new year

2012 promises to be a very good year. The other day I was watching a program on Vijay Tv where they had invited many astrologists. They gave their predictions on how the year 2012 would be for different rashis, one which caught my eye was for Tula rashi,

lady1 : For tula rashi first half of this year will be very fruitful. For professionals the second half might have some relationship issues.

The host asks Sir1 for his predictions

Sir1 : Last year tula rashi might have had certain difficulties in financial situations, but from middle of 2012 the stars are turning in their favour and they will be successful in all their endeavours

then Sir2

Sir2: I am afraid 2012 is going to be a very bad year for Tula rashi, health wise they might face some trouble etc etc..

The host concluded : So it appears for tula rashi people 2012 is going to be very successful year.

I switched off my tv.

In other areas, Abhishek Bacchan is hoping his daughter might bring him some much needed good fortune. Already he is back with many new ‘Idea’ commercials and news is they are planning many more.

Meanwhile Australia are not done pulverizing Indian attack, and BCCI is planning a ‘The new Agnipath’ series- a 5-0 series featuring India-Bangladesh. Venue is tentatively Delhi ferozshah kotla for the first 2 matches, and depending on the result, the remaining three will also be held there. The groundman has been given DVD of 1999 ind-pak match for reference. Hearing this Bhajji was seeing licking his fingers in anticipation. Zimbabwe might also travel to India and if they dont agree West Indies have agreed to tour again for a 3 match series to give much needed winning numbers in 2012 for India ( you might remember how much they helped us last year).

And today morning I saw that the Vinay Pathak Ad on the ‘mindblasting’ series was still on – guys !! seriously ?

bus conductor

It’s been a while since I took a train to Chennai. I have been taking a bus instead. Last weekend, I took a volvo bus from ksrtc. There was no conductor for this particular bus and hence the driver doubled up as conductor to check the tickets of all passengers before starting. It took a long time for him and we were late by 40 mins. In-spite of starting at around 12 in the night, I still could not sleep,  mine was the very first seat and the driver-conductor had not put down the flimsy namesake partition which cuts out some of the light from the windscreen. With the light from oncoming traffic blinding me, I could hardly have slept even if I was very sleepy. So I went and sat in the seat meant for the conductor and started chatting with the driver.  I sat there for 3 hours until we crossed Chittoor.

I found it highly interesting and though at first,  found it as a hindrance and boring, soon he brightened up with the substitute conductor’s company.  I knew Volvo buses can go really fast but I was very much surprised to see that we were traveling at 100 kmph without as much as an increase in volume of the engine or the slightest of vibrations out of normal. If it weren’t for the speedometer reading I would not have believed it myself. He spoke about how he joined ksrtc, how he got promoted from driving Tata buses between small towns to driving Volvo bus between big cities, the 15 day rigorous training given for all drivers promoted to Volvo, the different engines and buses which ksrtc has, the electronics on his dashboard, the difference between our bmtc volvo buses and ksrtc volvo buses, about lorries and trucks and drivers in general and what not. We even did comparison between Volvo multi axle bus and a Mercedes multi axle bus :) .. If you know me and you have not guessed by now or might be wondering why the usual connection hasn’t come up yet, here it is – He was a substitute driver himself that day for the chennai route, his usual route was to Ernakulam and back. He started talking more after I told him I have been in Ernakulam for 3 yrs and have used the kochi-bangalore volvo many times. We compared the routes from Bangalore to Kochi against Chennai routes via Krishnagiri and Chittoor. Thrissur Palakkad route is still bad it seems. I do not know when it was good either.

Dip dip dip

Rain

Everybody loves rain. Some like to sit cozily in the house with a hot cup of tea while it rains outside, others like to be in the rain, either driving a bike or walking around. I like riding my bike in the rain. There is no fun in getting wet if you have to go to office and work all day. That is where rain coats come in, to keep you dry while you still enjoy the ride in rain. I had a fully body rain coat. I already had a top jacket, all I needed to buy was the bottom pant. With both on, I was fully rain proof all the way to office and back. That is what I thought when I paid the cheerful looking shopkeeper two hundred rupees for that pant. I got to test my new water proofing the very next day, it was pouring rain and I had a meeting to attend. Losing no time I started on my bike in the rain enjoying the cool breeze, the wonderful feeling of cold water on one’s face (or whatever left of it on the front of the helmet). That was when I found someone somewhere had forgot to check the pant for its intended end usage. There was a hole in the pant and since water has this unique capacity of seeping through the smallest of holes, it soon started filling up. The same water which just a short time back was a ‘wonderful feeling’ and the reason behind the cool breeze wasn’t so much now. When your shirt gets wets, you just adjust to it and take a hot cup of tea once you reached office. No amount of hot cup of tea or coffee or adjustment is going to help when your pants are wet along with those aaram ka mamla hai thing gets wet. When the first drop of water seeps through the thick denim jeans is when nature fights with nurture : Nature says boss run for cover, forget your bike , nurture keeps you waiting until the signal turns green at the traffic light and lets nature take over only after you followed all traffic rules and with proper blinking yellow light indicators reach a nearby tea shop or shelter, meanwhile water is filling up inside the rain coat slowly soaking up your pant completely and soon you start feeling like sitting in a little pool of water complete with sloshing sound and feeling. When you feel the water droplets falling from your thigh to your shin inside the jeans which itself is covered by the shiny looking new dark blue raincoat pant, that is when you keep your chin high and look down upon people nearby who weren’t smart enough to plan for the rainy days and buy a rain coat or were stupid enough to leave it at home, never let your chin down and most important of all never let anyone know that the shiny new raincoat pant has a hole in it :) .  That was the last day I wore that raincoat pant :) . That incident has scarred me so much that even after 3 yrs I have not yet bought my second pair of raincoat pants and I now stop when it rains heavily or drive through and get wet – atleast I know I am going to get wet now :)

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My earliest memories of rain are from the time my family was in Berhampur. There used to be a small ground nearby at a slightly lower level from the road. One had to climb down to the ground. It formed a natural pond when it rains and it used to rain pretty heavily there, so soon the ground would become a huge pond. The water would come upto my knees. Thrashing in the water was a major pastime for me and my friends then. We used to play everyday there until the day someone told us there was a crocodile in the pond. Now, we had never seen a crocodile and we weren’t planning to see one live slithering in the same water where we thrashed around either. All we knew about the crocodile was, pappu’s brother had told us, it was a huge beast terribly strong in water but weak on land and would tear us apart if we ever ventured in the water. Though we saw grown up people, ignoring our cries of warning for not entering the water as it was infested with crocodiles, wading through the shin high ( for them) water to reach the other side of the ground and upto their homes, we, the gang of three, believed in our savior, 6 yr old pappu who was the one who told us about the croc. Exactly how he found out that there was a crocodile?  He said his elder brother had seen the crocodile floating near the far end near the old banyan tree. That settled it, even if we doubted pappu we could not doubt his elder brother who was already in 3rd std and a big bully. If he was afraid of something, the whole world should be afraid of it then. We never played in the ground pond again. Soon the rains stopped and in a few days all the water dried up. Me and my friend ran up to the pond to have a look at the crocodile now that all the water was gone. We didnt find it. Dejected we came back and on the way we met pappu who said that his brother had seen the crocodile running away from the ground-pond. since all the water was getting dried up, and he had chased it all the way on his bicycle, a BSA champ, till the natural pond at the end of the road which had water year round. We were astounded, his brother was both brave and clever, knowing that crocodile was weak on land he had chased it himself and saved us all from it, else it would have attacked us when we came to play on the ground. Meanwhile grown ups had now started using the ground for their evening walks.

Kaaliphlower paratha

I wanted to make Gobi paratha. Don’t know why. I was sitting in my home one day watching tv. And for some weird reason I was watching ‘The Anacondas’ movie – the movie where the normally slow-dull giant snake is shown as super charged super quick Rajnikanth robo of the snake world capable of catching falling people whilst hanging from a tree.  I am not able to catch my cellphone while I am sitting in a chair, let alone hanging from a tree. Anyways watching the movie which shows snake eating so many people, made me realize that I was hungry too. Though I need not catch flying people or sneak up on a vegetable from under water, I could make something myself.  That’s when I got the thing about wanting to make Gobi paratha. So on an impulse I went to the nearest shop and bought among other other things a cauliflower and onions. I found lots of recipes for making Gobi parathas and there wasn’t much to chose between them. Almost all of them wanted me to chop the gobi nicely, do the usual tadka stuff then put in the gobi and let it cook for sometime before adding all masala items and finally some besan flour. Then I was supposed to put this mixture in middle of rolled out chapathi, close it nicely and roll it out again. Simple enough. But for me, the mixture was never dry, no matter how many extra minutes I kept it on flame or besan I added, it only turned to a paste which still had enough moisture which spoilt my well laid plans of making stuffed parathas :( . With the Anaconda killed from the huge explosion the misery ended on Tv, not much for me in the kitchen. Someone said necessity is the mother of invention. The simplest idea sometimes might be the best. So, instead of trying to make the gobi masala mixture dry enough so as to stuff it into my rolled out dough, I put the entire dough into the gobi mixture and added a bit more flour and got my own gobi mixture dough. ( I wasn’t caring much for inventions or thinking about anything else, I was hungry and I had put better part of an hour into this mixture and the Anacondas movie kept replaying back in my mind again)

The idea worked out well and I was able to make the parathas with my roti king itself ! :) . In fact it worked out so well that 2 days later when there was a repeat telecast of the Anacondas I made Gobi paratha again with the rest of the gobi i bought that day :)

Added Later : The feedback I received from the gang in office is I should look towards cooking as a more lucrative vocation than validation. There were also few requests for starting a mid-day meals scheme with a pre-planned menu which I rejected outright as I was neither a politician trying to earn a point nor are they undernourished children.

What happens …?

What happens when, year after year your company deducts TDS and gives you a Form 16 end of year and you file your Income tax diligently?

Possibly 5 years down the line, you might get a mail saying there is Income tax arrears of so-and-so amount and asking you to approach your current assessing officer. You call one number, someone says they are not the right person and that you should call the office whose seal is on the returns, approach them with the right documents (TDS certificate for the year 5 yrs back) and clarify.

Recently i got such a mail for assessment year 2007-08 which is actually financial year 2006-07. I am excited at the opportunity of digging in my own history and uncovering documented evidence that 6 years back my company did indeed pay the taxes which they said they did.

Added later : And what if you don’t pay your taxes ? With enough luck and if you enhance your capabilities you might become a minister some day.

I read ‘The Glass Palace’

One day while walking through Landmark book store I came across this book with an eye catching cover-page. It was this.
Then I decided to look for other books written by the author Amitav Ghosh. All his books have really nice looking cover-page. Though I picked up the book based on the cover :) I soon found out that the book is superb. Amitav Ghosh style of writing is much different from what I have read so far. All his stories seemed to be based in pre-independence India and at some point of time in the book he comes to Bengal. There is something endearing to read a story based in pre-independence Bengal.

I picked up one more book of his ‘The Glass Palace’ from a library. There are times when you hear or read something which makes you suddenly realize that such a thing has escaped your mind for so many years. I got such a feeling when I read the Glass Palace. It is Burma. When I read the book I suddenly realized all my life, even when talking about possible tourist spots, geography lessons, I have never heard or thought about Burma except when, in the movie ‘Motor Sundaram Pillai’ Sivaji Ganeshan comes back from Rangoon after Japanese bombing. It was a strange feeling that I missed such a big country so close to India. We talk about Malaysia, Thailand, holiday spots here and there. Anyways, the book Glass Palace tells the story which starts in Burma 1885 with the British invasion of Burma and keeps going back to Burma through a period spanning 90-100 years.  It gives a vivid description of life in Burma, before the invasion and after the invasion becoming a so called colony of British where it becomes the sole supplier of high quality teak wood. The journey of teak wood from forests high up the mountains with armies of elephants and mahouts and other specialized workers, how they train the elephants, how the powerful mountain rivers are used as natural transport networks, the frightening episodes of Anthrax affected elephants, the planning involved in drying the tree before cutting it down so that all the moisture dries out from the bark and it can then float on water, is highly descriptive and interesting to read. The book also shows how innocent poor people from villages in Tamilnadu are tricked into joining the work force as laborers in rubber plantations in Malaysia – which happens to be a new wonder product in late 19th century. In short it is a rag-to-riches-to-rags story of a 11 year old orphaned boy working in a road side stall in Mandalay in Burma who becomes a millionaire later in life as teak and rubber industry booms and loses it all during word war 2 during Japenese invasion of Burma and internal violence against non-Burmese people, walks all the way across Burma to India and in the end dies a contended old man in Kolkata. It is an epic book and arguably his best.

Inner Road Road

I ride my bike to work. Having nothing better to do on my way way to office in the morning and on my way back home I started noticing the vehicles on the road, the people riding them, the style of riding or the lack of it. Most days it is mildly amusing to see the different kinds of the people from the shop keeper on his bike – usually a Bajaj M80 or a TvS XL – which is almost fully engulfed under the cardboard boxes which are tied to the bike and the shopkeeper himself just barely seated, to, the Honda Civics and BMWs which zoom past, traffic permitting. Although every person on the road is unique, broadly speaking they do come under some categories, myself included.

the-spitter : There is joke in one tamil movie – if all the spit that we Indians spit on the road is collected and let out for irrigation we would be less dependent on seasonal rains and there would be lesser Dam disputes!!

We Indians love to spit, we use it in a multitude of ways from showing disgust to exercising our vocal cord and spitting the resultant saliva or in certain cases mucous liquid . It also comes in other colors, add a bit of pan beeda you get the green color, to it add some lime and we get the famed red color with which govt office staircase, rail coaches, cinema theatres and in unfortunate cases your own sparkling white kurta gets a spray down. The Ghutka gives the color a bit of flavor as well. We spit while walking, we even spit from a running bus, a car or a train window. If only aircrafts had open windows, we would have taken it to air and and given Indian Army a new air to land missile which not only causes visible irritation but can also be shown as an unspoken word as to what we think of the enemy. Spitting has become so common that the sound of spitting has percolated into our vocabulary.  The sound  ‘thoo’ indicates a close friend or associate that this is what we think of his idea.  One of my friends brought it to my notice sometime back. Why do people have this uncontrollable urge to exercise their throat muscle and spit out on the road everytime they stop at a traffic signal. And I am not even talking about the guy who spits by slightly raising his helmet while traveling at 60 km/hr. A traffic signal is probably the yuckiest place on earth considering the math. The dialogue from the movie Anniyan when modified for this situation fits in- One guy spitting once on the road on his way to work is not much, but consider every guy on the road spitting at every signal and then consider the number of signals we have just in Bangalore!! Its not that traveling in a bike or car gives one a controllable urge to give a bit of ourselves to our homeland. I cannot sweat for my homeland atleast let me spit :P .  The sad part is very few of these people on Bangalore road are illiterate people. It is only the mindset. Would the same person spit on his yard or balcony ?

the-youth : They usually zoom off on their bikes and cars and are usually way faster than I am,  whatever be their bike a splendour or a pulsar.  I meet them only at signals and at times when there is so much traffic

the-not-so-youth: Like uncles dying their hair black to remain in middle age the-not-so-youth were once Youth. Yes I fall in this range too. I get amused the most or irritated the most with them. Most of the guys do not use their rear view mirror unless its to comb his hair or worse they would have removed the company fitted rear view mirror as it affects the aesthetic looks of their bikes! You will know someone is the not-so-youth type when he keeps looking side ways to see if some car or bike is too near him. The rear view mirror might not be giving you the complete picture but atleast you can see the big garbage truck coming your way without having to crank your neck!  If you go fast enough you won’t need a rear view mirror is what my friend used to tell me. But the not-so-youth is not that kind who zoom past you, they can hardly keep their balance at slow speeds without dragging their feet. If they are not able to balance how did they manage to ride the figure 8 required to get a license? The not-so-youth do not believe in helmet rules. “No saar, it is heavy, hair loss you know, head itching, summer time Saar sweating, I can’t see on my sides Saare”. When they were in their actual ‘youth’ the helmet rule was not applicable in most parts of India so they learnt riding their bikes without one and now they find the helmet which protects their thick head too heavy so they balance it on the petrol tank until the next signal or hanging from the rearview mirror making a radical use of the mirror not thought of by the manufacturer. Even if they did wear one the strap would not be locked or there will be a cellphone stuck in between the helmet and the ear.

the-beedi boys: If there is one thing which irks me more than seeing a biker riding with his helmet hanging from the rear-view mirror it is when I see the reason for him not wearing a helmet is to have a smoke while riding home. I do understand that smoking is an addiction, but is it so much of an addiction that one cannot smoke before getting onto bike or have one after reaching ones destination? Or is it that thrill of riding a bike one handed without a helmet in peak hour Bangalore traffic?

Civic sense and common sense : one, we choose to ignore, and the other, ignores most of us. If most of us had at least one of these riding in Bangalore traffic would be much less painful !

Nokia 3310


Back in 2003, I was still in college. My brother had recently joined a pharmaceutical company in Hyderabad. His job required him to have a mobile phone. He came home one weekend from Hyderabad with his first cellphone – a Nokia 3310. Until then the only cellphone I had seen was from far away in the hands of a guy-in-bus, a lady-in-car, uncle-in-car etc, but this was close, real close! We didn’t have a landline either then, so this small greenish thing in my brother’s hand was our phone.

It was an amazing thing!! It had a small LCD screen where it proudly displayed Airtel. I expected a cellphone to have just call and end buttons other than the digits but NO it had so many things !! A clock, an alarm, a calender and Games!! The Snake and the Tetris.  And the display was always ON, the phone never really had to be switched off!! Too much. The phone never worked in chennai, the days of automatic roaming enabled had not yet come. For a mind not yet used to computers or a simple landline, this was a bit too much. My brother had enabled this keypad auto lock and try as I might I could not unlock it. Even though the LCD displayed showed ‘Press Unlock then *’ I couldn’t decipher the code and unlock the phone, it was too much for me. In a way a disgrace for a Electronics engineering student :) . It had irritating monophonic ringtones, but we loved it. There was SaareJahan se accha, Nokia default tune and few other good ones and few terrible ones like Frog and Hop. Then there was this vibration. It used to be so loud I used to wonder why would someone require a ringtone when this vibration is so loud. For our simple minds it was too much and we looked up my brother in awe that he operates this thing on a day to day basis! Slowly we got used to it and starting loving it and couldn’t part with it. Every visit from my brother was awaited, not for him alone but for his cellphone too.

These days he has a touch screen phone with a latest movie mp3 song as ringtone but it isn’t the same as the monophonic tune from the 3310.

wierd -2

I had once noticed how I found few things which were very difficult to explain. Here

I saw something recently. This is far more bizarre than bike reverse parking and washing the road in front of your house twice a day religiously.  Here it is

There is an apartment complex on the other side of the street where I live. Every house has a balcony. Some people use it to dry their clothes, some sit and relax. Few don’t use it at all. Almost all balconies have an Iron grill for safety. Two houses have caught my interest.

1. The people in the first house have put up card board boxes filling up any open space in the balcony that no visible or invisible light can pass through.

2. This is even more bizarre. The people living here might be straight from another planet. Few days back they removed the door to the balcony and sealed the opening with bricks and mortar. Where there was a neat cream colored door is now a neatly plastered wall. There is no entrance to the balcony now. It is useless.

Any ideas on why someone would pay their life’s savings into buying a house with a balcony and road side view and seal the door and make it useless??