The Cricket Blog -1

Its always interesting to see almost everybody in India being hyper active when it comes to cricket.

The audience cannot take anything peacefully be it a victory or defeat. Victory  and immediately some cricketers become demigods. Defeat and immediately the demigod is reduced to a useless weasel.The amount of hype a media gives some cricketers has spelled the players' doom. In spite of a number of doomed cricketers the experts (who probably have never played cricket) commenting on strategy, analyzing a player's mind and capabilities.

The current captain of Indian cricket team, i think, is the result of one such hype. The poor chap seems to be a nice guy but the way the media is treating him, chasing him and writing him, it would be a time for him to worry about his career in cricket. A couple of failures everybody will write him off.

And finally, it is the team by itself. I wonder if it is the public and media pressure, they keep trying to do something new to win a game and end up in disasters. The current series with Australia proved this.

a) There was verbal aggression which ended up looking silly and childish when it was not backed by substance. Suddenly, when they realized there is no substance, the aggression ended abruptly.But there was no display of aggression in what mattered the most, the game.

b) There were desperate changes in the batting order without allowing any batsman to settle down in one slot. This was also pointed out by a senior player in the opponent team. The surprise in this was that a batsman who had proven himself for over 10 years in a particular slot being shoved around in the order and finally even dropped for one game.

c) The team's thoughtless use of bowlers in not using the bowlers who have been the best on the day to bowl their full quota of overs.

All this proves one thing, the team is run by a bunch of unprofessional people who also lack common sense. Can someone take their brains back from their home and start using it please. The need of the hour, from a common-sense perspective, seems to be professionalism, confidence and mental strength which should automatically increase the aggression in the field.

It is not a big deal to lose a match or a series as long as a professional outfit displays their competitive capabilities and gives the opponent a run for their money. Neither is it a big deal to have one or two bad days at work but it is important that people get to see a consistent good effort.

Wow!!! another long blog that nobody but me is going to read :)

The Search Scare

I read an article in Reuters which talks about what are top search topics by country. This article is based on statistics published by Google. This has increased my recent fear about Internet and privacy. The more you search in some search engine, the more the search engine, the more they know about you. It is possible for the search engines to know more about yourselves that you yourself do.

One of my friends called me and told me that he tried to use windows xp's "Find" feature and one of his monitoring software reported that the search is trying to reach some IP which belonged to Microsoft. Strange, I thought!!

With the increasing use of Internet in almost every walk of life like shopping, banking, food and searching information, it is inevitable that our privacy will be completely compromised.

As in everything there are both good and bad in Internet but it is possible for any of these popular search engines to compromise your private information. Even if they put in a small program in your machine which tracks your daily work and reports it to their database, most of us casual users are not even going to be aware of this.

Scary!! But I guess we will probably have to live with this unless we take some small steps like not using the same search engine over and over (at least scatter the information till the search engines merge and share data), using some security tools to know which software is trying to send what information outside your computer etc.

Gotta go now..i have a to google up some information :(

Insha Allah

I am in Dubai on work now. I had a conversation with one of our vendors regarding some work that he had to help me finish. Just to give the readers (if in the unlikely scenario of someone reading my blog) the context, there was a part of my work that depended on he completing his part. So, the conversation was simply about when he would be able to come and complete the work.

Literally in every sentence he spoke, he goes like "Insha Allah, i would be able to do this", "Insha Allah, i would be able to come there tomorrow". It is not just this gentleman but also a few other people who I spoke to spoke the same way. Two things stuck me on this, one on a serious note and the other a funny part.

Let me write the funny part first. Btw, if you are a Muslim and you are reading this blog, let me first assure you I am NOT making fun of the religion nor am I making fun of Allah-The God.

So, here goes the funny part. If someone was incompetent at work but always said "Insha Allah, i will be able to do it"; I wonder if the person would be blamed for his incompetence and removed from his job or would that be, Allah did not so desire and hence the work was not done. I would probably say "Insha Allah, you are fired" and close the story.

On a serious note, it was amazing to see how he believes in that supreme power. If not for HIM, nothing would happen. If HE so desires everything would happen. The consistent stress on the fact that anything he does is because Allah makes him do it. I am simply amazed by the belief these people have in God and their respect to God. Awesome, truly awesome.

HappIness

It was fun watching the celebrations of India's victory over England in the cricket test series. It was really nice to see the happy faces of the poor cricketers who have been bashed so much by every Tom, Dick and Harry. I have noticed, in my career in the IT industry, how a team's victory brings joy to everybody. In that moment of victory, people forget all their interpersonal issues and just savour and enjoy the moment. Some victories also end long standing animosities.

A team's victory is a great feeling overall and the happiness is clearly reflected and while relishing the team's happiness I forgot some Indian cricket bashing questions myself, which is a good thing.

To me, it was another realization how someone's happiness, even if it was on a stupid TV screen, made me happy. I like being around people who are happy. I want to be happy so that other people around me can feel my happiness and become happy themselves.

The goal, finally, is to try and be happy as much as possible and keep everybody around me happy. Most of the times it is in hind sight we realize mistakes or inevitable circumstances which create unhappiness. But the only way I think is to move ahead just seeing what positives you can take out of it. This Indian team seems to have managed to do it after an almost certain defeat in Lord's.

As the script writer aptly points out in the movie "In Pursuit of Happyness", there is only an I in happiness, there is no "Y".

The Simpsons

I watched this movie "The Simpsons, the movie" yesterday. Outrageously hilarious movie is the only way i can describe it. My incompetency in English vocabulary limits my capabilities to explain it better.

The movie starts with making fun of the viewers, calling them idiots for watching something in a theatre that they can watch in TV everyday and that is the start of the Homer Simpson's outrageous antics.

From there on it takes us on a laughter filed 1.5 hours. Simple comedy and with good message. And, be careful, watch every scene and listen to every dialogue carefully lest you miss some of the wonderful subtle comedy.

I recommend it highly for a 2 hours of stress free time, the last 30 minutes to recollect the movie and laugh again :)

A sad state

I visited a temple in TamilNadu last week. This is a very old temple. I went on a Friday and there were number of visitors. The sad part was that the temple was so dirty and very poorly maintained. And what was worse? All the people who came there did not even seem to be bothered. This was my biggest disappointment. We seem to have accepted anything and everything as a way of life.

I think i should do something about it. There were a number of people asking for alms. I wonder if it would be a good idea to make them clean the temple and give them a pay and allow them to stay there. That might be a win win for everybody. Need to see if i can implement this plan.

He Goes, He Sees, SHE Conquers

A friend of mine told me this morning that he would be getting married soon and his life partner has been chosen. This blog is a result of our conversation this morning.

This is an arranged marriage. Well..all marriages are arranged in some way or the other but this is an Indian Arranged Marriage. For those who do not know...its a very simple process

Parents decide who their kids should marry... The boy or the girl, henceforth referred to as the victim, goes through the following process

Step 1: Horoscopes are exchanged between families (only in the same cast, creed etc). Nobody knows where all in the world the horoscopes have travelled. When matching horoscopes are found...the victims are shortlisted.

Step 2: The photos of the guy and the girl (victims) are exchanged by the families.

Step 3: Parents, Siblings, Grand old men and close relatives do the next round shortlisting by looking at the photos.

Step 4: One evening parents of the victim calls the victim with a huge smile on their face and present him/her with a white envelope. The entire family will now be looking at the victim, while the embarassed and shy victim skims through the photos and shortilists his/her prospective partner victim. In some cases, the victim may be lucky and may get an email with a zip file attachment containing the photographs and BioData (note: NOT CV or Resume) of prospective victims.This is an optional step and some families skip this.

Step 5: The male victim is invited to the house of the female victim or to a neutral venue (primarily to negate any advantage the female victim or her family may get) where the victims gets a chance to interview each other.

Step 6: After this the victims talk to their parents to give their consent to accept the other victim as their life partner...if one of them does not agree the process repeats either from step 4 if there are more prospective victims shortlisted or else it will repeat from step 1.

There is more to an arranged marriage ...but we have seen the process initation here and this blog is all about step 5.

This is where it happens ..He goes, He sees, SHE conquers. Some people say that SHE conquers his heart and some may say SHE conquers his life. I do not want to say what she conquers but "He Goes, He Sees, SHE Conquers" still holds good. What say, eh??

Note: This process is known to be working for straight (man and woman) relationships but there has been no recorded evidence of this process working for same sex marriages. Though i do not see any reason why it should not work :)

Acknowledgements: Mr.Saurabh Agrawal

OM Coffee

There is this small food joint called Food Days near my house. I go there for my breakfast occassionaly. The first time i went to this place i ordered my breakfast and a coffee. There is a gentleman by name Krishna who makes you your coffee. I requested him to make a cup of coffee and make it strong for me. He had an instant smile and he made my coffee. Finally signed it off with an "OM" . I hesitated to drink the coffee for a moment. I thought it was a nice art and i did not want to disturb the "OM". Bright smile, good coffee ...i think there are a number of small things that can make my day good. This surely is one of them. There are surely some nice people in this world and thank god for it.

Eighty-Sixing

One afternoon in Arizona, I had gone out for lunch with my friend. We gave our respective orders. My order was a one of those vegetarian sandwiches and i asked the guys to avoid mushrooms in my order. When the check was given to us my friend pointed out something interesting to me . My order was marked as "Garden - 86 Mushrooms". He explained that it was one of the common terms for excluding something. This term is used more often than not in restaurants. There are many stories about what is the background of using Eighty-Six. For details, please visit
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-eig1.htm

Another interesting usage in the restaurants which you may hear could be "A lonely boy on the raft".This means that someone has ordered for an egg with bread.

This takes the cake(?#$%#%%#) and the icing (#$%$#^$%#&^$&^%**&^*&^) and whatever. Imagine yourself at the breakfast table and asking someone "What is for breakfast" and the reply is "Shit on the Shingle". I am not joking "Shit on the single" means that you will get gravy with hamburger and bread, that is if you are still on the breakfast table after hearing what the name of your breakfast.

Being a veggie , i escape this superbly named breakfast while non-vegetarians you can enjoy your Shit on the Shingle :)

The Grand Canyon Railways

So, I decide to spend the weekend by paying a visit to “the Grand Hole” or the “big hole”, as the Arizonians would call it or the Grand Canyon as the rest of the world might know it. I had to drive to a little town called Williams and take a train from there to the south rim of the big hole. Williams was about 180 miles from Tempe, AZ. Without too many driving misadventures, I reached Williams at 9:15 AM. I had planned to visit the Grand Canyon and spend the night there and return the next day by Train to Williams. The Grand Canyon railways is almost 100 years old. They have these little trains which take you from Williams to the south rim of the canyon. Every coach has these coach executives who are very nice people and screamed funny instructions like “Gentlemen, make sure you use ONLY the men’s restroom which is at the rear end of the coach and also make sure you take the 2 extra seconds to flush.” They also talk to each passenger about what they should be doing after they get off the train...what activities they can do. The tell you a lot of trivia about the railways and the canyon etc..The GC railways also has singers who come to every coach and perform..which I thought was really good and each singer specializes in one kind of music. I got a chance to hear some old English songs and on my return another artist sang some folk songs of the native Indians.

And the lady, Victoria was talking for 2 hours 14 minutes and 57 seconds during the travel time of 2 hours and 15 minutes. I slept. When I got out, she politely said it was a pleasure having me in the train. Well, I am sure it was!!!

I rented a car. I am driving alone in the US for the first time. I had the support of google maps and yahoo maps. So, I drove from the airport to my hotel. All is well and I reached my hotel.

The next day I had to get to my office. So, checked the google map, wrote the directions down and started driving. I drove, drove and drove on. The 48th street seemed to have vanished. I see the 40th, the 44th but I can’t see the 48th. The cars were whizzing past me. Some drivers giving me a odd look and a few of them honking. Well…jet lag and all that stuff, it did not occur to me that when someone honks that it means that I have made a mistake. Twice around, I realized after about 15 minutes of driving that I have been driving around the same roads and streets. The tension was mounting since I had to follow rules of the new country and also get to my office. Finally, with the help of 3 kind souls I managed to reach the office. My client greeted my with a big smile when I told him that I was driving for about 2 hours. It was quite "interesting" to know that the office was just about 2 miles away from the hotel I was in.

Anyways, things started improving as I started driving more. I still kept missing streets and exits. But the improvement was that I knew that I have missed one in less than five minutes and I knew how to find my way back.

It was hilarious when I had to go to Grand Canyon. With the new found skill of mine to take the wrong exits or turns, I realized that I am on the wrong road. Again, this also with my special competency to that when I am on the wrong road, in about 15 minutes. Only that I had driven a fairly long distance since the speed limit was 75 miles an hour and as usual I was doing more than the speed limit (85 miles). So, I start working towards finding my way back. After 25 minutes, I reached my hotel and without realizing that I have reached my hotel before I saw the board. I lost an hour in that and I had a train to catch at 10 AM. I started all over and managed to reached the station at a fairly reasonable time and catch the train.

I came to Houston from Arizona. Houston did not seem to have as many signage like in Arizona which made it difficult. I was searching for a sign that talks about the speed limits while people were whizzing past me. So, I started driving faster too. I had to drive through the Sam Houston toll way. I did not realize initially that I am reaching the toll station and I was in the left most lane of the road and that is only for people who had exact change. So, with great difficulty I managed to reach the right most lane (had to cut 4 lanes) and paid the toll. As I happily started cruising, to my great irritation, comes another toll station. There we go. But there were only 4 cars ahead of me and I had exact change this time. So, I took the “Exact change only lane”. As I reached the machine which would eat my money and open the gate, the darned thing said “COINS ONLY”. God damn it, all I had was a dollar bill and 25 cents. To the irritation of the other car drivers I ran to the manned toll gate and got some change from the gentle man there and managed to get out. Oooof.. boy, frickin stooopid machines, I tell ya.

And now, the grand return to Houston IAH airport from my office in Houston. I started well ahead, @ 12:00 noon, to catch my flight @ 3:50 Pm. The distance 33 miles and the travel time about 35 minutes. It’s fairly simple, get on to the I-10, reach Sam Houston toll-way, take Beltway 8 East and you are at the airport. I reach the toll way, all is well and cruising happily. It’s 50 minutes and I have not reached the airport yet. There was some traffic and I am hoping that I would reach the airport soon. 1 hour and 15 mins and I suspect that I am lost. I get to a gas station and ask a gentleman, who was kind enough to confirm that I have missed Beltway 8. He asked me to go back. Airport is about “40 mins” from the there. So, I start going back. I reach a point which says Beltway 8. As soon as I enter, Beltway 8 splits into North and South. I decide to take Beltway south and start driving hoping to get to Beltway East. No luck after 20 minutes. So, I head back and try Beltway North for 15. No luck again. Okay, head back to Houston. Again, get into a restaurant’s parking lot and ask a person there. He goes “Oh! You are a long way away from the Airport, its at least 40 minutes from here. Take 59 and after 15 minutes you will reach the I-10 blah blah blah”. Time 2:15 and 40 minutes to the airport to catch an international flight at 3:50. I could not help laughing at myself. I decide that I should still get to the airport at least to change my travel date to the next day. So, I start again and finally by some magic reach the JFK boulevard and see the sign to the airport. By the time I returned my rented car, it was 3:00 Pm. I took a bus to the airport and reached the ticket counter at 3:10 Pm only to see people checking in still and to be told that the boarding would start in 10 and I should get to the boarding gate quickly. Lady luck had had enough of laugh and decided to be kind to me. The security check did not have a huge queue and I did not have to walk miles to get to my boarding gate. Wow!! Some experience it was. The only thing that I was surprised at the end of this was that i did not panic or feel the pressure instead I just laughed at myself and found the whole thing just too funny. Not bad, eh??

"Fon"due experience

Feeling bored of eating the same variety of food everyday, i suggested to a friend that we go to a reataurant and have something different. The restuarant we decided to grace happened to be a "global cuisine" restaurant where the service executives wear funny clothes. Since i had been to the restaurant before i strongly recommended to my friend that we should have Fondue there. Fondue is a swiss starter which is served for a group of people. A pot full of cheese is set in the middle of the table along with dry and tasteless bread. You are given a special gadget (a thin metal rod with a "v" shape at one end and a wodden handle at the other) to pick the bread, dip it in the hot cheese in the pot and eat it. Legend has it that the first person who drops the bread in the cheese would pay the bill (check -for people who speak only US english).

We look at the menu card and find the following
a) the Fondue is the costliest dish (Rs. 450/)
b) it is a starter
c) one portion would serve 4-6 people

After a serious thought process we decide that we would have the Fondue. He is 83 and i am 90 (i mean, in Kgs) and we firmly beleived that the Fondue cannot make a big difference to us. The service executive tried his best to control his chuckle and explain that it is a starter and it would be all that we could have if we ordered that. We said with a very straight face that it is okay and that is what we would have.

We were served our Fondue. The etiquette haters that we are ...we did not wait for the service guy to get our Fondue gadget and start eating the Fondue with a fork. My friend...takes the bread with the fork and dips it in the Fondue cheese and takes the fork out. Lo!!! we only see a cheese dipped fork and the bread goes missing!!! Ha! i thought "i dont need to pay today". My friend tries again think time with a bread and jalapeno dipped into the cheese pot..there we go the bread with cheese comes out while the jalapeno goes missing.The fondue is turning out to be a bermuda triangle for my friend. Now, the service guy brings the "Fondue Gadget" and we take it with a sheepish smile. The service executive vanished just unable to control his laughter.

My friend beams "I dont need to pay the bill since i did not have the right gadget to eat the Fondue" Now, there is another attempt by my friend to take a bread and another palatable item in the Fondue gadget and dips them in the cheese and there we go again.. the palatable item apart from the bread goes missing!!!

Slowly, he managed to win over the bermuda triangle. We managed to finish the bread. Our man does not want to get let the service guys clean the table until he solved the mystery of bermuda cheese. He gets up from his chair, uses his fondue gadget, fishes out (like a trained fisherman using his spear to catch the fish in a river) all the food that were swallowed by the cheese and swallows them himself along with the dripping cheese. Once he is satisfied that he got back all his property from the cheese he announced to me that "the Fondue experience has been a reasonable success". I looked at him and agreed quitely. The service executive convinced us that we should try the new desserts since they have a dessert festival and manages to convince us to spend more money. We eat a dark chocolate dessert and felt satisfied that we have done enought justice to the money we paid and also had a satisfying "Fon"due experience. I am fairly certain that the service exectives did not have any fun due after our visit.

Vowels catch a flu when it rains!!!!

This is a story of a friend who went to Goa. On a rainy day, my friend decides to explore Goa. Loads herself on a honda activa and loads another friend in the pillion and they take off. The rain god (is he?) started acting up when they did not want it. So, my dear friend and her dearest mobile were drenched .Now, the interesting part is the vowels in her mobile keypad stopped working. So, if she wants to send u a msg "why dont you come home" it would end up as "why dnt y cm hm" and if ur name is Ananthakrishnan you would end up as nnthkrshnn!! in her mobile. Dont ask me how someone would read that name. I have still not figured out if the vowels in the caught the flu or if it was her gray cells that forgot the vowels, a possibility i would'nt want to rule out. :)

Irrespective of whether the wet weather affected the gray cells of my friend or the vowel buttons in her phone, the point is wt wthr cn ffct th vwls nd vwls wll stp wrkng. S, bwr..

snt tht strng!!!

A!!!

She calls herself the terrible tapioca. She likes doing things her way . She gets along with people very easily. She has the enthusiasm to do things that most people much younger dont have. She taught me a lot of good lessons in my life. Read her blogs an and you will understand what i say. People who know her, know that i am not exaggerating.

Terrible tapioca... as i told you, you make me feel jealous all the time.

http://toconstantlywonderafresh.blogspot.com/

Nooooooos

News 1: Arranged love marriage - A new concept - Times of India

I read the head lines, read the headlines again...hmmm..do they arrange love or do they arrange marriage??? Its rather strange..an arranged love marriage is supposedly the intermediate period between the engagement and marriage of the couple. If the period is treated as a period for arranging love, the engagement should be broken if love does not get arranged...which means engagement is just as good as a contract.. but if the engagement cannot be broken...love is not arranged but just forced...as usual i did not understand "Arranged Love Marriage" :(

News 2: Shewag's technique questioned by an expert - Star News

I dont really know where these experts suddenly crop up to complain from. From the time Sehwag started playing he has never had any technique but just an amazing hand and eye coordination. At some point of time, he had to get into a slump..Now, when that has happened.. there are people analyzing his footwork, technique...and tell us that Sehwag does not have a good technique, does not have footwork etc etc..

Its amazing how a lot of us are happy to complain instead of trying to solve problems. I hear a lot of complaints at my work place and have heard it before..and in majority of the cases problems that can be solved by taking a simple action...i keep cribbing about a lot of things that i probably will never act on. People complain about how nothing changes...but do not get together to change things...not a good trend at all :(

The Idiot Box Stress

Watching television in recent times seems to be very stressful. While most of our careers are quite stressful and the workload takes a toll on us, the television just seems to be adding to it. At home, it has become a practice to switch on one of the news channels in the morning. The first thing you are most likely to hear in the news is bomb explosions in few parts of the world, arms and ammunitions recovered in some parts, a terrorist threatening the entire world sitting in a some desserted land with all the latest gadgets and we, the people get our day started with a feeling that a bomb could explode under our feet any moment.

Come back from a hard day's work and switch on the TV. News channels, there is a one hour debate about how pepsi and coke can be harmful. There are a group of people who are fighting in front of a camera to decide which is worse, pepsi or coke. Personally, i think bombs are ... I don't mind dying while drinking pepsi or coke. Switch to a cartoon channel there are four kids with some funny masks fighting some monsters... whatever happened to those simple funny cartoons like Donald duck, Mowgly etc..switch... movies...a movie you may have seen 250 times in the same channel... switch...nat geo or discovery...animals killing other animals.... well... whats new?? human beings kill other human beings too.....music...not bad but not all songs are good either....

Spend a good one hour trying to find something good to watch...and then just switch it off. The idiot box surely just adds to the stressful lives that we already have.

I find television very educating. Everytime someone turns on the set I go into the other room and read a book. - Groucho Marx

A Weekend Trip

This blog should have been my first blog. Souvik has been asking me to post this for quite some time. This script is the result of another silly thought that I had on the 24th June 2003. But at least as a respect to Souvik’s persistent pestering, I have to post this. So here we go, back to June 2003.

Day 1: 20th June 2003

A lightening must have struck Saurabh Agrawal two weeks back. Now, what would u expect me to think if someone who enjoys sleeping 40 of the 48 available hours in a weekend suddenly decides to sacrifice his sleep and says that he wants to go out on a trip? When he told the rest of the homosapiens at the house about this, they also felt as if they were struck by lightening. In a state of shock, we all agreed to it. Agrawal decided that all the 4 us who have been staying in the same house for 2 years now, should go out together.

The shock did not end with this. He also started planning the trip. He started enquiring about where we cud go. When he asked me I suggested that we go to Kudremukh or we travel to Udhagamandalam (Ooty) on our bikes.

We decided we would rent a vehicle and go to Kudremukh. Saurabh Agrawal (henceforth SA) checked out the cost of renting a vehicle. I wanted him to check with Hertz (a car rental agency) about self-driven cars. The cost was very similar to renting a chauffer driven Sumo or Qualis. Souvik and I were two people who knew something about driving a car. We tried convincing SA and Saurabh Chaturvedi (S.C) that a self-driven car would be a good idea. These guys did not want to risk their lives and rejected this idea.

Finally, we agreed to rent a Qualis. By the time we had decided on the place, there were only 2 days left for the trip. We tried to book Green Valley for our stay in Kudremukh. But they said, they cannot accommodate us (may be they still remember what happened when about 25 of us went to that place once).

I dunno how this struck my mind; I had a feeling that Deepa’s father was working with Kudremukh Iron and Ore Company Limited. Somehow we also came to know that they had a good guesthouse there in Kudremukh. I spoke to Deepa’s father and uncle was kind enough to call his friends and arrange for our accommodation.

We planned to leave Bangalore by 4:00 PM on Friday the 20th of June 2003. We started sharp at 5:30 PM.

As soon as we were out of the city, we played a cassette of Kishore Kumar. Suddenly the driver could hear 5 Kishore Kumar’s. And one of them who was not very good at Hindi and tried using whatever words he knew. Now, the original Kishore was lost somewhere and all one could hear was 4 voices screaming the song that Kishore was singing. The driver must have seen many such people; he remained unaffected. After a couple of hours the 4 Kishores lost the energy and we stopped at Kamat to have dinner. Later we reached Chickmagalur by midnight. We checked in into a small lodge there.

Day 2: Saturday 21st June 2003


This day again started with a big shock. SA gets up at 5:15 AM and wakes all of us up. I was beginning to worry. SA usually gets upset if he gets up before 8:30 AM. 8:30 is also ok only if someone wakes him up. And if it is a Saturday, there is no question of SA getting up before 12:00 AM. If he gets up at 5:15 AM and wakes up the rest of us, then there must be serious problem. I don’t show this out but I had to digest this, so I immediately SMS Asha about what happened. She also shares the same concern but suggests that I don’t express my concerns lest the usually quite SA reacts violently.

We start at about 6:30 and head towards Mulayangere. SA is very much interested in visiting the place where the villagers attacked a few of our friends, a few months back. But, instead of going to Mulayangere, we head towards another place called Dattatreyapeeta. As we drive up the hill, we entered the clouds and we started driving into the clouds. This was a fantastic experience. As we passed a particular place, the driver and I saw a lot of hills visible amidst the clouds. We pulled over. But by the time we got out the car, the clouds had covered the hills and all we could see was the dark clouds all around us. We start enjoying the scenery and a few seconds later the clouds decide to be kind to us and they moved away from the hills. It was a fantastic sight to see them move away slowly giving us a view of the wonderful green hills.

We visited Dattatreyapeeta (DP). There is a temple and a mosque in the same campus in this place. The moment I thought it was a gr8 thing, the driver told me that there is always some problem there during the festival season there. We went ahead from DP towards a small waterfall. There was just a strip of water coming from the top. The waterfall is supposedly holy. And as most other Holy places in India, this place was nasty and horrible all around. But the top of the hill had a fantastic view for us. Then we head back towards Chickmagalur.

As we reach Chickmagalur, we decide to have breakfast. Souvik and I had to answer the nature’s call. The hotel we went to have breakfast did not have a usable rest room. So we decided to check out if there was any other place to release the pressure. As we walk down we see another hotel, which looked promising enough to have a rest room. Souvik and I had a very serious discussion about how to get into that place and complete our mission. Souvik struck upon a brilliant idea as he watched some people having breakfast there. He went to the person sitting in the cash counter and asks him “Do you serve breakfast here?” The person looked bewildered and said, “Yes” after thinking for a while. Well, that was the first time this guy must have heard such a question. What else can you ask in a hotel? All that you could ask is if they serve breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Souvik had no time to care about the bewildered cashier he headed towards the toilet without another word. I grabbed the opportunity and quietly followed Souvik. We completed our mission successfully. Then we decided that it was not correct to leave this cashier in this state. So, we went and asked him if he had mineral water. The cashier was now prepared for any kind of question. He quietly took a bottle and gave it to us. We paid for it and walked out to join the rest of the guys in the other hotel.

We finished our breakfast and were ready to start. I slowly talked to the driver and convinced him to allow me to drive. The driver half-heartedly agreed. The moment I took the wheel, SA started praying to all gods he knew. He said “Venkat Zara Sambaalkey”. I started driving. The driver warned me that the breaks were too sensitive. As I drove, the driver kept asking me to honk whenever I overtook somebody. That annoyed me a bit. I tried convincing him that it was only in India that we honk everywhere and every other country in the world it was considered to be an insult. The driver said that I was driving in India and I have to keep honking. So I had no choice but to honk every now and then.

Now, Souvik was also tempted to drive. He kept pestering me. We entered the village of Mudigere and pulled over to buy some film rolls. I asked Souvik to take the wheel, but he decided that he did not want to endanger the life of villagers. He asked me to cross the populated area and stop the car. I did that. He took over. He put the vehicle on gear and the next moment we heard a screeching noise, then a big jolt and the car was moving ahead.

Souvik was quite calm and composed. He immediately yelled “Easy guys, easy”. By now the rest of us had our hearts in our mouths, especially, the driver. But we did not show it out lest our man gets scared and runs into some vehicle. He had some problem with the gear initially and the driver who was sitting beside him had to remind him to change gear every now and then. The traffic increased and Souvik did not like it. He started grumbling, “Why do all these fellows have to come when I start driving”. We had no answer. We did not think that it was a good time to tell him that it is only normal that other people also drove their vehicles on the road. We did not have the guts to say anything. We just kept praying and watching the road.

To make things worse, a buffalo started crossing the road. Souvik saw that well on time. It was in the middle of the road and taking its own time to cross the road. Souvik yelled immediately “Which side do I go now?” We were not really sure if the question was posed to us or if it was for the buffalo to answer. But then the chauffer decided that it might be too late if the buffalo had to answer the question and he asked Souvik to take the right side. Neither the buffalo, nor the car nor any of us was hurt. SC had a doubt if Souvik’s question was targeted at us or was it for the buffalo. Souvik, who was very seriously concentrating on driving, just laughed it off. The rest of us did not have any clue if we had to laugh or cry to be in a situation like this.

It was only a few minutes after the buffalo incident, the car suddenly started going all over the place. None of us had any clue what happened. All that we could see was both the chauffer and Souvik were trying desperately to control the car. The car came to a control in a couple of minutes and started heading straight. Till now, none of us have a clue as to what happened. Now, SC had had enough of it. But he did not feel like saying that straight. He slowly said “If we go at this pace, we might not reach Kudremukh on time”. Souvik seemed to have realized the point. He decided to let the chauffer take over and spare our lives. By now, I think the chauffer had also had enough. He started driving at a very high speed. I thought it was a way to vent out his anger more than the interest in reaching Kudremukh quickly.

We reached our destination at about 3:00 PM. After a small debate about whether to take a room with a television or without one, we decided to go for the ones with television. The canteen in the guesthouse was about to close. So we headed directly to the canteen and had our lunch.

We took rest for sometime. We wanted to visit the KIOCL and see the mining, but it was too late when we pushed ourselves and asked for the permission. The factory was closed and the next day was a Sunday.

It was already 5:00 PM and there was nothing much we could do for that day. The guesthouse also had a sports club in the complex. We were told that we could use the facilities in the club. While Souvik and SA went to play table tennis, SC and I decided to play the less strenuous game of carom.

Later, when we visited the TT hall we found Souvik playing TT with a gentleman. The gentleman had come with his daughter to play TT. Souvik plays TT very well. But seemed to have lost touch. The gentleman and Souvik played a few games of TT, which was very interesting to watch. After a two hour-long effort SA and Souvik were really tired. We packed our food and went back to our rooms.

After a couple of drinks, Souvik revealed that the Gentleman (who was playing TT with him) was very much impressed with him. He also said that the Gentleman’s daughter was a software engineer. While all of us were waiting to hear some more interesting story, Souvik said, “I am tired” and went to bed.

The day came to an end leaving the three of us disappointed.

Day 3: 22nd June 2003

It was raining heavily. The driving skills Souvik and myself must have made SA normal. He did not seem to have any effect of the lightening attack (remember the first line of this document??). He wanted to sleep the whole day, instead of going out and seeing a few places. We had a difficult time convincing him that we have spent a couple of thousands on this trip and it would not be fair to sleep. SA was initially convinced that the AC room and the very comfortable beds in the guesthouse were worth the couple of thousands. Finally, we managed to convince him to get up and go out with us.

The forest department was kind enough to let us visit 2 places. One was a hanging bridge and the other was the HanumanGundi waterfall. We headed towards the hanging bridge. From one point, the road (road???) was too narrow for the car to go and we decided to walk down to the bridge. We ask some locals how far it was to the bridge. They said it was about a kilometer. We started walking discussing about the possibility of attacks by leeches.

We walked about 200 meters and saw the hanging bridge. Dunno why the locals thought it was about a kilometer. The next debate was if the bridge required a load testing. After some inspection, we decided that the bridge might be able to take a fairly good load. And I started walking on the bridge. The bridge successfully completed the load testing. We decided to intimate the local panchayat that the bridge was strong enough to handle heavy loads.

We walked back to the car enjoying the scenery around. It was a very nice sight. As we reached the car, I got in and sat next to the chauffer. He immediately noticed that I had brought back some worms along with me. By now Souvik had also noticed a couple of such worms in SA’s sandals. Well, these worms were none other than our friends, the leeches.

This is the first experience for SA and myself with the leeches. SA was lucky that none of the leeches got stuck to him. But there was one in my leg. I panicked. I jumped around all over the place trying to get rid of this bloodsucker. The other three had a difficult time controlling their laughter. SC and Souvik tried to calm me. I tried my best. SC took a small stick and tried to remove the bloodsucker. By now, the bloodsucker had become as fat as I. By the time SC took one end of the leech out of my leg and tried to remove the other end, the first part would go and start sucking blood again. I added more trouble to SC by doing a tap dance when he removed one end of the sucker. It was just a desperate attempt to get the sucker off my leg, but SC was not amused. He was getting furious with me. He screamed at me. SA and Souvik were enjoying all this but did not have the guts to laugh at me for the fear that I would kill them. After struggling for about a few minutes against the leech and my tap dance SC was successful in getting that sucker off my leg.

We resumed our journey. We headed back in the same way as we had come towards HanumanGundi waterfall. We came somewhere close to the guesthouse and asked someone the way to HanumanGundi. He told us to go back the same way. He said it was about 10 kms away from where we were. We told him we had gone to the hanging bridge. We asked him if we had to go further from the hanging bridge. He replied that the place we had gone to was not the hanging bridge and the hanging bridge 5 kms away on the opposite direction. Well, all that testing of bridge and attacks of leeches for nothing.

We took a ‘U’ turn and started towards HanumanGundi waterfalls. On the way we spent some time near the Kadambi falls. Since it has been raining for sometime now, there was lot of water pouring down from the hills. It was a fantastic site and we were awestruck.

After a half-an-hour drive we reached HanumanGundi. The place had changed since I visited last time. It was a very slippery trek to the waterfall when I had come to the waterfall last time. Now concrete steps have been constructed to go down and close to the waterfall. It was easy to go down. But by now we were fear stricken by the attack of the leeches. Souvik refused to go down to the waterfall. He was unlucky that he could not find any company to stay back with him. So we started walking down. The waterfall was fierce and was fantastic to see. We did not get anywhere close to the wet muddy side or the rocks fearing leeches. The fear was so bad that we started walking back in less than five minutes. Half way up I saw SA sitting and checking his sandals desperately. No marks for guessing that right. He managed to remove the sucker from his leg quickly. And the next thing I knew was SA had vanished. Thanks to the bloodsuckers, he did not feel the tiredness of climbing 380 steep steps. I had a tough time climbing up. But I managed to reach up. As SC and I reached the top, we saw Souvik jumping desperately. A sucker had stuck to his knee. He managed to get it off after a brief struggle.

The next thing that I saw was Souvik holding his hands around SA’s legs and wiping them clean. I understood that he was just making sure that there were no leeches. I just wondered what if there was one and that got struck to his hand. Luckily there were none. After making sure that we are not carrying any leech with us, we got into the car. The next discussion was whether we had to go to the “actual” hanging bridge. By now the leeches had instilled enough of fear, SA and Souvik were against the idea of visiting the hanging bridge.

So we headed back to the guesthouse. It was interesting to see SA and Souvik, who generally loathe the idea of bathing everyday, run into the bathrooms and take bath immediately. They came after taking bath and said “Haa! Its refreshing” with a sigh of relief. It must be really be a big relief and a refreshing feeling when you know for sure that there are no leeches sticking to your body.

SC, Souvik and I thought a couple of drinks would be a nice idea. And SA, as usual, was just a spectator. The lack of sleep on a Sunday had given him a high anyway. As the first peg went down, Souvik declared that he is not scared of leeches but it was just that they were so disgusting creatures that he hated them. SA seconded that and I decided that it was not a bad idea to agree to the statement. SC had somehow managed to become friends with the leeches. They did not care to disturb him. I dunno if he had a chat with them about their perspective to life and his perspective towards life.

Then the conversation turned towards the differences in the thought process of men and women. The conversation went on till a gentleman from the guesthouse canteen came and informed us that the canteen would be closed in a short while. We had our lunch and started on our journey back from Kudremukh.

None of us had the energy to attempt driving or do discuss routes with buffaloes on our way back. The best we could do was to play antakshari. It was good fun trying to recollect all the old hindi songs and scream on top of our voices. This lasted for a couple hours and we were drained after that. It was quite and peaceful return journey after that.

Love Life

A good friend has requested me to write about my love life. I cannot reject her request , not just bcoz she is a good friend but also because she has promised that she would write about my love life. I am just a little scared about the second part. It took me just a few seconds to decide that should blog about my love life lest.....

Now coming to the topic, my love life has a lot of similarities with the National Stock Exchange(NSE). The NSE has no control over the stock price. The prices of the stocks are controlled by the Bulls and Bears. They decide which stock should move up and which should not.

My love life is just similar. I play the role of NSE. The women i know are like the scrips. My dearest friends play the wonderful role of Bulls and Bears. Every now and then the value of one of the scrips increases and that becomes the most valued stock of the NSE. The value of the scrips are controlled by the bulls and bears. The prices of all the scrips keep fluctuating depending on the interest of the bulls and bears. The NSE has no choice but to watch it quietly and come to know from the bulls and bears which scrip is the most valued scrip at the moment. New scrips get added too, sometimes with the knowledge of the NSE and sometimes without. Exciting and fascinating eh??

One of my other friends who was so fascinated by this stock market game has even written a story and screenplay for his next film. I do not know if the NSE will get the royalty for it :)).

So, thats all about my love life. It is so easy. If my dear friend who requested me to write about my love life publishes her version of my love life, you can also be a player in the stock market of Venkat's Love Life Stock Exchange. Let the stock market get more interesting, exciting and fascinating.

Yours Truly

The NSE

What have i done....

Ok, its 2300 hours. It has taken me about an hour to create this blogspot address and post this blog. Why do i want to blog and will i blog regularly are questions that i have yet to answer... I have spent more than an hour in this site without answering these basic questions. I am impressed with myself... as usual :-)