Days of my life!!

You come home on a Monday evening and are greeted by an empty house and complete darkness thanks  to the fact that your wife is away for the week attending her best friends' wedding. You realize, once again, how much you miss the one you love. However, thanks to the amazing telecommunications revolution you can now simply pick up the phone, talk to her and lessen your pain. Things do get worse later when it's time to fill your empty tummy. You go buy one of those ready-made chappati packets and heat up the bhendi ki sabji she has left for you and as you sit in front of the couch munching on that stuff you can't help but think of the amazing dinner she would have made if she was here. Your thoughts go back to that Spaghetti she had made last week. Or the snacks and the lunch she had made for diwali some time back. It's ok, you say to yourself. She's just gone for a week. But tomorrow morning as you dive into that bowl of cornflakes for th...

Five years back, as I was trying to make a quick transition from the highly organized surroundings of Melbourne to the rather dis-oriented Bengaluru, I did notice quite a few potholes that had stemmed the progress of this otherwise beautiful city. One of the them was the obvious lack of an efficient public transport. There were no yellow and black taxis (like you would find them in Mumbai), the auto rickshaw wallas were basically running a business my looting and cheating the passenger who sat on the back seat and while the buses were quite effective, the fact that the destination was displayed in Kannadda, virtually ensured that an outsider like me would end up boarding the wrong bus on more than one ocassions. What Bengaluru needed was good rail connectivity. It didn't take long, after that, for someone in the Government to get a similar revelation and within no time, by pulling a few strings - project plans were charted, funds were raised and grand announcement was made t...

It was a quiet and serious atmosphere in the HR's cabin of my company. On one side of the desk sat the almighty and powerful HR of Magma with his neatly combed hair and his reading glasses tilted on his nose. On the his desk were a bunch of resumes and in front of him stood a group of people, who I assume were the recruitment consultants who had brought in these resumes. He examined each resume one by one with intricate details. He ran his magnifying glass over the resume and after a while, placed the first resume in his suitcase, on his left hand side. "Perfect experience level, good knowledge of ASIC design, right attitude. He'll be a Bournville one day.", the HR said. (Ahem Ahem....."Bournville" is a code we use for a Star Performer in Magma!!) Moving on .......he examined the next resume with the same level of precision and placed this one to the right. "He's nothing..."  As he moved on to the third, there was s...

If I mention the word addiction, the first words that obviously comes to mind are smoking, drinking, coffee, snoring and what not....but I wanted to highlight a different kind of an addiction that we all probably have, but are not ready to admit - our favorite newspaper! Reading the newspaper, especially the 'Times of India', runs in my family. I still remember my grandfather's face hidden behind the newspaper for hours and hours, as he held it fully stretched out, using both his arms. Ofcourse, there was no satellite TV during those days, but I seriously doubt if that would have deterred him from changing his daily routine. A similar tradition is still being religiously followed by my mom and whenever I am in Mumbai, I can still find her falling fast asleep in the afternoon, with the newspaper next to her, after she is done reading the editorial and 'Speaking Tree' sections. She rarely bothers about the front few and last few pages though, and despite of being an e...

Yet another fine Saturday morning in the city of Bengaluru and like a very good husband, I spent the day lazing on the sofa with my legs stretched out on the coffee table, watching CNN IBN's telecast of Bollywood Divas' which was featuring the life and times of yesteryear heart-throb - Madhubala. Thanks to my laziness, Prachi too got busy with her laptop, on the chair next to the sofa, to complete her office work or 'verbatims' as she refers to it. Soon, the host, Rajeev Masand, spoke about her steamy affair with Dilip Kumar which eventually broke up on the sets of Naya Daur . Being totally unaware of this new piece of data in my life, I excalimed, "Aila, I didn't know she had an affair with Dilip Kumar, I only knew about her marriage with Kishore Kumar!!" Prachi, however, was probably too busy with her work and I thought she had hardly noticed what I had said or what was running on the tube. A couple of minutes later, Rajeev Masand excused himself to take...

The first time I came across the word 'Pressure' was in my Physics text book, which defined the term as force per unit area. Simply put, 'Pressure' was nothing but the amount of force applied on a surface. As I grew older, I came across a few more scenarios where the word 'Pressure' was used along with a suitable prefix. Social Pressure, Academic Pressure, Financial Pressure, Family Pressure and many more. In each case, the source and magnitude of force applied changed, but the surface remained the same - me!! Yesterday, as I sat and thought about it, I realized that all this while, it was just 'Life', grooming me for something bigger. Let's go back to Physics for an example. If you take a stone and throw it on a piece of glass, it will break. But if you take the same stone and try to throw it on a diamond, chances are that the stone will break, but the diamond will definitely not. Your ability to handle pressure, will determine if you are a piece of...

A guy decides to buy a new black car and, as always, his friends' chip in with invaluable pieces of advice. Mr. Pessimist : "Don't go for black one da . Black is the colour of evil." Mr. Rockstar : "What rubbish....black rocks man....like Street Hawk!!" Guy : "You mean Knight Rider?" Mr. Rockstar : "Yeah man....same difference.....black rocks!!" Mr. Gentleman : "Black is actually a royal colour. I think it will look really great on a car." All this changes when the Guy has a wife or a girlfriend. If his better half does not like the colour, she simply says, "If you love me, don't buy a black car!!" If, however, she likes the colour she will first try and convince him of how beautiful and sexy black looks on a car. She will then explain to him that there aren't many black cars, of that make, on the road. If nothing else works, she'll simply say, "If you love me, get me a black car!!" In the end, wh...

The other day I was watching a movie titled ‘Arthur’s Hallowed Ground’, a classic British movie from the early 80’s, on the ‘World Movies’ channel. The main protagonist of this movie, as you may have guessed from the title, is an old gentleman by the name of Arthur, who has been shown to be working as a curator on a cricket ground somewhere in London. The astonishing thing, though, is that he has been doing this job all on his own for, believe it or not, the past 45 years!! As the years pass, things change and the committee members who run the club, bring on-board a businessman to change the dwindling fortunes of the club and help them make some money. This businessman wants to invest a large sum of money into spectator welfare, but faces stiff opposition from Arthur, who insists that he needs the money to buy a new grass cutter for the ground. Every effort from the business man to raise some money is resisted by Arthur. He even sets up a tent next to the pitch and spends the entir...

Yesterday evening, we went out with a few friends to enjoy some sumptuous dinner at the ' Barbeque Nation ' restaurant in Domlur. Being a Sunday, we only got reservation at 9:45 pm and by 10 pm, we were all settled in our seat having the first round of chicken hot and sour soup. Some 15 - 20 minutes later, we were all deeply indulged into enjoying the barbecue items that were being lined up in front of us, which included mushroom, pineapple, capsicum and corn in veg and chicken, fish and prawns in non-veg. Each of this had been cooked in a different sauce whose names I don't really remember, since it hardly mattered to me. What was important was the fact that they looked really delicious and each empty stick was being replenished by another, which was full. The ladies were busy talking and eating, while we guys were busy hogging the food and failed to notice that some of the staff members had actually gathered in a neat line in the central passage almost right next to our t...

Yesterday evening, I was driving back home, as usual, and was stuck in some traffic in Koramangala, when I was suddenly witness to a typical multi-storey house, by the road, and the extended family that was resident within it. It was around 7:30 in the evening and, since I was stationary on the road outside, I could easily catch a glimpse of everything that was taking place in the basement and on the first, or should I say, mezzanine floor. The first thing I noticed, in the basement, was an elderly woman stationed in front of a gas, cooking something in a large vessel. From the steam that was rising from it, it appeared to be some form of rice. There was another vessel placed near by, which I guessed housed either sambar or some form of dal . Not very far from this place, a group of guys who could be easily classified as 'teenagers' had started a game of cricket, on a small virtual pitch. The guy who was fielding closest to the kitchen, was even helping the old lady move and c...

Over the past few months, the job market here in India has really opened up and every company has had to let go a bunch of good and bad employees, while gracefully welcoming a new batch. Every employee comes up with his or her own reason for quitting – better prospects, new profile, chance to work closer to home and many more; but chances are that almost 90% of the employees leave for only one reason – more money!! With this background, allow me to introduce you to the hero of our story – Sreedhara Venupillai (name changed). I have no idea why I had to change his name; no one reads my blog anyways…but still. So, Mr. Sreedhara Venupillai quit his job in a big firm and went on to join a even bigger firm without knowing that the formalities of the exit interview had been outsourced, by his previous employers, to a HR Analytics Firm. Hence, the news of our hero’s resignation travelled through the world wide web and reached an excel sheet which was being maintained by this HR firm...

After a more than exciting match last Wednesday, between India and Pakistan, it was no surprise that the last day of the financial year was spent on discussing literally everything that occurred on the fateful night in Mohali. India won the match by 29 runs and booked a spot in the World Cup final, thanks to a 85 not out by Sachin Tendulkar and some lusty blows by Suresh Raina in the death overs. Credit must also go to the Indian bowlers - Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra, Munaf Patel, Harbhajan and Yuvraj Singh, who picked up 2 wickets a piece and ensured a sweet victory for the dignitaries, from Delhi and Islamabad, who had tuned up for a crunch semi-final. However, it was the mannerism in which he game was played that brought a doubt in everyone's minds and became the lead topic of discussion for a billion people in India and abroad. Sachin getting dropped 5 times, Haffez's shot selection after his fluent knock, Younis Khan's and Misbah's strike rate as they chased 260 all ...

One evening, sometime last week, both Prachi and me decided to go for a small walk and also do some grocery shopping on our way back. Before leaving, however, I somehow managed to leave the window of our living room open. Now, leaving the window open on a hot evening in the Shivanand Nagar locality with some construction work in progress, not very far off, is equivalent of giving out free visas to a dozen or more migrant mosquitoes, who were hovering all over our living room when we returned. Since, I was the culprit to this crime, I got myself busy in killing the rascals, before they could go about their business -of sucking out our blood. SWAT! THWACK! The first two mosquitoes were relatively easy. I had to make strategic use of my height to get to the third guy, while the rest were trying to hide behind the tube light, fridge, TV and wherever else they could escape too. I shook a few things and got the better of a two or three more, as they tried to escape. All this while Prachi was...

This is an incident that happened during my time in Australia some 5 years back. The cricket super series was being played in Melbourne and I, along with a few friends, had a chance to go meet some Indian players during their practice session at the wonderful ' Telstra Stadium ', as it was known during that time. Now, the fan-following for the Indian cricketers was no where close to what it is back home and we got to meet them one-on-one. We became such good friends that the players actually offered a few of us to pad up and have a go at batting, against some of the local Aussie bowlers who had turned up. So, we borrowed a few pads, bats and gloves, decked up like Indian batsmen, and went into the nets. First, my friend took strike to a Aussie fast bowler and swung his bat, only to find his middle stump uprooted. He got another chance to bat. Again he swung and skied the ball so high that a fielder came right under and took a simple catch. It was my chance next, and being the ...

Around 3 years back, when my parents moved into our apartment in Tilaknagar, Mumbai, I was told that some 'Kulkarnis' were our immediate neighbours. Now, this is a very common surname in the Western part of India, but over the last year, I got to interact a lot with Mr. Kshitij Kulkarni and have realized for sure that there is nothing 'common' about this individual. For starters, he is a Geologist by profession. He started his career in the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Mumbai, where he worked as a Scientific Officer. After a 13 year stint there, he joined the United Nations in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in Vienna, as a Isotope Hydrologist. His job profile was to study the various water bodies on the earth and this took him all over the world. During this time, he even got to work alongside Mohamed ElBaradei , who apart from being a Director with the IAEA will, soon, also be a candidate for the Egyptian Presidential elections. He spent almo...

Driving on the beautiful NH-4 highway, some 500kms away from Mumbai, during lunch time and suddenly we saw a sign board that indicated that we were very close to a city, whose name if literally translated from Marathi to English would mean 'City of Foxes'. Now, I am not sure if there is even a single fox in the city because it actually derives it's name from a mythological demon which was supposed to protect it. The city is, also, sometimes known as a Princely state, since everybody from the Peshwas to the British Raj had used it as their headquarters. Being the ideal spot to catch a quick bite, we exited the highway and entered the city through a large gate or Dwaar as it is commonly known. Just behind the gate, we were welcomed by an advertising hoarding that actual depicts the Mona Lisa decorated with a golden nose ring and also adorning two beautiful earrings and a wonderful diamond necklace that would give any bride, a run for her money. Moving on, into the city, a...

Every once in a while, a Traveler on the journey of Life comes across a small village or settlement where he wishes to halt for sometime. It is during this halt that an Almighty power weaves a beautiful web around him and shows him the different facets of human emotions. Initially, as he enters the village, he is met with a lot of inquisitive eyes. Most of the villagers act curious and a small group even looks at him with scorn. But as time passes by they all start to understand him and their true feelings start to flow. The small group that looked at him with scorn enhances their hatred for him and decide to stay at at arms' length from him. But the remaining majority take a liking for him and accept him in their lives. They welcome him to their homes, share their food and thoughts with him and become a part of his big family. As time passes, he starts to get very comfortable with everything around him and at that very moment he is made to realize a bitter truth that he is, but, a...