Dumbledore is an impostor in this case.
What’s up with the blackened arm anyhoo? Is it really due to the ring? Dumbledore seems to talk to Harry in slightly bizarre tones as well. A little bit ruder. But then Harry is also a little older… but something just wasn’t right about the way Dumbledore went about pushing Harry to get the memory from Slughorn…
Plus, what’s up with the “R.A.B” note. Where did the “R.A.B” come from, what’s it mean, and was Dumbledore really so dumb as to not know that the locket he was going after was fake?
And when Snape finally kills Dumbledore, there is a small doubt in my mind – it seems to me that Dumbledore was pleading with Snape TO kill him. NOT pleading with him to be saved.

Any other suggestions, oh learned readers?
Please do write in….

A trip to the seven islands

I went to Bombay/Mumbai…
Long post – be warned!
Ok, so the next best thing to being rich, is having a brother-in-law who is Managing Director (South Asia) for a gigantic American Bank. This means that when you visit Bombay, you don’t get to have fun with the rest of of the commoners. You don’t get to wander the beach aimlessly (though I suppose I could have if I really wanted to). You don’t get to ride the bright red BEST buses, and you don’t get to be flattened like a chapati in the local trains…but there are compensations. You do get to ride around in an S-Class Mercedes (which has reclining rear seats, among other things). You do get to live in South Bombay (Malabar Hill), and have a frikking glorious view of the sea. You also have a duplex flat/apartment. This may not seem like a big deal to some, but Bombay is to India what New York is to USA (in more ways than one). Now maybe you can appreciate what it means to have a duplex apartment. Oh, you also get to watch “The Last Samurai” on a screen which retracts from the wall, and has a picture projected on to it from an overhead projector while 6 speakers blast the sound at you from all different angles…Anyway, I took a few atypical pictures of bombay (beware, I am an AWFUL picture taker), so “read more”

Note: Clicking on the pictures takes you to a larger size image.

Ok so this first pic is a view of Marine Drive (also known as the Queen’s Necklace, you shall soon see why)..

Just some random Bombay skyline…

Ok I couldn’t stop obessing over the brownish building to the left hand side of this photo. It’s a building called ‘Haveli’ and the unbelievably brilliant architect did the following: He created duplexes (or is there some other plural), and EACH floor has this HUGE triangular balcony, which most of the residents were using as a garden. I have yet to see this idea replicated in either New York or Hong Kong (but somebody correct me if I’m wrong). Someday I will rich and vulgar enough to buy one of those places.

Ok, once upon a time, there were lots of textile mills in Bombay. Well they all went bust, and of course, the logical step in the evolution of that land is in the form of bowling alleys, restaurants, and shops. So I present to you Phoenix Mills, complete with a McDonald’s to the right, and Spaghetti Kitchen (yummy Italian food) to the left.

Some random building facing Phoenix Mills…

How many McDonald’s do you know of, that come with their own smokestacks?

Ah. Marine Drive by night. Do I have to explain why it’s nicknamed the Queen’s Necklace? It’s also a place where lovers go for moonlit walks. I would go there, it’s jsut I don’t have any partner to take with me Someday, I swear, I’ll stop being the software geek and wow the world by wooing a woman…in the meantime… I have some surfing to do…(no, not on Shaadi.com).

Ok, this is a VERY SMALL and NARROW take on Bombay. The city is a lot bigger, and has a LOT more crazy things about it. I’ve only covered about 0.0000000001% of the city (duh), and that too from a rich, elitist standpoint – plus I was only there for the weekend. There are beaches, and slums, and movie stars and gangsters and pao bhaji, and bhel puri, and Trishna Seafood Restaurant and Swati Snacks, and Gateway of India and Elephanta Island and Parsis and Reliance Interactive Movie-on-demand Cable Television (just about to start up soon) and really-good-driving-compared-to-the-rest-of-India and why Rohinton-Mistry-and-his-stupid-book-A-Fine-Balance-can-F-off which need to be talked about, which I don’t have the space for here, and will refrain talking about, because I’m a Delhi-ite.

A few more notes (What I learned on my way from The City(Delhi) to The City(Bombay))
1) Do not fly Air Deccan. I understand that they are a low-cost carrier and all, but please, surely water can be served for free? That being said, I booked my tickets on a Wednesday (for Friday) for Rs. 7500 return (that’s US$170).

2) My title is called Seven Islands, because once upon a time Bombay used to be seven islands (or was it 9), which eventually started reclaiming land during British Rule, and ended up as the out-stretched hand known as Bombay). Question – why did they stop reclaiming land? Hong Kong reclaims some land every year – 20 years on, it’s unrecognizable!

Till next time, folks

I’m Home

Mera Bharat…well Sadda Dilli Mahaan, at least…
It’s 38 Degrees outside. This means we’re all melting.

People drive in Delhi like people weave through the New York crowds….

They have implemented Queueing at the IGI Airport. They’ve also turned on the escalator, and are replacing the tacky marble which made the airport look like a bathroom with that modern steel look. There is a bright and clean counter opened by the Tourism Ministry, to HELP tourists(unfathomable)! There are no customs agents waiting to harass you and go through your bag from goodies brought over from “The Decadent West”

As the plane descends into Delhi, you see a lot more bright lights than you used to.

The roads are in good condition.

As soon as you walk off the plane, your nose is assaulted with the smell of dust, courtesy the dust storms blowing in from nearby Rajasthan- which everybody else confuses for air pollution.

The cellphone rings, and I almost disconnect and run to the land-line…when I realize incoming is free. And I don’t have to hop on one leg until I get good network coverage.

There is a buzz in the air, of activity, of growth, of life.

I’m jet-lagged.

I’m home.

So Long New York (and thanks for all the Fish!)

Some Voyeurism

Spin the globe, and where do I land?

So here’s a big glass window looking into my current state of affairs:

Bank C hires big American Software Company U to do some projects for them.

Big American Software Company U comes up with the following bright idea:
Bill Bank C at $300/hour, and outsource all the work to employees(me) of Indian Software Company H, which bills work at $90/Hour (of which the poor employees don’t see any of…)

A few million dollars and 2 years later, Bank C realizes that software company U has done an awful job with the project is considering suing Big Software Company U.

Mercifully, the employees of Indian Software Company H, who the work was outsourced to at a very late stage (long after the project was about to explode in everybody’s face) will not be held liable, but will have to be shifted to other projects, as this one is coming to an early end, and may it rest in peace!

This whole episode will give rise to the next post, which shall be titled:
What I learned in a failed software project in the City

In the meantime however, I will be leaving New York. My current choices are as follows:

I can either be sent to Clinton(no, not Clanton as mentioned in the John Grisham books), Mississississississippippippi or New Delhi, India. I am to be interviewed by the Mississippi client today, and am thinking of purposely flunking the Interview so that I can be sent back home (and then go kiss my boss’s back side and get sent to Singapore or Australia. Yummy!).

So those are my two choices. Does anybody have any insight into Mississippi. I’ve have only heard nasty things about it so far.

It’s meant to be the poorest state in Country. They apparently still lynch coloured people over there, and you have to allegedly enter some restaurants through the back door, because coloured people aren’t allowed in the main part of the restaurant.

Can anybody confirm these allegations? Is there any truth to them? Or are they just exaggerations?

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Thank YOU ALL

I’m going to London….

I just wanted to thank everybody for their gift of unconditional positive energy. It worked. Special thanks to Karma for helping out with that. If you ever need some positive energy for your own purposes, you know where to get some….

A Request….

For some positive energy…
So it’s like this…there is a friend of mine who I care about more than anything else in this world whom I am going to try and see in London. But, in order for me to get to London, I need a Visa. I will be going to get that Visa this Thursday. But in order for me to get that Visa, I also need to get a few papers from my company, which have been mailed from California on Friday, but have not reached me yet…and may not reach me in time for my appointment. (Due to circumstances beyond my control, this is the only time I can got for the appointment).
Anyway, so as an experiment, I am asking all those people who pass my site, to donate or lend me some of their positive energy – i.e. just a ‘best of luck’ or a ‘you’ll surely get it’ type deal. I’m not much of a religious person, but I do believe there is a powerful force (or multitude of forces) at work in the world. The universe is too perfect to have sprung up randomly. But we’ll discuss those metaphysical issues later. Right now, could I ask you for some totally-renewable, environmantally-friendly, and healthy positive wishes?

Thanks.

Happy Valentines Day

Some comic verse to make it worse..

I do not have much to say
this special Valentine’s Day
For I am all alone
short of money and cellphone
living the single life,
with no girlfriend or wife
but many women friends
who drive me round the bend
But despite my current state
I use this space to dedicate
To all who view this page
a day free from hate and rage.

I Leave you with the lyrics from one of my favourite songs -

“These Words” by Natasha Bedingfield:

These words are my own

Threw some chords together, the combination D-E-F
Its who I am, its what I do, and I was gonna lay it down for you
I tried to focus my attention, but I feel so A-D-D
I need some help, some inspiration, but its not coming easily

(bridge)
Tryin to find the magic,
Tryin to write a classic,
Dontcha know, dontcha know, dontcha know?
Wastebin full of paper,
clever rhymes- see ya later

(chorus)
These words are my own, from my heart flow,
I love you, i love you, i love you, i love you,
There’s no other way to better say
I love you, i love you

Read some Byron, Shelley and Keates,
recited it over a hip-hop beat
I’m havin trouble sayin what i mean,
with dead poets and a drum machine

You know i had some studio time booked,
but i couldnt find the killer hook,
now you’re gonna raise the bar right up,
nothin i write is ever good enough

(repeat chorus twice)

I’m gettin off my stage
the curtains pull away
No hyperboles to hide behind
My naked soul exposes
woaaaaah

(repeat bridge)
(repeat chorus
I love you I love you, thats all i got to say
cant think of a better way, and thats all i got to say
I love you, is that ok?

Oh and special thanks to Karma, for letting me be her online Valentine

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A Long Walk (off a long pier)

A (typical?) interesting day in New York
This post was meant to be about my company’s guide to America for its Indian employees. But I was too lazy to go through that document and post the funny stuff here. Also, because I have no politically-charged stuff to write about, this post is just a (maybe-boring) journal entry.

Ok, so as some of you may know, TTG is in New York. After shifting from one place to another all of last week, I finally have a small cubby hole of my own to call home for the next 6 months or so. Anyway, not knowing anybody (who lives close enough to me) in NYC, I figured I’d just get on the subway, and aimlessly wander around Manhattan. So I left my basement cave in ultra-ethnic Jackson Heights (I owe Sulekha.com for this place!), hopped on the subway, and got off at 42nd St (Times Square). About 4 years ago, after lunching there, at the Olive Garden, I wandered off North with an old friend of mine. We walked, along Central Park, from Times Square to the Gugenheim Museum. This time, I decided to head South, in search of the Apple Store, to see what the iPod Shuffle looked like. On the way I stopped in Old Navy, and didn’t find anything I liked. Then I stopped in H & M, and saw a supercool blazer for $129. But I had feeling that I was too overweight for it So anyway, I just decided to walk far south, along 7th Avenue, and it was at some point in that journey that I decided to go see the WTC site instead. I did not lose anybody in 9/11, although it is somewhat connected to my being laid off 3 years ago, but then everything is connected to everything.. Also, while many people have been to the WTC viewing gallery, I have only peed in the basement restroom…so I guess I don’t really have any attachment to it, but I figured I’d go there simply because I could. So after one very sweet, delicious Cappucino and Chicken Fajita from McDonald’s, I was off searching. I knew that I just had to follow 7th Avenue southwards and I should be able to find it. I didn’t want to ask anybody, because of my own prejudices – I assumed that if they found somebody with brown skin asking about the WTC, they’d have me arrested or something. But it turned out to be easy to spot. Amidst a thick concrete jungle is a gaping hole, and now a big construction site – which will be home to: The Freedom Tower, a big park, two large square pools which represent the towers, and a futuristic transportation centre which will house the PATH trains and the NY Subway. It’s really odd, most of New York is surrounded by the regular city noises, but the construction site is eerily quiet…but then again maybe the workers are off on Saturdays..
Strange, I went looking for iPod shuffles, and instead end up at the site of America’s worst terrorist disaster. By this point I was very tired (Hey I walked something like 42 blocks, of course New York blocks are shorter!), so I boarded the E train to head home. When I got on, I saw to African American kids sitting in a corner counting some money. Then, as the train started moving, these two kids walk to the center of the carriage, shout “Ladies and Gentlemen, can we have your attention please?”. Then they turn on a small stereo they were carrying, and start break-dancing, in the middle of the subway carriage. Usually, the subway is full of people who look perpetually grumpy. These guys managed to put a smile on their faces, and mine too. They did some pretty cool acrobatics too, and then proceeded to ask for donations, which caused my wallet to be $1 lighter. Then 2 subway stops later, they were gone, replaced by the usual bunch of black, white, yellow and brown faces crowding the subway…..
Finally I got off at Jackson Heights, only to be greeted by the now-familiar Bangladeshi-owned Indian restaurants, sari shops and Patel Cash & Carries dotting the area. All-in-all, an interesting day in New York.

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Return of the Jedi

Coming to America…

So after being away from USA for 3 years, I make my way back, to steal a few jobs and dollars. Who woulda thunk it?

Anyway, unfortunately, my net access will be limited, so I guess I’ll be taking a break from blogging.

So until the next blog opportunity I leave you with the following:

I’ve read in many places the following line:

We need fifty years of double digit growth in per capita income for Indians to catch up to today�s western standards.

Question: Is it imperative for India to reach a stage where 1 billion people are demanding iPods, running around in SUVs and whining about lack of wi-fi availability?

I think the aim should rather be to ensure that the poorest of the poor get to preserve some semblance of their dignity. That their stomachs are at least 75% full.
Let’s get it straight – India is NEVER going be remade in the image of America. And nor should it be. But looking at the above quote, no wonder people think reforming India is a losing battle? Why do we have to aim for today’s WESTERN STANDARDs? Can it not be argued that “The West” is kinda post-development? I mean even if we aimed for the level of development or per capita income achieved by western countries in the 80s, isn’t that good enough to get things moving? Of course, the above quote might be used to simply indicate how much of a disparity, but it’s still dumb..

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Life in Limbo…

Me Thinks Me Caught In A Temporal Anomaly

Verbose Quote of the (Arbitrary Time Period)
Behind every hate-filled diatribe/bitterness lies the rejection of an aspiration to conform to ancient prejudices

Cartoon of the (US Election) Year
Brought to you by Blogger’s current “Blog-of-note” – Slowpoke

Pet Peeve of the Milennium
And the winner is…..Deeshaa. Yes folks, Deeshaa has it all. A desi disgusted with everything Indian, with such choice quotes as “Yes, in fact, we are to blame. Indians are basically collectively a bunch of clueless retards. They collectively elect leaders who are clueless retards and these clueless retards choose policies that keep the country of hundreds of millions of people in abject poverty.” and other obvious-isms such as: “India is poor because of Socialism”. “India needs more WCs than PCs”.Number of articles with constructive content: 0. Amusement at seeing somebody as pissed off and disgusted as the Blog’s Author? Infinite. Surprise at being called a clueless-retard, by a clueless retard? Minimal.

Attempt to Encourage Comments
Please add to my previous blog entry “Delusion of Grandeur” – umm, something constructive.

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Some advertising

Not much is New, and the Old is beyond monotonous…

1) If you haven’t already, please check out the previous post (Delusion of Grandeur), and comment on it! I will be pushing that particular post for the next few blog entries, (then probably do a write-up any issues related to it, if people actually bother to add something interesting to what I’ve written!).

2) http://web.archive.org/web/20060518130304/http://www.keyhole.com/ – all I can say to this is WOW!!! Keyhole is a company (now) owned by Google, and basically, it holds lots of ultra-detailed satellite photos of the world. Of course, it is mostly America-centric, with some other places like Europe and Pakistan thrown in !#@#!$@. You view these photos by downloading a small client application on to your computer – BEWARE – this application is very CPU- and Bandwidth-intensive. The application itself is amazing, the way it can zoom in to a street address in America (I used it to take a peek on my old address, and lots of other people’s addresses!!). I must have wasted at least 3 hours on this alone. Unfortunately, street addresses outside America don’t work (but Verika, I still managed to find Marble Arch in London and view it from above and there are no photos of India (could this be for some Indian National Security reasons? Anyway, this site is great and allows one to waste loads of time zooming in on people’s houses, offices, stadiums or the Statue of Liberty of wherever. It is KICKASS! Just bear in mind that you will need a FAST net connection, and FAST computer (I’d say a P4 with 512 MB RAM at the very least). Check it out!

3) And finally,
I would like to introduce to you Benjamin Feen’s photo album. Why is this important and who is Benjamin Feen? Ok well first, I don’t know much about him – I assume he’s an American software engineer. Anyhoo, he’s in Hyderabad for a month, and the thing is, for once, a non-indian is showing fairly balanced pictures of India – I stumbled onto his blog from BoingBoing. Instead of finding a nice little poor village with cows, he shows you Hyderabad (well most of it – there are too many pictures of jewellery, but hey I think he had different audience in mind. Anyway, check it out just so you can see a teency-weency bit of Hyderabad…. Anyway, naturally his pictures fall in line with this Voice’s beliefs so he gets some free advertising (don’t know if he wanted it!)

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An Unoriginal Post

A Long Post
Ok this post was meant to intially be about the fact that the Delhi University’s solution to voyeurism-thru-Mobile Phones was the following: The Installation of CLOSED-CIRCUIT CAMERAS throughout campus to monitor people!@#!#@@@!. I read this in the morning Delhi TOI, but was unable to find a link to it in the online edition.

Then next, I wanted to point out, that there is some more history being made in the auto sector

Finally, here is a forward that I was sent at work today:

To the citizens of the United States of America :-
In the light of your failure to elect a proper President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchial duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy.
Your new prime minister (The Right Honourable Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections.
Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. You should look up “revocation” in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up “aluminium”. Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. The letter ‘U’ will be reinstated in words such as ‘favour’ and ‘neighbour’, skipping the letter ‘U’ is nothing more than laziness on your part. Likewise, you will learn to spell ‘doughnut’ without skipping half the letters. You will end your love affair with the letter ‘Z’ (pronounced ‘zed’ not ‘zee’ and the suffix “ize” will be replaced by the suffix “ise”. You will learn that the suffix ‘burgh is pronounced ‘burra’ e.g. Edinburgh. You are welcome to respell Pittsburgh as ‘Pittsberg’ if you can’t cope with correct pronunciation. Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels.
Look up “vocabulary”.
Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as “like” and “you know” is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication.
Look up “interspersed”.
There will be no more ‘bleeps’ in the Jerry Springer show. If you’re not old enough to cope with bad language then you shouldn’t have chat shows. When you learn to develop your vocabulary then you won’t have to use bad language as often.

2. There is no such thing as “US English” or “American”. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter ‘u’ and the elimination of “-ize”.

3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn’t that hard. English accents are not limited to Cockney, upper-class twit or Mancunian (Daphne in Frasier). You will also have to learn how to understand regional accents – Scottish dramas such as “Taggart” will no longer be broadcast with subtitles. While we’re talking about regions, you must learn that there is no such place as Devonshire in England. The name of the county is “Devon”. If you persist in calling it Devonshire, all American States will become “shires” e.g. Texasshire, Floridashire, Louisianashire.

4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys. Hollywood will be required to cast English actors to play English characters. British sit-coms such as “Men Behaving Badly” or “Red Dwarf” will not be re-cast and watered down for a wishy-washy American audience who can’t cope with the humour of occasional political incorrectness.

5. You should relearn your original national anthem, “God Save The Queen”, but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through.

6. You should stop playing American “football”. There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American “football” is not a very good game. The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays “American” football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football. Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American “football”, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US rugby sevens side by 2005. You should stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the ‘World Series’ for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.15% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. Instead of baseball, you will be allowed to play a girls’ game called “rounders” which is baseball without fancy team strip, oversized gloves, collector cards or hotdogs.

7. You should declare war on Quebec and France, using nuclear weapons if they give you any merde. The 97.85% of you who were not aware that there is a world outside your borders should count yourselves lucky. The Russians have never been the bad guys. “Merde” is French for “****”. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry guns. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous in public than a vegetable peeler. Because we don’t believe you are sensible enough to handle potentially dangerous items, you will require a permit if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 2nd will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called “How-The-Fuck-Did-That-Monkey-Win Day”.

9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean. All road ntersections will be replaced with roundabouts. You will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

10. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips. Fries aren’t even French, they are Belgian though 97.85% of you (including the guy who discovered fries while in Europe) are not aware of a country called Belgium. Those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called “crisps”. Real chips are thick cut and fried in animal fat. The traditional accompaniment to chips is beer which should be served warm and flat. Waitresses will be trained to be more aggressive with customers.

11. As a sign of penance 5 grams of sea salt per cup will be added to all tea made within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, this quantity to be doubled for tea made within the city of Boston itself.

12. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all, it is lager. From November 1st only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer”, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as “Lager”. The substances formerly known as “American Beer” will henceforth be referred to as “Near-Frozen Knat’s Urine”, with the exception of the product of the American Budweiser company whose product will be referred to as “Weak Near-Frozen Knat’s Urine”. This will allow true Budweiser (as manufactured for the last 1000 years in Pilsen, Czech Republic) to be sold without risk of confusion.

13. From December 1st the UK will harmonise petrol (or “Gasoline” as you will be permitted to keep calling it until April 1st 2005) prices with the former USA. The UK will harmonise its prices to those of the former USA and the Former USA will, in return, adopt UK petrol prices (roughly $6/US gallon – get used to it).

14. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you’re not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you’re not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you’re not grown up enough to handle a gun.

15. Please tell us who killed JFK. It’s been driving us crazy. Tax collectors from Her Majesty’s Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all revenues due (backdated to 1776).

Thank you for your cooperation.

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Attempt to prevent a Spillover

 One small step for Delhi, one huge leap for Indians…So I was driving home from work today – twas a working saturday – YECH! Anyhoo, anybody familiar with New Delhi will have an idea about a place called ‘Dhaula Kuan’. This is basically a big-ass crossing where traffic all points of the world converge. 3 Years ago, this was an awful place where the traffic jams knew no end. 3 Years ago to recently this place was a nasty mess of construction (as is most of New Delhi today). Finally the darn crossing has been completed, and now it’s possible to travel in any of the directions without having to stop at a traffic light, whereas before this was just a crossroads with 4 traffic lights and chaos.

But being New Delhi/India, just having a signal free road is never enough to prevent traffic jams (I mean, if a cow is sleeping between two out of 3 lanes, the most well-planned roads and crossings will not help you).

Out of the other countless problems is what I like to call “Spillover”. In this specific context, it refers to the commuters waiting to get onto a bus. Instead of waiting in a line (Line? What be that, bhaisaab?) on the pavement/sidewalk in an orderly fashion, most people waiting for the bus tend to spill over onto the road…sometimes this spillover extends to the end of the first lane of a 3-lane road, thus causing the bus to stop in the middle of road so as to not flatten passengers (it doesn’t always succeed at that mind you). Anyway, in a city of 14 million people (This number is greater than the entire population of many European countries), Spillover can be a real problem.

So the spiffy-looking Delhi Traffic Police actually decided to something about this – to be fair to the Traffic Police of Delhi, they actually do their job more often than not, it’s just that there are so few of them to go around. They’re more courteous than their other brethren (could this be because you tend to be paying them traffic fines, by any chance?).

They were actually standing on the pavement/sidewalk with their nightsticks (about 4 of them I guess) blowing whistles loudly and actually preventing pedestrians and waiting commuters from spilling on to the pavement. It was an interesting scene. As all of us motorists drove by, it looked like some sort of welcoming parade to see a long line of people standing on the pavement, desperate to set foot on the sacred stretch of black tar they were so used to occupying till yesterday. It was actually funny. And it helped prevent a usual traffic jam. If the traffic police actually manage to keep this up, I’ll be forced to take a picture of this new phenomenon and post it to my website.

Here’s to more semi-revolutionary ideas like this one – what comes next I wonder? Lane Driving? Let’s see…

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My Daily Commute

Okay, so I’ve decided to document my daily commute to work.

Below you see a nice little snapshot of Josip Broz Tito Marg, New Delhi. Marg is the Hindi word for Road/Street I guess. It was a nice and cloudy day when I took these pictures so the lighting’s kinda wrong…

South Delhi

The photo below signifies “new” New Delhi. A city which has perpetually been under construction the past five years, courtesy Sheila Dikshit, the current woman in charge of Delhi, and a host of other agencies. What you see in the picture below is a FlyOver being constructed. Flyover being a British English term, I’ll translate for the Americans. What you see there is an Overpass. Within the past 5 years, no less than THIRTY-TWO flyovers have come up across the city, and more are coming up, to prevent the teeming masses from having to wait at red lights in the 47 degrees celcius of the Summer. I call it a sign of Progress. The old folks of course, are lamenting the death of “their” Delhi….the one in which you got to see an unsightly mess of cars, bikes, trucks, pigs standing at a crossing/intersection honking to death and sending nice wisps of Carbon Monoxide while they wait.

FlyOver Someday

The teeming masses I was referring to above are here in full view. Note the lack of Maruti 800s in this mess. (See my previous post titled sign-of-progress-and-hopeful-obituary)

Some Indian Jam Anyone?

This is a picture of Nelson Mandela Marg. Note things don’t look so bad here…Yes, there is actually a road in Delhi called Nelson Mandela Marg. Get over it. Delhi also happens to the only place in India which has an MG road, where the MG does NOT stand for Mahatma Gandhi. (It stands for Mehrauli-Gurgaon. Mehrauli being another ancient part of Delhi….)

Not All Is Jam, However

Ok so off Nelson Mandela Marg is what was/is? India’s first 7-star hotel, The Grand Hyatt…er whoops. Sorry, there’s no more Hyatt attached to its name. Once upon a time, the Delhi Development Authority dreamed up scheme to populate South Delhi with 7 5-Star hotels-in-a-belt, as part of some grand Tourism Plan. Well three of those hotels came up – The Grand Hyatt, The Marriott and The Radisson. When people noticed a hotel coming up in their backyard, they protested. Then the environmentalists got involved. Then finally, the people who were going to make the remaining 4 hotels realised there was zero infrastructure (Roads, transport, e.t.c) to make this thing viable. So we’re left with 3 hotels located in strange parts of the city, not doing very well. So bad in fact, that Hyatt is no longer associated with the Grand-not-Hyatt anymore, and not being able to think of another name, it is simply called The Grand….

The Grand Hy…er..um..ah

Ok so this is the current look of National Highway. The central artery that connects Delhi to Gurgaon. And one of the many arteries that connects Delhi to India. This road takes you Jaipur,Rajasthan-the Land of Kings…Gurgaon-Jaipur is a smooth flat black carpet, which you have to pay to use. Delhi-Gurgaon was an awful two-lane piece of crap full of cars inching at 1 cm/hour, and (im)patiently waiting in line to enter Guragon, or head off further to Rajasthan, and vice versa. So now Delhi-Gurgaon is being converted into an 8-lane toll road…and in the meantime, the cars are inching…at 1 cm/hour.

National Highway 8. Delhi to Jaipur

Just a brief peak at the Radisson, which has its history explained above. The Radisson is doing relatively well for two reasons. It is very close to Indira Gandhi International Airport (New Delhi). And the second reason is The Great Kebab Factory. FREE BEER on Sunday Lunches, and All-you-can-eat Kebabs for 600 rupees….but at 600 bucks per head, you damn well better get all you can eat, heh.

Home of The Great Kebab Factory. YUM!

Welcome to Haryana (State neighbouring New Delhi, and harbouring Gurgaon). Why is Gurgaon important? This place is home to IBM, Fidelity, Microsoft, Sun, Cisco, Wipro, TCS, HCL, Daksh, GE Capital Services, Maruti Suzuki and host of other companies responsible for the New India. They are all in the Outsourcing/Technology field (except Maruti, of course). The funny thing about all of this is that the situation here is the reverse of America. Everybody lives in the main city (Delhi) and goes to work in the suburbs! This because the city is at least 1500 years old. But that is neither here nor there.

Yay, we finally made it

This Building is the first thing you see after crossing the border into Gurgaon. It’s called the DLF Gateway Tower. But apparently, the boob architect who designed this building had some bizarre idea of Ships in his ming…so it is actually in the shape of a Ship’s exhaust tower (or chimney, or whatever), and is thus called “The Ship Building”. At the bottom you see a sign reminding you that the National Highway (and all of Delhi) are still a work-in-progess..

Gateway to the Suburb

This is the building belonging to Convergys, a MultiNatiional Call Centre op. You get to see some cute college-going women wandering around if you hang around there…of course this what ‘a friend’ tells me. I, of course, wouldn’t know.

Hello USA? This is Convergys speaking

Another landmark is the “CitiBank” building. It’s not all owned by Citibank, but that’s how everybody knows it, because of the prominent sign.

Tall glassy and blue

And the green building that you see in the centre of all this filth is good old HCL Technologies India ltd. A software consulting/outsourcing firm, and my current source of income. To the left, you see another outsourced firm (that slightly grey building. That happens to be Agilent Technologies (The breakaway software division of Hewlett-Packard).

Work, Sweet Work…

Well there you have it. It has always been the aim of this blog to show you pictures of India that you wont find in the media….though credit has to be given to CNN for abandoning its usual position with a recent set of shows on the Outsourcing Debate, where they actually showed a balanced view of India, FOR ONCE.
Hope this page loads fast on your browser…
Of course if you refuse to unplug yourself from the Matrix, the standard experience-of-India fare can be found at this blog. Where, as the author will assure you, this is the “Real India”. The photographs I’ve posted are all fake, of course.

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Country Metaphors???

So heading back home thru the art-form that is New Delhi Traffic, I caught the RJ* rambling on about how Manoj Night Shyamalan said that his latest movie – The Village could be seen as a metaphor for America.

WARNING – SPOILERS AHEAD – DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE

As somebody who’s only spent 5 years in America and spent 25 years approx. hearing about it from one source or another, I struck me as true in some senses, but very simplistic…but then it’s only a 2 hour long movie.

So to escape the persecution of the “Outside World” these people break away, going to a place out in the middle of nowhere. Ok sounds like America somewhat. All of them have an awful story about the outside world, and how harsh it is. Then they get attacked by the “creatures” in the woods, which prevent them from leaving their self-centred isolated world, which of course turn out be self-created. Yes, that seems like America to me too. But of course, as self-sufficient as their village is, they still have to depend on the outside world for a few things – the quest to get medicine, for example. And the outside world depends on them too somewhat – those security guards that man the perimeter, they salary was probably paid by the the Rich owner(s)? of the village (most likely William Hurt still has all his father’s money). And even if one of these vilagers does venture out of their village, she’s the Blind one. She leaves the village with her single purpose, and so does not stop to try and get a sense of what the outside world is really like. Then she heads straight back home, to safety. Yep, sounds like the America I know again…

Steven Spielberg’s new Movie The Terminal has just released in India, and the above RJ says that this is also another metaphor for America. He quotes Spielberg as saying “All of America can be found in the shops, restaurants and offices found inside any airport terminal…like some sort of Nowhere Place”….alrighty…will have to see that movie for myself and decide…..

On the other hand…. one could look at a blank sheet of white paper and say it was a metaphor for a rainbow in some way or the other, so all the above could just be hot air….

So after all this rambling, I pose a question to anybody who brushes past this site -
What do you see as a metaphor for India?

To get the ball rolling, here’s my two paise:
I see India as a really really old and fragile vase, always on the brink of shattering. This vase has been shattered and put together quite a few times over the years. And each time it becomes whole, it’s never quite the same, because the shards that are glued together to make it whole come from entirely different sources – sources which one would never think of mixing together. Oh and it doesn’t have a smooth round shape. If you look at it from one angle, it looks kinda appealing. Turn this vase just by 1 degree and it looks ugly, misshapen, very badly formed. And each time you look at it, you will see something different.

Well there’s my contribution. Anybody else with a more interesting one?

*RJ is short for Radio Jockey. In India, People on the Radio are called RJs and not DJs, because here, the term DJ is reserved for those people who play the music at clubs/parties, and are part of that whole dance/hiphop/remix culture. Odd, but true.

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A Sign of Progress and Hopeful Obituary

About 20 years ago (roundabout 1983), a very young Prime Minister of India (Rajiv Gandhi) saw his dream come to fruition. Like Hitler (the Similarity stops here), he wanted to make a People’s Car for India. But India, being an awful, socialist country at the time (and very much 3rd-to-4th-World in 1983) wasn’t going to be able to do this on its own. So the Government of India held discussions with various companies, to see if they could make a car at what were dirt cheap prices. GM and Ford backed down after initial discussions, because they couldn’t figure out how to make a car under the terms specified. This is where the Suzuki Motor Company of Japan steps in, and thus was born Maruti Udyog (otherwise known as Maruti Suzuki). Along with the birth of this company, comes the birth of the Maruti 800. It defines Modern India, much like the Model T, The Mini, The Beetle and the Trabant all define respective parts of other countries’ history. Yes, there is a Morris Oxford look-alike called the Ambassador. And most of the Orientalists will tell you that is the car which defines India, not this puny little upstart. But you see, The Ambassador defines Old India, not New

The Maximum Retail Selling Price of the car in 1983 was Indian Rupees 47,500. Taking the APPROXIMATE exchange rate to the US$ (INR 10 : USD 1) at the time, that means this car cost US$4750, fresh off the assembly line. Of course, the tech specs need to be noted:
At US$4750, you get an in-line 3-cylinder 0.8 Litre engine. No Power Steering. No Power windows. No Air-Conditioner. (The A/c model was more expensive). No Stereo. No Automatic Transmission. No MultiPoint Fuel Injection. 4 seats, a gear shift lever, 1 rear-view mirror (not Day-Night) and ONE side-view mirror – on the Driver’s side…

Yes, you’ve heard of motorcycles with more features. But that’s not the point. The point was to get India mobile. And it worked. Of course that aim came at some cost. Having a car this small and this “zippy” also led to some of the most awful driving ever done in the history of man. On a lane-marked road, this car can fit between two cars in their respective lanes. That means it can sneak up on you and squeeze past. Unless of course you accidentally drift a little to either left or right, in which case….bang…But then it also help liberate a lot of middle class people and women too. This car was EASY to drive, after the old clunkers that used to dominate the Indian roads, that women took to the streets in droves. It gave birth to an entire industry of car accessories to prevent your Maruti conforming to the Any Colour So Long As It’s Black philosophy

e.t.c. e.t.c.

That was then. This is now. 20 years on, the reign of the 800 has finally come to an end. Not only are Indians driving other small cars, they’re also driving more medium/big ones. Cars which are much more advanced technologically, a lot less polluting, with a lot more features. Hyundai, Chevrolet, Fiat, Honda, Toyota, Skoda and a host of others are selling their stuff.

So join me, in wishing farewell to the Maruti 800, and the end of an era in which Indians had to sign up on waiting lists for cars, and air-conditioning in cars was greeted with a HUH? And a shrug.

NOTE to the Cynics/Orientalists. This post is not about social issues related to driving, Indian infrastructure, or morality. So I do not mention parking problems, road rage, rash driving, drunk driving, pot holes, starving-people-in-villages-without-anything-to-eat while little rich boy takes his car out for a drive, because I fail to understand why every post related to India must have those obligatory references. Thank you for you time.

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A Neat Little Parlour Trick

Yes, India has contributed more to maths than just the concept of 0 and the Decimal Number System

So there’s a bunch of really ancient Hindu scriptures known as the Vedas of which the oldest is the Rig-Veda one of foundations of Hinduism – open to lots and lots and lots of debate as it is apparently approximately 3500 years old….
Anyway, one of them apparently has a section on Maths… I was taught some of the stuff they call Vedic Mathematics in preparation for the entrance test for Indian Institute of Management. Anyway, I list below one of its secrets, for easy reference, which shall be updated, as when all of it comes back to me.

How to find the square of all numbers from 1 – 100

Ok so the square of numbers from 1-thru 13 most people have memorized, so I won’t mention them.
The square of all multiples of 10 (i.e. 10, 20, 30, 40) are easy to determine, so they don’t need to be covered either.

So here’s the neat trick. Vedic Mathematics gives you a cool way to figure out the square of any number ending in 5 (5, 15, 25, 35, e.t.c.).

Ok so let’s take the square of 95.
Every number that ends in 5, has a square that ends in 25.
So we know that the LAST TWO digits of 95-squared are 25.

How about the rest?
Well you take the digit(s) to left of the 5 (In this case 9) and multiply them by the next integer.
The only digit to the left of 5 is 9 in 95, so you multiply 9 by 9+1(10) to get 90.
Place the 90 to the left of 25 and you have your answer.

95 x 95 = 9025

Don’t believe me? Let’s try 65.
Last two digits of 65-squared are 25.
The rest of the result is found by multiplying 6 and 7(6+1) = 42

65 x 65 = 4225

The square of 105?
11025 (again, last digits are 25, and 10 x 11 gives u everything to the left)

Ok so great. Now we’ve got all the squares of multiples of 5, 10, and everything from 1 thru 13. Now to fill in the gaps. Here’s the final magic formula, which u may already know from your regualr algebra classes.

x+1 squared is = x squared + 2x + 1.

So that means that 36-squared is = 1225 + 71 = 1296
37-squared = 1296 + 73 = 1369
39-squared = 1600 – 40-39 = 1521 (going backwards from 40-squared, coz it’s easier)

and so on.

Well that ends the show for today. I’ve just touched very briefly on the subject there are lots of more interesting things you can do with Vedic Maths
So go on and wow your friends, show them that you’re secretly a math prodigy. :-p

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More Monsoon Babblings

 Slow Week
So now that Delhi is finally getting its share of rain, the UPA government is relaxing a little. But of course, all of Delhi is suffering. Granted, the monsoon brings us our yearly supply of water, but also gives rise to the Annual Supreme Traffic Jam. But this jam only takes place on one particular day every year, because there is usually only one day in the year when Delhi gets 24-hours-worth of rain.A Powerful Woman
According to Forbes Magazine Sonia Gandhi is considered to be the 3rd most powerful woman in the world…. not bad for a broke Italian student learning to speak English in Cambridge….

1 in a Billion, Again
So Major Rajyavendra Rathore gets a Silver Medal in the Olympics. And everybody else is now either disqualified due to doping/stupidity or just didn’t make the cut.

Social Security?
The outgoing NDA government had decided to issue National Social Security Cards anybody who has a job, and contributes to the Provident Fund (Sort of like the 401(k) in America). So now Indians will have Social Security numbers too…

Bollydelphia
Bollywood is finally getting the balls to tackle AIDS, with a new movie called Phir Milenge (We’ll Meet Again). Apparently the story is about a woman professional who contracts HIV from her hubby, and her struggle with the prejudices at work and in society in general. You can count on Bollywood to play up stereotypes and handle sensitive issues with sledghammers, so I doubt this movie will amount to much…but the UN is actually endorsing it!!!?!?!

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The New Orientalism – Pt 2

Ok, so having taken the last week or so to cool off, and re-compose my thoughts, offer a half-apology to the author coupled with an invitation to coffee it’s time to post a reply to the reply to my ‘attack’ on Aziz’s blog (the URL for which can be found in my previous post, or on Blogger.com as a Blog of Note, at least at the time of going to Press).
First of all, to be fair, my critique was a bit too personal. It shouldn’t have been, because there are probably at least a million such stories floating out there, and this just happens to be the (un)lucky one which got noticed – appearing in the “Blogs of Note” section, which this Voice happens to visit every once in a while to escape the drudgery of outsourced computer programming.
So here is my reply:

Although I was excited to see my ancestral homeland of Kutch (Gujarat), my primary motivation to come to India was to explore and experience India, gain some understanding of the plight of India�s more than 300,000,000 poor people and get some work experience with an NGO (non-government organization).

The part of this that bothers me is that “Gain Some Understanding of the plight of more than 300 million poor people living in India”. My problem with this is just that. By your figure there are 300 million people who are defined as “poor”. What does that mean? Are they starving? Lacking a roof over their heads? They can’t afford a TV? All? And once we’ve decided what poor means, are we really going to apply this blanket term to 300 Million people, who speak different languages, have different religions, customs, cusines? You say you want to understand the plight of these 300 Million people. I’m just wondering why the remaining 700 Million people hold no fascination for you. Or the fact that we went from having 500 Million poor people 57 years ago, when our young nation was born to 300 Million today. Why do those 200 Million people who struggled their way upwards hold no interest to you? And how many people need to be lifted out of poverty for somebody to be able to visit India to gain an insight for reasons other than the plight of its X number of poor people?

Yes, you made your purpose and intent clear in your reply, and maybe I should just leave you alone and move on. But you see, Blogger.com has decided that you’ve written something noteworthy. And the fact is that although most of us blog for ourselves, I think we all know that someone, somewhere will be reading. So again, I’m just curious why the remaining 700 million (by your figures) Indians don’t hold any interest for you…

My posts focus on poor rural areas because I am working for an NGO that seeks to improve the livelihoods of poor, rural Indians. I came to India to work with poor people and I spent much of my time surrounded by poor people, so it follows naturally that my blog speaks at length of the problems of rural India

This would have been a fair point, until you mentioned the sweeping generalisations about Pasta and the News channels, among other things. Surely that’s not Rural India you’re talking about… (yes, that still rankles. How widespread are samosas out in the ‘boonies’ of NewFoundland).

In your sharp criticism of my blog, you seem to have bitten into an apple and yelled, “THIS IS THE WORST TOMATO I’VE EVER TASTED!”.

Nope, it was more like, DANGNABBIT, another tomato posing as an apple! @!#@@!@!!!!!

Tarun, I think you are wrong to think that one has to plunge oneself into the most backward pasts of your country to find poverty–it stares me in the face in Ahmedabad, and its surrounds me whever I travel in rural areas.

Ok first off, I have never stated you only find poverty in the most backward parts. However as stated in one of my previous blogs, there is The Filth Factor. Which means that even in the parts of the city/country that are rich/well off, things look like they’ve just been bombed out of existence by a Pakistani fighter swarm, coupled with the fresh smell of a mass urination. There are many reasons for this, which I may go into at some later date. But the fact is that, being a newcomer to this country, you confuse filth/laxity/apathy/anarchy with poverty. And those attributes aren’t always connected.

The vast majority of your countrymen cannot afford to eat at the Olive Bar and Kitchen.

The reason that Olive Bar & Kitchen was mentioned was in response to the statement – “They must not know what Pasta is in India”. The answer is that quite a significant number of people do. But I fail to see how Pasta-awareness is an indicator of a high-standard of living.

I wouldn’t presume to guess your background as you have mine, but I think you should get out to some villages, meet some poor people, play with their kids and understand their problems–you’ll appreciate the beautiful restaurants of Delhi that much more, and you’ll find yourself angry the next time you read about “India Shining”.

I have been out to villages. I have driven from New Delhi to Chandigarh while National Highway 1 was under construction for wideneing an repaving. We had to detour through at least 3 villages on our way to Ambala. I have also driven to Ludhiana and Patiala and stopped in many places in between. Unfortunately, these are villages of Punjab and Haryana. According to a recent edition of India Today, Punjab is the richest state in the Union. So basically, the fact that the people in the villages of Punjab and Haryana have raised their standard of living means that they won’t fall under your 300 million poor people, or in anybody else’s definition. They will basically drop off the map until they either get poor enough to starve, and thus merit a “juicy” blog entry, or when the level of prejudice (i.e. low-caste killings, murder of girl childs e.t.c) rises to a newsworthy threshold.
And I don’t find myself angry about India Shining, but I don’t blame you for it. This is your first trip to India. So you have nothing to compare it to. But I have a lot of timeslices to compare – 1983-89, 1991-97, 2002-today. And I can confidently say that as a 57-year-old nation India is at its brightest now. Of course, the light is still dim. But it will grow brighter, and much, much faster than you think.

(The offer for coffee is still valid, btw)

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Monsoon Babbling

2.5 World Country Weather (for the Newbie)
Seattle is apparently the most depressing city in the world, with the highest (recorded) suicide rate. One of the reasons attributed to this is the weather. To quote most Seattle-ites – “This Year’s weather will be overcast, with light showers (except on the 4th of July)”. Slight exaggeration, but not off by too much. ‘Cept for one or two summer months when you get to see how beautiful Seattle is – There is the Puget Sound in one direction, tall shiny glass buildings in other, the Glorious Grand & Dormant Mount Rainier to the South, and…more buildings and civilisation to the North. Anyhoo it’s really good looking, ‘cept when it’s raining when all is mostly grey and gloomy…..

Approximately halfway across the world lies a pointy/peninsular landmass, which was once a part of Africa some gazillions of years ago. Eventually this land mass broke away, and hit Asia pretty hard. Real hard. Thus the Himalayas were born. Apart from acting as a natural barrier to prevent China from invading India, they also contribute to an annual event which most Indians anticipate anxiously. Having the Tallest Wall in the World to your North, 2 seas, 1 ocean to the South, and some mostly-flat plains in the middle gives rise to the Indian Monsoon. Loosely translated as “Our Water Supply for the Year”. But take pity on a 2000/5000 year old northern city by a river. Everytime March-June rolls around, the inhabitants of this ancient city (Delhi) curse their ancestors and wonder why the $!@#!$$!@#!$@ they had to pick this particular area to settle down in. It may have been nice and comfy 5000 years ago, but these days the Great Indian Desert makes its presence felt in Delhi by sending a few dust storms and hot winds (known as The Loo for some reason) in our direction….these storms are further compounded by temperatures ranging from 45-47 degrees Celcius*. This carries on for a while, and in the meantime, the newspapers decide to rub it in by mentioning how Aqua-Bangladesh is 50% submerged, and there are floods in other parts of the country. All Delhi gets is a thickening of the air, as the humidity rises to an unbearable 90%. Finally, once everything is covered in a layer of dust (or melted due to heat), a huge dark cloud approaches (much like it does in the ‘Ghananana’ song in Lagaan). Then cool winds start blowing and the first drop of Monsoon devastation strikes. Pit pit, pat pat, pit………KABLAAM! KAPOW! And before you know it, you’re going for a swim on the Ring Road. Travel times rise. The 25 Kilometre stretch of MG Road* which connects 5000-year-old Delhi to wannabe 2-Year-New Gurgaon takes 4 hours instead of the usual one. New potholes arise, to replace the old one which were patched up pre-election. The government-run telephone company’s phone lines go bust allowing the pvt-run companies to advertise how reliable their services are. Old trees that couldn’t handle the heat finally collapse and close up a few roads, taking a few power lines with them. Kids run onto to the rooftops, for an impromptu bath, and also to start their kite-flying practise for Independence Day

But most important – Everybody’s spirits rise with the rain.

*The MG in MG Road, doesn’t stand for Mahatma Gandhi, like other various MG Roads throughout the company. Becuase this is New Delhi, the MG stands for Mehrauli-Gurgaon Road. Mehrauli being another ancient semi-city left over from Mughal times, which is now a part of Delhi….

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Musings

Indian Democracy’s Knowledge Addition
Dear Cynical Indian Public, here’s one reason to vote. It teaches you an interesting bit of trivia. I learned that your nail takes two months to grow, from cuticle to tip. How did I pick up this interesting piece of news? When you go to cast your vote, the voting officials mark your right/left forefinger with indelible ink (which is apparently easy to wipe off with turpentine or lemon juice – haven’t tried it meself). Anyway, this mark is placed half on your skin, and half on your nail (at the joint). So basically what happens is that the mark on your nail stays on, (the part on your skin disappears naturally). So over a period of two months (starting 13th May 2004), that black spot progressed from the joint (where the skin meets the nail) to the tip in just under two months – it reached the tip of my nail on the 12th of July 2004.

America Says Sorry
So it’s out in most Indian dailies. America officially apologises to India for strip-searching our (now ex-)Defence Minister George Fernandez. Richard Armitage, currently in Delhi (only for today) to touch base with the new government in power, is apparently “horrified” that something like that could happen. The initial source of this was not the ex-Defence Minister, but an autobiography by Strobe Talbott, in which he claims that George (Fernandez) complained about being strip searched. Georgy-boy himself claims it was far from a strip search! Great, for once America actually apologises for a mistake, and as it turns out, maybe they didn’t make one! It is a bizarre world…

Why our country will remain stuck at 2.5-World for the next 4 years
Reason 1
Mr. Harvard-Educated P. Chidambaram’s budget. He managed to make an ass out of everybody, and basically did nothing except to raise Taxes. He made it seem like he was doing a lot more, i.e. throwing more government money into the black hole known as “Rural Development Schemes”…Yay. Throw money at poor people great. “If you give a man a fish….”

Reason 2
The monsoon, according to this voice, has officially failed to materialise. And even if it does, it won’t be even a tenth as potent as last year’s. I can just see the VHP, RSS saying that this is Will of God for not voting the BJP into power, and also for neglecting to take care of the Babri Masjid Issue.

Reason 3
This one requires a whole new post, which may be forthcoming if I can gather thoughts together to make a comprehensible blog entry. But to keep short it is the fact that most people in this country believe that in order for one class of people to benefit another class has to be suppressed. I.e. steal from the rich and give to the poor. It’s not just our country, but a world-wide left-wing phenomena. This voice, having right-of-centre leanings, finds such a philosophy idiotic, stupid, and just plain false. How about this for a philosophy. Let’s just try and make Everybodyricher. I.e. if the filthy rich are getting even filthier rich, LET THEM. But let’s also get the filthy poor to be a little less filthy. Why do the two have to be mutually exclusive? It’s never made any sense to me. It basically stems from the idea that “The Rich make their money off the backs of the Poor”. I see. So all rich people got rich because of slave labour. Ok, enough for now, this will probably be my next post for sure…

The Laws of New Delhi

Hey, this is a shameless rip from the Delhi Times – a supplement to the Times Of India. But I’ve put some effort into typing it out at least (and I wanted it here for easy future reference….)

The Laws of New Delhi
A lot of outsiders feel that there are no rules in this city, and that it’s just absolute anarchy…this absolutely false. Delhi-ites follow a strict code of conduct, which I have documented below:

1. The Other Side Law
If there is a traffic jam on my side of the road, then I am within my rights as a Delhi-ite to start driving on the opposite side of the road.

2. The Queue Nahin Rule
If there is a long queue of people waiting, nobody will notice me jumping it, as I am looking the other way.

3. The Mind Over Matter Law
If a traffic-light is not working on a 4-way intersection, then four cars going in 4 different directions shall be able to magically pass through each other. In some cases this does not work, leading to the Law of Grid-Lock, and in grave cases the Automobile Destruction and Loss of Human Life Rule.

4. The Automobile Direction Axiom
I am not allowed to use my indicators/blinkers to specify which direction I am turning in due to the Official Secrets Act. Further, it’s good to keep the motorists behind alert and on their toes, thus they need to be kept guessing.

5. The Spitting Image Rule
The more I lean out of my car/bus, and the harder I spit/puke, the stronger the roads become.

6. The Theatrical Freeze Law
When my mobile phone rings in a cinema hall, the movie automatically pauses, and the audience takes a breather by listening to my loud voice tell “Bunty” where I’m sitting and what movie I’m watching how crappy it is.

7. The Incest Law
If I want to win an argument, I simply terminate all sentences with SisterFucker(in Hindi). If I’m losing the argument badly, then I use the more high-priority MotherFucker suffix.

8. The Baraat Right
When I am on the road to marriage, “all Delhi roads are belong to me”(sic)

9. The Salman Khan X-Ray rule
If I open enough buttons on my shirt, the hot babe at the bus stop can see through my hairy, Punjabi chest into the depths of my soul

10. The Relative Registration Rule
All motorists are hereby advise to paste the names of their kids/uncles/spouses’ names on the backs of their cars, so that the trailing motorist can know that Rash Driver from Hell (Registration # DL 3CB 7679) is associated with “Honey” and “Guddu”.

11. The JK Rowling Postulate
If I double park my car, the road automatically widens to ensure smooth flow of traffic.

12. The Chill Bill Position
When I park and block somebody else’s car, I’m giving said person a chance to pause and reflect after a long hard day at work, in line with Ancient Hindu and 21st Century Punjabi Principles

13. The Flatulence Fundamental
The louder I burp/fart in a public place, the better the digestion, and overall well-being of my fellow Delhi diners.

14. The Bus Karo Law
If buses stop precisely at a bus stop (or at all, as opposed to merely slowing down near bus stops), the city will explode due to a doomsday device planted by Dr. DelhiLove.

Well there you have it. This being said, Delhi is STILL one of the great cities of the world. Come visit, but when you do, make sure to keep these laws in mind.

Hum-Tum: A Review (and other musings)

This Voice is now 25 years and 2 days old….
I feel old. Very OLD. A quarter century has passed me by, and I still:
1)Don’t own an island in the South Pacific
2)Don’t own a villa on the Med
3)Don’t run a multi-billion-dollar company which threatens to own the World
4)Don’t run that Indo-American Film & Theatre Production House with my aspiring director friend (Anita), and closest non-relation (VeriKa)…
5)Haven’t got my MBA

And so I blog instead…..

So Hum-Tum…. hmmm..
Well it belongs to that new genre of Bollywood movie, which I like to call Zero-Bakwaas.
There aren’t any melodramatic fathers, or creepy arranged-marriaged suitors. Just a relationship between two people, very loosely inspired by Harry Met Sally.
It gets pretty cheesy at times but manages to keep you watching. But u leave the theatre thinking that it was just kind of blah. But at least things are refreshing, in terms of dialogue, and presentation.
I’m still sitting on the fence about the animated clips that were added into the movie (to try and get across that deep down, we’re all just little boys and girls). It was nice to see a different approach being used, but I’m not sure it added much to the movie.

Another refreshing change (WARNING – this is a minor Spoiler). Instead of having Abhishek Bachchan as a creep, they made him out be a good character, and decided to kill off the poor guy instead of making it a divorce or some such thing. I think that was a good move.

Finally, (WARNING – Another spoiler) the one thing that stood out the most in this movie to me was how they handled the sex – i.e. the fact that Rani Mukherjee and Saif slept together. But instead of getting all hoo-ha and melodramatic about it, I think it was handled with the kind of respect and maturity you usually find lacking in Hindi movies…good for them.
So end result – ok movie, crappy songs with no purpose or melody either. (3/5 stars )

There’s been a steady but small improvement in bollywood movies (which I think dates back to Lagaan, but I could be wrong), where the movies were still definitely classified as “Bollywood” but were getting a slicker in all sorts of ways (Note-to-self: Possible future blog entry on the changes in Bollywood).

Anyway, the conclusion of today’s blog is basically that there’s not much happening in the Political Sphere of things (national and international) – the government is too busy battling it out with the opposition for there to be much progress on raising 2.5-World to higher, and Iraq is about to gain partial independence… so this voice has been silent for awhile.
Well at least, as this voice predicted, the flyovers and National Highways will be completed. Ever since we have Congress in Centre & State, we started observing the resumption of construction activity on Delhi’s roads (and elsewhere too, but that’s not so visible right now)….

That ends it for today
Small note about all comments received on this site. I’m intentionally not replying to them because I don’t want this to become a discussion board, as much as I’m all for intelligent debate…because well.. It’s Voice From A 2.5-World Country not Voices of the Internet. I suppose I’ll write out replies to some comments as blog entries though…
Till next time.

A Belated Introduction….

The last thing I expected was to actually be read! Other than the people in my sphere of existence, my site is being read by anonymous strangers surfing the nooks and crannies of the World Wide Ball Of Wool.

So I’ll basically tell you a little bit about myself…
I was born in the not-so-humble city of New Delhi, but left it at a very early age (2.5 yrs old to be exact) and spent my formative years in Hong Kong. I returned to New Delhi in 1991, a few months after Rajiv Gandhi’s murder, and a few months before the Current Prime Minister announced his radical reform package which helped raised the level of India from 3rd-World to 2.5-World.

So I was there through it all – I saw the India which had 2 TV channels, 3 models of cars (last upgraded in 1956) and a New Delhi without satellite Dishes, Mobile Phones, Coffee Bars, fancy flyovers (overpasses to you Americans) and no Italian restaurant outside a 5-Star Hotel. A place where anything “Imported” was automatically considered as high-quality, and everything local was utter crap – this was true in some cases…

And I am in New Delhi now, after this semi-transformation too. However, in between 1991 and now, I spent 5 years in America (from 1997-2002) as part of my education. Frankly America was a disappointment. It did not live up to the expectations that everybody had created in my mind. It was meant to be a place where you could fulfill your dream, with a little blood, sweat and tears. Where the thing that mattered most to people was “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”. Where the Huddled Masses of the World could go, yearning to breathe free….

Right. Let’s try and change that picture somewhat. Throughout college, you had to live the with the slur of being a foreign student. This meant that you were apparently feeding off the government and the country, and should thank your lucky stars you were allowed to leave your godforsaken hellhole of a country (Most Americans believe that most of the world is a hellhole, barring England and maybe Europe)…even though most Foreign students in America do NOT get grants or scholarships. Most take loans, or depend on rich parents – it was Rich parents on my part….Oh, and we’re not allowed to work more than 20 hours a week on those Student Visas. Then when you leave college, you’re automatically the reason why the economy is bad, because you took a more deserving American’s job. Your boss gets to treat you like a slave, while holding the carrot of the work visa over your head…and then finally you get to be the first one who gets laid off, when times are bad. Well that was enough for yours truly. After losing my job, I went back to my country as Americans always suggest to you if you dare to criticize America – “If you don’t like it here why don’t you just go back to your own fucking country”. So I did. Now I can proudly say that I’m responsible for at least 11 American software developers losing their jobs, and also a much happier person in general.

Anyway, it was the reactions I got from people in America, and their overall general knowledge about my country, that has prompted me to write this Blog. According to CNN and lots of other American Media, people in India go to school on Elephants, and still spend their time charming snakes, that is of course when they’re not busy murdering each other….

So this blog is basically meant to be an Indian Born Confused Desi’s view on events in India, which get almost no coverage in America, or other parts of the World. Oh yes, and to also challenge American viewpoints on the world in general, whenever the opportunity arises. And also talk about some other random things I may feel strongly about…

Let’s give an example of a typical American reaction to this kind of posturing:
I’m an anti-American, Al-Qaeda-supporting, fundamentalist prick fully supporting the destruction of America, Americans and The American Way of Life…

Let’s rephrase that to represent the truth:
I’m somebody who believes in all of America’s ideals – Right to private property, freedom of speech, basic human rights, No discrimination on any grounds and equality for all, blah blah blah.
But also believes that America
a)does not have the sole right to judge who else believes in these ideals, and
b) barely follows its own ideals when it comes to dealing with the Rest of the World

Basically I just wish that everything that America stands for inside its borders is what it should promote outside its borders….which unfortunately is not the case. And to most of the World, they only the see the external America – the hypocritical arbitrary imperialist. It is those things about America that people hate. One aim of this Voice is to bring those things to light, simply because it can, and because it happens to my blog after all, dammit!

Finally, in my own opinion, I am Indian through and through. Though many Indians will find that some of my opinions do not sound very Indian to them (I need to clarify this based on a few of the reactions to my writing).

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