The New Face of India

It was once thought that India is in its villages. This might have been true for a long time after Independence. But not any more. The times have changed and so have the situations. The country is increasingly getting urbanized. Malls and Multiplexes are no more metro-specific phenomena. Now even average size towns can boast of these. People now have access to the best brands in the world and at the most affordable prices ever. The market forces and the competetion that comes with Capitalism is increasingly exposing India and Indians to the best quality of life that mankind has been able to attain. There is still a long way to go before everyone in India has access to the best and our standard of living rises high enough to empower all of us to compete in the world which is continuously flattening. We all have a crucial role to play, for the times have come when we have the opportunity to do what we are best at and the entire world has demand for it.

If music be the food of love, Play On!!!                                   -- A song from the movie Pyare Mohan

Phew, this was my most serious attempt ever at writing some hifi stuff in my blog. I was forced to do this out of frustration caused by remarks by many intelligent ladies that I write all crap. Still I don't think I could write any thing really solid. Anyway, I will keep trying.

No Raining

I wanting to dance in rain with gal-friend, but no raining. I hate this. Why this happening? Rainy season, july, no rain. Last year Pune flooding this time. Bombay already flooded this time last year. But now, no rain. Few days before it rained well. Bombay almost flooded. But now no rain. What is this. I hate this. My gal-friend shouting on me. What is this?

I carry umberella everyday. To office, to bazaar, to railway tracks when I going to shit there in the morning. Gal-friend force me to do that. Very concerned she is. Absolute cow. Very innocent. Trusting me lot.

Last year heavy flooding. Railway tracks under water. Water till knees. I shitting western style near tracks. Difficult to balance that position. Like sitting on chair, without any chair. With umberella in one hand. And water till knees. Bad Bad.

Time too bad. Black cat walking in front of me. All time. This side to this side. Back to previous this side from this side. Bad cat. Badding my day completely. I hate black cat. White cat also I hate. Don't know. White cat also may be bad animal. But don't know.

Indian gorvernment = Bitch. Doing reservation. Train reservation so problem. Now college reservation. What to do? Bloody-Fool politician. I hating them. Now reserving private company. India should drown in one glass water. Give free seat to poor, if deserving candidate. Pushing fool, he failing, what is use? Improve school, get youth more eligible. I hating what happening.

My neighbour cubicle gal resigning. What happened I don't know. She join one month back. Now resigning. My face so bad. Gal run away. Black cat going here to here.

My company canteen food so bad. I eat, it stops near throat. I drink water. Bad food. Cow-Dung. Bull-shit. Married people bring lunch from home. Wife-cooked. Tasty food that. But only if wife good cook. 99% wife good cook. My friend Bulli Raju. His wife give him little little food. He eat with sad face. We eat canteen food, he jealous of that also. Poor guy.

Ok wait, I go drink coffee from coffee machine. How it make coffee, I don't know. Good coffee. Free of cost.

Ok I am back.

Watching krishh before 2 week. Superman in Krishh, getting superpower from alien. Alien name Jaadu. I do morning walk at 2.00 am. No alien landing anywhere. I also want superpower. Will protect world. Promise!

No working in office. My client going vacation. It is wonderful. He said don't call me. Thinking I am wanting to call. He so stupid. American.

Chalo, it is lunching time. I going...tata!!!

dekho baarish ho rahi hai!!!

I watched Krishh yesterday. What a movie! Liked it. For the first time an Indian SuperHero-Movie had special effects to match any hollywood movie...and at the same time, the original tradition of the Bollywood movies was managed intact. Great songs, picturesque locales...sexy heroine...the movie had everything...Full paisa vasool!

And after the movie we had a nice dinner. I drank four large pegs of Smirnov Vodka and then I did something I had never done before. I smoked. Macchar and Jeetu had ordered a packet of cigarettes. And I was totally taken aback when I found myself taking a cigarette out of the packet and asking macchar to light it for me. And then within moments, I was really smoking. I didn't cough he first time. And I was surprised at this coz I have seen in a lot of movies...when a hero smokes the first time, he coughs like hell...but then I realized that I wasn't taking in the smoke into my lungs. Just keeping it in the mouth and releasing...so I tried taking it in...and then I got choked for a second...the khaansi...I finished the first sutta of my life, without taking in the smoke again into my lungs...who cares...it felt great having the tusurr-phusna in the hand...and releasing tiny clouds of smoke into the air...

I shouldn't forget...the hot chik doc at Dr. Batra's clinic has asked me not to smoke. Will never smoke again...I swear =))

Rainy season is at its best right now in Pune. It has been raining continuously for the past 2 days. And what a weekend it has been! Raining outside, thandi hawaayein, and me under my blanket...with my head resting on one pillow...and my hand resting on another ;-)

sweet dreams!!!

Gateway Latin America

TCS is heavily recruiting, in thousands, from uruguay, brazil and chile...it has global delivery centres at these locations...

what do u think it means?

even indian companies find indians costly overseas...tap the local talent, or get people from poorer nations...

this means that offshoring cud even happen to these countries and not to india if indian companies have offices there...and besides that, indians now will have ever decreasing opportunities to go abroad and earn some dollars which is the prime motivation for most software professionals in working in a software organization.

thoda sa dil thoda sa will...

I am thinking about starting a company. And my friend Jeetu is also thinking the same. And so is Ravi, Sandeep and Machhar.

We are clueless what we are capable of.

We are all in software jobs. Some of us are doing good(Ravi, sandeep, Macchar, Manis, jeetu) and the rest(me) are not. But the point of importance is that none of us are satisfied with our jobs. The basic reason is the awful quality of the work. And as a matter of fact, no one can be satisfied doing this crap.

We are a poor country. The americans keep all the creative, intellectually satisfying jobs for themselves and send all crap to us. And we are consoled coz we get to earn better money than what the traditional Indian jobs would pay.

But this is seriously undermining our spirits, talent and quality.

I will change it. Very soon. We will create better jobs and better opportunities for the Indians. Most importantly, we have to create a milieu where Indians work for shaping India, and in the process, shape their own lives...are satisfied, and happy.

Till then...

If Music be the food of Love...Play On!!!

trying not to live

Life has taken great turns. I was never a very quiet person. Neither have I become one. It is just that the inner voice has died down lately. And my thoughts have become more and more superficial. It is great trying to analyze onself; trying to look at u'rself from a distance. The brain (or should I call it the mind), trying to understand itself. Or rather, a part of it studying the other part. It's great to be human.

As I grew up, I learnt a lot about life. I have become and unbecome a lot of things. Experiences taught me a great deal. Experiences - good, bad, weird, happy, sad - many kinds of them. The reluctance to new experiences was always there. We live strange lives. We live trying not to live. We are scared to emote. We are scared to talk reality. We cheat, we deceive, we pretend. Is reality so scary? The power to pretend, that distinguishes man from all the other animals...is it a power at all?

I remember very few incidents from the early years of my adolescence. May be, only those which I have photographs of. Memory fails me even for those at times. And as I descend in time, all memory fades, and I don't remember anything. Even photos don't remind me of anything. Strange are those phases of life. You see, you breate, you hear everything, you feel a lot of things, you cry, you laugh...and yet the brain doesn't register any of those feelings and leaves nothing in the memory of those beautiful times. Why is that so? Is it like that with all animals? How long do animals take to start remembering things after their birth? Does the brain need to know a language of communication to be able to register events? How does it start? And if it really does, do animals, who don't have a way of communicating, never remember anything?

I used to play cricket when I was in school. I was a good player. I loved batting. As a batsman, I was a pinch hitter, trying to hit every ball to the boundary. I was a good fielder as well. I enjoyed a lot, diving all over the field to grab the ball, and shouting humerous slogans. I used to bowl sometimes. But was not very successful at it. I quit playing for work. And all work and no play made me a dull boy. I don't play now. I have got used to this dull state of mine. And I think I enjoy it too, coz I don't want to move out of it. I am trying not to live.

It's raining heavily. Yes, it's the rainy season. Thunder, lightning and then the rain. And everything cools down. Rains! Weird Phenomenon. It flooded last year in Pune. Many people died in the nearby villages. Life is not easy for them. Their homes are drowned in the rains. Summers destroy their crops. Rains do too. And winters kill their uncovered bodies. And here I am, sitting in front of my brand new LCD. There are no rains here. No summer, no winter. This body is definitely alive. I can feel it. My mind feels it. A part of my mind feels it. What else does it feel?

The other part of it is dead.

Me, Myself and My Hair

I am a very good boy. Nobody is so good as I am. I am not sure whether I should call myself a boy, coz I don't look like one. I have lost 95% of my hair. And my face looks like that of a 50 year old.

Life was pathetic when I first discovered that I was turning bald. I can write a book on it. It is true. Nobody understands better the feelings of a bald person than the bald person himslelf, or another bald person.

It all started when I was in the 11th standard. It was aweful. I used to love my hair. My dad is bald. My whole khaandaan, at least 7 generations backwards is bloody-bald. But somehow, I had had this confident feeling that I was not going to be one. A classmate of mine in school started losing his hair when we were in the 9th standard. I used to make fun of him. Call him "taklu", "ganju"...lots of things...all in Hindi...coz mine was an English Medium school where nobody spoke english.

Though there were tons of dandruff and though the hair used to keep falling all the time, I never even dreamt that I could be bald. I don't know exactly when I first noticed, but whenever I did, I had lost a lot my hair and had pretty large bald patches on my head. It was like you get up one fine morning and discover that u've turned a female. My god! It was more horrible than that. It was like you lose the most important part of your visible personality and all so suddenly. Before long, everyone knew about my handicap.

11th class was particularly important those days. I am sure even now it is. The reason being the fact that it's in 11th that guys start preparing for the various competetive examinations they have to appear for at the end of the 12th class which will decide whether they'll be engineers or doctors or something else (this something is very uncertain at that stage). I joined 2 tuitions. One was with Khan Sir, for Chemistry. Another was with Rao Sir, for Maths and Physics.

Khan Sir's house was pretty far away...near Pratap Taulkies. I used to stay in a place called Control Blocks in the Railway area. Three days a week, I used to cycle from Control Blocks to Khan Sir's place. It used to take about 45 minutes. And I used to cycle very very slowly. The reason...simple:

The moment I discovered that I was growing bald, I stopped getting a hair cut. My hair grew in a very bad way. There were lots of unwanted hair on the sides and at the back, of my head of course, growing uglily, and on top the little hair that was there grew exceptionally long. I let the hair grow so that I cud cover the bald pathches. So every morning, it took about 30 minutes to get my hair style right...i.e., I used to pull upwards all the hair from the sides to cover the scanty area on the top. This could unfortunately be done only from one side. If I pull hair from both sides upwards, I'm afraid it'd look obscenely scary. So i decided to go ahead with this. Then there was the problem of the receding hairline in the front. So I used to pull in front some hair from the top, creating some fringe. There was no "maang". Rather there was one close to my left ear and everything was turning right from there. I used to oil my hair heavily. For 2 reasons...one, in hope that the hair that i'd lost will grow back...two, so that the hair I set at home would remain like that till I come back home. But this was mostly in vain. Coz, I wonder why, but when hair is long and scanty, even slight wind manages to blow it here and there. As I used to cycle from Control Blocks to Khan Sir's place, I had to ride very very slow to avoid my hair-style getting spoilt. I used to turn my head to the right and then turn my eyes to the left so that my line of vision was along the road and my hair suffered the least due to the wind. And most often, despite all precautions, a truck would come from the other side at full-speed and blow off everything. It was an aweful feeling. I never carried a comb those days. There was a reason for this:

I am very shy person. Rather I was, a very shy person. I don't know why. I was not like this when I was a kid. Really. I used to bathe nacked even in front of ladies. They used to watch me. I never cared. But now, in class 11th, something turned me very self-conscious. This falling hair was changing my entire personality. I was in deep pain all the time. If I saw someone laughing at a distance, I would imagine that it was about my hair. I started hating people. I used to get complicated feelings. Each time I combed, a lot of hair used to come out, making me almost cry. I would imagine how I would look at the end of 12th class...completely bald at that rate...I thought...I was not actually ready for all this...and it was hard to imagine someone getting bald when he is in school. And it was scary being a bald kid.

I hated meeting anybody. I hated seeing people. I rode my cycle very slowly. I bunked school. I couldn't concentrate on studies. I was brilliant in studies, but now I couldn't concentrate at all. Wherever I went, people looked at me as if I was an alien. Guys cracked joked calling me a "taklu". There was a guy called Tony who loved to embarrass me in front of girls. I hated combing my hair in front of anyone, even my parents.

There was a peculiar way I used to comb. There was a mirror in my room hanging on the wall. I used to carry another mirror in my left hand. With the comb in my right hand and the smaller mirror held on top of my head with my left hand, I used to comb, very cautiously trying to cover every brown area on my head with whatever hair that remained. Underlying this, there was a very vague assumption that the hair would remain like this the whole day without getting disturbed, which never used to happen. But I could not help not to make this assumption. I didn't carry a comb until I reached college. There was a reason for this:

One day Khan Sir, who used to take my chemistry tuitions, cracked a joke during his class. It went like this:
"If you are in a train and you need to comb u'r hair and u don't have a comb, just look around for a guy with least hair. Ask him for a comb and you will get one. The lesser the hair, the better are the chances that the guy carries a comb."

This went through me like Shri Ramchandra's arrow. There was pain all over me, while everyone else were laughing at the stupid joke. Many looked at me while laughing, including some gals. The guy sitting right beside me asked whether I had comb. I was terribly embarrassed.

Also there is a general feeling that only "bad boys" carry combs. And I always wanted to be a "good boy". So I didn't carry a comb in my pocket until I reached college, that's when I grew matured enough to handle a bald head.

Anyway, things got better once I was in college. I got used to a lot of things. I grew up. Comments about my hair didn't pinch me any more.

To be Continued...