Saturday, March 25, 2006

but the memory remains!

I was without any project for whole of February and half of March. My honeymoon period ended abruptly four days back when I got the call from my boss who assigned me one of the most ‘hopeless’ projects on earth. From now onwards my office will be in Churchgate. I know, the crowd of that place is such that a 25-year-old guy like me can make his day just by roaming on the streets whole day, watching Bombabes, but this poor soul will be slogging hard in the office to earn his livelihood. God...Why don’t have Gates as my surname!

It was around 2:15 PM when I started for my lunch today. I was strolling on the road in search of a decent restaurant. But this Mumbai heat can sometimes be too harsh on you. I know, Delhi is much worse. Still the humidity here can make you feel as if you are soaked in a jug full of boiling water. I barely walked for 50 metres when the heat forced me to a shady restaurant nearby. He was serving in ‘thali system’. It means you cannot order the food of your choice and you are forced to eat what is being served. No matter if it contains the most alien vegetables on the planet and two tea spoon full curd which can be mistaken as slightly thick form of butter milk and not to forget half cooked chapattis and a glass of water straight out of municipal water tank added with a few drops of soya oil!

Anyways, after the thali system, it was the coupon system. You need to buy a coupon from the counter before you can fill your tummy. The thali was costing an amazing 18 Rs! Imagine..in 18 Rs he was promising a dal, two vegetables, curd, papad, pickle, 5 puris (Yes not chapattis) and full plate rice! I was totally amazed at the price and that amazement lasted for exactly 7 minutes when I realized that the only thing on which the guy compromised was ‘quality’. Yes, quality stuff along with quantity exists only in Chor Bazaar of Delhi.

This cheap thali reminded me of my engineering days. All through four years of college, there was a constant competition between all of us on who can find the cheapest place to eat. Every month or two, one of us used to announce proudly the name of one shady reatsurant after another where we could fill our stomach in as little as 20 Rs, 18 Rs and even 15 Rs! (No,we were not regular at such places! It was just for fun and visit to such places were one-off) The price kept on dropping till Rs 15 after which we thought we touched the limits until this guy, Ankit, came up with a steller 12 Rs thali! And yes! He became regular at that place too! Just to save money for his astronomical cell bills! The guy is printing dollars in US now!

Memories refreshed…

Sunday, March 19, 2006

Any Idea?

Just realised that i have lost all the 'haloscan' comments (made by u and replied by me) from all the archieve posts...

Any idea how to retrieve them?

Friday, March 17, 2006

Kalyugi Swyamwar!

When did you hear about a 'Swayamwar' last?

I watched it last on television. Yes! I was about 7 years old then and it was in Ramanand Sagar's 'Ramayana' where Rama broke Shiva's bow to win Sita's heart.

But this is an era of reality television and the Real Swayamwar is here!

Cheers!

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

The naked truth!

Now this is something interesting!

Naked wedding photos are the hot new trend among young couples in once deeply
conservative China."Some photo studios are just going too far. They allow young
women to have their photos taken in bikinis or with nothing on at all," said an
irate woman from the Anhui capital of Hefei. "I hope the authorities will do
something."

Something too hot to handle for conservative chinese!

Read the full story here.

Cheers..

CRAP...

It’s my B’day today. Yes its no. 25. You all can pour your wishes in the comments column! Going by the piece of statistics that an Indian male’s average life expectancy is 65 years, I have already lived 38.46% of my life! And yes..i am actually feeling that i am growing old!

But what am I doing at 3:25 AM? Because the friends who celebrated my B’day at 12 are already in the third hour of their sleep! One showing his 'not so graceful' tummy in full view while the other is having his mouth wide open. The reason is my buddy Anurag. Yes! My mate on all the bike trips! The guy will be landing in another two hours after 8 months of exile in Saudi Arabia. I know I cannot get up at such inhuman time like 4 AM, I decided to give sleep a slip! And what better way to keep myself up than to write this crappy post! ;-). But one thing is fore sure, we will definitely be heading for some place this weekend!

Hope you all enjoyed your holi..
Cheers..
PS: Here is last year's B'day post!

Being Narain Karthikeyan...

Being Narain Karthikeyan : I had a chance of watching this interview of Narain this noon with Anuradha SenGupta on CNN-IBN and once again I realized what this ordinary looking guy from Coimbatore has managed to achieve. I know, an 18th place finish in the over all driver’s race and ending up among the points in just one race, that too because of sheer luck does not make a good score card.

And why I am writing all this when he wont be driving any of the F1 cars on the race day this season and is just the second test driver with Williams and is having a pretty uncertain future in the sport?

Now consider that the guy comes from a country where till 5 years back F-1 was as alien sport as Sepak Takraw and where the infrastructure for the sport is still negligible ( if one is sane enough to exclude Go-Carting as the preparation ground for F-1), this guy has already achieved a lot. Now take this, there are more astraunauts than F1 drivers till date. Now this shows how difficult is the task to break into that elite group belonging to a country where all the sports, barring tennis and cricket, are as extensively covered as Kabaddi by the media. He has managed to put India on F1 map singlehandedly.

I just hope he will manage to impress the right people with his stint as second test driver with Williams and will be on track again next season.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Irony

I was surfing cricinfo site today and this thought crossed my mind!

13th March'2001, the day when VVS Laxman started the ground work for his epic 281. And on 15th March'2001, India scripted one of the most improbable wins ever in test cricket.

Ironically, after 5 years, the same guy was warming the bench in Mohali!