Metamorphosis

4th standard was a very special year. It was the year when I transformed from a boy to a man. Or atleast that was what I thought then. It was a year of changes. A year when I had to face many unpleasant challenges for the first time and also a year when many pleasant firsts occurred.

The new school in the new state did not provide with the luxury of skipping my second language classes. Instead, I was to face the most terrifying Tamil teacher I have ever had. She screamed at students, hit them with whatever she could get hold of and flung homework notebooks on to their faces.It did not help that I missed the previous two years of Tamil lessons. How I loved those Thursdays when I did not have Tamil lessons!

It was a year when I got my 'own' membership card at the local library. It saved me from the tyrannical Tamil teacher as I quickly learnt to read and write reading Siruvarmalar at the library. But more than anything, I loved the freedom of going to the library by myself and picking the book of my choice.

I wore my first analogue watch that year and the teachers asked us to bring fountain pens to school - the first thing that marked the men from the boys. A yellow belt at the Karate class also meant that I was the second strongest man in the world next to my black belt Karate master.

My freedom grew boundless when one afternoon my dad got me a top-of-the-line Hero Ranger bicycle after only 3 hours of pestering. At that time, owning a Hero Ranger was like owning a Ferrari now and owning a Street Cat was like owning a Lamborghini. Owning any other bicycle was just useless.

It was also the year when I swore at my science teacher on his face. A girl had sucked at him to give her mistake ridden test paper a 100 and my mistake less test paper a 99 so she could get the first rank. She got the first rank. Well, she was not a she actually. She was a he. But he deserves to be called a she, doesn't she?

Analyse this!

Since the time I started to work for money, my job title has been an analyst. My job title changed several times in the last 4 years, but it always ended as some analyst. At first it felt nice to say I was an analyst than to recite the usual 'I am a software engineer'. However, I learnt only later that calling oneself an analyst has its own disadvantages.

First of all, when people ask what an analyst does, I always struggle to quantify my work in less than a 1000 words; by then the person who asks me the question is in deep sleep. You see, being an analyst, you do several things. And sometimes you do nothing. So after sometime, when I told people only the nothing part, they were surprised that I was getting paid for nothing.

And then one day, when a pretty girl asked me the usual 'So what do you do for a living?' question, I geared up to impress her with yet another 1000 word I am the king of the world speech and started with the 'I am an analyst' line. To my surprise the girl did not ask me the 'What does that mean?' question but instead dived into her handbag and gave me a bottle.

I took the bottle from her and asked 'What is this?'
'That's my urine sample. You said you were an analyst right? So could you analyse my urine and tell me if I have swine flu?'

Cough syrup for calf ache

Kiran: So do you still train for the marathon that you are not going to complete?
me: yeah
Kiran: How is it coming?
me: Okay. But my calf muscles ache like hell
Kiran: Drink some cough syrup. That is what I do

Contraceptives for Climate Change

I suggested to Boston that we go Banger racing. This is after his wonderful idea that running around Hyde Park with our tongues lunging out like dogs will fetch us dates. Poochi fell for it and took a train all the way from Milton Keynes. All we managed to get was cold stares from old women as we entered the tube with our smelly sweatshirts.

For those of you who do not know Boston’s roots, he is from the Stone Age. When Marty from Back to the Future once drove to the Stone Age, Boston accidentally transported himself to our age and that is how he is here. Although he has made substantial progress in his lifestyle, including riding a bicycle, he is yet to fully assimilate into our culture; which is why he hates motorcars, thinks internet robs him of his life and runs for hours together at a stretch.

Anyway, the evil influences of the internet got hold of his unsuspecting soul and he now believes that driving cars is bad for humanity, depleting our non-renewable energy resources, raising sea levels through global warming and causing pollution. So have many other unsuspecting souls been led to believe; which is why I am going to clear all your minds and tell you it is not true.

All humans must become petrol heads - If not for himself/herself but for world peace. If you looked at all the wars that have been waged in the last few decades, they have invariably been for oil (in the pretext of bringing democracy to the war stricken communities). So if we finish off all the oil as quickly as we can, we can end these wars and save millions of lives. (Will this concept bring me Nobel Prize? or should I have to be the president of USA to get one?)

How many of us do work today which can be postponed to tomorrow. I am sure only the quotation writers will raise their hands. So long as we have oil, we will use it sparingly and make incremental improvements in hybrids and the likes. But if there is no oil, we will do something out of sheer necessity.

Even if we did not find an alternative, it is good for general world health. The millions and millions of human beings succumbed into their current unhealthy lifestyles will come out of it and walk to offices instead of driving their 2km journeys. Yet another Nobel for that!

I am not asking everyone to be selfish and use all the available petrol and rob the future generations of the pleasures of roaring an internal combustion engine. I am only asking everyone to help them indulge in it. You may wonder how that is possible if we finish off all the oil.

I have come up with a new theory that will illustrate that all the oil that is burnt is not actually lost but just waiting to be reused.

If you remembered your Deepavali days (The Deepavalis when you woke up at 4 AM and fired crackers till midnight and not the ones where you sat in front of television all day), you will remember that there certainly was a couple of hours of rain on the day. The carbon from all the rockets and 1000 walahs we fire gets caught in the rain clouds and comes back down bringing the rain with it. By the same principle, all the carbon emissions we send out will accumulate and eventually come down with rain and settle as sediments. These sediments after a few hundred years will solidify or liquefy to become coal and petrol again. So by not using petrol optimally, we are breaking this cycle of forming new crude.

I understand your concern that more rains will increase the already rising sea levels. But won’t the rains be filled in the empty oil rigs that we have dug in the last 100 years? By the same token, even if we didn’t use petrol cars and used hydrogen hybrids (which combine hydrogen with the oxygen we breathe to make water and energy) will the water from these cars not increase sea levels? Atleast by acting on my advice, we will have only increased water levels, but if we used hydrogen cars not only will we have increased water levels but also decreased the total breathable oxygen available in the atmosphere.

For all you know, global warming and the subsequent rise in sea level may not be our fault at all. If you happened to use Wikipedia as your primary source for worldly knowledge, you will know that the sun's output varies with time, which scientists refer to as the 11 year solar cycle -sometimes the sun emits more heat and sometimes less. The current period could just be a period where the sun is working overtime.

Whether global warming is the sun’s fault or not, I believe the whole thing could have been prevented if there was general awareness among the people of the 60s to use contraceptives. If only we had less people to use what is left, we would not make any fuzz about the whole thing but instead be Banger racing in Olympic Games.

Making sense of it

For the last few weeks I have been looking out for internal job openings within the company I work for. I am looking for a job with a title that says anything but an analyst. After 4 years of being an analyst, I have given up on trying to explain to people what an analyst does or more preciously what I do.

At this point I would like to state that rumours spread by people like Boston that all I do for a living is to go to office 3 days a week, pretend to work for 5 hours, get drunk by lunch and write blogs. This is unfounded and completely untrue. Boston is just jealous that he can not work at my efficiency levels.

Anyway, trying to explain what I do for a living is just as hard as it was trying to explain a shop keeper close to our house in Madurai why I went to study in Pilani.

Shop-keeper: So, I heard you have got into college. Where do you study now?
Me: Pilani
Shop-keeper: Oh Palani
Me: No, Pilani is in Rajasthan
Shop-keeper: That is a long way from here. Why? Didn't you have enough marks to get admission in one of the colleges in Madurai?
For the next 15 minutes I tried to explain to him that only kids who unexpectedly and accidentally score exceptionally high marks in the final school exams get to go to that far-off college. But he was convinced I could not get an admission in one of the local colleges.
Shop-keeper: So what do you study?
Me: M.Sc
Shop-keeper: So you couldn't even get engineering?

To cut the long story short, trying to explain my analyst role has only resulted in several agonising and confidence denting incidents.

And as I look out for openings, as a precaution, I have made a mental note not to go for jobs with female managers. Imagine the manager calling for a meeting with me and I say 'Should we get a room?'

After the 12 JDs

I met someone at the bar now - not at the court of law, because I am single and have nothing to do with in-laws. Anyway she asked me for my birthday, I said the 23rd of May.

She: 'You can't be serious. I was just gonna say that. I swear. I had this hunch. You know my parents got married on the 23rd of May and my sister was born of the 23rd of May!!'

Me: I have a hunch too. Your sister's name must be Mary.

You know how the conversation proceeded from there...

Pigeons under the floodlight

Over the years I have seen several pigeons fluttering around in day-night cricket matches played under floodlights. While I must have mouthed the cameraman to turn back to the match, I have always been short of asking the pigeons what the hell they were doing at this time of the night.

I now understand why. No, I have not been bit by a pigeon and I have not become pigeon-man. The bright sunny summer is gone now and in place darkness and gloom have encircled the place I live. To add to the eeriness, I, from time to time, add my bit of background music with the clattering of my teeth.

But that aside,the clocks are moved back an hour in winter. Some call it day light saving or something like that while many intellectual men like me suspect that the real reason is behind the Big Ben that needs a battery change. There is no advantage changing the clocks because it is dark all through the day anyway - it is dark when you wake up, it is dark when you go to office and it is dark when you come back from office. The only time you see sunlight is on the weekends.

Although the time change seems to have done nothing to the natives, it is causing havoc to my system. For instance, I am waking up at 3AM when logically I should be waking up at 5AM even with the time change. I am hungry for dinner at 5PM but don't feel sleepy until 11PM like usual. I tried to convince my manager that I don't work night-shifts and so will come to office only when there is sunlight. He can't seem to get my logic.

My inventive mind is planning to create artificial daylight in my own little room with the sodium vapour street lamp from the next street. There is some planning to be done to get it materialised. I have to steal the lamp and bring it home, hammer it on to the 6 inch wall that separates my room from my neighbours' and draw power from them to keep the lamp running 12 hours a day.

But getting back to the pigeons, I now sympathise with the pigeons for having to battle out blinding floodlights when they are supposed to be making out with pigeons of the opposite sex.

May be I should help the pigeons. I should write a note to PETA that day-night cricket is preventing Pigeon Ecology Thriving Activities and use the pigeons to deliver my message. But I am afraid PETA will sue the pigeons for using PETA's acronym without paying them license fees.

Amidst all this world ending problems I realised that the only way I can continue to watch cricket happening in India because of the time differences is when there are day-night matches. Now that is a bigger world ending problem.

So there is now a slight change in policy. I suggest that we catch all these menacing pigeons that distract us from the game, fry them, sell them and make money out of it. I suggest we call the venture KFP - Karumathur Fried Pigeons. The world needs such bright ideas during these testing recession times.

Cross-belt Land

When Jinku and I first started to work for money, we shared a 1 bedroom house in the heart of a slum in Chennai. For weeks none of our colleagues knew where we lived. And then came the rains that flooded the whole of Chennai. Jinku would tuck his pants upto his knees and hold his shoes in his hands while I rode my motorcycle to drop him at the main road. This continued until my motorcycle's engine was filled with water. And then I had to go on my first overseas trip. Or atleast that was what we told our super sweet landlord's family to get out of the place.

We found yet another one bed room flat. But this time in the second floor so no flood would do anything to us. But unfortunately, we found a flat in the heart of cross-belt land - west mampalam.

West mampalam can be a great or a lousy place to live in; depending on your mind set. But the original inhabitants of that land had certain fixed notions. Such as - Unmarried men are evil (Unmarried non-cross-belts were more evil). Unmarried men eyed all women in the family that included daughters, wives and mothers - even if the wives were 55 year olds and the mothers 85 year olds. Unmarried men smoked cigarettes from the balconies and dropped ash on alpha male cross-belts' bald heads seriously pondering over a cure for cancer. Unmarried men drank beer and puked in other people's door mats.

We did not know all this background and were surprised for the first one month when everyone in the flat scattered like flies whereever and whenever we walked. It took a while to realise noone spoke to us either. No one used lifts when we used it.

But like I said, it can be a great place or a lousy place depending on what you wanted it to be. We wanted it to be a great place. And it was a great place. We felt like tigers in a herd of deer as everyone scampered for their lives as we walked around the place. We felt like Maharajas as people stuck to lift walls like lizards or sneaked out of lifts to let us ride up to our floor. We had our occasional fun as well as we walked as close as possible to our next door neighbour as he walked home from office. We could have added fuel to fire by striking a conversation with their wives, but we were concerned the husbands' heads would turn so hot that we could fry our eggs on top of it. Obviously, we didn't want eggs fried from used coconut oil.

Ring a bell

Before the time of cellphones, we had a landline phone in our home. It was quite handy. It provided midnight updates on leaked question papers and helped plan mid day movies after bunking school. I could see from my mum's body language that she was not convinced with the new device; especially when girls called her son. She managed to find out even if the girls spoke in a man-ish voice.

And then came cellphones. You had to buy one than face the indignation from the voices that echoed 'So you don't have a cellphone?'

My first cellphone was the legendary blue brick. It was the most useful cellphone I have had. My mom endlessly played the snake game and my sister threatened to break my head with it if I didn't share my pocket money with her. I, on the other hand, kept staring at it for months, waiting for it to ring. It taught me patience.

Many years later, cellphones have only become useless. They no longer are large, heavy and strong. So I can't moonlight anymore as a burglar armed with a cellphone and threaten people. I can no longer call pretty girls under the pretext of having forgotten my home number and so called them to ask if they remembered it by any chance.

On contrary, I overheard a couple of 142+ IQ women discuss that cellphones are nature's devices to counter the epidermic called men. They said cellphones emanate certain magic rays that kill men's 'little armies' which help them make more men. Infact, they said it is a grand design that began in the 17th century when the English travelled to most parts of the world. Of the many things that the English took with them, long pants with pockets was one of them. It took the English two and half centuries to make the whole world wear pants. Soon came the cellphones and the cellphones went into men's pockets. The rest is yet to be seen.

As I walk along the corridor with my personal phone in my left pocket and my office phone in my right pocket, I wonder if women are hand in glove with nature. Or why would they buy pouches and handbags for their cellphones inspite of wearing pants? I bet they already have an underground secret cloning facility to keep them multiplied.

Kiran in Kashmir

For a while now, I have been writing just about myself. That was because I was trying to mind my own business. But now, Kiran is going to Kashmir and what a waste this blog would be if I didn't let the world know that Kiran will be in Kashmir.

So why is Kiran going to Kashmir? Because Kiran wants to go and live in Australia. While many may wonder what madness prompted him to travel from Kerala to Kashmir to reach Australia, those who are familiar with Kiran will understand that there will be some method in his madness.

Kiran always looks to follow someone in life. For example, in exams, he tries to write the exact same answers as the person in front of him. So now he wanted to find someone who had recently relocated abroad and do the same things he/she did that took him or her out of the country.

I was one of them. So he decided to study all the things I did in the last one year before I left. The thing that stuck to him most was my road trip to Goa earlier in the year. He knew that a road trip to Goa will take him to England, so he wanted to go somewhere far enough to be ensured to go to Australia. The farthest he could imagine was Kashmir. So Kiran is roadtripping to Kashmir.

Kashmir always brought a nationalistic fervour in Kiran. So he wanted to travel to Kashmir in a way that will tell the world he is a Mallu. So Kiran is hiring an Omni; one way. On his way back he plans to glide down to India Gate in New Delhi with his umbrella. Reasons later.

On the way to Kashmir, he is also dropping in at Sivakasi to pick up as many fire crackers as he can. He is tired of cowering at every person who has a back pack since the Bombay shootout. So he plans to single-handedly destroy all the terrorists in Kashmir with the fire crackers. He has watched Gadar 5 times and so has adequate knowledge to single-handedly finish the job.

Kiran has also seen many English movies as backup for Plan B. In these movies, the victorious soldiers always parachuted to the city; which is why he wants to glide down to India Gate with his umbrella for his Param Vir Chakra. He has not found any place yet that sells cheap parachutes. So if you know of some place in Kerala, please contact Kiran and help him in his nationalistic cause.

But something was missing in the whole plan. If Kiran wanted to go to Australia, Nitin will also want to go to Australia; ofcourse without incurring any cost to himself. So I rang up Nitin and asked him what he was upto. He is removing the spare tyre in the Omni's boot and coiling in instead.

Hair styling

Cutting your own hair is not such a good idea; especially on a Sunday evening when all barber shops in your town are closed. But I had a reason to cut my own hair. A haircut costs £35 - the money that Rajinikant's hair stylist earns in a month. So I decided to take the matter into my own hands.

I now understand why priests in temples have one small bunch of hair at the top of their heads that is longer than the rest and why some people wear turbans. Cutting your own hair does not always end with the desired result.

The good thing about cutting your own hair is that by the time you are finished with the cutting (which is by the time there is no hair left to cut) you would have styled yourself with 9 different hair-dos. The not-so-good-thing is that the 10th hair-do, which is the final one, always looks the same. It looks exactly like what it would look if you put your head into a burrow full of hungry rats that have not been fed for 13 days.

It will be a very defining moment when I meet my colleagues in the office tomorrow. If they have a laugh at it, I can always blame in on recession and who knows, they could pool in some money for my next hair-cut. But if they like it, then I could have a weekend vocation. I should even think of applying for a patent for my fork cut and retire with all the royalty money I will get from the franchising.

Patent-pending fork cut

If you too are thinking of starting your own hair styling brand, I must warn you that it is not such an easy job. Not only does it take 3 hours to complete, but for the next 3 months nothing would grow on your head - not even dandruff. You have to be ambidextrous; to be able to handle a pair of scissors on your left hand while you operate the hair trimmer on the right. Did I mention that the hair you cut sticks to anything and everything 5 feet around you? Getting rid of it is not easy. But I have a solution. You can wash it down your drain, if you didn't mind your hair clogging your entire street's drainage system.

All barbers cut hair. But they never always end up with patent pending hairstyles. That is because they do not know what I know - yet another of my accidental discoveries.

Half my hair was turning white. While I could fool the Europeans that one of my parents was Finnish and the other Indian; which is why half my hair is white and the other half is black, these second generation Indians in the UK don't believe what I say.

When you have an issue that needs attention, ignore it. When you like to make an issue out of nothing, call your mum for advice. ' Use parachute. How you do think Asian paints make their black paint?'

So that is the secret formula. Every drug has its own side effects. My secret formula has its own. Instead of the 5 feet radius, your hair sticks to a 10 feet radius, and your face, and your shirt, and the mirror, and the trimmer.

Post hair cut question: Are hair trimmers water proof? The mess was so much, that I put the trimmer in a bucket of water mixed with Pantene shampoo to wash off the hair. I am sure they are. Would they have thought about guys like me when they make hair trimmers?

cats, cows & karma

A wise man once told me that the brain can process or hold only a certain amount of data and this is an independent constant for each individual. That is why some women are able to hold on to information that is 20 years old and other men are unable to simultaneously munch their breakfasts while watching two and half men. But the individual constant is a fixed entity for each individual. That is, the sum of the total amount of data one can hold on to one's head and the total amount of processing the head can do is a constant at one particular instant. My abysmal record at remembering names should indicate something to you all about my brain.

The law applies to me but with a clause. That is, the constant is not restricted to the head but to the whole body. Which explains why I get my blog ideas when my IQ is drained through my ears in meetings at the office or when I am contributing my humble bit to global warming from the toilet.

Last Saturday, I had an English breakfast, a Japanese lunch and an Italian dinner. I did not know the English, the Japanese and the Italians did not get along very well and no sooner there was a world war. The bloodbath and destruction caused led to my spending several hours in the closed confines on my closet. As my body got rid of the warring parties and more of itself, it had more processing power than it had had in a long time; which led to the serendipitous discovery of the truth behind karma and rebirth.

According to version 8 and later versions of Hinduism, every man and woman will have 9 lives to live. Depending on what each one does in each of these lives, one will be either be promoted or demoted in the food cycle (Applies only to Hinduism believing Hindus). So if you did certain things you can keep your human status and eat chicken. However, if you did other things, you will be demoted to a chicken and other humans will eat you. By the time you complete your allotted 9 lives, all your parts would have worn out. So you are sent to a place popularly known as the hell where you will be thrown into a sea of fire to be melted and reprocessed along with other people who have completed their 9 lives. This new molten people will be used to generate more brand-new 9-life species.

This is something that many people already know. But what they do not know is that you do not die in one life to go to another. Rajini almost spilt the beans in one of the songs in Baasha when he speaks about dividing one's life in years of 8. What really happens is that there are 9 facets of life and each of these lasts for 8 years (which explains the cumulative average lifespan of species at 72 years). The allegory to dogs or cats or cows or chicken is only what you closest resemble to in each of these facets.

The period when you are shit scared about anything and everything is when you are a chicken, from where comes the expression 'you are such a chicken'.

The period when you don't do any work but sit and shit in the same place and keep eating all day is when you are a domesticated cow in a cowshed.

The period of life when you graze around women is when you are a goat. It is likely for the grazers develop facial hair growth, especially under the chin during this period.

The period when no amount of humiliation would dislodge you is when you are a buffalo.

The period after you wake up in a stranger's apartment with 2 teeth missing after a 12 Jack Daniels night and you swear never to drink again is when you are a camel.

The period when you are unsure of what you want to say to people and so just hang around nervously is when you are a cat. Thus the expression 'cat on the wall'.

The period when you carry your girlfriends' shopping bags while she shops and shops; and shops is when you are a mule.

The period when mid-life crisis engulfs you and you spend all your night chatting with 30 year-old truck drivers masquerading as 18 year old damsels is when you are an owl.

The period when you are too old to walk that when you cross a zebra crossing you hold up the traffic for a mile is when you are a snail.

The period when you have posted close to 100 such crappy posts is when you have ceased all your usefulness and are going to hell.

Career plan

Year: 2007
Time: Appraisal time
Manager: So Raja, you are a bright and intelligent kid. Obviously you would like to move up the corporate ladder. And me being your line manager, I have an obligation to help you chart a career path. To help me do that, could you tell me what you would like to do in 5 year's time?
raja: I don't know. I have not thought about it.

Year: 2008
Time: Appraisal time
Manager: So have you had a chance to think about your career aspirations in the last one year?
raja: I did think about it and I could not arrive at anything.

Year: 2009
Time: Appraisal time
Manager: Now you have come to a point where you will have to say something about what you want to do with your career
raja: Give me 6 months. I will come up with something

And so now, I have the arduous task of finding out what I would like to do with my career. If I could not have found an answer in 3 years, I do not think I will be able to bring forth something in 6 months. Nevertheless, I will list out the options I have and try to arrive at what is best for me.

My manager can not blame me for not proactively thinking about my career. I infact thought about it quite early in my life. When I was small I wanted to be a farmer. Not just that. I wanted to be the best farmer in the world. So I bought a potted plant and tried to grow it as best as I could. I learnt from my biology classes that plants work in the morning and sleep in the night. But I wanted my plant to work 24 hours. So I bought a carton of RedBull and made it drink every drop of it. The result...

My experimental plant on steroids

I concluded that plant nutrition probably was not my forte. So I turned onto nutrition for human beings. I worked to prepare my own magic portion that will provide me infinite strength and put Obelix to shame. I noticed that whenever I refused to eat or drink something, my parents told me the goodness of that particular food or drink. Some made you grow taller, some made you stronger, some gave you x-ray vision, and the list went on and on. So one afternoon, when my parents were away, I managed to gather all those foods and drinks, mix them in a pot and boil them to a paste. I made small tablets out of them. I had a friend who was anxious to become superman before I did; so he had a go at the tablets before I did. I think it is unnecessary to explain that it didn't go very well.

Superman teeth

One Thursday afternoon, I was watching Forrest Gump when it struck that I could grow shrimps like Forrest. But noone eats shrimps in India. All people eat is rice, chicken and fish fry from road side stalls. That was my big idea. I could grow fish and become a millionaire. My first attempt at fish culture failed as all my fish grew legs and turned to tadpoles and jumped out of my Nutramul pond. If only people ate tadpoles...

A few years later, I realised that my dad worked 5 days a week all round the year. He never had quarterly, half yearly or annual holidays to go fishing or to climb trees or to play hide and seek. I did not want to grow up and work 5 days a week all round the year. So I sat up thinking about jobs that will provide me with quarterly, half yearly and annual holidays. Teacher! I was going to be a teacher. And like usual, the difficulties seeped into my head later. What if the students asked me questions? Could I say ' I will leave that in choice' There was also this moral obligation for the future. If an interviewer asked me what electromagnetic theory is, I would very fluently answer that it is a theory that combines electric theory and magnetic theory in an effort to save writing time in exams. But if I taught that, our future generations will not be able to steal jobs from America.

The answering questions problem arises only if I thought students subjects that had difficult questions. What if I thought easy subjects with easy answers, such as drawing? But showing my drawing exam papers from school is never going to get me a drawing teacher job especially when I have managed to pass only half my drawing tests, and that too just barely.

You are asked questions only if you teach. But if you did something, you can always pretend that you are busy doing stuff and get away with it. Carpentry can be one where I can do stuff such as unnecessarily shaving wood and pretend to be busy! But my carpentry experiences from college are not very encouraging. I once dropped a vernier caliper into a lathe machine and proved that vernier calipers could be sheared up to 0.1 millimeters. I also managed to nail the wooden tray I was making into the working table. If I could nail the tray, I could very well nail my hands and that will not be a pretty sight.

I can't be a computer engineer as I have proved enough number of times that I do not have the IQ to do programming. Nor do I want to be a market researcher. There is no challenge in the job when you have already researched the entire ether-world. I could be an actor if not for the girls that will throng me. I also hate to dance shirt-less on snow capped mountains.

In the last 6 months, I have become a wonderful cook. More and more people have been showering accolades on my cooking skills and less and less people have been running to the bathroom. But cooking is a dangerous sport. I have to live every day of my life with fire, smoke and knives and I end up in tears half the days. So me being a peace-loving person, I think I will have to pass that on.

My cooking has become so awesome that one of my guests didn't even spare the spoon

Moving on to less dangerous sports, I could be a marathoner. It is easier to take this up as I already have a plan to take on the marathon. But I am not going to be the best in the sport. I will blame it on my being a pure bred Dravidian. If I were an Aryan (pure-bred or mixed) I would have been larger than what I am now and larger men have longer legs. So if I took 4 steps to cover 10 feet now, I would do that in 2 steps with my Aryan legs. So all Aryan runners will easily surpass me and I won't be the best in business. There is no point in doing something if you are not the best at it.

Which brings me to where I was 3 years ago. My appraisal is in a year from now. So I can think of it then. I think I could be a procrastinator.

Red-dy Gar-u

When I was 6, I wanted to be an automobile engineer. I imagined that when I grew up I would build cars and jeeps and the entire nation would run on my 'V' badged super cars. As preparation to my future, I made my parents buy as many miniature cars as the number of outings we took - even if the outing was to the next street grocery shop.

At 16, when hormones worked overtime, my preferences changed and I decided to be a taxi. Like when I was 6, I wanted to prepare for it. So when my parents bought their first 800 like many other Indians, I sneaked the car out as often as I can. After a few initial bumps and scraps I learnt to drive in quick time. I had a good father who rivaled and sometimes surpassed me dumping the car that we cancelled each others' damages. Mum did not know our deal.

Soon I realised that being a taxi driver is not such a good job. Thanks to television, I was enlightened that the job of taxi drivers also had other duties such as buying vegetables, picking up the ironed clothes from the iron-man and washing dishes. The first two were acceptable; but washing dishes? You know how I cringe to touch water. So to soak my hands entirely in a pool of water was not something I could do for the driving job.

My car building plan was still at the back of my head. But I dropped it when I was in my second year of college. I had solid reasons. I had to complete a course called Mechanics of Solids which is fundamental for mechanical engineers. And usually mechanical engineers specialised to become automobile engineers who made cars. But midway through the course I realised that all I was making in the course was zeros. By the looks of it, I could only make circular tyres from the zeros. An engine-less car is no good. So I dropped the plan as I was intelligent enough to know when to give up.

Now, at 26, the mad rush for cars resurfaced again a few weeks ago - but this time to own a car. So I bought one with Jinku's money. I was happy that I could make atleast one part of my car dreams come true, but there were some practical niggles.

First, the UK rules are not as good as Indian rules. In the UK, I am not allowed to park anywhere I want to. Not just that, I have to pay money to park MY car! And; I have to remove the car in less than 2 hours in most places. What a scam. Even when I pay money, I don't get value for the money. I can not park the car the way I want to. I will have to reverse park and parallel park in many places. Why are the British so keen on inserting their cars between other cars? Don't they know it is vulgar to do so in public in many cultures and Britain being a multicultural country must spare a thought for foreigners from other cultures? But the best of all British queerness is that they have speed cameras to spot you if you drove fast. The primary use of a car is to travel from point A to point B as quickly as possible. So what sense does it make to limit your speed?

It is not just the road rules. Buying a car is not just buying a car. One has to get a car insurance which is half the price of the car and no sane man will find logic in it. Even if I crashed my car once every 3 years, instead of just the repairs that the insurance company pays for, will I be not able to buy a new car if I saved up the money I used to insure the car? There is more madness. But I have to stop right here as my tom-tom is alerting me of a security camera watching me rubbishing British rules. But before runaway, come to think of it, what use are the speed cameras when tom-toms know where exactly the cameras are located and warn you a mile before the cameras spot you!

After-dark

Nitin: Why do parents insist that small children sleep early?
Kiran: So they can watch after-dark movies without interruptions

Independence Day

My rice-eating, coffee-drinking, sleep-at-9-wake-up-at-6 mum, who until a point in her life thought Madurai was the farthest point on earth that human beings could travel to, visited me earlier this month. Given the short notice of her trip, she did not have enough time to see enough star movies to perk up her English. So she paid for my sister's expenses and brought her along.

'Mum, you could have brought dad along'
'I could have. But what will I do if someone talks to me in the washroom. Though your dad would have loved to take a peek into the ladies room, I am not sure I will approve of it. And so I chose your sister. We have paid so much of money to get her to college and we should be able to extract at least something out of her, shouldn't we?'
'But, is it fair to dad?'
'I was fair. I extended him an invitation as long as he was ready to manage his own expenses.'

And so my mum and sis came to the UK.

Ever since there has been some sun here, there has been a flurry of Indian mums visiting sons in the UK. And mums always looked the same. They went around draped in their sarees and their best necklaces, packed lunches wherever they went, never spoke to anyone non-Indian, became experts in multiplication table 8 as they converted every pound they spent to rupees and mentally made notes to get their sons married as quickly as possible to avoid the risk of short skirted English women preying on their sons. I expected my mum to do the same. No offense, it is just natural isn't it. So as a precaution, I warned friends coming home for free food not to bring free drinks. But; I was in for a big surprise.

In just about a week, while I cooked for them at home, they painted the town red in the trendiest of skirts, drank £5 coffees at breakfast, 10, lunch, 4 and dinner, ate with knifes and forks, sipped coke after meals and managed intriguing conversations with complete strangers. They impressed upon so much that shop keepers gave them gifts for free, guides took extra time to explain the merciless and brutal annals of English history, waiters helped pick from the choice of menus and passer-bys guided them to places to where they knew the route already.

There is only one person I have ever known who could manage to do all that and still walk around nonchalantly - My grandma. I wonder if my mum took quick lessons from her mother-in-law just before she left.

My grandmother can hardly read or write. But take her to an expensive hotel, she will seat herself in the lounge, pick up an English (only English) newspaper and skim through for 15 minutes and tell you all the 'stories' of the day for the next 30 minutes. She has this innate ability of transforming pictures to stories, which is well complemented by her expansive knowledge of all Indian and American politicians and their life histories. While most of her friends inked their thumbs for signatures, she trained herself to hold a ball-point pen. She taught herself just what was necessary. You talk to her in English, she will juggle around with the 13 English words that she knows and trick you into believing she has a masters in the language. My uncle took her on a plane for the first time recently and unlike many people who have nervous jitters she carried herself very well that all she could come up with was ask the air-hostess if she could have the window seat. Give her a chop-stick, she will look at you eat and learn to do just the same before you realise she is using you as her teacher. She tips workers, gifts grand-kids, still goes out with her friends, demands her allowance and above all that carries herself like no one I have ever seen.

I was happy for my mum to have inherited a lot from her mother-in-law. I had my own fringe benefits. But everything comes at a cost. And entertaining two women is not very cheap. I spent my month's wages in the two weeks they stayed with me. But I still enjoyed their company. So please believe me when I say it was only coincidence and that I did not have any ulterior motives when I waved them good bye at the airport on the Independence day.

Unrelated post-airport Independence day event: On seeing the number of Independence day related scribblings on facebook, I decided to do my bit on that day. So I went up to the national flag that hangs in my room, saluted at it and tried to sing the national anthem. Miserably for me, I had to hum a couple of lines in between. That is what happens when you are not the tallest in your 5th standard class but still stand at the back for the school assembly and hum at long-legged 8th standard beauties while the national anthem is on.

Shark smooching & the subsequent serendipity

When I was a little boy I wanted to build a zoo in my house so I could open it for visitors for a fee. My grandiose plans also had an aquarium. So I brought home a dozen baby fish from a neighbouring river. But, in a week or two, the fish grew legs, turned into frogs, jumped out of the Nutramul bottle pond and ran into all corners of the house. My mum was okay only until the fish remained in water and was not particularly happy for them to leap around the dining table. So I had to dismantle my zoo. I could not find any logic in dismantling the entire zoo, but I understood only much later in life that women's minds work in un-understandable ways.

It also meant that I did not visit an aquarium. So I was happy when I knew I was going to be traveling in a train that would go underwater. I have always wanted to see sharks smiling meekly for pictures through glass windows in aquariums. But what a disappointment again - The Eurostar train connecting London and Paris had glass windows, but the tunnel through which the train passed through didn't. So I didn't know if I passed through the sea or the train just went round and round London and told me it was Paris at the end of the journey. My doubts doubled when I didn't understand a word of what they spoke. It was nothing like the French I was taught at school.

My doubts subsided when everyone around me started taking pictures of me. I have read somewhere, probably in wikipedia, that the French are great admirers of fashion and beauty and once they took pictures of me I could confirm that I was atleast in some part of France.

I took pictures of them while they took pictures of me

But what is the point in being in the limelight when the one most important thing that you based your trip on isn't to be seen? But just as Johny Bravo said to me, you lose some to gain some, so I did find something worthwhile in France.

All his life, a friend of mine has been searching for an ultimate truth - the truth that will culminate all knowledge and quest. He did not know what that ultimate truth was, or where he could find it or why he was looking for one. But he was looking for it and he knew the moment he saw it, he will know it was what he was looking for. He also told me that if I saw it before him, I will recognise too. And I think I did just that and am sure all shameless but honest blokes will agree with my discovery.

Mr. Anderson...

It was my 12th standard board examinations. I knew I had every chance of maxing my computer science test. But when the results came in, I was 11 marks short. That changed my life. If I had scored a full, I would have built a Sandcastle becoming the greatest computer hacker in the world and as a consequence I would have enrolled myself into computer engineering.

So I went on to study Chemical engineering and Physics and learnt some valuable lessons for life; one of which was life lesson 2.

Life lesson 2: Physics in college is not the same as physics in school. Generalising the rule: The subjects that you thought you liked and were good at, at school will be the subjects that will make your life miserable at college and thus the subjects you will come to dislike.

Computer programming turned out to be one of them. It will be an understatement if I said I was hopeless. I never made double digit marks, could never write one error-less line of code (One instructor remarked in an open book test that if I had opened the book during the test, I could have atleast got one basic line correct. I started off the program with an studio.h instead of stdio.h. Studio seemed logical to me than the stdio gibberish.) and at most times managed to make the default marks for attending the test.

Now, here is a confession. Many young and attractive married women have been asking me how an intelligent, gifted, sensitive and capable man such as I am never had a girlfriend at college.

Because I was having such a good time entertaining everyone around me at the computer lab with my ingenious logic and computer vocabulary, some guys who were jealous of me printed several copies of my programs and distributed them among the ladies.

If you can not write programs that can not run or atleast amble, you don't get a job. If you didn't get a job you don't have money. If you didn't have money you don't have me.

And so I didn't have a girlfriend till the end of the second year and therefore I didn't have a girlfriend all through college. But what about my 3rd, 4th and 5th years? Don't come to a conclusion until you have understood life lesson 127.

Life lesson 127: All women you desire are taken before the end of second year of college.

Later that year, word spread that someone had hacked into the university network and went to places never gone before, seen things never seen before and touched things never touched before. In a matter of hours there was a Robin Hood, a Mr. Anderson and a William Wallace; all simmering in one body - mine. I was the world's best hacker I would have dreamed about. I received more than 700 love emails in the most exquisite and gratifying language I have ever seen women write.

My account was seized. My activities were monitored. I was bullied to submit in closed room interrogations. My weekly long distance telephone calls with my parents were tapped. But they couldn't move a muscle in me. They were all exasperated and almost given up when one genius in the group had the brains to look at my computer programming test marks. None about nine. They let me free.

Life lesson 1983: Everything happens for the good

It was then I decided I will no longer have anything to do with software. And so for four years since I started work, I managed to hide myself in power points and spreadsheets until a few days ago.

BB: So Raja, you are the best man around here for numbers and spreadsheets. We would like to built an excel based tool that will be programmed to turn all our bad businesses to good and good businesses to better. And I would like you to work on it.

Well, they say life is a circle! Should that be my life lesson 0?

BB* - Boss's Boss

Insider view

I had great respect for guys who said, 'Don't judge people by the outside, look inside', until it dawned to me after many years what they really meant ;) The respect has now turned to adulation.

Gun culture

A Word of caution: I have been diagnosed as suffering from gender insensitivity. Therefore, the content below might seem vulgar to readers suffering from gender hypersensitivity. I caution those readers to stop reading the post right away.On the other hand, if you are suffering from generosity, please email me your bank account details, so I can use your money to treat my condition.

It was my first day in the UK and I went to the office bathroom for a leak. No sooner than I went inside, I heard gunshots that I had to crouch and take cover under the sink. It seemed like a battlefield with ammunition hurtled relentlessly. I ran out and dialed 100 to call the police. 'Adyar Police station'. Only then I realised that you can not dial 100 to call British police.

Later that afternoon, at lunch, I understood why there was gunfire in the toilet. Britishers eat large portions of meat, particularly cows and pigs. If you are a one-movie-a-day person you might have seen Mangal Pandey. The movie shows British bullet cartridges made out of cow skin and pig fat. If those small bullets, when fired,can make such ear deafening noise that resonates for miles, imagine what these large portions of meat could do.

It is fortunate that many Indians are vegetarians. If the 1.2 billion and growing population was meat eating, we could be firing so loudly that our neighbouring countries could think we are on a war with them and throw nuclear bombs at us. But I have been concerned for some time that many are turning into non-vegetarians; which is why I moved countries. I already look mutated and do not want to aggravate it any further with nuclear exposure. But that's not the only reason why I moved homes. India has tripled its population in the last 50 years. And if we grow at this rate, one day the ground beneath India might give in and we would all make our way to the centre of the earth and be burnt like roasted chicken.

p.s.: Chuchi's facebook wall said a minute ago that there was a tremor in Bangalore, so says Thekri. I am convinced it's not an earthquake but it is the ground beneath that is cracking up.

The General & her Prisoner of War

I went on a trekking trip last Saturday with a friend. We eventually reached a village called Shere (pronounced Shear) after playing lost and found in the woods for 6 hours. 6 hours is a long time. Especially for my bladder. Especially when it was holding the 12 JDs I drank the previous night. The JD had misplaced priorities. Instead of working on my head it was working down there and I had to get rid of it.

After 3 hours of arduous battle I let go of it with a smiling face. I have acquired the habit of posing for pictures these days and I was sure there was some hidden security camera relishing my act.

Shy Eyes (that is her name translated into English) called me disgusting. How can it be disgusting? Rather, it is disgruntling to me. I water the plants but they still ask me to pay at the supermarket for the fruits the plants bear.

Not wanting to offend her anymore (she had the map and the money) I tried to entertain her with some witty jokes I stole from some of the blogs I read. She asked me to stop talking and walk quietly or she would leave me stranded in the woods. I think the blogs I read are not very witty or clever. If I had read Hansel and Gretel instead, I would have brought a bag full of pebbles with me.

Unable to do anything about my situation, I tried to keep quiet and follow her until civilisation. I managed to keep my mouth shut by sticking my upper and lower front teeth with the chewing gum she offered me a while ago. But she did not offer me anything to keep my brain shut. So my brain continued to rattle the usual nonstop nonsense, some of which are below.

1. Why should I be silent to observe nature? Every right comes with a responsibility. If I have the right to observe nature, is it not my responsibility to let nature observe me? How will it observe me if I was quiet? Or am I not part of nature? I am definitely going to hunt squirrels and wear itchy leaf underwear for coming up with this.

2. If she left me stranded, and I called Shaktimaan, will he come here to rescue me? Or is his jurisdiction only within the coverage area of Doordarshan? If so who is responsible for the UK? James Bond? James Bond will not help me as I have been calling myself James Bond when I answer the phone these days and he is mad at me. That leaves me with Austin Powers. But has he returned from the 70s with his mojo? Wish I knew what happened to him. I should not have slept in the second half of the movie.

3. The earth rotates at an angle. All these years, I have lived close to the equator for the angle to have any effect on me and things around me. But now that I live close to the pole, the tilt should have an effect. Will that mean the uphill climb now will be a downhill slope in winter?

4. Are bubble gums biodegradable?

5. Most women I know tell me that the female species is a superior species to men. I grudgingly agree. But why does a superior species always want to mate an inferior species and make babies? Are they not bringing down the intelligence of the offspring by half? So if that half life continued for generations, will there not be a time when the male and female species be equally intelligent? Or stupid? I think the English are approaching that phase. Look at their spellings and you will understand. Shere (Shear), Gloucestershire (Glostersher), Edinburgh (Edinburah)...

I write anymore than this I am going to be hack-saw-ed. But why do people berate me for writing such trash but continue to read them anyway.

Project managing a half marathon

'So Raja, the project management course that I sent you to. Was it useful?'
'Very much.'
'Why don't you brief the team this Friday on what you learnt, so it will be a refresher for a lot of them?'

Where did my manager come from? Does he not know that courses are attended to use up department budget and not to learn something. The manager can tell the management the money given to him was all well spent so he could get more money next year (the more budget the manager has the more commanding his position is in the authority matrix) while I get free lunch and drinks for attending the course.

Back at my desk, I thought really hard to see if anything I do is ever close to project management or can be put into the frames of project management. Luckily, I had one.

Earlier in the previous evening: Ha ha, you are going to run a half marathon!! I bet you can not do that.

So that will be the project that I will manage. I will run a half marathon.

(I don't really remember where I left my course material, so I do not expect to follow all the steps one would in real project management. In between making rubber band bullets, playing sudoku and all the chattering my ears randomly picked up a few terms in the class which I will use here extensively and interchangeably.)

Project Statement: Run a half marathon

Terms of Reference: (what, where, who, which, how, when)

What am I going to do? - Run a half marathon
Who will run? I will run
How am I going to do? - That is my job. I will figure it out
When should I complete? - Before winter. (Running in winter means buying special winter running clothes. That costs money. So I save running in the summer. (This is an example of some of the best practices of project management: Save where you can))
How long should I take to complete the marathon? Nobody told me how long I should take. So I will assume I can take as long as I want as long as I complete before end of summer.
How much should the whole exercise cost? - It should not cost you more than your salary because you have no other means of income.
Where will I run? Run in the gym


What was not defined was how many times I could stop and how long my stoppage between runs could be. So I have decided to run one kilometer everyday in the next 22 days and complete my half marathon.

My budget:£ 228

Running shoes £ 80
Running t-shirt £ 15
Running shorts £ 15
Running underwear £ 8 (I figured out that I will have to wear a running underwear as I live in the UK. UK has more security cameras than people and I will not be surprised if there is a camera at the base of the treadmill.)
Pre-run meal 22 X £ 2
Post-run pizza 22 X £ 3 (Motivation is key to success. Unless I am motivated with a pizza at the end of the run I will not be able to get through the whole distance)


Stakeholders:

Get to know my stakeholders:

High influence - high support: Boston: 'Right-o'. He has completed 2 full marathons and always complains about his aching leg when he finishes the race. He comes from the stone age. He has no Internet connection and nowhere to live. There is rumour that he currently lives in his cubicle.

High support - low influence: David: 'Hey, how you going!'. David is my housemate. We eat pizzas together. He will be more than happy if I tell him our meal every evening is going to be a pizza for the next 22 days. I intend to give him a 2% stake in 'lazy-man inventions'. He invented the idea of piling up used plates and dishes until we use up everything in the house and wash them just once a week instead of spending an hour daily at the sink. He is trying to convince me to buy a bathtub so we can fill it with used plates. But as you would have seen, he falls in the low influence category and so we are not buying a tub in the near future.

Low support - low influence: Jinku: 'Darling'. He is Indian. I am Indian. He can not lift 5 kg dumb-bells, which automatically means I can not lift 5 kg dumb-bells. Or he will at least say so. His life revolves around women (2D & 3D. Do not mistake the Ds for the 'Ds'. The Ds stand for dimensions. A 2D woman is anyone on print and Internet while a 3D woman the one that walks around in flesh and blood), although he has not spoken to a single female species in the last 8 years I have known him.

High influence - low support: My other me: 'Hello, James Bond.' My other me likes to wear suits and sunglasses, drive super fast convertibles with a cigar in the mouth and 3 lovely ladies in the 3 other seats in the car. So he does not like to wear shorts and run in the gym. And unless he runs, I don't run. That explains his high influence - low support tag.

If you looked at the pictures of the stakeholders, you will observe the high influence people always look up and the low influence people look down. This should help you identify the high influence and low influence people in your offices.

Critical path analysis:

Critical path analysis tells you how you tactically manage running the 1 km. Once you have had your pre-run meal, pick a treadmill that is right behind that pretty girl in short shorts and tight t-shirt chugging along in the cycle. 1 km is a long distance and so you will need all the motivation you can take to complete and pretty ladies are good motivation.

The first 250m: Walking is slow running. So start with a walk but keep swinging your hands up and down so it creates an impression that you are running hard. Try to adjust the elevation to either a flat or negative slope if you can. ( ♫ Its another day in paradise)

The second 250m: Try to run this part. This part is going to be the hardest. Mysteriously, however long you keep your chin up and run and finally look at the time passed, it will not be more than 15 seconds. So start with your usual style of running. You must be able to cross the first 100m this way. To cross the next 100m, imagine yourself to be Arnold Schwarzenegger and try to imitate his style of running. When you come close to completing this 100m you will come to know that even Arnold Schwarzenegger feels tired after running 100m. So muscle does not work at all times. Try the no-muscle run for the next 50m. Run like you have no bones or muscles in your body and let every joint go in every direction. But the time you get used to running this way the next 50m would have also passed.

The third 250m: When you have reached this stage you have crossed half the distance. Although you will want to throw the towel and walk away, you must hang on. ( ♫ I will survive) And I know just the way to hang on. Hold on to the bar in front of the treadmill and let the treadmill drag you for the next 250m. Let your tongue out and pant as hard as you can to keep yourself cool. Dogs hang their tongues out and pant to keep themselves cool. You will by now have noticed that the girl in front of you would have also found you to be cool as she stares at you without blinking her eyelids for the next 30 seconds.

Last 250m: Whenever you run long distance, it is advisable to cool down. Cooling down after you finish your 1km is waste of time and energy. So I suggest you cool down in this 250m. So bring the speed down and start walking again until you hit the 1km mark. Job well done for the day! and its pizza time.

I do this for 22 days and I finish the half marathon. By putting it all down on paper, I have proof that I listened hard in the course and can put theory into practice. My manager will be happy about this when I brief the gathering with the same material this Friday.

My mummy's guide to blogging

Many people think that to maintain a blog is to just write our inner most carnal desires periodically and post them online. But what they do not know is that the world of bloggers is ridden with secrets and sabotage. In this post I will let you know some of the secrets. In a few days from now, you will automatically get to know about the sabotage as the blogger brethren bury me alive in a maggot filled coffin for letting out what was guarded with great devotion.

Symbiosis. You advertise me, I advertise you. Bloggers are a symbiotic group. If a fellow blogger sticks a link to your blog in his blog, you have to return the favour. I know a lot of you may be angry with me for not having your blog links on my page when you have mine. I would love to have all the names of the blogs I read. It is just that I read one too many blogs and some that are private and closed for public viewship. Since I am honest and impartial, I would like to have all the blog names posted and I don't think the owners of the private blogs are not going to be very happy about it. If you are also one of those who likes to read other people's private stuff, I tell you, it is not very easy to begin with. You should have read every page in the internet until you come across this before you know where each one's secret secrets are hidden.

lol-ing. One of the secrets of increasing your viewship is to go to random blogs and write arbitrary comments. They will visit your blogs to see who you are and thereby increasing your visitor count. You can comment whatever you want, even say the most indecent of obscenities as long as you end it with a smilie or a lol. People are just happy as long as they have comments for their posts.

Rule of 40-60. When the visitor counter reads 10,000, be assured that 4,000 of these visits were from the blogger him/herself. Usually 80% of the visits are from him or her for the first one year; by this time he or she would have given up on writing. In the second year, viewership percentage from other people will increase but eventually settle down at the 40-60 ratio.

Idea hours. Ideas to blogs usually arise when you are in one-to-one meetings with senior managers. As you pretend to actively listen to them, you will painfully see your ideas eroding out of your brain. The interesting ones arise when you are in the toilet on days when you think your last night's spicy biryani is out for one min and not entirely so in the next.

That brings to an end the first set of lessons to blogging. The next set will be released as soon as I manage to nick enough ideas from other unpublicised bloggers. That's another lesson. Steal from others. As long as you can publicise your posts more than the other guy you can always claim it to be your idea. You never know, it may not be his as well!

Beach houses, babes and biscuits

Prologue: After repeated accusations that I write only for the male fraternity, I have made an attempt to satisfy both the female and male species. So don't write hate mails to me this time.

Why would I not buy a home in Goa? Because buying houses cost money. And I am yet to invent a money making machine. (Mental note: search Wikipedia to learn to make money) But out of some drunken madness, if you wrote a cheque to me for a pot full of money, I still will not buy a home in Goa. Ofcourse, the alcohol is cheap and women come there to shed clothes. But I am not falling for it this time. Instead, I will reason out why You should not buy a home in Goa.

All of Goa and its coast is taken. So your dream of a beach house will only remain a dream. There is no point buying a house 10 miles into the mainland. The beaches are where the babes are. The clever you might fancy buying a telescope. However, the suspicious me and my brotherhood in Goa will brand you as Othakan Sivarasan and send you to Bihar. No questions on why to Bihar.

You might still compromise into buying a house well into the city and picking up babes at the bar. But I have some insider information that even the Government of India is unaware of. Goa has been sold to the European Union and America. So any bar you step into, you will have a hundred eyeballs pinning you down, none of them black or brown, until you chicken out and leave.

'You don't know about me. I am a mutant. I am a hybrid between a human and a certain animal that is known for its thick skin.' Your dad was ofcourse well ahead of his time! But, not everyone is. So you will never be one of them. After a few months you will be desperate and try your luckless luck with the locals. But remember, you are not one of them.

'But that is not too bad. I don't have to be around them as long as I have the telescope.' This is where everyone is mistaken. The hot babes leave Goa when the weather is too hot for them. And Goa is hot for most parts of the year. Assuming you managed to find someone pretty, you still need a joshful Shah Rukh Khan to protect you from the goons from the rival gang.

'Women come and go.. But a home few miles from the beach, fried fish fresh from the sea, cheap liquor, I can settle for that.' That is what you will think, until you have a taste of the real Goa. Your 10 rupee tip is no match to the 10 percent that the foreigner leaves behind. You will only be shy of seeing a board at the restaurant that reads 'dogs and you are not allowed.' So that leaves you with only the alcohol. It is true that Goa is full of cheap liquor. And they call it Feni. Drink it once and tell me if you ever want to drink anything liquid again.

'So should I buy a house for the babes then?'

It is a vicious circle!

Epilogue: I did not write anything about biscuits in this post. I didn't intend to. It is just that biscuits rhymed well with beach houses and babes and I included it in the title.

Weekend work out for the weight watchers

While the world is struggling to cope up with obesity, there is still a minority that struggles to add even a few ounces. I know two from that minority. One keeps a secret that he wouldn't divulge even in his deathbed. He shops for clothes in the kids section. The other's secret is known to all. Whatever he eats and however big that meal is, he has to have a full meals at the end to fill him up. I can't help people like him. But I can help the first one move from the kids section to the main section. So if you are one of the first kind, follow my fail proof advice for exemplary results.

Make use of the weekend. When you return from work on Fridays, order your Saturday's and Sunday's breakfast, lunch and dinner from a nearby take-away/home delivery restaurant. Do not eat veg. Meat is where the mass is. The more legs the animal has, the better. So dogs, cows and sheep are better than fish and chicken. But spare the spiders. Make sure you eat biryani at least once a day. The key to weight gain is minimising your movements. So once you reach home, drag your bed and fridge next to the front door so you don't have to come to the front door to collect your food. Have five or six large plastic shit bags around you. And for the sake of aesthetics, do not use transparent bags. Try to sit still or lie down as much as possible. If possible try to get one of those wooden machines that Jackie Chan uses in his films to fetch him various things and move him around the house. It should not cost you a lot as it is second hand and Chinese. Drink lots of fluids. But do not drink water. Drink beer. Beer will keep you healthy and provide you those precious calories. The only fruit you are allowed to eat is the mango. I can vouch for mangoes. I gained 7 kilos in two month by supplementing my usual diet with 2 cartons of mangoes (over that period). Sleep. Sleeping minimises your body movements. So sleep as much as you can. You will find it hard in the beginning. But once you cross a threshold, you will be tired from the excessive sleeping and will sleep more than before.

That is the weekend plan. The weekdays plan is at a small price. Contact me for
further details.

Superman

I waited for a full 2.4 days for Boston to update on our trip to the Stonehenge. He is probably training a speech-to-text software to understand his Anglicised thickly Thamizh-accented Indian English to understand him and write a blog for him. While the world can wait, my writer's itch pleads me to dump him and sketch my version of the trip.

Disclaimer: All ideas to this blog are solely mine and no part is stolen from Boston or Aja.

My arctic trip had skinned me to the bones and I had no money left. So I walked to the office for a week. It was weekend but I had to contend to sitting at home when Boston and Aja rang me up. The plan was already made and I was part of it. We were going to the Stonehenge for the solar solstice.

I knew my finances were bleeding. However, I had an ulterior motive to the trip. The Stonehenge was built in ancient times and it is said that the sun strikes the stones in a certain way on the solar solstice. This unusual event brought druids, tramps, gypsies, pagan worshippers and black magicians to the stones. Now, these people are very interesting people and if they were to congregate at the stones on this day, there must be something in it for all of them. Have you not seen movies where the sun strikes a crystal on a certain date and time, which in turn brings enormous power to the person holding the crystal? And I could be that person holding the crystal. I could become the person I have always wanted to be. I could be Superman!

But did I? That will be my little secret. But just to let you know, my underwear has mysteriously crept over my pants.

North Pole - 1

'I think you should sit at home and save some money instead of going out so often.' But staying at home, with nothing much to do and nothing on the TV, with just an idle housemate as you are can spur a lot of things. Now, all the perverts stop reading right here. You have got the seed for your imagination and there is nothing exciting and kinky after this.

What really transpired from the idleness cost me a lot of money. It cost me a little over a thousand pounds - my entire life savings. It all began with one simple question: 'How north can we travel?'

N: So raja, What are you doing this weekend?
raja: Backpacking to the arctic circle.

With a backpack, a new pair of shoes and my debit card I entered Heathrow and cleared all the Norwegian Kroners that all the American Express Forex depots had in stock that day. I was going to be the second Indian (Or at least that is what I thought) to set foot on Longyearbyen, the northern most human settlement in the world.





Confession: I have an ASS* now which will last for the next 7 days. Like common cold, this condition has no cure and will naturally fade away. Because of the condition, I named the post 'North Pole' even though I was a good thousand miles south of the north pole.

* Attention Seeking Syndrome

Second language

There are several advantages to your parents moving cities frequently when you are at school. You don’t have to be in that class where that bullying teacher made your little life miserable. Whether you completed your homework or not, whether you made a 100 or a zero, she always screamed at the entire class – at each one of you.

There is an added advantage if you moved states. If you are stubborn enough to tell the teacher that the second language you studied in your entire 3 years of schooling and the new second language that the new school taught were different; and that your little brain could not accommodate the new second language; and that you wished to maintain your cultural integrity; and if that school did not have a teacher who can teach the second language of your choice, you don’t have to study a second language. It happened to me!

And so for the next two months, for one full hour every working day, I played football by myself, roamed around the corridors, dug out earthworms and threw stones at the mango tree in the adjacent compound in a quest that one day I will be able to make strike one little mango. It however did not last long. If the mango tree had a glass window near it, it is not your mistake that the stone aimed at the mangoes cracked the window. As a 7 year old you think you can get away with it if you kept quiet about it. But not if the occupant of the house complains to the principal and not if you are the only one in the entire school premises to have the licence to roam the campus.

And so for the next year and three-quarters I spent my one free hour at the biology lab that houses preserved specimens such as meek looking snakes, a human kidney, gory lizards and a plastic skeleton.

While it was not entirely comfortable to have a skeleton to provide you company for an hour and your 7 year old male ego prevented you from confessing that you were pissing your pants at the look of it, you can always bank on your parents to move schools for you soon.

And they did. This time I was back to the state where the only second language I studied was the first language of the state and the second language of the school. But there was a problem again. I did not study a second language for the last two years to cope up with the rigours of a 4th standard class. You can always tell the teacher that your little brain with insufficient training will not accommodate the language after a two years break or that you wished to establish national integrity by not being biased at learning just that one second language. But it doesn’t work that way if the teacher happens to yet another bullying teacher who made your little life miserable.

Note: I learnt to read and write Thamizh reading Siruvar Malar from my neighbourhood library. After more than a decade I enrolled myself today into the local library and it brought back memories of my first library. I wanted to write about it and instead my confused, in two minds,uncertain, indecisive levelhead scribbled yet another nonsensical post.

The Day of Reckoning

I knew it was coming. But did not know it was to come this soon.

Saturday Night & the Kingfisher Girls

You don't say no when someone pays half your travel cost to travel 5000 miles for her wedding. It was my first Kingfisher flight. The first thing you will notice as you enter the aircraft is that unlike BA and Jet, there are no air-hosters. It was an all female servicing crew. The next thing you will notice is that unlike IA, they are all pretty. There was one similarity though - in all of these flights, all the air hostess have an inch thick foundation cream on their faces.

I was later told that the women were hand picked by Mallya. If I were in Mallya's position, I would have picked the same girls. But instead of having them work in the London-Heathrow aircraft, I would have them work in my private jet. It is just like what Mukund said he would do if he were put in a closed room with 'that' pretty actress; naked to the skin.

My luck got better when Sandhya sat next to me. Otherwise, how else would I have known that kids these days are so electronics savvy. I was very amazed at her seamless navigation on the touchscreen interface. The hand controller to the touchscreen distracted me away from Sandhya's dexterity and the pretty ladies shuffling around. This hand controller looked like a PS3 controller and there were games on the TV to top it. But my joy was short lived as I managed to load test the software yet again and crash the system.

Sir, would you like a beer?
I just had two and I wanted to say no. But when a pretty lady asks you repeatedly, the 'no' in the brain comes out as 'sure' from the mouth. Two more beers later I was just short of snoring when two mischievous minions who sat behind me pulled into full action. Their mum should have become immune to their screams over the years as she slept peacefully midst all the pandemonium. They didn't stop there. They repeatedly switched on and off other passengers' overhead reading lamps until they were out of their seats. I was out of my seat too. Beauty does not come with brains, doesn't it? Otherwise why would the air hostess give me so many beers, when, ideally she should have poured a couple of shots of JD for the kids and got them to sleep.

If the kids were one problem, the hand controller was another. The controller snug under the left armrest. So every time you moved a bit in your sleep, you either accidentally pressed the overhead reading lamp or the service button that summons the air hostess. While I liked to press just one of them repeatedly, I could not control the outcome of my twisting and turning as I unsuccessfully tried to sleep for the rest of the flight.

I disembarked from the plane, copied answers to a swine flu questionnaire from my neighbour and waited impatiently for the next 8 hours before I boarded another plane. It was the most turbulent flight ever in my life. But that story on another day...

Life lesson 1308: Everything happens for the good. If the boys had not woken me up at 2 AM in the morning, (when it was 6 30 AM at Madurai) I would have been jet lagged for the next 3 days and missed the wedding.

Cruel Intentions

It was a disappointment when Kumar stopped blogging. That was understandable. The weight of his new family must have broken his back. But why did the don stop writing? I had my own selfish interests for him to continue to write as he probably was the only one who ever mentions me in a blog!!

'So Don, why have you stopped writing?'
'You probably are the only one who ever reads my blog.'

While I told him that he didn't need a reader to write a blog, I knew it was upto him to write or not.

So why do I write? It is my vent. I am not sure what it is a vent to, but it certainly is very pleasurable to me when I write something. If I had to talk all the rubbish I write, I would have already been killed and mummified as a warning to all the living men and women like me. I stopped advertising my blog sometime ago after someone I knew humiliatingly told me not to send her links to my posts. But that does not stop me from writing, does it? Instead it inspires me to write good (what I think is good) blogs. I wish that one day she reads a good (what she thinks is good) post from my page, chuckles at it and then reads this to realise that it is her that I have mentioned in this post. But I know, it is a cruel world where my cruel intentions will not be realised.

Cooking lessons for first time cookers

If you live in India, give up on your cooking ambitions and head to the nearest restaurant. The meal there is going to be quicker, cheaper and tastier than the mouth watering concoction you think you will be able to cook.

If you lived elsewhere, you couldn't have gone anywhere better to learn about cooking. Believe me. When cricket is a religion, Sachin is God. Just so, when cooking is a religion... you know the rest, don't you?

Ok, let us cut down on some egotism and concentrate on the cutting and chopping. Peak performances can be achieved only when there is a pressure to perform. So if you are going to cook for yourself, there is not going to be any pressure. Therefore invite your boss and his boss for dinner and tell them to skip lunch that day. But never tell them what you intend to cook. What you intend to cook is not always what ends up on the table and it is not on your hands.

The first and foremost lesson for any kind of cooking is to have a Plan B: Always have a plan B. Buy a maggi before you set foot into the kitchen. Following that, unplug the smoke alarm. Smoke alarms are useless devices that go off even when you light a match a mile from them. When you cook there is bound to be some smoke. Don't be bothered about it until the flame under the frying pan leaps onto the top and torches the roof of your kitchen black. When that happens, you should call a fire brigade. So keep your phone ready with the fire brigade number keyed in. The corner stone of any cuisine is onions and tomatoes. Normally, cook books will instruct you to chop them. There is a big possibility that you will chop one of your fingers. Now that is not bad. But not everyone is non-vegetarian. So keeping the herbivore species in mind, use a mixie and crush them all. This is all vegetarian and it saves some time. Since this will be your first time cooking, your imagination would have run wild and you would have bought every conceivable ingredient from the shop. But what you would not have done is cut open the packs before you started the process. But never mind; try and tear open the sachets while the cauldron of broth is spewing smoke and reducing visibility. You are bound to spill half the contents when the sachet splits into two. But never mind that too; because in exactly 3 seconds, the flames from the bottom of the pan is going to move to the top. So your next action to stop the flames will be to pour some liquid onto the pan. Avoid pouring oil unless you wish to understand what the expression 'adding fuel to fire' really meant. Next is the salt lesson. Do not forget to add salt. Just after you have added salt, you will always feel that you should add one more spoonful and after much deliberation you eventually will. But the last spoonful of salt will turn your meal salty and there is no way of getting over the last spoon temptation. When you have arrived at this stage, your meal is ready.

After-note: Never boil ladies-fingers unless you are making a jelly for dessert

Airport at MG Road

That I have spent a fortune to arrive in time for Arun's wedding, and that I have a history of missed buses and trains (I was not the one to blame for any of them), I decided to check on the flight dates and timings. I got the date correct but the timing wasn't so right. The stupid daylight savings had confused the airlines. Or atleast, I would like to blame it on the stupid daylight savings.

Next, I had to figure out my inflight and transit entertainment. But I am not going to worry too much about the inflight entertainment. The kingfisher girls sure know I am flying this Saturday night. But the problem is when I arrive at Bangalore the next morning and when I have to wait 7 hours for my connecting flight to Madurai. Sure, I can use that time to finish a few levels of NFS or The Satanic Verses, but my bum is not very happy to sit on steel chairs for the full 7 hours. So I arranged for Sridhar to pick me up.

I know Sridhar through Arun. For years Arun and D used him as the sidekick who is ready to accompany them on dayouts, dinners and movies. While he was genuinely overwhelmed at their including him in all their activities, he never suspected their evil plans. Otherwise why would Arun's bike have only two seats that will fit only Arun and D while Sridhar rode the bus? Or why would he be part of D's birthday party when there was no party on his birthday? But the unsuspecting Sridhar will know nothing of it. And again, this weekend, they have guiled him into coming to Madurai. So he will not be available to pick me up.

My next option was Collins. But I can not expect Collins to come to the Airport after his hangover from the previous night. So I rang him up to find my way to his house. But there was bad news. The Bangalore airport is an hour and half away from anything that is Bangalore and Collins' house was a 2 hour journey from the airport. Discounting all the travel, check-in and check-out there is probably going to be just an hour for me to spend at his house. Cushioned chairs at the cost of Rs 150 each way and one free beer (that I assume Collins will pay for) are no way better than the free steel chairs. 'Could you send a couple of your girlfriends to the airport.' He almost hung up the phone. People are becoming too selfish to share.

I then trashed out a million exciting ideas for another million unexciting reasons. I finally decided to settle in at the airport. So I looked into the airport website to check out the facilities offered by the airport. To my ill luck their restaurants, food & beverage section was blank. I suppose they did not have anything to offer there.

As the mind wandered around in search of new ideas to keep itself busy, two thoughts struck me. 1. Why are there not people thronging to pick me up? Don't they know that all people flying from overseas bring with them cheap liquor which they generously distribute? 2. Why is the Bangalore airport so far off from the city? Why can't it be shifted to the centre of the city? For sure, space is a constraint and planes need long runways to land and take off. But why can't we move to VTOL aircraft? Now there is an idea. And that is an interesting way to kill my time. So I will build a case to show the government why we should and how we could move the airport to MG Road. And in that 7 hours, I probably will also convince the airport authorities with my idea so that the next time I fly in, I don't have to travel 2 hours for a pint of free beer.