God of Small Things

‘Anthropological bipedal Homo sapiens’ or simply put ‘Human beings’ are a very complex phenomenon and generations after generations have put in loads of efforts to decipher it and understand it better. However, to me that’s a very Aristotelian or may be philosophical way of looking at things. I for once am interested in small things in life and would like to explore it in detail as it would unfold in next few lines.

Talking about small things, quite often in life we come across situations wherein you have to act or not act in a certain way. Then there are some scenarios wherein you need to follow etiquette and don’t know the nuances while following those etiquette and you eventually end up committing a faux pa and then looking for an excuse to cover it up, if you know what I mean. Alright, so I thought why not compile a list of such situations/life events which are often harmless but does leave one (especially if the one is the one at the receiving end) pondering over it for quite some time and may alter his/her life for better or worse depending on the situation again. A note of caution – not everyone would identify with all the situations I am going to list out as I don’t expect my idiosyncrasies matching up with everyone’s wavelength as otherwise that would mean an ideal world from my perspective! So here it goes –

1. Whenever I have to enter a room full of people be it a waiting room at a doctor’s clinic or a social party/gathering, I always get goose bumps as do most of the others in such situations. So what do I do – if I am walking in along with a group of people, its an easy way out as you just hide yourself behind a few other brave souls and you would soon find yourself in the most obscure corner of the room (safest haven in such social dos where I feel absolutely safe and secure from the afflicting xenophobia). But if I am walking in alone, my strategy is different. I will try to look as calm as possible, I often even start chewing a bubble gum so as to look ‘kool’ or look absolutely cold and phlegmatic so that no one gives a second look at you for obvious reasons. Once this part is conquered, the second biggest challenge is to find the right place to park yourself (or your derriere if you allow me to be a little risqué) in such a do. Here I utilize my glancing skills to the core as I throw a cursory look all around taking utmost care that my eyes don’t collide with others (and if they do by serendipity, it should ricochet off in a nano second!) as that would mean reciprocating back the gesture. If the other person is smiling when the eyes meet, then you need to as well, if he/she frowns/is cold/don’t give a damn, then you need to immediately cut out the flitting eye connection pretending you never saw them and so on…basically a very tedious game to play which I hate really. Having done that, I analyze the most deserted spot in the room and head towards it again taking care that I don’t look at anyone else unless there is really a good looking face around which is a different story altogether and need a separate dedicated blog. Once I am seated or standing in the corner I just made my home, I try to look around for things I can kill the time with. If a magazine is lying around, I will start reading it or at least pretend reading it but these magazines are mostly dead boring. I mean at a doctor’s waiting room, you would find something like ‘Medical Journal - Gastroenterology and its advances’ which you in all likelihood might want to keep till your next divine reincarnation. If I don’t find a magazine, my best bet is my mobile phone. Hold the mobile in your palm and look extremely busy making faces while staring at the gadget. It gives an impression to others that you are engaged in something very important. Reality is that the mobile is running Tic Tac Toe and I am enjoying it to the fullest! However at a social do, it’s not a good idea to look so aloof and disconnected, so I try my best to find a known face and while away some time with him/her. If that fails too, I just hang around with my better half (they ain’t called better half for nothing!!). As a last resort when nothing works, I just make a quick exit of course after having the seven course meal and satisfying my carnal appetite l!! One often recurring instance which happens with me is – somebody approaches me with all warmth and says hi, hello etc. The problem is the fact that I somehow am not in a position to recall his name though I know I have seen the person before. For such awkward situations, I often ask for his email id which then gives me some idea as to who he is. Pls note that this never happens with a female face since that’s how men are designed to work!! Another problem I face often is the kind of topics I can talk about with a person whom I have met say just once before. So the conversation revolves around weather, food (in the party) and at most politics which I usually avoid if the person is now well acquainted. All in all, I hate going to parties. My bigger fear now is that someone with not so close relations reads this blog and I ran into him in a social do!!
   

2. When I have to dial a telephone/cell# manually, I have lot of trouble when the entire number containing around 10 digits at a minimum are placed closely (juxtaposed!) to one another without any gaps…I mean on one hand you are dialing digits on the dial pad, then you have to look up the number to check next digits and there exactly lies the pain! You have to literally strain your eyes so much to see which was the last digit dialed in and then pick up from there. Really a strenuous job since I also have this phobia that if I delay in keying in the numbers, the phone might hang up or may mal function. I am just waiting for the technology revolution which will make voice dialing a common feature though I know it still would require me to read out the number aloud and that is equally painful!
   

3. Colour blindness – First of all, let me straighten it out – I am no colour blind. But then as my opening line of this blog mentioned - we anthropoids are a complex creature. I mean cant we keep it simple when it comes to colours? I can just about deal with the basic color god created - red, blue, green yellow etc. the ones we were taught when we were in Kinder. All my life I was under blissful belief (or ignorance as some would call it) that this is what all one should know about colours in life literally speaking. My simple world came crashing down when off late I realize how little I know about colours. Let me start with my struggle with a colour known as ‘Purple’. Is it light violet? If so, why name it differently as ‘Purple’? I mean c’mon keep things simple – that’s how men are designed for life and I have no doubts left in my mind that these extra terrestrial colours were coined and invented by women – Pls, can you ever put a stop to this brutality? Back to my story – Purple is also called ‘Lavender’ – WHY? Why on earth you have to name the same colour differently? Crimson – dictionary defines it as ‘deep purplish-red’. Amazing!! Isn’t it? Wait, the torture has just about started. How about ‘Peach’ colour? Its light pinkish yellow as of a peach. If you have to name a colour after a fruit, then why not follow similar rule for all colours? Call yellow as sun, red as strawberry or Mars (red planet), green as leaf and blue as sky. I just wish there is an international forum like ‘International Chroma Association’ governing the rules and regulations around colour naming and colour invention and everything related about colours. Well, let’s not deviate here and let me now take you deeper into the world of colours with no mercy. White – simple pure colour signifying peace and tranquility. Let me shatter it now – Ivory, Magnolia, off-white, cream and the list is endless. Another instance - Pink – a very romantic colour to me. Now see how the romance is killed when you hear – Fuchsia, Magenta, carmine pink, coral pink and what not. Some more random colours to wreck your brain (pls do not faint if you fall in my category of colour blindness) – Burgundy, Vermilion, Amber, Tangerine, Maroon, Sepia, Mustard, Olive, Saffron, Chartreuse, Emerald, Aqua, Turquoise, Denim, Sapphire, Mauve, Orchid and the list is serpentine. Honestly speaking, if you could relate even 25% of these colours, you qualify to be a genius for me. When I did some more research on colours, I was baffled further to see that the dictionary defines excruciatingly niche words just to describe the properties of these colours. Words like shade, tint, hue, saturation, contrast and so on really got into my nerves and I decided to call it peace and dwell no more further. When I was about to sign off from my lappy, I came across this line on the net – “Additionally, computer displays have somewhat limited gamut, so many colorful pigments cannot be represented on screen at all, and computer simulation of the natural world is at best a rough approximation.” So basically I am not sure how many colour I do believe I know are really the ones I am looking for.
   

As there are many more such small things in life which are vying to get some space here on this post, I thought I would pause here and would keep updating this post as and when I get disillusioned by them.

Tum Jiyo Hazaaron Saal...!

Yeah, its exactly a year that the little monster made a dashing entry into this world and before we could blink, he is already 1!! Time flew by so fast as it seems just yesterday that the news was broken at around 2.20PM in a sunny afternoon by the elderly maid in the hospital…’Ladka hua hai bai’ (that’s how its uttered in typical Bambaiya hindi). Those first few words of the news didn’t draw any expressions on my face as I didn’t know how to reciprocate to it though I was subconsciously trying to convey to myself the enormity of the news but to no avail! Probably I was too preoccupied with the well being of both the baby and the mother and the fact that I was expecting a baby girl all along. I took a deep breadth and told myself – Mr.D YOU ARE A PAPA NOW !!. When Chiku was first brought out of the theater room, I was too afraid to hold him as the tender and delicate appearance of the baby made me too conscious to touch him and vulnerable to my own fears of harming him inadvertently. After briefly holding him, out came the cameras/ video cam and I started taking the first few shots of the new born. Cell phones started ringing incessantly with congratulatory messages from near and dear ones and things were never the same again. For this one reason, Mumbai would always remain special for me and all.

The following days would be remembered for a lifetime since it was a totally different experience witnessing a baby’s world first hand and watching him grow, sometime him holding my fingers and sometimes me holding his little fingers. Along with all the tensions and apprehensions that come with the package, what touched me the most is the innocence a baby brings along with him and how he transforms your life even without you realizing it at all. I was so apprehensive about all the responsibility that a baby would bring along and I was so unsure how things would turn out to be. But as they say, nature is so naturally designed that you just fit into it seamlessly and the not the other way round! The cherubic smile that creases across his face when I get back home after a hectic day long work is simply ethereal and can not be described in words.

The first year as now I look back would be cherished for the sheer joy he brought in what with his antics and the histrionics getting doubled/ trebled with each day passing by. The list is serpentine - the day when he started rolling side wise (we had to then start building a pillow castle around him), the day when he started sitting up with mother’s support, the day he started imitating the surroundings be it his mom’s voice or be it my sneezing action, the day when he started to crawl (we started putting mattresses on the floor around the cot just in case he falls from the bed and he actually did once!!), the day he started standing up with a support (he would start basking in the glory of this big achievement of his own!!), the day he started walking without support with his hands up in air as if balancing himself on a tight rope looking at us in anticipation of a big applause, the day he started playing football with his first kick sending the featherweight balloon ball up in air to everyone’s cheers and finally the day when his first girlfriend Anna kissed him on his tender cheeks and he staring back at the little girl who is just a few months older to him in utter disgust (Chiku badly needs lessons here in this area from his papa!!).

Even though I know this is just the beginning of more exciting times to come, I just wish that he continues growing up at his own pace and experience the world the way he would like to.

Here is wishing you a very happy B'day my son!! Cheers...

Desultorily Yours !

Writing an article and that too for Darpan is a thought that dreads me the most. I mean I can write just about anything on some other platform like my blog or scribble on the floor for my 9 month old where I need not worry for being judged for my writing skills. But in Darpan, the ever wonderful and ‘professional’ audience makes me conscious of the fact that whatever I write is being read by an elite group so to speak!! So here I am with yet another attempt at writing something meaningful which falls in the category of ‘Elegant and meaningful writing’ as the purists would like to call it. But suddenly, I feel a rapid surge of revolt engulfing me from deep inside and questioning me as to why we always need to toe a predefined line of being right or wrong? Why the writing has to be ‘good’ always? Why can’t there be a separate category of literature dedicated specifically to ‘bad’ writing, something which does not meet the stringent standards set by those so called self proclaimed puritanical pundits? I surrender to my inner voice and decide its time I take up cudgels in my hand and do the impossible – write something real bad. Well, with bad I don’t mean indulging in some kind of blasphemy or writing in Chinese fonts. I would rather tweak the usual motif in writing and attempt at something random, something desultory – literally that is.

When I was in school, there used to be a competition wherein you are required to speak for 2 minutes in front of an audience on just about anything without pausing even for a second – the catch being the rules of the game that the sentences should be complete and grammatically correct and that there should no repetitions of any of the lines spoken already. I thought why not try this out in writing. But then, a sane mind would ask what’s the fun in attempting the same in writing when you have all the time at your disposal and you can double check anytime to ensure you meet all the rules and guidelines of the game. So I thought why not make it interesting in terms of its content if not the conventional rules. That’s true – I would attempt at writing complete sentences but with one condition – they should be as desultory as possible in terms of the meaning they are conveying and should take you for a ride literally. So here I start. (I know I would never get an invitation for writing an article for Darpan after you read this but I am not complaining!!).

Once upon a time, there was a king and he did not posses a Bluetooth device with him. To makeup for it, president Bush went for a vacation in the Prairies and the Steppes, parts of which are in Wyoming and Montana states. The first book he read there was not Casino Royale since he doesn’t like reading. Prairies and Steppes have counterparts in Deccan and Malwa and the Vindhya range in the south, though the list is not comprehensive. A comprehensive list can be found in Yellow pages wherein you generally find phone number which you are not looking for. And coming to talk about it, who coined the name ‘Yellow pages’? Why not red, blue or purple? I have never been able to recognize purple color in my life and I am not color blind genetically even though we have the complete map of human genome which unfortunately can not be found on yahoo or google map. Google does offer notepad functionality that can compensate for my color blindness which I strongly deny having it. So basically what I am hinting here is that yellow pages can be stored in Google notepad though the limitation is one’s ability to lookup the right phone number and that can be truly tedious as happened in case of Star fisheries and Star garage. Which movie was that? RGV’s Aag and the sequel to RGV’s Aag should be called RGV’s Aag’s Dhua!! Dhua means smoking which is harmful for health and putting gory pics on Cigarette packets won’t deter them anyways. Whom you are kidding Mr. Health Minister? And the reason Uttappa played so well is because he did not watch RGV’s Aag which conversely means that he doesn’t smoke. Bluetooth, Bush, Prairies, Casino Royale, Malwa, Yellow pages, Google, RGV – all these terms have one thing in common. Nope, I am not referring to the fact that they all are random in nature but the fact that they all are proper noun if you remember Wren and Martin’s torture called ‘Grammar’. I have typed in exactly 765 words so far and I am not done with my definition of randomness. But in the larger interest of society, I am calling it peace and inviting you to the World Military games in Hyderabad to be held sometimes in 2007 A.D. which I bet could not have been foreseen by Nostradamus. Nostradamus could not have foreseen a stupid article like this one too since he had no idea about escape velocity. But then it wasn’t his mistake as the king did not have a Bluetooth device in the first place.

PEACE!!

PS - Darpan is an office magazine which was initiated when I was in TCS.

Salaam Mumbai

When I would grow old(hey I am still young) and look back retrospectively, I guess my tryst with Mumbai would mark an epoch in the initial sculpting and chiseling of my life. Yeah, I used those piquant verbs intentionally since I liken my stint in the dream city as a potpourri of sweet and bitter experiences. To be very candid here, it was an excruciating journey that lasted a full 9 years (well almost) and left behind scars as well as love bites to put it that way. The intention of this post is not to enumerate how good or bad the city is since that would be too judgemetal and I hate being one. I just thought to pen down a few thoughts as a farewell note to the city that never sleeps.
I landed in the city on November 15th 1998. The scenic beauty enroute Mumbai from Trivendrum(after my initial training period in my first company TCS) was I guess nature's way to enrgize me for facing tougher times ahead. The first two years were really afflictive and inconsiderate - how could I forget the famous(or infamous) Mumbai locals and the daily grind I endured through for close to two years. The exact sequence was - catch an auto to Malad station, catch a local to Borivali (without alighting there since the same locomotive becomes a Churchgate fast on its return journey), reach Churchgate in 70 minutes around, catch a share cab to Cuffe Parade in Colaba and report to office at 11th floor(2 hours almost since the start). The return journey was even more painful since now you had to literally wade through an absolutely phlegmatic and cold crowd to catch a Borivali slow, never mind risking your life for it. Mumbaites call this circus as the indomitable spirit of the city(which basically refers to the common man getting back to work after any tragedy which strikes the city every now and then). Though I do salute the Mumbai janta for this so called 'spirit', I really would like to ask this question to the Mumbaites- a clerk who resides in Virar and has his office in Churchgate - does he really have a choice but to report to work the very next day after such a tragedy? Dont try to equate spirit with helplessness of common man. I may again be sounding too judgemental here but lets not try to fool ourselves. I guess I can go on and on but I am calling it peace here since I feel it really does not make any difference beyond a certain point(Mumbai has gone past this point way too long back).
Back to my story, I do feel proud being associated with Mumbai inspite of all the above. Infact, this very uncanny charm is something no one has been able to decipher about this big bad city. The sheer size of the city and the fast pace of life dwarfs you and makes you feel special even when embraced in its badly littered streets. The first 2 years is when I got acquainted with the length and breadth of the city(courtesy the nature of my job!) and was convinced that in a likely scenario of loosing my IT job, I would surely be able to have a career as a city guide!! Raheja township in Malad and J B nagar in Andheri were couple of my addresses I stayed at. A turning point came(and so did a break from the grind) when I was deputed to the States for around 2 years. When I returned back in 2002, the city hadn't changed much(the JVLR link road was still under construction and it still is, I guess its completion would coincide truly with India being declared a 'Developed' nation). This time, I made Thakur village as my home. I guess I will always have a special liking for this place. Its a city within a city and its hip population gives you a high naturally. I guess I would miss this place the most in Mumbai. The next 2 and 1/2 years were memorable for 2 reasons - I spent good amount of money(since I had it in excess for first time in life !) on friends/socializing (even though I am not a a very social person naturally). I remember I once took an impromptu flight to Banglore during a weekend to catch up with a bunch of old college buddies...wow those were the days!! And the second reason is an obvious one as its this time in my life that I got married and started life on a new note. Together as a couple, we got a chance to explore lot of places in and around Mumbai - Daman(the return journey from here would best be forgotten), Goa(delayed honeymoon), Khandala, Lonavala(the company guest house here is the most romantic place in the world), Pune(a good city to visit), Sanjay Gandhi National park(hehe, I almost got thrashed for the last one!!) etc. I did start liking the city atlast!! I got another break from the grind when we went to US of A for a long term deputation. It was almost after 1 and 1/2 years that we were back in Mumbai. The trip would always be cherished by both of us.
The post US stay(Jan 2006 onwards) in Mumbai was a busy one since it brought in a lot of new experiences in life including Chiku and life was never the same again. We left Mumbai after a lot of deliberation as to whether the move would be worthwhile and whether we would ever feel at home in any other city as we did in Mumbai. But I guess the writing was already there on the wall. Several factors including monetary ones made us take the final decision of calling it quits and we bid a tearful adieu to the city of dreams in July 2007, after 104 long months!! We made some of the best friends for life, met some of the most amazing people, had some of the most memorable and cherished events of life and matured up learning some of the toughest lessons in life in the eventful journey. The city would always find special place in our hearts and who knows may compel us to come back to it at some of time in future. Till then, all I can say is - 'Salam Mumbai!!'

Baby's Day Out!!

Just goes on to show that we(netizens of my age) were TRULY born in a wrong generation..!!

The story goes like this - Our maid servant tells us in typical Mumbaiya hindi(itna paisa milenga to itnaich kaam hoenga!!) that there is a film shootin going on right in front of the society's main gate. Archana always wanted to see a shooting(though something very commonplace in Mumbai, she never got to witness one)..so I drop her off on the main gate and I myself pushed off for office.

Archana then calls me up at office describing that the shooting involved the hot Amrita Rao doing an action scene...well I, for one regretted going to office without checking the details about the shooting. But the story doesn't end here...Archana was standing at a very close distance to Amrita(though behind the society fence) ..she turned towards Arcahana casually..she spotted our cute Chiku and said an equally cute 'Hiii' to him..!! I have spent close to half of my life and no one except my 'dear' wife has said such an endearing hi to me(off late, I have stopped receiving that 'you blink and will miss' hi too!). Coming back to Chiku, I wonder if this is the sign of things to come...(I mean c'mon he is just 6 months ol' and has already managed to woo Amrita Rao!!) Oh how I envy him at the moment!!