Neighbours of Fanatics.

In the book Husband of a fanatic, the author, Amitava Kumar, cries out, "We aren't even given chance to swear at each other". He is talking in the context of Indo-Pak relations. Not political relations but men to men relations. It's a brilliant book and would not disappoint any one who picks it up. It talks about the rifts present between various religious communities in the sub continent. Kumar has taken pains to do meticulous research over the subject and his analysis is very deep. He has travelled extensively for the book & met numerous people.

The Indo-Pak scene is given ample importance in the book. Kumar, himself married to a Pakistani Muslim, travelled to Pakistan and cared to meet various people over there. He carried out a very interesting experiment:- he asked children from his school in Patna to write letters addressing their counterparts, studying in schools at the other side of the fence. He asked the same thing from the students of his wife's school in Karachi†. What came out of this experiment really shows how skewed and indoctrinated our views are. Many children though agreed that the children on the other side are just like themselves, they couldn't let go of the negative emotions fed into them since start.

If we think about this, what do we know about Pakistan & Pakistanis? All we get to know, and that isn't enough for sure, is hugely superfluous information. Considering the popularity of Bollywood movies (and lately, TV serials) in Pakistan, one would imagine atleast they have a fair idea about us. But we know how far from reality those movies are! So, is there any way to get to know each other better? Few years earlier, perhaps there wasn't, but with the arrival of internet, people are coming together like never before. And of course, the cricket series, with people crossing borders to watch matches and mingle with the "neighbours", are helping.

Take Orkut for example, it's a networking website from Google, with growing popularity worldwide. The users are allowed to maintain groups with other users can join and they can then discuss various topics of their interests. It has found sizable following in the sub continent too, just like the rest the world. Not to be left behind, many groups are formed with Indo-Pak relationship as the theme. There is India Pakistan Friendship Club and soon people fed up of it and formed IPFC SNOBS (India Pakistan Friendship Club Sans N00bs Or Borders). The Cricket community is hijacked by Pakistanis & Indians for all practical purposes. There are basically three kinds of people there; 1) Curious lot, 2) Friendly kinds and 3) Jerks or people with different opinions :). Curious ones are there to know more about the other side, they are interested only in questions, raising and clearing doubts etc. Friendly people "invest" their time in all sorts of silly games and general chit-chat ("Write something about the person above", "Suggest a future for the person above u...", kinds). They have lots of time and lots of bandwidth to waste and apparently it thrills them even more to find that there are like minded people on the other side. And we have jerks, these are real combative punks! They start all the "controversial" topics, they are interested in insulting the other party & picking up fights. There are lots of them from both sides. While most of them allege baselessly, some of them are really well informed over various conflicts and charges put on the other side, like the issue of Baglihar Dam, RAW & ISI, Kargil War, etc. Despite the venom they spew, some discussion turn out to be really rich in information and provide great insight towards what they know & think about the other side.

Then there are blogs. I don't know many Pakistani bloggers but there is this excellent photoblog, "Who Am I?", maintained by a Karachiite (The link also appears on my photoblog). Some more pakistani photoblogs are listed here.

Last time when Indian cricket toured Pakistan, first time many Indians crossed the border to watch the contests. When they came back, welcomed warmly & treated excellently, they brought along many "feel-good" stories about Pakistan & the Pakistani awaam. I remember, one write up from some one from Wipro was circulated in the software circles. It narrated the beautiful experience he had in Pakistan; shopkeepers would not take money from him, people would greet very warmly and all. I once met a Pakistani in a Paris subway (I was in Europe in Summer 2002 for my internship with few other batchmates). He told us, in Urdu with a heavy Punjabi accent, "Awaam aman chahti hai. Saale Politicians hi ***** hain". It was the first time I met a Pakistani. Now, I want to visit Pakistan.

† The Letters by Indian and Pakistani school-children collected by Amitava Kumar

Song Request

After the shameless plea for comments, I'm here again with another request. Firstly, for all of you who didn't notice that I maintain & update (little more regularly) a photoblog too, please to have a look here. This post is not just an advertisement for my photoblog, I want even more. If anyone of you worthy readers, came across the following song in any digital format, she/he can earn meri duwayein by mailing the file to me at vasingh[at]gmail[dot]com.

The song featured in Chetan Anand's superb war film, Haqeeqat (link 1, 2). Based on 1962 Indo-China war, Haqeeqat is supposed to be one of the more realistic war films, till date. I remember watching the film in my childhood on some Independence day and loving it straight away. The music of this movie was a winner with songs like "Kar Chale Hum Fida Jaan-o-tan Saathiyon". The lyricist, Kaifi Azmi, wrote some real gems for this movie. This particular song captures the hopelessness of a soldier, stuck in the warfield in a losing position, sure to be killed ruthlessly, remembering his love-interest back at home. It's perhaps the most tragic song I can remember.

*Sigh*-ning off,
- Varun

UPDATE: God bless Raj Gaurav Asthana for mailing me the song. If anyone wants it, drop me a mail.

I want you to...

I want you to comment!

Reading this blog,

If you're happy and you know it,
Drop a line,
If you're happy and you know it,
Pleasure is mine.

If it's crappy and you know it,
Curse and swear,
If it's crappy and you know it,
I'll take care.

Mangal Pandey : Movie Review.

Last night we went to watch "Mangal Pandey - The Rising". It was a weekday evening, but still I had expected more crowd than what was present there. The cinema hall was barely half filled. After such a lukewarm sight in the first week, it's tough to digest the tall claims made by Aamir. He actually told them - "Just for the record, can you believe that the entire business done by ‘Lagaan’ in it’s full run has been done by ‘The Rising’ in just one week?!". What record Amir, the most obvious lie? Anyway, if you've already spoke to people who watched the movie, it might be a repetition but I must advice you to skip this one. Or perhaps wait till next 26th Jan - some channel ought to show this one. Or rush to the VCD wallah and rent "chintu candy" wali VCD.

Very few words were written over the saga of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. Moreover, most of the written records were maintained by the East Indian Company. So, basically the character of Mangal Pandey comes more from folklore than from history. The film adds more of bollywood masala and one raunchy "mujra" item song to the folklore and the outcome isn't very entertaining.

The movie got me confused about the orientiation of Pandey ji. He is shown to be very close with sympathetic English officer, Gordon. But what was shown in the movie looked a lot more than just-good-friends. Imagine two burly & bare wrestlers flexing their muscles in the dirty ring and one of them asks other - "Kal kyun nahi aaye? (Why didn't you come yesterday?)". In another scene, when Housten & fellow officers were beating the hell out of Pandey ji, Gordon comes and save him. After this he removes the locks of hair from Pandey ji's face and asks - "Tum kaise ho? (How are you?)". The insinuations were present everywhere. Gordon comes to the Sepoys' barracks and tell Pandey - "Mujhe tumse akele mein kuch baat karni hai. (I want to talk to you alone)". Pandey says talk in front of my people but then some eye-signals are exchanged and Pandey leaves the barracks with Gordon. Perhaps the makers got aware of this and hence, were forced to include Rani Mukherjee & Amisha Patel. Both of them are totally wasted. Rani has one mujra in the movie but if it could've gone to the another "mujra" girl in the movie, it would've added more "value" to the movie. Amisha Patel's role was totally unnecessary. Don't know how did she persuade the makers to include her in the movie.

Didn't you hate the Hindi-then-English narration in the previous paragraph? If that annoyed you, you'll probably tear your hair in the movie. Whenever Englishmen are shown talking in English, they are given the time to finish their dialogues and then Om Puri's voice repeats each and every thing said, translating every single word. No wonder movie got a "bit" lengthy.

Rediff published some very interesting excerpts from the book "Mangal Pandey: Brave Martyr or Accidental Hero?" by Rudrangshu Mukherjee. It states that the main reason behind the rebellion was the fat on the new cartridges and on the day when Mangal Pandey revolted, he was allegedly intoxicated with Bhaang. It was an isolated event but after almost a month of the hanging, mutiny broke out in various barracks in the planes of Ganga. The movies, presumably in the pursuit to color Pandey as first nationalist freedom fighter, moves far from this possibility. It's hard to imagine that Pandey, just a Sepoy, would fight for Azadi. He was from common peasent folks, who were accustomed to be ruled by royals in the past & company during those days. Moreover, concept of a unified India must have been very far fetched at that time. Till about few decades ago, the subcontinent was divided between numerous small states and they all got unified under company-raj. If not for the cartridges, Pandey could have been serving company loyally and got retired with pension.

Even if we overlook the gliches in history part of it and treat the movie as totally fictional, it's simply not entertaining! I don't know what took them four years to complete this movie? They should've given the job to Subhash Ghai. He would've made the movie in half the time on Kisna's sets! "The Rising" was only slightly better than Kisna and Kisna was a big pain in neck!

Final verdict: Hype is phoney, it's not worth your money!

UPDATE: Now that we are at the topic, I want to discuss this posting, here. From the post

Mangal Pandey gave up his life to protect his beliefs for the religion he belonged to. So did other soldiers who mutinied at that time. Viewed in the context of the present, people's religious sensitivities seem to have sadly undergone a sea-change. Even staunch religious organisations which pretend to protect their religion and breathe fire and fume at the slightest provocation, do nothing to stop such actions against their beliefs. And the people themselves - whether staunch Hindu or Jain - out of ignorance or indifference, seem to have little concern.

I am infact very *happy* for this change. I'm not very religious myself, but I don't think religion is all about the icons and rituals. Read the entire post, it's another way to look at it.

My Camera Panasonic

On his recent trip to US, RG bought me Panasonic DMC Lumix FZ-20. For quite some time I was confused between going for a DSLR camera or a Ultra Zoom Digital Camera. DSLRs cost around twice the money a high end, ultra zoom digicam will take. So, though I was besotted with the capabilities of a Digital SLR camera, I decided to go for FZ-20. It has a super long 12x optical zoom, along with 4x digital zoom. The image is stored using 5 mega pixels, which ensures supreme picture quality. It comes with it's proprietary battery, so you can't really put in some cells from the shop. So that is one problem, but the battery gets charged in two hours flat, so it doesn't pain much. The LCD of Canon Powershot S1-IS was detachable and you could rotate it. It helped if you want to click some difficult angles, but in FZ-20 the LCD is fixed in the camera, so you must keep the camera in front of your face.
On our recent trip to Wayanad, I took the camera along and clicked some pictures. Some of the better ones are following, click on them to get larger versions. I've also tried to explain some of my favorite modes.Please keep visiting my photoblog, I shall be posting my pictures there.

Panning: I'm very pleased with the panning mode in the camera. Earlier, whenever I had tried panning, the picture came out as over-exposed and shakey. While it depends heavily on the skill of photographer, having an extra mode for panning saves ametuer photographers, like me, from the complexities.

Macro Mode: The best thing about the camera, with my limited exploration, seems to be the powerful macro mode. You can get as close as 5 cms to the subject and it clicks sharp pictures for you! I've also used this mode to get shallow depth of field effect.

Potrait: The camera has a very effective potrait mode. If the background is sufficiently far, it blurs it so the potrait gets more sharp.

Some more PJs :-)

(Good that people liked my last post. Hopefully you'll enjoy this one too. This one is more impromptu kind of thing though.
I'm off for the weekend to Wayanad. I'll be back on Monday evening. Happy Independence Day!)

The award ceremony of the Indian Oil Cup was a real tear-jerker. Dravid got on the podium as the losing captain. He said - "I pictured myself having that trophy". Ganguly shouted from the dressing room - "So did I". At the press conference, Dravid was asked if the team fell short of one batsman. He said - "No, we had all the batsmen from the last game. We just dropped Laxman!". The news of tension between Dravid & Ganguly over captaincy is not new. None of them wants it! You've seen what happened to Ganguly, team screwed up the over-rate and he got banned. Some say that screw-up was a team strategy, keeping Ganguly's form in mind!

If you go to Brigade road (Bangalore) you can notice all sorts of weird t-shirts. I can't understand some of the supposedly funny lines.
"My dad is an ATM" - But then dude, where do you swipe the card?
"I'm the guy your mom warned you about" - Who? The Leper or the beggar? May be Gabbar Singh! Moms warn children about Gabbar Singh near Ramgarh.

Sometimes I just pity those Americans for having to deal with Indian customer care. Even I can't understand their English! The accent is not the problem, the problem is that they would rattofy the entire content and blurt it all out in such a flurry that you won't even get a hint about what they are talking! It's like they have this 100 words dash event in their training. It was still bearable when they'd confine themselves to phone calls but now they dog you down at the ATMs, parking places, movies halls, public toilets, etc etc. I went to this ATM and this fella came up to me - "Sirmmmannmajsfghghaahfa-ICICI-mannmmdjf-CARD-jhhdhfhdf-FREE-jghjh". I told him very politely - "Kannada Gottilla (I know no Kannada)". He glared me for a while and then started in Kannada - "ahjsjhdfshffghdfhgdfg-ICICI-dgfdhfgddf-CARD-kdjgfhghfjhfj-FREE-kjfgfjjgjk". I ran away from there!

But I really admire the blooming BPO industry in India and the people who put their efforts behind this. The attendants, kids barely out of college, are trained well to behave like Americans. So now they are doing drugs 7 days a week, boozing all day, sleeping around all the time, living on loans -- maaan they are totally Americans now!
Some time back the think-tanks of BPO industry had this major problem -- all the toilets in their office would get clogged due to flushed condoms! And guess what?! Most of the condoms were of American brand! Now that's some serious commitment towards behaving like Americans.
So the think tanks came up with a solution. They invented a new type of condom which will be made out of tissue paper. So as soon as it gets wet, it'll get dissolved! They sent this "business-plan" to a VC and he sent it to "The Dumbest Plans Contest". Believe it or not, they came second! First prize went to a website which was launched to sell condoms on the net. "Please allow us 12 hours to deliver.".

My Stand-up Routine :D

(Sometimes, when you are sitting all by yourself, in office, having stuff to do, but lacking the motivation to put in the efforts, your mind wanders. If after visiting all the frequented thoughts; girls, more girls, pizza, etc etc, you are still in a ponderous mood, one often thinks about the what-if scenarios. About the alternatives of this routine life. About alternate careers -- prime minister, porn star, sky diver, peace corp .. there's absolutely no limit. I often wonder how would it have been if I were to be a stand up comedian? I could insult people on their face!)

So, I'm from Bangalore and Bangalore is the home of Kannada film industry. It's more of a family business - Rajkumar & Sons own it.
The industry doesn't find many patrons in Bangalore, but for the auto rickshaw waalahs. They'd religiously put posters with heroes' faces & heroines' thighs at the back of their autos. Most of them already look like the heroes, or vice-versa.
Recently government proposed that smoking scenes should be banned in movies. A real wave of panic ran through the Kannada film industry! With this new rule, how would any one know who is the hero and who is the villian?
One of the heroines claimed that in her next film she gets to show lots of brains. After the movie came out, it was confirmed that her brains are in her knees, or somewhere up there.

Mumbai was hit recently by worst rains in last 100 years. The water has receded but now the insurance companies are flooded.
One of my friend recently joined a company there which promised him transportation for first one month. They've given him a kayak. He is now planning to rent a houseboat.

People nowadays, want something in their hands all the time.. umm.. as in they want something to work all the time, not something in their hands or anything! So I've my room-mate who does crosswords in the loo. Every morning he wake up, pick up the paper & pen at get into the loo. Somedays, when they publish hard crosswords, then we go to office without bathing. Sometime back they started publishing these sudoku puzzles instead of crosswords. So in the morning, he got into the loo and after a while came out very stressed - "Yaar! They haven't published the clues! Aati nahi." Thankfully, we had a book of crosswords.

College was good, you get to meet loadsa freaks. People from Andhra were called Gulti, I don't know why. Gultis have an attitude man, they'd behave as if they know everything there is to know. May be they do, who would know? They don't talk to anyone other than a Gulti. Even if in a group of 10 there are 2 Gults, they'll start in Telugu and everyone will go oinnnnn.
Gults are impatient lot, they eat fast, they talk fast & even when they talk, it's full of impatient grunts. They'll talk like - "Vastannu tch. Yentra tch. Ni amma tch.". They just can't stand slow talkers, That's why BJP failed to make any alliances in AP, they'd ask them to talk to Vajpayee! Those gults got really furious maan!
Half-gults aren't as bad as gults. We had one guy, as in there was one guy in college, not that we *had* him, whose father was Gulti & mother was Punjabi, so that should make him "Gulabi"! People say in next hundred years Indian population will be a lot more homogeneous. How interesting would that be! Mix people from Andhra & Bombay, you'll have "Bandra". If some Mallu and someone from UP got along, we'd have little "Ullus".

Punjabis are probably most harrassed people in India. First there were those Surdi jokes and now thanks to the Bollywood movies & music videos, people all over world think that atleast one in 5 punjabis carry around a dhol and rest of them are doing Bhangra all the time, in that stupid see-my-armpits pose they go balle-balle everytime they see another Surd. It's relatively safe to crack jokes on Surds, they don't get them anyway. ISI has a special division devoted to this task - to make Surd militants understand the racist jokes Bollywood cracks! It's not an easy task tho'. It took 2 weeks to make them understand the insults in "Jo Bole So Nihaal" and only after that they bombed the cinema halls!

Abhi itna hi.

Cal-see-Yummm

While I was in Kolkata, I couldn't check out the authentic Bangla delicacies. I doubt if the Bangla cuisine, which I presume is rich in non-vegitarian dishes, has much to offer to a vegitarian like me. Anyway, I did try out Misti Doi, Sandesh & Kulfi at the Forum mall. Perhaps it wasn't the best place to grab a bite, I didn't like them much. I must say the Puchkas (also known as Golgappe & Panipuri) available with roadside vendors were the best I had in a very long time. I prefer them with potato masala but here in Bangalore and even in Mumbai, they prepare them with chana masala, but not in Calcutta, they use potatoes! Even the masala water they use was perfectly balanced between sweet & spicey taste. Just a note: it's better to give them a miss during rains, the unhygienic conditions can cause jaundice.

I wanted to visit Haldiram's to try authentic sweets there. So we went to Haldiram's and I asked for a pack of rasgullas. But, sadly, the rasgullas were over for the day. I bought a pack of motichur ke laddu & some namkeen from there. I also got some chocolates from Flury's back to Bangalore.

I wanted to buy some souvenirs; I had a list in my mind -- a Murshidabadi kurta (with side buttons), a mask of Durga's face (like this) & that cap that groom wears in Bengali marriages (just in case ;-) ). I couldn't get even one of them. I asked for the kurta at the mall, but the shops there had none of them. I've asked Pankaj Jain to courier me one :). Along with my Tibetan kurta, I bought from McLeodganj, this kurta will be the earliest entry in my Kurta Collection :). If anyone of you darlings can help me with rest of the list, go ahead and do it!

High-Cal diet

I'm back from Kolkata, after spending five days in the city. I spent these five days trying to figure out the city, grasp as much as I can. My idea of visiting a city is not just about visiting the tourist attractions, I think one can get closer to the character of the city or the soul of the city by spending time on the roads, in the buses, by mingling with it's people. Of course everyone's impression about a city is bound to be different. Bandra, Juhu, Marine Drive is all of Mumbai many stars will know while Mumbai means mainly Powai for me. Similarly for Calcutta, my impression is affected only by the places I visited and if first impressions are anything to go by, the city is very old, old and dingy but alive.

The metro, though quite popular, can't be called the life-line of the city (as in the case of local in Mumbai). The coverage is poor; it has only one single line. It seemed to me regulars know each other and unlike the silent, sleepy commuters of Mumbai, people like to chat in the metro. I could over hear talks on topics ranging from Jyoti da to East Bengal's match with Tollygunge to Parineeta. The metro stations were not crowded with shops and it was much more organized & clean than Mumbai locals. The buses are very old in general. It seems they haven't renewed them for atleast some decades. Very few new cars are to be seen on the roads. The taxis, all of them Ambassadors, are driven by people ranging from Sikhs to Biharis to of course Bongs. Like any other place, you must bargain beforehand to arrive at a mutual consented price.

The next day of my arrival at IIM, I decided to check out the city alone as my friends had lectures to attend. IIM is located quite far from the city in the area known as Joka. One can take an autorickshaw (which is shared between 5-6 travellers) to Shakher Bazaar and then take another auto to Tollygunge. Tollygunge is the last station of Metro. I took the Metro to Maidaan, which is supposed to be the city center. I had to travel a bit to get to an ICICI ATM. The ATM hunt got me near to St. Paul's Cathedral. It is a marvellous, huge building built in typical cross shape. Just next to the church is the M.P.Birla Planetarium. One show was scheduled in next 15 minutes, so I decided to check it out. The dome shaped theater was very comfortable compared to humid conditions outside. I slept for the most part of the stale presentation, most of which I could remember from my visit to Jaipur's Birla Planetarium some 7-8 years ago. After I came out of the planetarium, I could see the dome of Victoria Memorial and the new Howrah bridge. I decided to walk in their direction and soon I was into one park. I don't know what is it called, but Cajoling Couples' Cave would fit it well. Many couples in various levels of compromising positions were at the park, at about 3 in the afternoon! Sometime later I noticed that probably I was the only single person in the park. Soon I left the park and asked my way to Victoria Memorial. It's hard to do justice to the grandeur with words. Sprawled across huge space and made with perfect symmetry, it's an awe-inspiring monument. The museum was closed at that time so I had to give it a miss. The new Howrah bridge was visible from here too, so I started to walk in it's direction. After walking quite some distance, I asked for directions at a signal and was directed to get into a bus. I got down from the bus when I thought it might be near to the bridge. I was wrong again, but thankfully I got down near Eden Gardens. Just opposite to the ground was the East Bengal club. As I walked little further, I noticed a soccer match in procession. I got into the small stadium and took a seat to enjoy the game. The game was between W.B.Police and Calcutta Customs. The level of game wasn't very high; Police was dominating the game majorly. The awareness level of the crowd was quite high for the kind of crowd present there. They were mostly common peasants, perhaps some rickshaw-drivers too. I left the stadium at the half time.

This time I took a cab to the Howrah Bridge (Also known as Rabindra Setu). I was watching the old dying buildings (It was Strand Ware House IIRC) and all of a sudden the magnificent bridge appeared! The view was breath-taking. I crossed the bridge by taxi and asked the driver to drop me on the other side. I was clicking some snaps of the bridge when the traffic cop held me up. After he yaked for a while in Bangla, I gave him "Ami Bangla bolte paari na". It miffed him further and he took me to his superior in the thana nearby. One officer was sitting there eating chaat. I deleted the pictures in front of him, he didn't look very bothered anyway. I came back to the bridge after this little misadventure. The bridge was bustling with a large influx of humanity. I walked to the middle of the bridge and watched the new bridge from there. Some steamers were busy ferrying people across the river, though I could not spot any small boats like the one in the Parineeta song. The neon lights at the Howrah railway station were blinking and some bathers were busy washing themseleves at the ghats below. It was a balmy evening and the wind was pleasent against my face. I wanted to take a ride on the ferrys below. I went to the Goa ghat, taking the alley below the bridge. Boy! was it dirty or what?! The ferry took me under the bridge and stopped at the Armenian ghat on the other side of bridge. The bridge, now lit with street lights was looking splendid. At the Armenian ghat I could see some small fishing boats, just like the one in Parineeta. The day's fishing was done and it was now cooking time; they cook too on the boat.

I took another cab to Flury's at the Park Street. Yes, you heard the name last time in the movie Parineeta. The other name mentioned in the movie, Moulin Rouge (Where Rekha sings and shakes her booty), was just opposite to Flury's. I had some pastries & got some packed for Pankaj Jain and his friends. Pastries were nice, but not really out-of-this-world great. I'm not a great fan of pastries anyway. Soon after finishing the pastries, I left for IIM.

The next day I wanted to get on a tram. So I walked out of IIM upto Behala and walked into a tram there. Quite frankly, it felt more like a toy-train to me. It would stop at any place to get people overboard. The tram-tracks look as if it's not in use now. I got down at Shakher Bazaar and took auto to Tollygunge. We watched Yahaan later in the evening at the Inox multiplex.

The city felt like stuck in time to me. As if it is waiting for something to happen, waiting to wake up from slumber. Surely it must have been a magnificent city with all the huge havelis and markets, but it feels as if it doesn't want to move ahead. Almost every part of the city is filled with ancient buildings, many of them just at the verge of collapsing. The inhabitants are easy going people, who like to take it easy. The shops are shut down in the afternoon, no one is wishing to push it harder for that extra buck.The buzz of Bombay & rush of Delhi is absent here, it's just cool & calm Calcutta for you.

P.S. : Today I received my passport back, with visa granted for next one year.

Amul - The Taste Of India

For more Amul topicals go here.

From the City of Joy (Mukherjee) ;-)

I wrote a longer post but lost it as the power got out! Anyway, I reached Kolkata yesterday afternoon. After checking in at Astor Hotel, I went out to take a stroll. First I went to check out the US Consulate, it was at 5 mins walking distance from hotel (I had to come to Kolkata consulate as I didn't get any early date's appointment at Chennai/Delhi consulates.). The consulate is at the Ho Chi Minh Sarini, which is in turn near to Park Street. The entire area has an unique air of antiquity to it. Some very old buildings (Kothis or havelis) were now in tatters, but it's not very hard to imagine the glorious times they have had. The Astor hotel's building is also 100 years old.

The traffic is as chaotic as in any other city in India. The narrow lanes near Park Street were dingy and clumsy. The feeling of antiquity has spilled on the roads too. I haven't seen as many Ambassadors in my life as many I've seen here in one day! Firstly, color them yellow and you've a Kolkata cab. Even otherwise many people were having ambassadors. I tried my hands at the Metro while coming to IIMC. It was much better than the Mumbai local experience. It wasn't crowded that much, mainly because the covreage is not extensive, I'm told. But it was cleaner. Even the platforms were better. I liked the use of punchcards, it makes it virtually impossible to travel without tickets. I'm yet to travel on tram, should be fun!

I didn't get any chance to try my limited Bangla (Aami Bangla bolte paari na, tumi Hindi bolte jano ki? Kemon acche?) as everyone understands and talks in Hindi. For any Hindi speaking person, Bangla is not a hard to understand language, if spoken slowly :). Even the script seems vaguely similar. I've yet to spot any junta from Bipasha Basu & Rani Mukherjee cadre, but US consulate is not the right place to expect them, I guess. This evening perhaps we'll go out for dinner or a movie, hoping for the best ;-).

The visa interview was smooth, I should get my passport back in few days. Right now I'm at Pankaj Jain's room at IIMC. This place seems good. The campus has two small lakes, the hostels are nice, rooms are big. The weather is a bit of bother though. It's humid big time and though it's not hot, humidity is tough to bear. Pankaj says it's the best weather of year though :-/. I already miss Bangalore weather!

Total Recall

If someone enjoys cribbing and he had lots to crib about. Is he happy or sad?

If the TV in the advertisement shows much better picture than mine, how would I notice that on my inferior TV?

People say I drive well. I don't think I drive that well. Perhaps, I drive well because I don't think I drive well.

Excuse the musing mood.

It has started to get chilly during evenings here in Bangalore. Last night I got my blanket out from the hibernation. As instructed by my mom, I had packed it in my trunk and put some camphor balls along. It was smelling of camphor. I like that smell. It announces the change of weather. When we were kids and the weather would change to such an extent that we'd require to transform the wardrobe, it was the time to meet some long lost friend. Ah.. the joys of getting back your favorite half-pant or that snugly sweater or comfortable but old t-shirt! It wasn't all that joyful to discover that you've grown much to fit into some of the favorites of last season, but then, that meant new clothes!

We used to have these silly debates about which weather is my favorite. "My favorite" was just a wrapping, we would shred each other down to prove that the weather with my birthday in it, was the best. My points: we get to eat grapes in winter and if it gets too cold you can still do something about it, but in summers when it gets too hot, then there is not way you can beat that! That wasn't all that was silly, we once made a comics club in Bharatpur (Vivek was an equal share partner). We used to spend whole lot of money on comics, so the idea was to lend them to people and charge a nominal fees for it (It was 25 paise perhaps). It was a solid business plan, the only problem was logistics! During the summer holidays, you don't have school to meet with whole lot of comic-hungry kids. Initially we planned to used our cycles but then we needed to have publicity, we couldn't go hawking! Thus, our brilliant idea died a silent death. The last nail in the coffin was my dad's transfer from Bharatpur to Bikaner.

I joined K.V.No 2 (Army area) in Bikaner. I had spent one year in this school during our earlier stay in Bikaner. So I already had the old set of friends and foes in the school. Shambhu Nath Tiwari was the fella who wasn't liked by many in our class. I don't know why, but we all hated him. It's not that I hated him because everyone did, but I can't put my finger on why I hated him. I'm sure he knew, if he is reading this he won't be surprised. Now, in that school we had one math teacher (some punjabi name; perhaps Arora ma'am) who was a legendary knuckle breaker. She'd usually put pencils between our fingers and press them. Once she had some test copies to check so she'd put the class in silent mode. The rule was that if you see someone talking, you go and slap him/her across the face! I pounced upon this opportunity and slapped 2-3 guys including Shambhu. I wasn't very big for my age but my hands transferred such huge momentum that one of them got swelling around his ear. Worse part was that he was the son of vice-principal! Now he and Shambhu went to principal and I had to apologize and all.

On my recent trip to home, I went to Bikaner to attend a wedding. We also went to our old house for breakfast, uncle, who live there now, being a friend of papa. The huge kothi just opposite to PBM hospital looked smaller than what mental image I had. Even my school looked smaller, so did the ground opposite the school. I didn't go to my room, but saw it from outside. Uncle had made it his living room. TV has taken the place where we used to keep our badminton racquets. The lawn we maintained meticulously, was now gone with the weed. It was a very short trip and I went to Bikaner after perhaps 6-7 years. The memories really rushed back to me. I passed from the gates of the zoo we used to frequently visit, passed from the front of my school, and the Shardul club we used to go swimming at. I attended the marriage of Rajesh, who is now a vet. We were together first at Anoopgarh, where I started schooling. Then at Bikaner. He was two years senior to me in school. We were never close friends but his family & my family were friends. So that way, we grew up together. I met Manoj bhaiya, who must have been in 12th when we were in Bikaner. Now he is a lecturer there. I thought I missed his wedding but wasn't sure if it was his wedding I missed, so I was hesitating in congratulating him. Good thing that I didn't congratulate him for his wedding, I didn't know he has became a father too! My bum-chum of Bikaner, Bijendera, is now in Jaipur and is about to get married soon (or probably has already got married). Isn't it funny how it gets awkward when you meet great friends of old times and you feel that both of you have now changed quite a lot; a lot of water has flown down the bridge? I face this awkward situation all the time.

Am I sounding like an old hag? Don't know, just felt like talking about good old days.