Days of my life!!

I was really looking forward to my first visit to Mumbai in 2009. Nitin was due to get married on the 15th and all cousins and relatives had descended to our home base, after almost a decade, to bless the couple. This was my opportunity to not only catch up with my relatives who stay abroad, but also get a real first-hand experience of a typical Konkani Wedding..... Part 1: Shanbhags' visit the Fish Market I had chosen a late evening flight out of Bengaluru to return home and a slight delay during take-off and a even greater delay, due to air traffic, during landing, meant that I only reached home at 12:45am. As per our family custom, I still ate a couple of pieces of fried nagli and slept off. I woke up at around 8:30am the next day, only to find that my dad was already off to Pune and sister off to college. Mom had woken me up before she left and instructed me to atleast have breakfast that she had prepared for me, before I headed off to Ghatkopar. I first called Vasant uncle a...

Saturday, 31st January 2009, marked an important day in the life of the Open-Silicon cricket team. The team was to debut in a friendly 20-20 leather ball cricket match against Philips/NXP team, which was organized to co-incide with the visit of our CEO, who is a big fan of cricket. Yes, we won the match by 8 wickets.....but this blog is not about the match. Infact, I just wanted to note down a few interesting excerpts from my conversation with our CEO to and from the cricket ground. A little bit about our Boss, before I begin - He hails from Pakistan and moved onto the US to finish his studies. He holds a PhD and was a professor for quite a while in the University of Nebraska. He worked with Intel for over a decade before co-founding Open-Silicon in 2003. Unfortunately, my knowledge about my boss was only limited to things that I had heard about him and from his corporate profile on Linkedin.com. The ocassion mentioned above gave me a unique oppurtunity to know him a little better. I ...

Yesterday was a big day for me. After a long long time, I was going to meet my big cousin sister Sumita ben and my three year old niece, Sachi. I had been looking forward to this day ever since Sumita tai had told me, in December, of her planned visit to Bengaluru. Sumita had planned to stay at her friend Purnima's house initially and than move to my bachelors' pad over the weekend. I wanted to go pick her up from the airport, but she had decided to cab it and warned me from coming 60kms to receive her. Instead, I decided to go meet her at Purnimas' place, cause I simply couldn't wait till the evening. At around 10:15am, as planned, their cab pulled into the Raheja Residency where Purnima, her little son Prahlad and me were eagerly waiting to welcome them ( sans garland and red carpet ). After she stepped out of the cab, the first thing I noticed about her is the fact that she hadn't changed much. I don't remember the last time I had seen her, but the Time, the...

Today evening, for some strange reason everyone in office, atleast in my cubicle became very nostalgic. Derrick and myself got together and started discussing about how school was back in the late 80's and early 90's. The discussion then went onto to the world famous Doordarshan channel, which was like the only source of entertainment!! We discussed about all the serials from Ramayan, Mahabharat to Surabhi which was hosted by Renuka Sahane and Siddharth Kak. As compared to the 'soap operas' that run today, these serials ran only once a week and everyone used to look forward to them. We even recounted the fact that there used to be a Hindi Movie every Sunday afternoon and on Saturday afternoon, they used to showcase one reginal movie every week. Slowly and steadily, we couldn't help but remember on song that had won a million hearts at that point of time. It was a song about peace and diversity of our great nation and used to play multiple times daily and had litera...

Yesterday, I witnessed my first accident of 2009. It's also the first since I bought my flying ranee (that's what I call my little two-wheeled wonder). Fortunately for me, I wasn't a part of the accident.....well almost!! The sankrant or pongal holiday on Wednesday meant that I was looking forward to spend Tuesday evening woth some vodka and chicken. I left a little early from office and encountered a decent bit of traffic on the roads. As usual, I took a U-turn on the inner ring road and started zipping along the long curved 3 lane road, heading for Indiranagar. This is the stretch where I reach my maximum speed of aroun 70 kmph. However, due to the traffic I wasn't able to accelerate. A few 100 metres after the U turn, comes a long left hand bend. I moved to the outermost lane and overtook a few cars as I reached the bend. There was a guy riding a Bajaj Pulsar ahead of me. Next to us was a White Sumo carrying a few IT proffessinals home. I was waiting for the bend ...

A couple of years back, before I took up my first job here in Bengaluru, I had visited an elderly person on my fathers' request. I had to travel to his factory situated in Yelahanka, on the outskirts of the city and only remember him as Mr. Kamat. He suggested a few books for me to read and amongst the other things he told me, I distinctly remember him telling me his observation on life, especially related to a person's career. He told me that it is most likely that every hard-working individuals goes through four stages of his professional life: Stage 1 : This is when one takes up his first job. His main aim now, is to be self sufficient and independent. He looks to save money as far as possible. Stage 2 : This typically starts when he gets married. He now plans for his immediate family (wife, kids, parents..etc). Stage 3 : The onset of this stage normally occurs some 5 - 6 years after Stage 2. This happens, when he feels he can easily take care of his family and looks to expa...

Just last week, I watched the much talked about Pakistani movie - ' Khuda kay Liye ' and I must say that it does change a person's perspective about Islam in the modern day world. At first, it is hard to digest that even today, a lot of educated men could fall victim to the brian-washing of a few fanatic leaders. Whats more disheartening, is to realize that the actions of such soft-minded individuals spells doom for the rest of the people from that community who still tend to reason out some logic from whats taught to them. To be frank, I don't know how true all this is. I had a few Pakistani friends in Australia. One of them was my classmate and I still remember him telling me that it's a nightmare for him to pass immigration in any country. His ancestors hailed from Gujrat and he told me that it was very difficult for his family to obtain an Indian visa to visit their relatives. Another distinct memory was of another guy who hailed from a Multan and stayed in the ...