It finally happened. You know, for a while now I'd been wondering what was wrong with me. I have a good job, a decent haircut, an unremarkable odour and a witty sense of humour (just gulp that for a while - this story supports it). There is nothing particularly revolting about me, except perhaps my feet, but I conceal them well. So, I was wondering why this hadn't happened earlier.

So, I was in Mumbai a few weeks earlier, and while leaving home, my grand mother, in her ever-feeble voice, said, "Arjun, tujhyasaaathi ek mulgi sangun geli aahe". Now I had no frigging clue what that meant, so I put up my clueless Maharashtrian-boy-brought-up-in-Bangalore look. My grandmother got the hint rather well... though sometimes she overdoes it - one time recently she even tried telling me how shrikhand was made. I was plain offended. Every Maharashtrian boy worth his modak should know that!

However, this time she was right on the money. So she explained "Arre, laganyasaathi" (for a marriage [to you]). "Dentist aahe. Tichya aaini vicharla, tujhyabaddal." (She's a dentist. Her mother asked about you). Ah!

So I said, "Majhe daat sagale ajun nighale naahi aahet. Nighalyanantar baghuya". (All my teeth haven't popped out yet. Once they do, we'll see). My sisters giggled, my grandmother grimaced. And that was the end of that.

I don't think my grand mother will be 'helpful' again soon!

An attempt to see if my life is interesting enough to blog:

So, my day literally starts when a friend calls me because he's buying a new bike. A silver Unicorn, no less. He's apparently at the showroom with a loaded bank account, saying he's made up his mind, but probably wanting a final affirmative nod from us that he's not completely insane. All this happens while my roommate and me are planning on getting a late lunch.

In light of this new to-do, we decide to check out the bike first, and then get ourselves treated to lunch! (new bike yaar... treat treat!) On the way, the traffic jam really sucks! I yawn a splendid yawn, turn my head and see the driver to the left of me giving a huger yawn and looking right back at me. At the end of our performance, we both smile. A sort of nod to mutual laze and boredom, perhaps.

The bike rides smoothly on the test-drive, although I'm very unhappy that the salesman gave me such a tiny alley to work on that I only got to third gear. All is good, except the showroom doesn't accept cheques. What a bother! Hmm, we need to find a bank near by. Well, after lunch, dammit. Can't think on an empty stomach. Ah, wanna have sugarcane juice first?

So we go to this place where you get 99 varieties of dosai, and promptly make the wrongest possible choice of dosa. An 18 inch behemoth that tests even the bottomless pits we call our stomachs (well, mine at least. The other two really don't eat that much). We leave almost half the dosa, and walk out with our tummies making nice half moons in the evening light.

So, the to-be-Unicorn-owner departs to handle his finances, we decide to look at some electronics. Me like - Bose headphones! Nearly buy them. Then we look at some cell phones and definitely don't buy them. I realize I need a TV stand just about then, so we go to a mall to find a furniture shop. Now at the mall, I'm swimming in a sea of beautiful faces and bouncy perky well-shaped, erm, eyes. So we don't really find the trolley, and we decide to try the furniture shop opposite. Not before we stop at McDonalds of course. I finally find myself a good stand at the furniture shop, and the to-be-Unicorn owner informs us that he withdrew a whole lot of cash and thus will very soon turn into a Unicorn owner - with the AP govt mandatory helmet receipt et al.

We bring the TV stand home. It goes well with the TV. I get a call from the biggest nut I know, and we go off into encyclopedias of stories. We share some good times. Then I try to think I can throw away something I truly love, and decide I can't do that. But apparently I'm not sure I can keep it either. So things get very messy in my head and outside it, and I'm all of helpless, upset and angry. And then I use that anger to shoo off another friend who might have helped. And she happily gets shooed off too! A little too happily.

So I'm watching FRIENDS because I can't sleep, and suddenly this delicate thing I really don't talk to much pings me because she can't sleep either. Wow, that's a nice omen-like-thing, I think, and I start chatting with her with all the enthusiasm of a first-bencher (no better analogy in my head, sorry). Only, ironically, my chat with her cures her of her insomnia! Wow, a totally hilariously tragic way to end the day.

That's it. I'm done. Only maybe not. It's 5:40 and I STILL CAN'T SLEEP. Wonder what utterly interesting adventures lie in store for me. Sigh... get a life. I need to.

March 12th, 2007
Hyderabad, India

A new phenomenon is sweeping across the Internet, causing managers a lot of worry and mothers a lot of panic. Its rapidly expanding user base calls it anything from 'status chatting' to 'giving head'. With the infectious nature with which it works, chances are that a loved one is engaged in this very dangerous activity even as you read this.

It's chatting at the next level! Discrete and effective, it involves chatting through the Status Message of popular IM clients usually reserved to indicate the current status and/or disposition of the user:"Oh, I use it mostly for casual chatting, without commitments", says a user who preferred to remain anonymous, "but sometimes I'll stick in a URL or two in there for the heck of it. Sometimes it's one-on-one, but more often than not I'm doing it with multiple partners across different IMs". Is such rampant and seemingly irresponsible behaviour a cause for concern?

Renowned psychologist Atyanta Thinkar attributes this phenomenon to the constant yearning of the mind for exclusivity, while at the same time its need to explore its dark voyeuristic tendencies. He assured us that apart from studies that show the link between status chatting behaviour to lameophoresis, there is really nothing to fear. There are more than a few people who would beg to differ from this point of view, however.

Hari Sadu, a manager in Eyebeem, Hyderabad, described his mounting worry of the number of hours his team has lost to this new hobby. "It's deceptive in the way it takes away a person's time incrementally without him even realizing it!" Eyebeem, like most companies around the world, is taking an aggressive approach to curb this emerging menace. "We are pushing major IM providers to use different ports for status messages and chats so we can effectively block one while letting the other through", says Mr. Sadu. "While communication within most companies is indeed done through IMs and is a productive facility overall, status chatting shows very alarming figures on the productivity scale".

Geeta Sangeeth was involved in a relationship for about a year until she caught her boyfriend cheating on her through status messaging. "We used to chat all the time", she said, "until I realized that he was status messaging someone else while chatting with me". It took Geeta some time to correlate his frequent status message updates with those of her best friend's due to its discrete nature, but once she was sure, sure enough it broke their relationship immediately.

"The real issue here is that the sociopsychological characteristics of this new collaborative behaviour has not concretised in the minds of users", said Dr. Thinkar. "Different people are reacting to it in different ways, and it will take a while before clear boundaries are defined as to what is acceptable and what isn't".

For the more cautious, it is advised to keep away from the phenomenon until its long term effects are fully understood. Staying away is fairly easy by following these simple instructions:

1. Make sure you uninstall IM clients that allow status messages to be edited. These include most popular IMs including Google and Yahoo.
   
2. Use IM clients like GAIM that implement multiple protocols, thus ensuring that they have poor status message support for any one protocol.
3. For companies, we suggest developing custom IM solutions that do not implement status messages at all.
   

In the end, the choice is yours! Join one of many Internet revolutions and pamper your mind, or be a non-believer and stay away from what many deem potentially dangerous and destructive. We wish you luck either way.

--Routers, err... Reuters

In my line of work, I get to correspond every now and then with people from quite a few different places around the world, including those in US, France, Germany and Japan. And the wonderful ways in which they twist English around their own languages is sweet, indeed entertaining.

Like a translated document we received from the national postal service in France - La Poste telling us how they want their shipping labels to look - it had a section which contained stuff on the label that was obviously extremely important to them, so much that they named the section "Mandatory Indispensables". They could just as easily have called it "Put this stuff on the label or we'll kill you first. And then misplace the package!". Then there was correspondence from a Frenchman saying "Here are some examples of manifest where we don't have these informations on each page". Love that plurality switching thing.

Which takes me back to those good old days - trying to learn French at IITK. There was this time our class had a little rendezvous with some Frenchmen, and our lecturer, the nicest lecturer in the world, told us to generally be nice by preparing a question each to ask them. And boy was it one of the most pressured moments of my life. I asked one of them an innocent enough question, "Quelle musique aimez-vous ?" (What music do you like?). He had this "Say whaaat?" expression on his face at first. A couple more attempts and an encouraging yet half embarrassed look from the lecturer finally got the message through to the man. And the resultant surge of emotions and torrent of words it evoked from him as he went on into some deep philosophical monologue about what it means to really love music was met by a bewildered grin from my end while I tried desperately to make sense of even a single word if only I could. Not only did I seem totally unFrench to him, I was probably also constipated and retarded in his eyes. "Thanks for keeping me alive through this, Oh God", I prayed silently, "Never again will I smirk at the less Englowed!"

Ah, those wonderful French classes. A time to unwind, to have fun, to take over two minutes to utter a single sentence and still get a pat on the back for it. "Juh sveee umm... Juh mapppppel ... err... Arjun....? Oui...? Oui! Bon!" There were really three foreign language classes - French, German and Japanese. The Germans were students who wanted to learn mainly to pursue higher education. Serious stuff. In uniform it is rumoured. The French consisted of bored housewives, campus residents who wanted to show off to the home crowd, and hopeless romantics. The Japanese were Anime-loving immature man-child desperadoes. While the Japanese often spoke of Hentai and tentacle-sex in class, the meek and conformist French made jokes about how it is inappropriate to ask a young lady questions from the first chapter like "What is your age?". I cannot comment on the Germans since I dared not venture close.

All in all, good times. Times that flash back every now and then in my head when I have serene conversations with fellow travelers. And then I just have to ramble on and on to someone who wouldn't give a smelly escargot for what I have to say.

Well, sometimes there's just no one to talk to. Perhaps if I didn't behave like a wise old monkey who knows the answer to life, the universe and everything automagically following a brief scratch-session, I just might have stopped to listen to other people when they tried to help me however they could. Hmm, if I could just remember what they tried to tell me then...

Force feedback and 29 inches. Hour long phone calls. Reliving the past with someone special. A vegetarian meet up with friends. Illy coffee, a couch, beautiful hair and a smiling waitress. Having a girl puke all over my pants. Twice! A persistent cough and a light fever. Hearing the little one squirm and stretch early in the morning. Messages that just refuse to go international. A spanking new office with patent pending swiveling keyboard stands. Some fried masala peas.

Boy, do I feel alive!

And Barista comes up with the stupidest names...

For the last time, it's not 'fren'. As in:

"m blessed to have a fren like Peesaravanmuthudoubledeckerbus!"
"bas tu hi to meri sacchi fren hai!"

It gets worse! They have somehow formulated modifiers around the contorted excuse for a word. Like:

"just hanging out with frens."
"I'm a simpal gal who cherishes frenship."

It's FRIEND, for crying out loud! If you think I'm overreacting, let me leave you with a gruesome thought. What if this popular TV series was produced in India???



Now you're finally scared, aren't you?

"And nothing lasts forever, even cold November rain..."
- that guy who thought he was the entire world, Axl Rose.

Sometimes the universe decides to give you a break. It actually conspires for you for a change. Makes things work out. You win a lottery even though it isn't much. Those at loggerheads stop locking horns with you and get comfortable over a couch, virtual as it may be. Your SMS finally gets through after just one pending status! And your heart swells with pride when someone you hold close achieves.

It just had to start with that burger joint playing 'Golden Slumbers'. Perfect!

Remember when I told you that you deserved better? Well, I knew what I was talking about, but now I've just gone and outdone myself.

I can't simply be like this. This is just plain unacceptable. But till I cnange, I'm sorry.

(No comments expected or encouraged...)

Just WHY is my door number 8-2-310/3/A/3? I mean which kind of retarded 8086 endowed official decided on this contorted overdose of numerology? Why does God intend me to consult my cell phone whenever I needed to recall my permanent address, attracting suspicious stares from whoever requests it. Why do I have to repeat my address a minimum of five times to every guest kind enough to visit at least once? And why is the landlord's daughter so young?

If someone explains what 8-2-310/3/A/3 is to me, you entitle yourself to a nice fat treat from me. That, or you get an immediate admission into CBI!

Ok, so I changed the ghastly template to make way for an even ghastlier one. In other news...

• Shopped for pendants for the first time. All alone! it was amusing how the experience was all of interesting: "Natural pearls come only in these 3 colours", boring: "Yes, this might look the same as the first, but it is more casual; it's for daily wear!", ego-boosting: "These are all real diamonds, sir. 18K." and mercilessly ego-shattering: "Oh nooo, you don't want to look at these. They are all in the higher price ranges...", at the same time. At the end of it all, I was left with a cheap little piece about the size of a shriveled pea. At least I gained some arbitrary jewelery knowledge - for instance, they add 15% to the weight for wastage! Wastage??? Dude, if you don't want to waste, why don't you be more frigging careful? Stop weeding before work!
  
• A bunch of us went to a mall, bought a bunch of clothes, and managed to buy them in such a way as to make sure our individual bills were small enough to avail of absolutely no holiday offers whatsoever.! A few minutes later, we came back to buy a couple of undies, and bam! We win two passes to a Euphoria concert. Moral of the story: Ensuring that your underwear is fresh and clean is very lucky, if getting gay concert tickets can be considered so.
  
• Finally, the fast food joint Chicking really really sucks. Well, the burgers ain't too bad, and the chicken is quite crispy and KFC-like. But come on, what's with the stupid name? Sounds like something eve-teasers would use on a typically productive day.
• Oh, happy birthday, little one!
  

I've been to my share of eateries over the years, more so after my recent shift to a city with no obscurely linked relatives' homes to gate crash into. The mundane exercise each night, initiated by a lazy roommate who goes, "So, what do we do for dinner tonight?" in quite the Disney's Jungle Book Vulture kind of way, leaving the NP-Complete (little computer humour there...) problem of finding a satisfactory restaurant each and every night solely to me, has resulted in me getting familiar with absolutely all eateries in the locality, and most even beyond. My apologies for that mammoth of a sentence.

Anyway, as I was saying, I've had my share of eateries. Cute word, isn't it - eateries? But I digress... so, of all the places affordable (barely) for your average daily dinner, the one place I want to go into again and again is this tiny little Subway that's a convenient two kms away from our home. Initially drawn to it because of one disturbing detail on the results of my then recent medical checkup, I now like to go there simply because of the interesting blend of people it draws in. Of course, I admit one can see a similar blend on any of the newer trendy hangouts these days, but then again everywhere else they generally talk, laugh, have a good time. Nothing worth observing. At Subway, they are more themselves, lost in thought, as I am, lost in mine.

There was this really innocent fairy-princess kind of girl with a strange tongue (as in language, you pervert). Spotless skin, face like a doll, her words sounded quite like a casual medley of instruments carried by a summer breeze. Looking down at the way she looked half smiling at her toes as her male accomplice made all the moves, I couldn't help but let my mind be drawn to romance once again. Rather than check her out, I instead simply wished her, and if she wanted, the lucky freak who was with her but so did not deserve her, all happiness deserved.

Then there was this Oriental student, bespectacled, hair falling over her face, trying very hard to look lost in a book and in her white PDA, which I admit, was what I was drawn to before its owner. Feverishly concentrating on her reading and occasionally keying in frantic bursts on her PDA, she received more than one smile from me. It's just as well that she was too busy lost in her world to notice. A good half hour passed, and as I picked up my tray to leave, I noticed she had but gone through a mere dozen pages in her book. Perhaps she found English difficult, perhaps she had too much else on her mind, perhaps she was alone. Perhaps.

Then there were the bogged-down-with-life atomic families, the rich irresponsible software engineers, the confident aunties, the full-of-promise couples. Each with their own ideas and worries, their own opinions and insecurities, all bottled up inside them, not even let out in the small confines of the Subway outlet.

And then there was the foggy spectacled (yes, they are still foggy) self-declared psychiatrist with only an average wiener. The 6-inch sub, I'd call it. Hehe...

It finally happened. Bangalore is now ಬೆಂಗಳೂರು (Bengalūru) . The proposal put forth by U. R. Ananthamurthy was finally implemented on November 1st, 2006. How does that make millions of Pradesh-loving citizens feel? Very patriotic indeed! What do the millions of Pradesh-loving citizens think of this proposal? They don't...

U. R. Ananthamurthy, I. M. Very Annoyed!

I thought this was cute. I'm sure at least half a dozen people I know will disagree. But, keeping up with my scandalous reputation, here it goes.

On checking out Aparajita's Orkut profile:

Arjun > Sneha > Aparajita


Tee hee hee!

Yeah yeah, Sneha or Appu, if you want me to remove this post, I will. Party poopers...

The first bug I resolved at Amazon - didn't really do anything, rather showed the concerned party that nothing could be done! Just when I stretched my hand to pat myself on my back, I received the icing on the cake via email:
--------------------------------------------
Why did it take nearly 3 months for you to get to this ticket? This is unacceptable. The response time on this ticket is ridiculous.

XXX
--------------------------------------------
Hahaha!
No offence, XXX, but 3 months back I was begging my thesis superviser to let me go! Ahh, memories... :)
Now, me's gonna solve me some tickets. Bring 'em my way. Bring on the rants!

"Free is all you gotta be..."
Ah! A wonderful day today, isn't it? Did some good work last night. And the day is bright, without being unnecessarily hot. Just about right. One of those days.

"Dream dreams no one else can see..."
Q. Hello, Amjad, yaar... cab 9 baje bulaya tha. 9:10 baje hain. Kidhar hai?
A. Haan sir, abhi 10 minute me ayega.

"Sometimes ya wanna run away..."
Oh well, just some standing around in the middle of the road looking like an idiot with auto drivers driving by very slowly in hopes of getting a ride for a while. No biggie. Just hum the song louder in your head. Simple!

"But you never know what might be coming round your way"
Q. Hello, Amjad. 9:35 baje hain...
A. Haan Sir, woh cab Jubilee Hills mein traffic jam me fasa hai. Abhi 2 minute me pahunchega.
Q. Traffic jam in Jubilee Hills? Yeah, right! Arrrgh!

"On a day like today, the whole world can change"
Well now it's getting to me. Hmm... but it's not the cab. It's something else. I wonder what?
...
...
...
Prrrfffffffft!

Haha, yeah. I'm back, baby.

On a day like today
The whole world could change
The suns gonna shine
Shine thru the rain
On a day like today
You never wanna see the sun go down
You never wanna see the sun go down!

A great white ox stampeding down in parallel. I glance at it, and I wonder how I'm managing to keep up with the terrific pace. I look down and realize of course that I'm sitting on my friend's back (let's refer to him as Tez, for reasons you will know soon enough), who's rampaging on all fours himself. In order to either bring the bull down or beat it in a race, Tez rams into the bull sideways a couple of times but the bull does not relent. I am worried for Tez, because he's just gotten stitches on his head and one of the ox's hooked horns is dangerously close. My fears are justified soon enough, with the ox lightly etching its horns onto Tez's head, starting a tiny spurt of blood. I worry, but we must win the race! Or bring the ox down! Or something like that. Anyway, Tez runs harder than ever, and the ox gets more and more agressive, burying the horn deeper and deeper into Tez's head, eventually tearing the skin and perhaps the skull. The scene then fades out thankfully. The next moment, Tez and me are talking post-race or post-rampage or whatever. Apparently I made him do what he did, and he's not too happy about having his hair soaked in blood. I feel terribly guilty now, because I do really care for him, and want to do something about it. So we go to a doctor, and get him restitched. Only for God-Knows-Why I'm doing the stitching myself. A short lapse of time, and he's in a much better state. And the alarm rings!

And I'm not having biryani from that place near my apartment EVER AGAIN!

A few adjustments were made to accommodate friends travelling together, and hence my seat, number 10, was already taken. Some chaos followed, and when the dust cleared I was put into the only remaining seat, right next to a girl who was fast asleep. I thanked God briefly for not giving me the 40 year old pot-bellied man he gave me the last time I travelled alone, before I tucked my luggage away and sat down, humming songs from 'Hum Tum' to get into the mood.

The journey started off rather sweetly. The girl's head dropped on my shoulders and she apologized before shifting to another position. Ahh, how sweet our lady is, I thought. Plently of time to talk tomorrow morning, let the poor girl sleep now. Apparently she didn't think anything on similar lines. Our lady is not a sound sleeper, and her constant shifting and turning kept me shifting and turning as much. But the really scary part was that everytime the bus jerked on the road, our lady would let out a soft moan, which sounded rather scandalous and scared the shit out of me. I looked around to see if the other passengers could hear her, but apparently God had reserved this treat only for me. I tried to exercise my telekinetic muscles to make the bus go slowly, but the driver was probably several levels higher than me and I gave up soon.

As the night went on, her right shoulder seemed to get heavier and heavier, and everytime she shifted on my side, I would push her back to her side, upon which she would emit that strange moan again. This happened quite a few times throughout the night, and by about half the journey I had shifted to humming 'Norwegian Wood' instead. Boy, she really had me!

Come early morning, I was woken up (yet again) when the attendant yanked my blanket off of me and did the same for the damsel who caused me a lot of distress. I turned to my left to see a mess of matted hair covering a face that I realized for the first time that I had never really gotten to see clearly the night before. She cleared that hair away, revealing a face that condemned the world for troubling her by waking her up so early in the morning on an uncomfortable bus. That face, which was the best personification of about a dozen negative emotions I have seen in a while, remained locked in that contorted state till I finally reached my stop. I picked up my luggage calmly and marched down, but my shadow must have leaped out the window instead.

In closing, if that 40 year old dude is reading this, I would like to apologize. I really shouldn't have cursed you or my luck when I sat next to you. In fact, when are you travelling next?

It's been a while. But then, I've been enjoying another chapter of my rather fortunate life. A few wonderful things about it:

• The drivers, the localites, the policemen - they all complain about how painful the traffic in Hyderabad is getting lately. But as for me, I'm from Bangalore! To me, the word 'traffic' has a much more chaotic and frustrating image. As a consequence, the cab rides to work are a breeze.
  
• I found a cute little place in Banjara Hills, one of the posh(est) areas of Hyderabad. Well, the place sucks as far as daily amenities go, but then I love the look I get from people when they hear it. Hey, and Hyderabad Central ain't too far away.
  
• I have a brand new DELL Latitude 620! I'm taking good care of it, so that it has Longitude as well. Haha. There, my quota of bad jokes is up for today.
• I get a huge salary the first couple of months. I'm talking HUGE! Well, huge for the 5k p.m. impoverished grad student that I was, anyway.
• Team lunches. They say they will get rather boring in a couple of months, but right now, it's like getting free treats (atleast) once a week!
• Did I mention all that money???
• An ATM card! I've been dying to insert those fiesty little things into ATMs and press some buttons. Withdraw something, maybe check my balance just for the fun of it.
• Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai - all less than 12 hours away.
• Nice geeky crowd at work. I feel at home, or at IITK anyway.
• Oh, and the brand new wardrobe that comes alongwith a new job. Lookin' quite 'da man'. Of course, this is facilitated by the... oh yes, you got it. THE MONEY!

But really, one of the things I look forward to every day is speaking to people I care for. That's what keeps us going. It's sharing my happiness with them that makes the fire of my excitement a steady warm ember.