Virgin Mobile job offer fraud....

Can you believe? I have just got an offer letter from VIRGIN MOBILE. They are offering me 100,000 GBP w/o even interviewng me :D. Well it is a fraud letter. Preliminary examination tells you Virgin's head quarters adress is given wrong. I am planning to take up this with police in India. If you have recieved this kind of letter please check the mail domain it is coming from. Anything else than virginmobile.com should be a fraud. Also please check the adresses and contacts from Virgin Mobile before you rush. I am publishing the offer for your reference. Please beware!

Registered Office:
8-10 Queens berry Place
South Kensington.
London SW7 2EA.
27th DECEMBER 2008.

CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS:
35 Brook field Road,Ilford, United Kingdom London .
TELL: +447031970112

SOFT COPY OF YOUR CONTRACT LETTER

Dear Anil Kumar Pappu,

After the review of your CV/ RESUME and Answers to the submitted Online Questionnaire, the Management Board of VIRGIN MOBILE UK has decided to employ your services for the provision of expertise to her Company in London, United Kingdom.Please find attached herewith this e-mail, relevant document containing the Soft Copy of your Job Offer Package for your perusal and approval.YOUR JOB OFFER SUMMARY IS AS FOLLOWS:

BASIC SALARY: GBP 8,475.00(Eight thousand four Hundred and Seventy Five Great Britain Pounds)
JOB TITLE:Product Development,
JOB REF: 007/08/VM/VGT/T5Y
JOB CODE: 080/VM/101
STARTING DATE:FLEXIBLE
JOB LOCATION: LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM.

THIS AGREEMENT is made today job is been offered to you between Virgin Mobile of the one party and you as a second party.For good consideration, Virgin Mobile employs the Employee on the following terms and conditions.

ARTICLE 1: CONTRACT PERIODThe contract period shall be for Contract duration: The contract shall last for duration of 60 consecutive months; 5 years and could be renewed only if employer is satisfied with employee's services and could be reduced if employee request for amendment of duration.
.........................................................................................................................................................................
.........................................................................................................................................................................
............................................................................................................................................................................
+447031970112mailto:Email%3Avm.joboffer@live.comVirgin Mobile.BRIEF INFORMATION ABOUT VIRGIN MOBILE:The VIRGIN MOBILE Online Employment System welcomes you to our company and wishes you to join and work with us.VIRGIN MOBILE is proud to have a multinational workforce, consisting of over 17 different nationalities.

Ghajini review

The wait is finally over and I am just back from Ghajni. I booked for the preview show, that itself shows the expectations I had for the movie. Here I am, awake at 2:30am writing the review for the movie and this should explain the fact that I am far from being disappointed.

The expectations that are set by the immaculate marketing campaign, the trade mark of Aamir would just rise when you look at the titles, which look like sneak peek into the human brain. The next ten minutes were spent in comparing the movie to the Telugu version. In fact I was a bit disappointed to realize that to an extent it was a screen to screen copy of the Telugu version. However, the director quickly pulls you in by some nerve tickling humor and from then, no looking back as the movie goes ahead with each scene promising that there is more to come.

Anyone who says that Ghajni is a standard revenge type movie where hero chases the villain to death, they surely have missed a lot of the movie. The movie has all the aspects that a good entertainer should have. It starts with humor that Kalpana(Asin) churns in while Sanjay (Aamir) falls for her is really good. Kalpana is a smart, innocent, talkative, independent, ambitious and socially responsible girl who is good enough to attract the Harvard graduate business man Sanjay.

The plot unfolds showing how Sanjay who was once a smart young business man who balances his life to heed to his innocent girl friend now becomes a brute force killing machine. Sanjay as the short term memory loss patient hardly has any dialogues. His eyes spoke everything; in fact the best part of the movie is to feel along with Sanjay the pain of losing a loved one and how that pain becomes uncontrollable and turns into revenge, all this happens as you look into eyes of Aamir and you cheer each time Sanjay kills one each from the villain’s gang.

The performances were all fabulous, the screen play was awesome, the fights were well designed, and last but not the least AR Rahman's music was great to say the least. One thing that came to me as a pleasant surprise was that the climax was different from the Telugu version. All in all Ghajni has come out well, the emotions of person who lost his love- the theme of the movie- came out sound and healthy. For all this, Ghajni is a definite paisa vasool and so a must watch.

We shall have something like these....

There was a sudden tickling feeling on my thigh. I instantly doubted the man sitting beside me; I hated him for ignoring the other empty seats in the bus and choosing the empty seat beside me. And the worst part is he did this when- you know what- just entered the bus. The feeling was like you were hogging upon nice yummy biryani and you enthusiastically chewed a four inch long chilly.

So when I was waiting like sulking child waiting for an opportunity to vent out this anger, my phone vibrated in my pocket. Though I wished the guy messed with me so that I could give it back to him amplified (please note that I am still straight), the feeling waned in a matter of a few seconds as my brain responded to the stimuli and recognized that my phone was ringing. I carefully reached for it; it was Muley- my room mate.

Of late we have been practicing a lot for the ‘World’s laziest bum’ contest. So as a part of the practice we have decided to work on our dinner plans and decided to pick a parcel on our way. I agreed half heartedly as this means a few extra steps with my newly bought designer Italian shoes (for all those who do not know how I look, the next time you observe a tall fair guy with shoes that are too long, too slim and too shiny, like the ones the hero in the fairy tales wear…… errr that SRK wears, you can safely conclude that its me).

So as I carefully ascended the steps of our take home biryani center, my concentration was instantly bought by the owner who seem to be extremely interested in my ID card. There is nothing more contending than some attention for an average SE engineer. So I moved the ID into and away from his line of vision and enjoying the way he hypnotically craned his neck like a pendulum (as I am writing this I am cursing myself for having not concentrating on my new shoes ). Things got more exciting when he did not move away from the ID, for first I was a bit worried about getting mugged, but that was a very stupid thought. I instantly praised my laziness for not being able to thought further.

As the next few seconds were spent in trying to control the adrenaline rush into the blood, the excitation peaked when the owner approached me and took hold of my ID. I widened my eyes; and even a child observing me would have concluded that I had a throat infection by looking at my upper throat; I opened my mouth so much. I gave up my oath to laziness and started thinking about the possible reasons for the owner’s interest in my ID card. My brain started calculating all the possibilities- Is the guy a big fan of Infosys? Is he going to offer us some exorbitant discounts? Or DOES HE READ MY BLOG? DID HE RECONGNIZE THE GREAT AKP? I stopped breathing at this instant. I needed to listen to his intentions to choke myself back to breathing.

He said “Hamare paas aisa bhi kuch hona chahiye”.

I flushed instantly; he apparently wants to issue this kind of ID cards to his staff too. My face turned pale, to control the bile I had to cancel the order we placed and rush off the center taking enough care not to damage my new Italian designer shoes.

rab did not have taste.

I finally conceded upon my celibacy. I gave in to- you know what- at one of those ubiquitous multiplexes which are more of vacuum cleaner for your wallets. After a long period of inactivity of not being screwed by hindi movies, I have had my share yesterday; I watched rab ne banadi Jodi. I am cursing myself as I am writing these lines. Not that I hated watching the movie, but because people who liked the movie suggested it for its romantic comedy.

The first half was spent in spasmodic slumber. While the ‘not so real’ emotions are grinded upon you in completely unreal sets which are a pain to see, it is just the occasional funny one liners that wake you up as the theatre explodes into an occasional burst of laughter. In fact things get so boring that people did not laugh at what I think as the best line of the whole movie-mera naam hain Raj, naam tho suna hoga? While audience start doubting their intelligence when the questions like why can’t Suri be as fluid as Raj pop up, I felt like a sheep for being taken granted so much that I was made to believe that Tanee could not make out the difference between Raj and Suri.

Most of you know that the screenplay sucked and the storyline was as boring as Russian romantic novels where nothing happens till page number 380 where the hero decides to commit suicide. So I will not talk about it, what irritated me the most is the spineless nature of both the characters Raj and Suri. Both are idiotic enough to dance to the tunes of an emotionally tortured woman whose ideal world is far from reality. Though there is logic behind the concept that Suri wanted to know if Tanee loves the extrovert Raj or introvert Suri, the concept makes sense only if both are different. The whole movie for sometime seemed like an extension of kabhi alvida na kehna, the story was lack logic, the screenplay sucked is an understatement, art direction was no better and the movie was so long that I contemplated walking out.

Coming to the performances, Sharukh was fabulous; his talent was for sure wasted here. I am not sure how much more did he charge for wearing those please-look-at-me-and-puke-instantly clothes. Neon yellow t shirt, blue track suit and red shoes! Anushka was awesome, each and every inch of reel of hers in the movie has come out with the correct emotion, and I seriously feel that she has got a great career ahead. Vinay as usual is good. Overall if you are a smart person and hate emotional manipulations you can instantly avoid this movie. However, if you are a mushy person or an introvert who feel extra uncomfortable talking your feelings to girls, then maybe you can give it a try.

Pappu's fundae

Try and try till you don't know what to do.

Basic Instincts

Today is Diwali, festival of lights. Though I believe that one has to celebrate when one really wants to, it is really heartening to see how millions of people actually get into celebrating mode during the festive time. Well, if you ask me why on earth am I writing about my observations about celebrations, when I am actually supposed to be out there on the turf, celebrating; the answer is that I am stuck at around 1200kms from my home, without any purpose or reason.

Well, keeping aside my reasoning on why I stuch back, I just thought I will celebrate my diwali in the most satisfying way possible: scribbling a few lines in my blog.

It has been quite sometime since I have last visited my blog. Honestly I am not finding time to write, though there are quite some ideas. But as of now, I have a mission- MBA. So I am putting everything else in back seat, however I thought I will celebrate my diwali by blogging, I just read a few of my blogs again, I found that there are more grammatical errors than there are words; thanks to GMAT SC.

I have become quite incoherent, didn't I? Anyways, the vacuum that was created since morning has been filled up, I felt that I have celebrated. Guys a very happy deepawali.

Veeru and Jai got a new job?

Looks like VRL travels has hired Veeru and Jai, take a closer look at the screen grab.

chinese rock :D

I was going through my daily dose of news and stumbled across this. Couldn't help but laugh; no time for a longer post guys, keeping busy of late. See you all soon. And yeah, chinese rock, dont they??

Gyan.....

The biggest frustration in life is to show that you are not frustrated....

Life in a PMT bus.

I don’t generally stay back beyond six at office, not that I am a very strict person who believes in the work and personal life balance, but there is something that awaits me at 6 o clock in the evening that peps up my otherwise dull life.

I am no flier in writing, so I kind of make it as succinct as possible for you to read so that you don’t go back to your outlook window, pretending to work on a problem, which if not solved immediately would melt all the ice in Siberia or would cause flash floods in Sahara.


Talking about the excitement I get for leaving at six in the evening, you will be surprised to know that it’s all about a boring red box on four wheels, what we affectionately call as a PMT bus. For my all the more scarce non-Punite readers in the minority of my blog readers, PMT is Pune Municipal Transport. Wait! There should be something more, this is not that exciting, is it? So let’s read on.


The PMT bus that I travel.
I do not know about others, but there is something really enthralling about the PMT bus journey that amuses me, may be the greatness of the PMT bus (do you know that the PMT has the ultimate post modern era's symbol of greatness? Yes it has a Wikipedia entry ) or may be the way these buses are driven. Whatever it may be, the amusement is just there.

So after I marched out of my office panting and gasping for the breath when the unsuspecting security checked my laptop, I directly headed for the PMT bus, hired by our company to make up for the commuting demands of ever increasing employee base. Just as I am about to board the bus, I was greeted by two middle aged men, with all the excitement of a child who is dying to wait before it could wear its new pair of clothes. Well, people call these two the driver and the conductor; I call them the don and his capo régime. Whatsoever, they will be hence forth referred to as the Veeru, the driver and the Jai, the conductor.



That's Veeru (in khakhi) staring inquisitively into camera.


The very moment I entered the bus, my searching eyes landed on a vacant seat beside a lady and even before I could react, the lady returned a venomous look which the ladies reserve for a rogue guy. I am in no mood to fight egos; I am here for a far more exciting experience than sitting beside an attitude filled lady. I instantly excused her and settled in an abandoned seat near a window.

In a little while after I sat in the seat, a whistle went off and there was a sudden jerk. The jerk, a very violent one, would instigate you to believe that the earth has given up on bearing the weight of this malicious world and decided to rest for eternity, but it’s just the beginning of an exciting journey in the PMT bus and the whole scene resembles a formula one race among a few about-to-conk buses.

With in no time, unless you have taken a very boring decision of catching a power nap, you will observe that this otherwise ubiquitous machine has almost overtook a dozen buses as you shake and violently vibrate about your base and thereby intensely strengthening your abdomen; I seriously suspect that all my co-passengers have developed/will develop a sexy six pack or at least a four pack if they are traveling consistently in the said PMT.

My journey back home consists of three parts:

1) Taxiing.

2) Take off

3) Landing.

Taxiing:

I wanted to use the word congested for the three kilometer stretch of road that connects my office to the highway, but that very night I had nightmares of Shakespeare whipping the wits off me and so I realized that congested is a very mild word to be used for this stretch of road where the vehicles move as fast as the earth’s tectonic plates or even worse. So you get how bad the condition is, no?

But ours was a different case. Veeru is a class apart; he is one of those rare species who believes in the movie Speed, and thinks that lifting the feet off the gas pedal would blow the bus off, and his desperation was so extreme that, if he were to die in the bus and has to lift his feet off, he would haunt the bus for the rest of the life or death or whatever it is called. And this makes the taxiing a daunting task for Veeru, only if Jai, the capo regime, were not to be there.

That's Jai trying to lift a bus off that blocked our way.

Jai would remind you of your childhood friend who used to watch you with an engrossed enthusiasm and excitement and used to shout directions on how to maneuver your car in your latest video game. Jai is just that and much more. Apart from giving real time driving directions to Veeru, he acts as confidence booster by making an occasional gesture like waving his hand in the air resembling more of a commander in chief instructing ferociously on the battle field.

If you think that Jai’s driving directions are just the left, right sorts of thing at a confusing road intersection, then you are as mistaken as when you think that MNS has started endorsing Hindi. Jai is more like a solution to a complex space problem, he calculates in real time the space required for the bus to maneuver and shouts and gestures at Veeru so that Veeru just zips across the traffic leaving behind a big tail of traffic, remember that all this should happen with enough care so that the 50 odd passengers are not thrown out of their seats as they are jolting violently while they are riveted to the seat. Of course rules never existed for these two and safety is an eternal issue.

With such an adept crew on board it is little surprise that we will manage to sneak through the hap hazard traffic with ease, just as water seeps through the bed rock. But it is worthwhile to observe the passengers in the bus. Each of the passengers would be as petrified as a cat which suddenly realizes that it has been playing with a muscular Doberman’s tail all this while. All they could manage is to close their eyes and pray harder hoping for the best to happen, and for ardent adventure lovers like me, its just fun to watch the whole drama.

My heart races as the bus zips through the traffic as if it never existed, but the best part of the taxiing is to watch the pedestrians cross the road as our bus zooms through the road. An unsuspecting observer would come to a firm conclusion that the bus’s tyre would happily hog upon someone just like a child would burst a balloon.

But Indians are too smart for that, years of experience in crossing the road in the most extreme conditions has made each Indian so expert in road crossing that they can cross the road blind folded, of course even with out a blind fold it hardly matters as they do not care what comes across, they just cross the road. They are however safe unless Salman Khan is a Software Engineer (which is a remote possibility according to Aamir Khan) and he commute to office drunk using his BMW.

That's a lucky pedestrian who crossed our bus successfully
Veeru, of course, is no Salman Khan and remember, we are traveling in a PMT. So the pedestrians are generally safe, though they are at a very high risk of being spray painted with a liter of mud water if it’s a rainy season.

In any which way we will reach the Runway (Highway) in a time much lower than the average time required by any other dashed vehicle on that road.

Take Off:

With in a few minutes of ‘hard drive’ on the runway, you would start wondering if Schumacher is driving the bus for a formula none race. If not for the violent jolting, thanks for the excellent road condition, one would bet a year’s salary and would contend that the bus is flying. ‘Veeru rocks’ is just an understatement.

As all the passengers are closing their eyes tightly and hoping that the bus wouldn’t fly, there was deep hollow scowl; it sounded something like “Aiiiiyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeee”. The scowl has horrifying enough to arrest an unsuspecting heart to eternity. And this made the ‘Venomous look’ clad lady to eject out of her seat with fear. It took a daunting effort for me refrain from giving a high five to Jai, the person who scowled, for frightening the wits off the lady.

But Jai had other ideas when he scowled. Veeru and Jai are very environment conscious, and they did not want to pollute the environment with unnecessary honking, so they promptly removed the horn and Jai took up the responsibility to warn all those people whom Veeru thinks that are dangerously close to our vehicle, Veeru operates in nano dimension terms and Jai’s scowl coupled with the dangerous proximity to the vehicle would provoke anyone’s heart to arrest itself immediately to save time. No doubt the lady was so petrified.

And this excitement will reach its peak when Veeru tries to overtake a vehicle, left or right does not matter. Let’s see how Veeru and Jai perform the overtaking feat.

Let’s say Veeru wants to overtake other vehicles (henceforth called as victims). A cursory check was performed by Jai and he calculates the fastest route to reach a point that is a kilometer ahead, Veeru then increases the speed of the bus to at least double that of the victims’ and if there is another victim in the way, the overtaking is not abandoned, in such a case the accelerator is depressed to abysmal and the headlights are ‘dim dipped’ vigorously, this means the responsibility to avoid an impending collision is completely with the victim and in case, the victim does not oblige, Jai jumps into action and scowls; this scowl, as described above, is good enough to bring the victim to a screeching halt or may be pulling itself into the roadside pastures. And that completes the overtaking task.

By then, most of the passengers in the bus would be hoping to heaven and hell that there will be no more excitement for the evening; the way Kareena does in the movie Jab we met. Their prayers will be answered unless a dog will be too eager to meet its mate on the other side of the road and crosses the road before Veeru could, what happens then is a well known fact or you can refer my blog.

So after a few more overtaking feats we will be ready to land.

Landing:

Just as I tried to recollect my insurance agent’s number for obvious reasons and almost took a firm decision that I will be at least a mile away from a PMT bus next time I drive, I have realized that I have reached my destination and got ready to exit the ‘ride’. I stood up and started walking along the gang way catching hold of little plastic hangings provided. But, only then did I realize that it was stupid of me to conclude that the ride was over and Veeru gave a ‘picture abhi bhaki hain dost’ look as he started breaking the vehicle spasmodically.

This spasmodic breaking would make the passenger who is standing a pendulum and the passenger starts swinging about the point of suspension. So when Veeru gave the final touch to our ride, a co-passenger became a pendulum and crashed into me with his under arm under my nose, I suspect if he were not to use the deo I would have fainted instantly.

For a moment I wondered what if Veeru’s romance with the breaks would make me slip and fall on the ‘Venomous look’ clad lady, before my brain could open its creative gates the bus came to a screeching halt. I alighted the bus, only to find that I was hyper ventilating and my pupils are dilating, man that was one hell of a ride.

The next fifteen minutes were spent in a desperate attempt to cross the road, apart from failing miserably, I looked as if I was rehearsing a primitive kind of tribal dance in a formal dress code, but then I have made up my mind, closed my eyes and started running towards the other end hoping that there are no more PMT buses coming. No doubt that so many dogs die on the highway.

Whatsoever, I felt that I just came out of one of those fun rides in amusement parks and whined at the fact that I will have to wait for another 24 hours to have the ride again.

Now you know, why I die to leave at six, don't you?

A Wednesday.

".......in this world there comes a time when the most humble of men, if he keeps his eyes open, can take his revenge on the most powerful." said Mario Puzo in his block buster novel The God Father.

Well, the analogy between "the god father" and "A Wednesday" ends there. But these are powerful enough fewlines to describe the whole movie.

My friend who is a teetotaler came out and said, is this what getting high all about?

The movie has the wall paper of terrorism, an all the more common theme in India , but it comes out with a surprisingly gripping pliot line, which just rips your adrenaline glands off.

The movie basically acts like a voice to a common man and almost acts as crater to vent out your frustration on the anti social elements who play with normal people for no mistake of theirs. I do not intend to discuss any more on the plot of the movie becuase it falls under those categoury whose plot needs to be kept a secret for a person to enjoy the movie.

Coming to the performances, Naseeruddin Shah was stunning to say the least, his climax speech is a classic and takes the audience to a level higher. Anupam Kher, Jimmy Shergill and Abbas were as lucid in their roles as anyone could get.

The best part of the movie is that there are no songs. Phew! What a relief!! All in all the movie is a class apart though its roots can be traced to Die Hard 4. I rate the movie with three stars as this is a very good one timer. But do watch the movie, its worth it.

Cheee!!! Chicken??

Does your salivary glands flood themselves to glory when you see a country chicken flies away in a confused state, much to evocate the way bikers grace the Indian roads?

If you do get crazy over fried legs of a chicken or roasted pair of wings think again, eating chicken or for that matter any form of non-vegetarian food would help you add to the global carbon foot print.

According to this article 18% of world's total carbon emissions are due to meat production. Every stage of meat production, ranging from clearing forest for farms to burining fossil fuel for farm vehicles to animal wastes contribute to this 18%.

So friends, next time you lay your greedy hand on a plate of yummy chicken biryani, think again.

We live a boring life!

I generally refrain from reading others' stuff, mainly because my mind is volatile and my ideas are more or less in a liquid form, so anything I read which relates to my ideas would act as a container and, whoa!, I will almost touch the ass of plagiarist in me, so I refrain from reading others' stuff and if I do and get inspired, I take the utmost care not to sound like Pritam or Anu Malik (wink! You know what I mean, I do not know the chinese lyrics of the song oh jaane jaa :D). Though this does not happen always, it does happen.


However, I have recently contemplated to read some of these stars' blogs and I did read them. AB's, AK's etc. The first thing I have noticed, and did so with envy, is that these blogs have thousands of comments, though most of them are "Hello AK uncle, I am 12 year old" types, the comments are there. And that made me envious.

A regular visitor to my blog, if he/she still survived by a stroke of luck, would be quick to grasp that comments on my blogs are as rare as a student who doesn't copy, or you might even want to say as rare as a girl in a Mechanical Engineering class or even as rare as good looking female in my project. What so ever, I made best efforts to market my blog as much as possible with all those funky gadgets on your right. I also wonder what would have happened if I were to be modest. Damn it, this IT industry did teach me something, show casing, eh!

Coming back to those celebrity's blogs, I wonder what AK thinks when he sees those comments, the "Hello AK uncle, I am 12 year old" types; he might just bring TZP kid in and asks him "should I reply him saying that I am AK uncle and I cannot quite disclose my age?" Or he might just blink and smile benevolently and muse over why a 12 year old kid started thinking about his own age so early and eventually imagines a bored house wife making the best use of her broadband connection, after all she cannot keep watching porn youtube.

What is more important is that the content of the blogs, these are completely e-journals of what these stars do day to day and what they think about what they do and in the attempt to do so they try to sound modest about (quite obvious, they cannot say "I am great and hence the great fan following") their stardom.

For a moment I thought and pondered upon a few 'what if's
like:
1) What if I also write about what I do every day. (a few of my body parts started disowning me immediately and considered parasiting upon my lesser mortal roomies).
2) What if my PM reads my blog on what I do? (my ID immediately called its insurance agent)
3) Worst of all, what if my client reads my blog on what I do everyday?? (I could almost imagine a few CEOs approaching Vito Corleone to save their businesses :D).


The gist of the article is that, we live a boring life. And I am sure talking about the fights we have to get the access to the Bathroom in the morning or the way we run to the bus stop JIT or for that matter the snoring patterns of our room mates would only make the blog as boring as our life is and I am sure if I were to talk about what my projects are or how I got moved by a certain incident no one cares a hoot. Of course, it is a different thing that you will be very famous if it is a video on you cozying yourself with your girl.

If you are still wondering why I wrote this or searching for something funny in this, I guess your search should end here and I suggest you laugh out loudly for me/with me/at me and wait till I pull out something better.

Gyan...

Try and try till you suck...

New iPhone launched.

All the speculations on the price of the much adored iPhone in India ended when it was finally declared that the coveted gizmo will cost you just 31K for an 8 GB version and its bigger brother which has bigger stomach capacity would cost you just 5k more. It will be a great pleasure to use this phone which comes at the price of dirt especially with Vodafone, which has an exceptionally great network. I did call their call center to convey the same, but there seems to be some problem as I have been failing to get connected for last three days, I have literally mugged by heart their promotional messages in Marathi while I waited for a call center executive to attend the call.

Meanwhile, rumours about the iPhone's next version coming up have swarmed the net. The next version is claimed to have the capability to increase the average intelligence for any one who uses it. It has a host of other customized features which include features like helping you look more attractive to the opposite sex, increasing your chances to get selected for a reality show if you send the SMS from your phone, and an all new lie detector to know whether your girl friend is cheating or not. You can also buy and download third party software, installing which will help you know whether or not a new release will be a hit by just typing its name.

Our sources had an opportunity to discuss about a very secret project for Apple inc., known as ePhone. An over excited Apple employee spilled the beans about this Z+ generation phone. The e-phone is claimed to be boon to all the corporate employees in the world, it is expected to bring reprieve from the bosses. "We are researching on the boss detector feature, with this feature the phone will be able to detect the boss within range of 5 meters and gives him a small but an uncomfortable shock." says the unnamed Apple employee."Bosses then associate the pain with approaching the employee and over a period of time will avoid the employee". he said with beaming eyes. "The other options are...." are the only final words we could manage from the employee as another employee pulled him in catching his collar. We are assuming the second employee is his boss.

Mean while, there are speculations that e-Phone will be launched in India first with the collaboration of Reliance. The price is expected to 200Rs per piece. That is the only way to show the world that we are as good as US said a beaming RelComm employee who refused to name himself.

A qucik rant.

Please note that this is a completely personal rant and the reader is risking his time by contemplating to read through. Any such attempts are assumed to have agreed to my terms and conditions of not cursing me after reading through.

I am not finding time to write, I know I have complained about this earlier, but I guess it is a cycle. But, I do not want this blog to be inactive for too long, lest I will have to budge into the requests asking me to sell my blog for $2.

So, just a few updates from my side.

Apart from the boring routine of brushing the same old teeth and bathing the same old body I have tried to see a few movies, apart from getting poorer by a few hundred bucks nothing substantial happened as the movies were far more routine than the above mentioned activities.

Yours truly have failed again, though not miserably, in his recent attempt to cover up for his ever falling hair which is affecting his otherwise charming personality. The finer details like what that attempt was and how miserably he failed are kept as a secret fearing the loss of market segment to his arch rivals.

Well, if you are to know me better, you will safely assume that failures hardly bother me. I guess that is the main reason I fail, there is no fear of failure for me.

I just wanted to quote a few lines from the Godfather here.


"in this world there comes a time when the most humble of men, if he keeps his
eyes open, can take his revenge on the most powerful."

That should end this post. I know this is too abrupt, but I seriously do not know how to end things, which is why I am still writing.

Lifts, Courtesy etc.

I do not use steps, keeping aside the health benefits of climbing up and down those plethora of steps, these benefits are as applicable to me as morals would be to most politicians, I prefer those little glass and metal enclosures which move up and down at a call of a button, we call them lifts, no?

Observing people in lifts is a great stress buster; it takes you into newer worlds with a greater insight into psychology, if it ever existed.

Yours truly considers himself to be pretty good at observation and has come up with a good classification of the lift users under which the above mentioned could be easily elaborated upon.

· The callers, classification on how people call the lifts.
· The people who board, classification on how people board the lift
· The people who alight,

The callers:

Among other boring types, the most interesting fall into two categories:

The go getters: These people are those who are not too comfortable with the idea of things not in their control. Let’s see the following conversation near a lift:

She: blah blah blah blah (continuously pressing the lift button).
He: (after a long hiatus) darling! Why are we pressing the call button so many times? my PM told me its enough if we press the button twice or thrice.
She: Oh! You dumbo! (Speaking as she presses the button continuously) you don’t know? The more the number of times you press the button the faster the lift comes down.
He: Ooooh! I never knew this.

She has got her ex-boyfriends in the lifts logic design team of OTIS, Mitsubishi and the likes and they apparently discuss, in their annual meeting they have with her, how they are thriving to increase the acceleration of the lifts with each increment in the call count.

The just do it types: These types believe that whatever they do is right.

She: blah blah blah (as she presses both up and down call button for the lift)
He: Hey! Why did you press both the buttons? Isn’t it enough to press just the down arrow button, as we are going down?
She: Are you nuts? The second button is given as back up, if the lift doesn’t come for the first button, then we have to press the second button; up and down my foot, huh!

That’s it; another name has been added to the world’s most enlightened souls’ list. This guy is lucky, isn’t he?

In the meanwhile they board the lift that is going in the opposite direction; her logic was simple- everything that goes has to come back.


The people who board:
The Hollywood type: This type is mostly inspired by Neo, the matrix man (Keanu Reaves) and believes that lifts are just another element of nature that would act according to their whimsy. When this type sees the lift at a considerable distance and when they decide to board it, all they do is just march towards the lift sternly and mechanically with a defiant palm lifted into the air.

This type would succeed unless there is a similar kind already in the lift, who on seeing the first person would press the “door close” button and smiling at the thought of the person crashing at the lift door.

The Indian fast bowler type: This type starts running towards the lift as and when they see it open, the distance just doesn’t matter, they just run with all the conviction of a determined soul, as the people waiting in the lift speculate about their chances of making it, they either run out of their steam and settle in the nearest sofa or change their mind and go towards the staircase.

The people who alight:
Before talking about this type, now that you have reached this far, I presume that you are either not too interested in life or you are too interested in what I write, in either way, I presume that you would not go away to read other intelligent posts on the forum as I quote Aristotle from his work on political philosophy

“If there be some one person whose virtue is so pre-eminent that the virtues of all the rest admit of no comparison with his, he or they can be no longer regarded as part of a state; for justice will not be done to the superior. Such a one may truly be deemed a God among men; and for men of pre-eminent virtue there is no law—they are themselves a law. Any (person) would be ridiculous who attempted to make laws for them.”

Aristotle in the above message is referring to super heroes, the icons who are above all the law and are considered demigods, a good examples for this is our security, there are at least a dozen such super heroes in our security, these do-gooders, with all due respect for keeping us in safe hands, just need a small reason to scowl at, you forget you tie, they scowl, you try to use the umbrella till the bus, they scowl after all they are super heroes and their managers have told them that smiling is a crime and courtesy is a sin.

I have met one such super hero in the last seat of the bus yesterday(this time it’s an employee); the super hero was engrossed in the music his i-pod is beaming out, with his unbuttoned shirt showing his jewelry and a few things that are beyond description for this point, he just couldn’t wait till his chance to alight the bus, he has a word for his rescue “excuse me” which he used with generosity as he made his way through the people whom he think are going to XYZ phase 3

I have later realized that this guy is the Dark-Knight of [please insert your company name here], who is in a hurry to encounter Joker who was troubling [your company's employees], asking them why they were serious.

“Excuse me” gentleman, are you reading this?

Back to the topic, it is interesting to observe the super hero category in the lifts, especially when the lift is packed, they do not have enough time to wait for their chance, their aim is simple, be the first one get out of the lift as the others are waiting to go into underground using lift.

Pappu CAN dance.........

This is your's truly, quintessential at parties. No I am not always inclined at 90 degrees backwards on the dance floor, but yes contradictory to the popular song which shouts out that Pappu cannot dance, yours truly is an ardent dancer and scares the hell out of any one within the radius of his hands.
I will have to write a bigger write up on this. Let me find some time :)

Birthday.....

As a child, I was always amused by anniversaries. It used to excite me to see the passion with which people celebrate anniversaries, but for some strange reason my inclination for these celebrations turned volatile and almost evaporated, but like everything in nature even this had a cycle, I donno if I have turned childish or its just that I have understood the passion behind these anniversaries, but I am really glad, yes I mean really, to share with you all that *irrationally rational* is a one year old today.

I wish I mature myself as a good writer and hone my skills and this blog reaches the place which I think it should, wish my blog a very happy birthday!!

News Digest.....

Disclaimer: All the news in the following post is fake and is taken directly from kaltak. Anyone feeling that the news is alluding at him/her is free to introspect, the author however, is not responsible for any cerebral breakdown resulting from the futile attempts.

HR executive resigns:

In a bizarre and first of its kind incident, a HR executive of a software company has resigned on moral grounds. On 22nd of July 2008, Manavi Mahopadhyay, a senior HR executive has submitted her resignation to her boss, the reasons she cited was the unruly behaviour of the freshers she has recruited so far.

"It is so disheartening to see hundreds of mails complaining against these youngsters breaking the queues, hedging the spoons, romancing in the last seat of the bus, I just can't imagine,that these are the same kids on whom we spent lakhs and lakhs of rupees for training on inter-personal effectiveness" said a sobbing Manavi who later completely broke down.

Our sources, who refused to be named, said that the final nail in the coffin was hit when a senior employee, who was already frustrated for a lot of other things (which includes insufficient leg space in the school bus in which he commutes to office daily) was given a cold look by a guy for sitting beside his girlfriend, unfortunately that was the only available seat. The couple later proceeded to switch on to their basic instincts and romanced the rest of their journey to glory. The senior employee then wrote a lengthy mail to his HR with choicest of words, Manavi who is sensitive and sincere at work, chose to take the blame and resigned citing moral grounds. The senior employee refused to comment.

We have strong proof that the couple was given a pink slip, but were immediately selected by MTV for their upcoming reality show on dating.

India hot destination for Russian defence scientists:

Look out when you cross the roads in India next time, if you are lucky enough you might as well be asked to sign a contract for participating in Russian Defence Research. Russian Defence Research Organization has signed a pact with Indian government allowing them to study the brain patterns of Indian pedestrians and motorbike riders and to map the same in the anti missile technology in their latest combat jets and submarines.

"I have come to India last year on a holiday and was amazed to see the impeccable accuracy with which the Indian pedestrian cross the road without the help of a zebra crossing and I do not have the words to describe the Indian mo bike riders, they are too good for words" said Mr. Purikoshov Bhajishova. He also said that there is a high scope for break through in the said anti missile technology if we can carefully study and understand the brain patterns.

Management graduate proposes a new theory

Sharad Dikhaoo a management freak from a high profile college has proposed a new theory, he named it De-show casing theory.
"I used to find it very difficult to show case, essentially because there is nothing to show case in me, but I cannot sit quiet you know? This is a very competitive world and you need to be on your toes for you to survive and hence I came out with De-show casing theory, its simple, the statement is- if you cannot show case yourself, de-show case others, its nothing new, I am inspired from the childhood riddle of making a line shorter without erasing it- by drawing a line longer than that. I just used the converse and it worked" said a beaming Sharad who recently tested the theory on a *low life* and was able to successfully syphon off the *low life's* prospective girl friend by using the theory.

The HRD ministry who was pretty impressed with Sharad's work has promised to nominate his name for igNoble prize under show casing category, however under the caveat that the Prize committee agrees that de-showcasing can be considered as one form of show casing.

On the other hand, the low life on whom the theory was tested was so depressed for being deprived of a girl friend (his 109th attempt) that he complained to Ganeka Mandhi against the theory. Ganeka is currently agitating in front of the HRD's office for justice. Our sources said that the *low life* was present at the agitation and using all his charms to flirt with Ganeka and impress her. Our blog wishes him all the best.

News Digest.....

No more tail Lamps...

The confederation of automobile manufacturers (CAM) yesterday in Delhi disclosed that they are not going to use tail lamps and indicators any more for automobiles in India. CAM spokes person speaking exclusively to this blog, told that this idea of removing the tail lamps for the automobiles is around for a while, "Indians are smart, they get to know when the vehicle ahead of them stops and change their driving path accordingly, they hardly require the tail lamps and indicators." Saying that the cost benefit will be passed on to the customers, he said that the new range of vehicles without the tail lamps and indicators will be available from this December.

In totally unrelated news, Indian central government has asked all its state governments to remove all the signal posts in all the road junctions in India. The iron collected from all the posts will be used to build hospitals. There will be no more paint wasted on zebra crossings and road divider markers, they said that the amount saved will be used to compensate the fiscal deficit.

Our sources say that this was expected in these tough days of economic turmoil where we cannot waste money on things that are not put to use, there was an extensive cost benefit analyses carried out by PWC and cost benefit was found to be humongous.

A new reality show:
In this age where every day a new reality show comes out, a recent survey conducted showed that though reality shows excite people, their monotonous nature is boring people to death. So there is a need for a new reality show with fresh look and hence "Kaun banega reality show ki baap" was launched. "We saw a need to have a reality show on reality show, and we stepped in to fill the void" said CEO Mr. Chato.

The program features excerpts from various reality shows and judges will be calling cliched names for the show that is featured, apart from looking at each other and nodding occasionally at each snippet. There will also be opinions from audience on the shows and on the opinion of the judges as well, all the audience watching the show will be given eggs and tomatoes (subject to costs and availability).

"This is so exciting, throwing eggs at someone who shouted at my favorite performer in my favorite singing show is just awesome, I am loving it!" says an excited Pakao Sharma, nibbling at her burger and watching the all new reality show.

MNS strikes again:
The MNS activists yesterday did a lightning attack on PMC. They claim that Kothrud (which in Telugu means new road) may mislead many people to think that there are roads in Kothrud and also it is against the culture to have a name that sounds non-regional.

"Its good to see MNS so concerned about people's troubles, this will definitely help curbing the rising global crude prices and soaring inflation", beamed a Puneite who requested anonymity.

Gyan.....

Its not the words, but their interpretation that matters.....

Oh fuck!

Been there, Done that and I am the best......

Disclaimer: All the characters in the blog are work of fiction and any resemblance to any one living or dead is due to probability and Murphy playing together.

Been there....

'Been there' is an Engineer. The adverb for the adjective engineer could not be finalized because he was not pretty sure what kind of engineer he was, so he thought he was better off being just an Engineer.

Out of the million peculiar qualities which distinguishes him from the lot, the considerable ones are, his ability to confuse the shit out of every person in even the simplest of the situations and his trademark shake of his head to show disagreement, which starts much before a person in the conversation could even say something.

A few minutes of discussion with him gives you an impression that there is nothing possible in this world or you are the most useless person ever born on the face of the earth, both are too serious a wound. And what adds salt to this wound is his immortal penchant to re-phrase whatever you just said in passive voice. Well, if you love it short and sweet he is a pain in the neck.

There is little wonder that he is not married and his professional growth graph is as straight as an arrow. And this made the matters worse, he revamped his marketing strategy , he began marketing himself extensively. He is here, he is there and he is everywhere. And he is not shy to say this, each and every meeting he attends is full of fundas of he being here and he being there; rejecting everything he hears and repeating what ever the other person says with a few more grammatical errors and claiming it to be his idea. Little should I say that this did not help, and what is worth mentioning is, that he is "Been there".

Done that.
'Done that' is a 9-5 girl. Except for a few odd occasions like a fire drill or the first rain of the season where people do not bother about who is around them, "Done that" tries her best to stick to her seat and pretend that she has been working, by fanatically typing the keyboard.

When she is not doing any of the below mentioned activities:
Drinking coffee.
Reading news papers.
Chat.
Forward mails.
Pretending to attend teleconference by plugging on her headphone, but actually listening to music,

she does her best to attend the plethora of meetings, which are never seem to be at scarcity; and when she is bored of all the above, she works.

For her, meetings are analogical to spa houses where the presenter is the therapist who does his/her level best to induce sleep by relieving stress. And in the rare occasion, when she is asked about her opinion, she speaks like a programmed answering machine, repeating the same thing in every meeting- what she has done till now.

Her all the more rare official talk is more of an activity report of what she has done (read- what she wants others to think that she has done) between the current and the last meeting.
Well, my readers are smart enough to infer that, even "Done that" is not married and her career growth has a slope similar to that of "Been that's".

The fateful day.

They say that someone somewhere is made for you, I am sure you do not want to read about how crappy I feel about this saying and how I think that if some one somewhere is born for us, why shouldn’t we be born with a small chit with name of our partner and the address in that?

Now that, you want to know what the fateful day is about, let me introduce to you the back drop .

It was Saturday and the location was some temple. Among the other general things, which are common to any temple, what was noticeable was a serious discussion between two beggars.

B1: Why? I mean why should this happen to just me.
B2: What happened?

B1: My career is not progressing, I beg a lot but I dont get anything. But you, you don’t seem to be begging at all, but people just throw alms at you so generously, why-o-why? Why is this world so mean.
B2: Ok let me tell you a trade secret. You are a good beggar, but you miss the guile of the job. Any job in this world requires diversifying. You cannot expect to grow, doing the same thing at same place with same set of people. See, what I do- I go to different temples on different days and pretend a different kind of a disability on each day and when I do that, I don’t need to even beg, people just contribute on their own. Learn to do this, and then you will become the best beggar in this world.

As the second beggar continued his gyan, puffing a beedi and sipping over a cup of tea, a couple, who were incognizant of each other's presence and who eavesdropped at the beggars' conversation, started towards each other with their mouths agape and eyes twinkling. Little should I say that they are hell inspired by the beggar's gyan, and like anything else in this world, the inspiration didn't come free, it has come along with LOVE.

Yes they fell in love with each other, love at first sight.

And the couple was none other than, "Been there" and "Done that". Their first meeting was scintillating and they couldn’t wait anymore to compliment each other and they are married within a week of their first meeting.

Five years from now:

Ramu, after a long hectic day at the office, decided to feed himself with some masala news. His job is simple, all he has to do is to switch on the TV set and click a few random numbers for the TV channel, and the chances that he ends up in a masala news channel are almost placed at 1 in 3.

This time he was first time lucky. The first channel he started off with is itself a masala news channel. There was already a scrolling that read "Breaking News: A four year old boy finds out that 1+1=2 ". I don’t want to discuss about what Ramu thought after seeing the news, it’s in our blood, and it will be as good as writing a blog about how to breathe or how to walk.

So, let me just briefly tell you the history behind this news.

Well, after "Been there" and "Done that" were married, they complimented each other so well that they learnt each other's traits. And hence, they progressed faster than light in their careers, thanks to their innate talent and ofcourse, the beggar's gyan.

Now, the kid in the news is none other than the son of "Been there" and "Done that", "I am the best". He inherited all the great qualities of his parents and at very young age mastered the art of "show casing". And the result- In one of the math classes, after writing 1+1=2, he was able to hype it so much that it became national news. Of course, there is an enormous amount of support from media fraternity, but even then, "I am the best" has become a hero at a very young age.

Moral of the story: Been there + Done that = I am the best.
--AKP

P.S: In case you don not know the author properly, please be informed that he is obsessed with satire and irony. If you have assumed that the author is supporting the ideology that one should suceed by show casing, then please think again.

P.P.S: The author is not too confident about his satirical abilities.

No time to write......

I am not finding time nowadays to write, lots of professional, personal things to catch up. However, I thought I should thank all my readers for bearing my nonsense till now. So, I take this opportunity to thank all the readers of my blog who visit it out of interest.

Especially, the person from Tulsa College Community, Oklahama ( googled Tulsa OK)who seems to be obsessed with my blog. Thanks for your interest!

My dear readers, in case you did not observe, you can now subscribe to my feeds/ newsletter over email. A close look towards the right side of the screen would tell you why and how.

And, the following articles will be coming up shortly.....

1) Been there, done that, I am the best.....

2) A career change....

3) HUGS....

Thank you all for your support. Thanks.

What should I call this?

It was a pleasant Sunday afternoon, overcast, with breeze volunteering to lighten up the souls. A perfect time to go out and enjoy nature. But, I have got something to do. I need to go out on work, yeah work along with someone to whom I promised that I will help out in doing something.

So, I got into an attire which I thought would go well with the weather and mood and reached the parking lot where I parked my Honda and started to pick the person whom I promised to help and headed towards our destination.

Within a few minutes we reached our destination. It was a huge building which was lit up generously as if electricity is as abundant as pollution. However, I should not bother, it is my place of work. I parked my bike and accompanied the person to the work space.

My plan was to complete the work in an hour or two and get back to be a part of nature and enjoy it. And keeping in this mind, we started off the work. My role was just to help the person out, after all it wasn't my work. There was a passion with which the person carried out the work. It was as if a whole race was performing those tasks for zillions of years only to try and master it. Well, all it took was a few half an hours above my planned time of two hours to realize this. Yes, it was indeed four hours since we are working and given my impatient nature, I was pissed off.

A clever attendant at the work place who has observed me trying to disengage my self from the work as the person whom I was helping got too engrossed with work, came out with a suggestion. He suggested me to wait in a near by room. I obliged instantaneously, only furry creatures from alpha centauri would reject such offers.

I have entered the room and was surprised to see a few unshaved young men, waiting there watching TV with an unfading puzzled look on their face, which boldly shouted out, why was I here? I felt as if I found soul mates, it was blissful to see so many people with same expression on the face and that too when I was feeling the same way. An old gentleman, who seemed to have come to terms with this phenomenon have courteously invited me in and asked me to take some rest and assured me that it would take at least a couple more hours, as if he were a prophet.

I sat down silently on couch and started watching TV, at least there was a consensus with in the room for the channel to be watched, unlike the work which I left in midway where my every decision has been questioned and autopsied ruthlessly so that the work could continue endlessly.

Beedle, Beedle, Beedle, the phone rang, it was not mine. A gentle man, who would look good enough for a Manager, if he were to be clean shaved, picked out the phone, and asked enthusiastically, "are you done?". The answer, as it seemed, did not quite amuse him, his reply was much of a scowl, he said "But, we were here for last two days!!!". I was shocked, this guy is here since last two days?? It was a shocker for me and it did shook off my other wise solid nervous system.

I needed water, I headed for a water tumbler, only to see a grotesque scene of a person brushing his teeth and coming out, huh!! What the hell?? Why was he brushing teeth here, of all the places? There is little I could fathom, where I was and what all this frustrating waiting stuff all about. And then I have looked around with an intense sense of observation, and there was a striking coincidence about all the males sitting there, all of them were waiting and doing so for frustratingly looooong time.

I smelt some fish and so I went out and seen what that room was, it was labeled "Waiting room for men who have come with women".

Yes my dear readers, I went out for shopping with a lady, and the big building which was generously lit was a shopping mall.

People (read ladies) call this barbarous act of lingering around big shelves of clothing, not able to decide what to do as shopping, but I seriously do not want to call that so.

So, what should I be calling this?

P.S: This is a complete work of fiction and has got nothing to do with yours truly hanging around with a girl. The last time yours truly got too close to girl in a shopping mall was when a lady sales executive bothered the hell out of him, when he allocated some 15 minutes to buy himself a pair of cargos. In case you are still doubtful, yours truly is single.

Sarkar Raj

I am no movie review buff. But thought that one should be going through this link before watching the movie.

I am an ardent RGV fan. I like audacity with which he takes up his projects. I will keep this short, lots to do today. I have to complete a few tests and rush myself to one of those mega structures which leech me of my money by pretending to show movies in a luxurious way, but in fact the Rs. 100 which we spend for the front rows actually used to cost less than 20 a few years ago.

Was I sacked??

Waking up on Friday mornings is fun, there aren’t enough words in English to precisely describe the feelings but I could comfortably settle with saying that its just an antonym for what I feel on a Monday morning. The very idea that you can do whatever you have been doing at office for last 5 days, without going to office excites me. Today is no exception.


The Friday fever woke me up at 7:30 Am, if it were not for Friday, I would have safely decided to take the 11o clock bus, but on Friday it should be different. I stood up, I looked like the fast forwarded version of my video taken on non-Friday weekday. I need to leave for my bus-stop by 7:55 Am and I did all I could to do so and of course, making sure that I do not compromise on my looks, after all today is Friday, huh!

Well, to make the story more interesting, all those scenes of me running to the bus stop, getting into the bus, crossing my fingers and praying for a girl to sit beside me, me cursing the guy who stole me of that chance as he sat beside me in spite of many other seats being empty, bus getting stuck in a traffic jam because of a Maruti 800 crashing itself into a truck, are removed from the story and I will take you to directly to the scene post break fast, yeah the swipe in machine.

I swiped in, as usually waiting for my chance amidst all those non-believers in technology who fanatically swipe-in and swipe-out at all the machines available to them. I generally swipe in at only one machine, because I always think that continuous sound of beep-beep-beep might awaken the alien spirits and might even provoke them to attack Infy, so all the people out there thank me for saving you from aliens. Digression!!!!. Let me continue the story- After swiping in, I headed towards my work area, a secure zone which requires me to swipe in.

I happily ramp walked(now a days limping is re-named so) to the swipe machine where I swiped in, beep said the machine, but red LED was too lazy to turn green, I tried again, this time the beep was more of an angry one. I was slowly allowing myself to react. I tried again, no luck and this time around the swipe machine almost called me names with the security in charge there giving me a weird look, I gave her an assuring smile so that she will not mistake me for an in filtered MNS activist. I gathered all my courage and tried my luck for the last time, it was red again. My jaw dropped.

The failure of my last attempt has seen the surprise in my face turn to worry, my worried expressions can be precisely put as one sentence, was I sacked? I could not even reach my manager, I did not know what to do. I did not even want to log into Infosys network, what if I am unable to log onto. My brain started calculating all the necessary next steps, is my resume ready? Will dad be allowing me to sit at home for that long? What will I answer the interview panel of the B-School if they ask the reason for the gap? Will Infosys provide me with an experience letter………..

Just as my brain took me to the verge of madness, my phone rang, it was my room mate, “abbe tera ID kaam kar raha hain kya?” My jaw dropped!!!!
How did he know? I quizzed him with questions about HR approaching him to tell me that I have been sacked and other permutations of the possibilities, he was hell confused, he called me a few names and asked me to see what was the name on the ID card, I obliged, it read Shripad Anirudhha Wangde.

Gyan.........

Your choices are half chance, and your chances half choice........

A deadman's suicide......

The premise:

Raj Thackeray has started the divine mission of ethnic cleansing of Maharashtra. It took him quite some years to succeed. But during the gestation period of his success there were some quite interesting things that happened.

Due to the heavy appreciation of rupee, Indian software companies started concentrating on local businesses, the aftermath being a satellite launching station in Harihareshwar. A mission to Space, which is a build, deploy and operate project was taken up Indian IT confederation. And first time in IT industry 5 SE engineers are sent onsite to Space. Sanki is one among them!

So Sanki Sharma along with four others has been sent to Space in a Space shuttle that was designed and developed by a group of software engineers. He left on August 7th 2009 and returned to homeland on August 4th 2014, but shot himself to death on August 7th 2014.

Lets see how the story unfolds........

4th August 2014

He landed today in Harihareshwar after a week's journey into space according to the spacecraft's time. Since he traveled with velocities equal to that of light, Einstein's time dilation came into play and he returned to earth after 5 years.

Unfortunately the idiots who have designed this craft never knew about something called theory of relativity and hence they never expected them this late. In fact they were so surprised that Indian Air force has sent some 100 missiles, luckily the craft was under autopilot mode and no one bothered to change the trajectory and hence, all the 100 missiles missed the target.

He looked around the moment he set his foot on earth, his inquisitive eyes searching more vigorously than the google search engine for a glimpse of the baby like face of his girl friend, but instead he found surprised officials.

Little did he knew that everyone gave up within a week of his take off. And that his name had been added to the likes of Kalpana Chawla.

And with in an hour, after a heated discussion with the officials, he realized that he was considered dead and his family has been given 30 lakhs compensation after a mock funeral that was conducted over the weekend. And that his brother married his girl friend and bought a flat with those 30 lacs. Depressed he walked out.

As he walked out of the space station, he was in for another surprise- there were no taxis, yes they are replaced with bullock carts. He climbed into one of them when a voice said "hello, how are you" in the most beautiful English he had ever heard, he later found out that he was a retrenched call center employee. He reached home, but was surprised to see the name plate changed, it read Rajesh Apte and actually it should be reading Rajesh Sharma, he was confused but only until he found his surprised mother.

His mother, the moment she saw him, dropt the vessel she was carrying, rounded her eyes to make a perfect zero and inadvertently rose her left arm to bite the back of her palm. Anyone who has head above his shoulders could make up her expressions, they said 30 lakhs. Does she have to pay the compensation amount back? Sanki's dad, of course, had no similar worry. He was sure that he could sue the IT companies for it or something, so he did not seem to perturbed. He was a lawyer, so Sanki need not worry about lawyer charges.

5th August 2014

Though he did not allow himself to react to the situations around him, reality did its best to dawn upon him and it did succeed. He realized that something was utterly wrong. Questions and more questions popped into his brain. But the situations at home are not all the more honky dory to be fit for a question and answer session.

His parents though happy about he coming back, did not seem to be too amused to share the happiness with every one, the reason might be the four annual death ceremonies conducted at a very social level, with aaj tak giving a complete footage on first ceremony. His brother avoided him for more obvious reasons. His (ex) girl friend too could not face him; it is too much for him to digest in a week’s time. And he almost gave up on the concept called time.

He needed a break, he decided to watch TV. To his utter surprise, it was in a dilapidated state. It seems that no one was watching TV for ages. He switched it on and to his utter disgust he found 5 local channels all telecasting agricultural awareness programs in the local language. He could not understand the regression.

The whole day has been spent on nailing down the possibilities for the current situation, but he could not fathom any. However, his parents after dinner, which is again all the more similar to local style, have managed to tell vaguely about something which the then CM, Raj Thackeray, has started less than a decade ago.

He was surprised, he knew that there was something about this Raj Thackeray guy regarding driving out the non-Marathi people out of Maharashtra, but how could that lead to all this? He could not really fathom anything out of this. And he hardly could sleep that night.

6th August 2014

He had a better discussion with his parents today. They seem to have to come in terms with reality and shooed away their disappointment and are talking to him more openly. He then had a conversation with his dad, which cleared all his doubts on the current situation.

It all started with ethnic cleansing of Mumbai, driving out non local population out of Mumbai. It then spread to other bigger cities of Maharashtra. It was a huge success, at least on papers. People who have no property for themselves in Maharashtra have vacated, but those who had their property here found out a way, they changed their family names. And hence the changed name plate outside his house.

He also came to know that Amitabh Bachan succumbed to the pressure and changed his name to Amitabh Thackeray and also named his grandson as Raj Thackeray Jr. Sharukh could not do so, Sharukh Thackeray was sounding too weird and hence he vacated.

With complete success of this revolution, Sr Raj has to come up with another political issue. This time it was ban of all the non local language cable channels. It then followed by ban of non local newspapers and everything and anything non-local has been banned. In fact in a strange move, Sr Raj has banned all the vehicles as petrol which is not a local entity is deciding the local economy. It was then followed by banning of all non local trade, all the IT companies, BPOs etc have been banned. Every one started farming and pulled bullock carts in free time.

His dad also drew his attention to lack of babies. After the ban of sex education, all the Hindi/English movies have been banned for vulgarity and as the aftermath youth did not know how to copulate and hence no babies.

Raj then adapted non-violence as his next agenda. He banned cricket as it was perceived to be dangerous, throwing a ball and swinging a bat are too dangerous to be handled by people and hence the government settled for a less harmful bridge and chess.

With this, he thought that he had heard enough. Whirlwinds blew through his mind. His heart pumped out blood as if it were a volcano. He just could not stand what has happened, and that too it was too much of a change for him to handle in a week's time notwithstanding the change management course he has undertaken. With a heavy heart and and blewn up mind he hit the sack.

7th August 2014

He woke up with a heavy headache. He had decided over night what has to be done; he could not just get in terms with Sr Raj. He then shot himself on RT road (FC road was renamed so) , his blood splattered all over Raj Putla, and his brain was forced out and fell on the pavement, an enthusiastic dog made a meal of the same. (Dogs are not yet banned here).

His parents hid his body and his fifth ceremony was conducted. His brother and his ex- girl friend had a sigh of relief. And they both want to make movie of this story and name this as The Dead Man’s suicide. Of course it will be in local language.

Gyan......

If you think life sucks, it might actually start thinking so.......

Wanna be happy?

I am not sure about my problems, but I guess, I am good at solving things for others, I shed out good advice and my close friends do rely upon me for those needy words which might brighten them up, or at least thats what they have pretended to me, it might as well be due to my never ending inclination to talk and believe me I am very good at (at least pretending)seeming that I mean what I say.

Having said that, I thought that I should put on public space, a write up on what I think or made to think the way things should be looked at. This is inspired by this video by Baz Luhrmann:


As I see it, there are three types of problems in life:

1) Relationships.
2) Career.
3) Confusion between the above two.


Let me handle each one of them. Relationships, mostly the ones between opposite sex , are the most bothering. People just get too much possessive, obsessive, aggressive and what not. But please remember that, any relationship is just a catalyst for a happy life, they are not constituents of life. A human is born alone and is going to die alone, and if you are not aware, sati is banned in India, Pati is still, god forbid, a concept yet to be developed and suicide, if you have survived, is taken seriously by the Judiciary. So, my dear friends if you are thinking of a perfect partner who will be along with you all the time, think again.

So, the point is that, you might get a boy/girl friend, you might not get one, or you might get ditched or if your luck is still bad, you might even get married to your loved one and if you are lucky enough, you might even get divorced. But, the fact remains that YOU are YOU. So its pretty illogical of you to make your happiness depend on long beautiful hair/long legs/beautiful eyes/sexy six pack/muscular biceps etc., believe me your happiness can be depended on more reliable things.

The best way to avoid the head ache is to love yourself, just love your youth, your brains your whatever you could think of, take a number of pics of yourself and put them everywhere on net you could think of; the world is full of fools and there shall be at least one who would be appreciating the beauty in you. So the bottom line is, do not hurt others and do not be with others who hurt you.

To put it crisply, love can never bring pain and if something is paining you, then it cannot be love and you can safely reject it as poison.

Coming to the career related issues, mostly these are comparative issues, X in spite of being an ass is in a better position than I am. He is my junior, but he earns more than I do etc., take a break people. Jealousy is one of the worst enemies for happiness, the other person never asked you to earn less than him. So understand that some times you are ahead and some times you lag, but at the end of it the race is with yourself, your whole life is about where you wanted to be. So just do not bother yourself with bad appraisals, and do not bother either about a test that you could not crack or a promotion that you missed upon, they really do not matter three years down the line. Your career is what you want it to be.

So forget the insults, remember the compliments and just try doing different things, you might fail but then you will know how to.

And coming to the confusion between career and relation ship, all I have to tell is to master the concept called synergy between Geography and life. If you learn how to maintain ties with your family & friends no matter where you are, you must be a happy person.

Having said that, I conclude.

I agree I was a bit weird of late, the effect being the post below, the cause unknown even to the person who has undergone the cause, I cant tell more than this and I hope I could be less reactive in the future. I am wishing myself all the best for the future and promise you to bore you further with my blogs..........

Not going to write ....

I have decided that I will not write, though this blog will stay here, I am stopping to write at least for quite some time.

Gyan..

There are two types of idiots

1) The first type believes that all statistics are right.

2) The second one believes that there is a second type that exists.

The future of IT..

The year was 2123. There have been lots of changes in India. C has been declared national alphabet, Cut, copy, paste(not in that order) as national words, Computer as the national gadget, coffee is the national drink, sandwich is staple food followed by pizza, Obesity is the national disease, and Age of empires is now the national game. Java is now recognized as the official language.

Yeah! Java is now recognized as an official language, after the 2067 linguistic based communal riots where SEs belonging to different languages fought with each other. The riots have caused serious damages to IT industry as there were thousands and thousands of monitors broken and even more keyboards hit against the heads, and apart from the property losses, the IT industry had to pump in lots of money as the hospital charges of an employee are covered by the company. The situation didn’t cool down unless the IT minister intervened and promised to declare Java as national language and also promised a new state called Soft Pradesh.

Soft Pradesh has got 2000 year tax holiday, petrol here is completely subsidized and is charged at a petty 50paise per liter. Autowallas are not allowed to charge more than 2 rs irrespective of the distances traveled. Whole of Soft Pradesh is Wi-Fi enabled and communication does not cost you a penny as it is over IP. Power is free. So virtually Soft Pradesh is the Indian improvised version of US.

All was going well in SP (Soft Pradesh) until a disaster struck. What is the disaster? Well the answer to the question is the story of Softesh. (Softesh is the most common name in SP. There are around 100 Softeshs per Sqkm )

Softesh is born to two IT professionals, whose parents and their parents incidentally were IT professionals too; Infact, his whole family for last 7 generations were It professionals. Softesh, little should I say, is an IT professional too.

Before actually getting into Softesh’s problem, let’s just have a quick look at how the roles in IT are demarcated. Any project will have a certain number of SEs allocated apart from the Project Managers (at different level) and People Managers. Project Managers look after the technical aspects of the project and People Managers should see that resources are doing their work.

Also, there are millions and millions of lines of codes available on goosys (yeah the second company took over the first in 2047) all you need to do is to find the correct code customize it and send it across.

Having said that, a typical SEs job has become mind numbingly simple, so simple that the ennui of doing it would force mistakes out of you. So, there are two kinds of SEs people who bend their head and do what is being told and people who protest and people who do neither are deported out of SP. The job of people managers is to identify those SEs who bend their head and do the work, the people will become Project Managers and the second type would become People Managers.


Softesh is a Project Manager material, he has been working incessantly for last 4 months without taking a break, and he has produced millions of lines of code. And on one fine day, he complained of severe head ache and was taken to the hospital. He was diagnosed for Cerebrocitis.

Cerebrocitis is a medical condition where the brain due to evolutionary deficiencies turns out to be a vestigial organ, like appendix and tail bone. The main causes of Cerebrocitis are using your brain essentially (but not restricted to) for brushing your teeth, shaving etc. So, over the years the brain refuses to recognize its presence and the basic mind numbing activities that human does will be taken over by the Spinal Cord.

Softesh, after years of mind numbing work and due to evolutionary defects where his parents or grand parents or great grand parents have never used their brain, has now developed Cerebrocitis, he is now as good as brain less person. All his essential activities of Cut, copy and paste and drinking coffee before a computer will now be taken over by his spinal cord, it has been evolved to undertake these quintessential activities.

Now there has been sudden out break of Cerebrocitis in SP. Thousands and thousands of youth have now become brain less. Now, SP which is known for its brain power has exposed its ugly side, the news spread and the whole world is waiting and watching to see the plight of SP. As of now the Indian biological department has confirmed that this is a new species and named it as Softo Sapiens.

Gyan....

life is one of those few things where the more you look back the more you want to and the more you do so the worse it would get.

Here I go...

With impetuous attitude my chariot
And the haughty courage my flagship
When I go, can I be stopped?

With ruthless audacity when I ferret
Success is my love and will my worship
If I fight, can I be defeated?

When each encounter on my road to life
Is punched in face with my fist called will
I succeed and I think I should.

How to bite ants?

If there is anything that I am consistently worried about since my child hood it is ants. These little creatures, which are so awe inspiring to human kind in many areas ranging from sociology to biometrics, have at most inspired me to thrash them to death.

It seems that there are some 12,000 species of ants on the face of earth and ants constitute of about 15-25% of animal biomass. But, to me there are only 4 kinds of ants
1) Red ants or biting ants
2) Black ants or tickling ants
3) Big ants or oh my god I have to run now ants
4) Flying ants.

The even numbered categories of above have hardly bothered me; my animosity with them is more of induced type because of their brothers in the odd numbered category.
You would most probably know the reason, unless you are from Antarctica or Greenland or Ice land, where our ant brothers have decided not to go.

The first time I came to know about the lethal nature of these little creatures was when I was around 3 years old when a Big ant decided that it can easily attack my cousin who was one year old then, sitting nude on the ground happily engrossed in eating mud. This big ant went and attacked his….. Well you know. It took around 10 minutes to remove the ant and 15 minutes to remove its head from his……hmmmmm. Since then, I prefer to sleep alone in a grave yard rather than to have an ant around me.

Ants continued to inspire me in their optimism to think that they can easily attack a person several thousand times bigger than them. These attacks resulted in many a crazy act like me dancing in cricket field, much earlier and much better than Sreesanth, and people running towards the nearest tap to get an instant relief from an army of red ants. And so here I am, who declared a war against the ant race and fighting it ferociously for last 22 years and believe me, this war seems to be lasting for eternity.

My mom has been my commander in chief in my war against these creatures; she just hates anything that crawls and god save any creature that catches her sight crawling because it gets the opportunity to feel the heel and the ground simultaneously. Thousands and thousands of insects have been killed and when there was no time there were insect repellents used generously.

But, insect repellents are for those loser insects, ants are different, they are super organisms. And one fine morning the ant optimism rose to new highs when they decided to attack a packet of ant repellent which my mom bought as she has got better things to do like mending her maniac son rather than slapping each ant of the army to death. My mom instantly sued the local Kirana stores and the case is still going on as there is no evidence that the ants have attacked the ant repellant.

The war was going on well, until recently. But, a few days ago, when yours truly was sleepy after a days hectic job of eating and more eating and trying to sleep in between, something happened and I woke up itching maniacally my lower rib.

My mom, who is an ardent follower of those science fiction movies where a normal person sleeps normally but wakes up like a monkey, almost believed that I transformed to a monkey and even tried to confirm by checking whether I developed a tail. But before she could, she saw the boils on my left lower rib. Well, the Red ants attacked me again. I guess these ants are from China, as there are 5 boils on my left lower rib, and the 5 boils looked like the Olympics symbol.

Now I have had enough, and to make matters worse this article tells me that insects do not feel pain when squashed. Considering that I have been insulted by another red ant the other morning, I have sworn to make my war against red ants more vigorous, I need to device a way to bite these ants, they should feel pain, they should get the itches, they should get the boils,they cannot ignore others' egos, after all I am going to become a manager and I have been told by my ex-manager that I have to heed to others' egos when I speak and satisfy them for me to grow in an organization.

Is Population growth a problem?

If you think that population explosion is a problem, think again, only if you are in Japan
This article http://www.thehindu.com/2008/05/05/stories/2008050557182200.htm says that Japan has lowest percentage of children in last 100 years. May be Indian male horniness is of some help to Japanese dormancy, so all those people who were excited by cheer leaders and threw an abuse or two at them, why dont you try your hmmmmm... whatever in Japan?

Gyan.....

If love is god, be an atheist.....

Are we gonna starve?

There are a few things which money cannot buy, if that something covers everything we blame it on inflation.

Of late every thing is on rise, salaries, temperatures, prices, inflation last but not the least the rate at which my hair is falling, but who cares as every one is now bothered about a much bigger issue- global food price rise. It is interesting to note that US was kind enough to attribute the global food demand-supply mismatch to the growing wealth of India and China, I was rolling to laughter when I read the following article
http://www.hindu.com/2008/05/04/stories/2008050460790100.htm .
Now Dr. Manmohan Singh should come out and say that the US is the main reason behind global terrorism, global warming and a lot more other global ill-phenomenon.

I hope Bush was not complaining because every human on this face of earth has the right to proper nutrition. And even if he is complaining, who cares? I should say that India has done a great job considering the humongous price increases in crude oil, what was $80-90 per barrel has now soared to around $120-130 per barrel and if it were not to be for the rupee appreciation the inflation in India would have been racing to double figures. Thanks to the sustained exports business growth and flowing dollar reserves.

The positive effect for this is the increased spectrum of what we can call middle class in India and their increased disposable incomes and the pseudo pitfall for this is the pressure this has added on the global food demands. And what Bush commented has really left me introspecting.

India has been witnessing a steady and enviable 8-9 % growth for last few years where as world’s leading economies grew only 2-2.5%. Sadly, the farm sector, which accounts for about one-fifth of India’s gross domestic product, has been growing the slowest. The growth rate in the agricultural sector has been stagnant at about 2.3 to 2.6 per cent per year over the last decade. There is large-scale migration of farmers and farm workers to cities in search of job opportunities. So India’s agrarian crisis is much to do with an imbalanced economic growth whose fruits are unreachable for rural public.

Now, this is a serious concern, in its recent report UN has estimated a whopping 82 countries to be short of food supply, including India and China. Global food prices have soared up from 25-70% in last few months. Mostly attributed to population rise, increased incomes and decreased agricultural productivity. Now the challenge before the world is increased agricultural productivity without increasing the current arable land and water requirements (food production must be increased to feed a world population that is projected to increase from the current 6.4 billion to 9 billion. The challenge is to double world food production output by 2050 using less land, far less water, and fewer nutrients).

So when Bush or his secretary are making some comments in public, they might as well be hinting at us to look at our current capabilities and what is expected out of us.

So this might be the time for us open our eyes and see what has to be done to make India sufficient to meet the global food demands. Unless we do something serious, we are going to starve, for sure.