An e mail to God

To:              God@universe.gov
Cc:              Heaven@universe.gov, Hell@universe.gov
Subject:      A humble request

Dear God

Hope this mail finds you in the best of your health and spirits!

I am told that everything happens for a reason and I could learn something worthwhile out of every painful situation. Currently, I have no idea about any of those stuff concerning my life. I request you to kindly let me know if there is something I need to know but failed to pick up.

I very well know you are not going to reply back through a comment on my blog. But now that I have told you, this becomes your problem, not mine.

Anticipating a favourable response from you.

Thanks and regards
Vasanth Kumar K
You know the crap that usually goes here after my name.

'Creative' thinking

Somebody once asked me why I am generally happier than the typical happy person around. I told her (or him, I just guessed guys won't ask me such questions) that is because I am greatly amused and amazed by the ways of the world and the world never ceases to interest me. One of the main reasons I am constantly amused is because, I think, in an acceptedly slightly crazy manner. These are not thoughts that will guide the course of next generation economy or solve global warming, these are simply useless thoughts.They don't serve any tangible purpose, nevertheless they are true! When I get a surging bout of creativity (aka craziness), I try to put it down on my blog. Reason 1, it gets documented for future generations to look up. Reason 2, it causes minimum damage, as only a statistically negligible percentage of humanity will ever stumble upon my blog. Now for the craziness, I mean, creativity...

When I was useless browsing the internet (I also usefully browse the internet), I stumbled upon a profession called 'creative writer'. Instantly there was a short circuit in my gray matter. Whenever some one writes, they create something, isn't it? It could be opinions, views, critique, novels, love letters or even shopping lists. They are creating something. So by definition of the process, anyone who ever wrote anything was a creative writer, isn't it? If someone is not creating something through their writing, they must be called copywriters. But doesn't copywriter mean something else? Here I am not debating upon the usefulness of the writing. On that basis, may be we can classify them as useful and useless writers. But that is a post for another day. Now, creating content and copying from others' content are all inclusive and mutually exclusive groups. In other words, if someone isn't creating content, they are copying it and vice versa. So creative writers and copywriters can very well be used to categorize all those people who write. Then for what do we use the word 'writer'? Is it a superset? Anyone?

Quite recently, I migrated my mobile number from a prepaid account to a postpaid account. Two hours after I had submitted the application, my coworker suddenly turned towards me. With a shocked expression on his face he said, "There is a buzzing sound coming from inside your head!". Yes, the damn thing inside was thinking. Again, prepaid and postpaid are two all inclusive, mutually exclusive categories. By conventional definition or by common perception, prepaid is when you pay before you use the service and postpaid is the other way around. Consider this, when the time reads 'post meridiem', it means after meridiem right? When your coworker says we will meet 'post lunch', you meet after lunch right? You also know what post mortem and post production mean right? By means of derived conclusion, 'post paid' means after the payment has been made right? No wait, that is prepaid!

Between the world and me, one of us is definitely crazy. I am just wondering which one!

I think thoda hatke, therefore I am thoda aur happy!

Cheers!

No comments...

No comments, this is what you say when you don't want to say whatever it is that you intend to say but want the listener to know what you are saying is not what you wanted to say. Alternatively, it is also what you say when you have absolutely no clue as to what you are supposed to say! Sometimes, it can be both. Sadly, this was not accepted as a valid answer to any of the questions in any of the (in)competitive exams in any phase of my life. Understandably so. Imagine a professor setting up a case study for a question paper - He googles and googles, scroughes through tons of pages in the internet, picks an esoteric case, translates it from Spanish (or Greek, or Latin, or Tamil) to English, spices it up with some numbers, (in an attempt to make it more difficult for geniuses like me to pass) draws up his own conclusions and just says, comment. In the answer sheet I write,

7. b)  No comments!  (fyi, this is a 15 mark question!)

I would have been long dead by now. Hey, do they have blogging in Hell? Not that I will end up in hell, I am just assuming they would have everything in Heaven (including Silk Smitha). Ah, crap! I do it again. Ever since I started this blog, I have made it a point to digress everytime I start to write. And you have been reading all these! I guess it has been a scientific art to keep this blog running and I am compelled to write a blog about it. Crap, digression again. Enough of it. Now I will get to my point. Everything you read from this point below has the breathtaking potential to miraculously waste 15 minutes of your life. Promise.

The primary purpose of this blog entry is to answer the quintessential question right at the center of the need for this blog's survival - Why don't people comment on my blog? It has become a serious concern. Let us talk numbers, take a look at the number of comments registered on my 3 latest blog posts - 8, 4, 1. Power series of 2 written backwards. Statistics would suggest the number of comments on this post would be 0.5. Seriously, God, why me?

Is it because nobody reads my blog? Couldn't be so... See, you are reading it. Gotcha! "If somebody is jobless enough to write crap, there is some-(more)-body else to enjoy reading that crap", once said Albert Einstein. Apparently that is how the Universe is designed. Promise. There are plenty of people who regularly tell me personally on gtalk that my last post was awesome. Are they cheating? Could be, they are my friends after all! I don't beleive in showing off by putting up visitor counters on my blog. I also don't believe the spelling of 'believe' is correct in the previous sentence. Obviously, it is the quality of readers that matters, not the quantity, no?

After careful, painstakingly detailled and horrendously boring analysis, I conclude Google might be the reason for the reduced comment traffic on my blog. They invented the Google reader. (No, I think they bought it from someone else, but that doesn't matter to this discussion). Everybody reads the unmatchable delivery of my hitherto unheard of intellect in their google readers and goes home. They don't come to my blog to comment. For the technically unequipped, it is similar to staying 1000 miles away from someone, calling them on phone and saying, 'I am still your boy friend!' You know, technology. Actually, I think this reason can be true. But I am not alone in this. Even the Hindu and the Times are battling to somehow get people to buy their newspapers. I just want you to leave lame comments on my blog.

From now on, if there are not enough comments on my blog, I will stop writing. Promise.

Alright... Regardless of whether you comment or not, I will write crap and you will read it. If you comment, I will write better crap. Comment and be a part of this legend of a blog. Offer valid only till stocks last. Conditions apply...

Cheers!

P.S - I know what comes to your mind after reading this blog entry. This has been conveniently titled to remind you that!

Universal wisdom from a Foreign return!

I should have written this long back. But because of some I.T. issues (my laptop screwed up), this got delayed for more than a week. So here it goes, universal wisdom from a foreign return!

I am now officially a foreigh return. Malaysia-check, Singapore-check. I could also see parts of Indonesia and Thailand from the aircraft. But I guess I am not allowed to check those! All those of you who are singing, "Sorgame endralum...", in the back of your heads, blog high 5! Long long ago, so long ago, I don't remember how long ago, somebody told me life is all about learning. You have to learn from anything and everything you do. Continual learning is the key to life. So here goes my 'learning' out of this 2 week long trip. Of course, I see the world with my own little sunglasses (and contact lenses). Therefore the forthcoming might cause some digestion related troubles if not taken with adequate amounts of salt... and pepper... and chat masala!

1. If you desperately want to be flying 35000 feet above the sea level in real inclement weather, you better be flying over the blue oceans rather than the brown sands. That way you can be sure you won't trasform into a spectular ball of fire when you get closest to the ground!
2. The range of business attire for women can fill a pocket dictionary. The range of business attire for men can fill two sentences... with difficulty!
3. The number of pages in the above mentioned dictionary is growing. If you have a problem with it and you are a guy, you will be booked under sexual harrasement and thrown out of the company. If you have a problem with it and you are a girl, go have some girl talk. Leave me alone!
4. If you are a vegetarian, India is your country. Hold it, praise it, fall in love with it, don't you bloody leave it. According to some 'reliable' sources I have, even cows abroad are planning to abandon eating grass!
5. Rest of the world sees us an 'Indians' and we are expected to behave as 'Indians'. Insert your favourite sentence about unity in diversity here.
6. It might be a good idea to determine what is the 'Indian archetype' in all the walks of everyday life. For instance, if somebody asks you to write their name in Indian language, don't ask 'Which one?' Or if someone asks, 'Do you do this in India?', in all probabilities, refrain from answering, 'We do, they don't'. Ain't cool bro!
7. It is not such a great idea to come back and tell your friends back home that in KL, you discovered you were most suited to be a driver! Confused? Never mind!
8. What happens outside India, stays outside India. For instance, don't come back and tell dad that you want 3 wives because some part of the world still believes we Indians are allowed that luxury! And seriously, who told them that it is a luxury to have 3 wives?
9. Finaly, Sorgame endralum... adhu namma oora pola varuma... Yes, I had to say it!

If you have something to add, please do it in the comments section.
Cheers!

Thirai Kadhai (Screenplay)

Disclaimer: Non Tams, this blog post might be similar to watching a Tam movie with English subtitles! Kindly adjust!

Metti Oli... No, don't run. It is definitely off air now, even the rerun. Metti Oli, literally transliterates to 'toe ring sound' in English. Wow, right? How the hell in this world does one listen to that, you ask? Me too, same sentiment! I would like to describe this serial like this. My mom started watching this, got enough of it, stopped watching it, started missing it, started watching it again, got enough of it again, stopped watching it again, started missing it again, started watching it AGAIN and, trust me, Devayani (Abi) was still trying to figure out whom to marry! I was like, 'Andava...! Thanni adichitu flat ayitiya...!'. Even if this were telecast in heaven, I guess our lady gods would have been glued to it. Mudiyala da sami!

On a separate note, I saw a serial in which this Vadivukkarasi aunty was speaking a in male voice! I was... well... umm... errr... Speechless!

Well yeah, the screenplay. I wonder why they even write it. Not this blog, I am talking about the screenplay. This blog occupies a truly indispensable position in today's society. When I was trying to draw a parallel to our serials' screenplay, the best I could find was running on a treadmill. You start running, you warm up, you keep running, you sweat, you get tired, you keep running, you are exhausted, ippave kanna kattudhe, you fall down, the machine throws you out and what the hell, you are still exactly where you started! So much of time, energy and effort wasted and only slight, minute, frustratingly small movement forward. These days they are taking small serial breaks in between commercial advertisements. My Mom usually says, "rendadhu break la tea potu tharen!" (I will make tea during the second break!). Just imagine, you can make tea for a family of four during a commercial break! Then there is this idhu varai, recap! A bloody brilliant contrivance to eliminate the need to write screenplay. Here is how it works, you show nothing today, then you show the same nothing again tomorrow! Dude, how much am I going to forget in one day? You know how much my boss expects me to remember? Your honor, as seen by the arguments stated above, screenplay for a Tamil serial is unnecessary and practically tough to find! Hence proved!

Having already established that screenplay is practically non-existent in our serials, we proceed to explore some integral characters that form the cogs on which the screenplay moves. Note to self - The last sentence was so awesomely confusing. Don't write again while watching Tamil serials. Despite all these distractions, our Thai kulam (noun, literal meaning - Mother clan, the versatility of this noun being that you can even use it on girls who are yet to be mothers, even your neighborhood one year old huggies sporting female toddler) somehow manages to grasp what is happening in the little screen! Lady gods' gift, probably!

The center of the universe for any serial is the protaganist also known as problem magnet. Somehow all the problems in the world seem to find their way to the problem magnet and the problem stream never dries up. It helps enormously if this character is a lady. Next important character in our serial is the eternal villain. He is the source of all the troubles that our problem magnet faces. He is entirely responsible for getting the protaganist the sympathtic votes from the audience. Even Osama Bin Laden may one day start talking about peace but this character is not going to stop creating troubles for the problem magnet, even after the serial ends, they just stop showing it on TV. It helps enormously if the eternal villain is a relative of the problem magnet. That way it is easier to create troubles and sympathy! This is where I am tempted to define the law of conservation of problems as a limiting case to Tamil serials - Problems can neither be created nor be destroyed. They can only be transferred from the villain to the protaganist. The number of problems in a Tamil serial always remains a constant. There is a considerable loss that happens when the problems are getting transferred and this loss is recreated as sympathy on the part of the audience. Eppudi?

Other than these main characters, you have this aiyo pavam (noun, meaning poor, character wise, not monetary wise) character. More often that not, this hapens to be the problem attracting protaganist. But if need be, it can also be designed as an orphaned child, drunkard brother, studious sister from a poor family etc. These characters are made to face pain for no fault of theirs, true to their category. Finally you have the all-in-all-alaguraja (noun, meaning I-know-it-all) character. These characters generally poke their nose into unnecessary issues, usually get things wrong and end up giving not at all useful advice at completely uncalled for situations! Then if you really want to complicate things and if you have enough budget, you can add any number of items from your grand Indian family tree. A typical Tamil serial would have a family tree problem so huge that you won't be able to solve it in CAT even if given the entire 2.5 hours! This way you can inadverdently prolong the serial from ice age 4 to ice age 6, without any screenplay, that is the important point.

For those of you who still have some place left for me in your hearts, the Malaria virus is off me and I am back to business in Bombay. Although I am still recuperating. But even the fact that I am in no way vulnerable to Tamil serials now is not going to stop me from continuing this series. Naan oru tharava mudivu panniten... sari venam vudu... After spending the last two weeks at home, I am convinced that I will have to do a piece of the audience as well. What an involvement they exhibit! Oh yeah, enjoy the insanity as long as it lasts!

...thodarum
(to be continued)

Kadhai (Story)

Chithiiiiii (with 6 'i's).... For those acquainted enough with the Tamil silver screen, this word is a legend (for few others its a terror!). It was one of THE Tamil serials that was aired during, well, most of my schooling. Quarterly ended, half yearly ended, annually ended, even school ended but Chithiiiiii did not! Half of TN did not believe it could end. Most housewives truly believed the world would end the day Chithiiiiii ended. Such was the legend. Alas, even Dumbledore had to die, you know. You ask me about life after Chithiiiiii? Pretty much the same. Chithi illana oru chithappa, namma pozhappu adhe dhan pa! Dear non-Tam audience reading my blog, kindly condone the overwhelming Tam influence in this particular series of posts. After all, we are dealing with Tamil serials here.

Now that I am home and I am grounded, I get to watch a lot of Tamil serials. Yeah, one for each flavor! No, it has not been easy at all. So I decided to take notes and do some analysis. Note to self: Six years of school and six years of college without so much as a page of notes and now you are taking notes on Tamil serials, gosh! Anyways, getting back to my analysis, I decided to carefully deconstruct each and every aspect and demystify the esoteric obscurity called Tamil serial. In a series of ensuing posts, I am going to handle one facet of Tamil serial that is true to itself. Therefore, ladies, skip the next sentence. Gents, buckle up, we are dealing with truck loads of crap here!

The first facet we are considering here is the most indispensable part of any serial - Kadhai aka story. If stories are what movies are based on, then, logically, I am bound to think that a serial must be based on a novel, volumes of it actually! But this is where we are distancing ourselves as far away from truth as possible. A Tamil serial is generally based on stories that are one sentence long. Or should I be saying one sentence short? There exists an unwritten relationship between the longevity of a serial and the story it is based on - the longer you want the darn thing to run, the shorter the story you must be attempting! You remember in school you used to do this - once a chewing gum had lost its chew-ability, you used your hand to pull it as long as possible and then chew it back and then pull it again? Chee... Ovak... Disgusting, right? That is exactly what they do with our Tamil serial stories!

These guys are smart in one respect though. If you restrict yourself so much as to a story, you are reducing the scope of creativity! You heard it right, creativity. So our people base the serials on broader themes which are easier to twist, turn, manipulate and even start all over again. These themes are generally poignantly peaceful and completely family oriented. One would want their kids to imbibe all the portrayal and emulate them in real life. That would way the kids would have really meaningful lives. Typical Tamil serial themes include rendu pondati karan (bigamous husband), odukali pondati (run away bride, no no, run away wife), mamiyar-marumagal prechanai (saas-bahu episodes), sakkalathi sandai (bahu-bahu episodes), varumai kottuku irandu mile keezhe vazhkai (abject wretched destitution), theerpu sollum nattamai (your friendly next door chief justice of India for the village) and other such jolly good items. Things get really really hazy when these themes mix, match, metamorph, mangle and finally mutate. Are you still worried about your audience? Never mind, they never seem to care!

So much to the story and we have just seen the tip of the iceberg. We will slowly uncover and thereby discover various breathtaking facts and mannerisms of the quintessential Tamil serial as we gather more and more courage. I will also reintroduce to you one legend of a Tamil serial that ought to be remembered in the beginning of every post. More insightful and not-at-all tongue-in-cheek articles about screenplay, star cast, music and other such truly exciting facets of Tamil serials in the making. Enjoy the insanity as long as it lasts...

...thodarum
(to be continued)

The Welcome!

"Welcome to Standard Chartered Bank." No, not you, me! Its for me. In case you did not know, I have joined SCB and this has been one statement I have been hearing a lot over the last two weeks. I have heard that sentence so much that now I have started reciting it in sleep and my room mate is scared of me. He doesn't want to talk to me after dinner! Although it does feel nice to be warmly welcomed into a new place, there is a fine line between adequate and overdose. Well that fine line differs from person to person, so lets not read too much into it.

Life has been so far so good, well mostly. I met a lot of new people who joined with me. Almost all of them were very interesting and great people to get along. (This sentence is only for those of the new joiners that will read this blog :P) I did all the fun stuff during induction (you know what I am talking about ;)). One thing that definitely needs mention is the pillows from the hotel we were put up. To call them heavenly is an understatement. Pity that I couldn't smuggle any out of the hotel. Pillow - too big, suitcase - too small, me - too disappointed!

Official life has otherwise been BAU. Oh yeah, we use a hell lot of abbr. ;) You know I have been filling forms, updating details, finishing learning modules, meeting people, getting confused, feeling lost and other such regular stuff. But there is one thing that definitely stood out from the e-learning modules. There was this module on HIV and one particular attribute of HIV actually inspired me. Apparently HIV does not discriminate across country, race, colour, caste, region, not even sexual orientation! It treats everyone equally. How nice! Won't it be great if everyone behaved like that. No, not like HIV, I just mean the non-discriminatory part.

One should NEVER forget that there are ALWAYS two sides to EVERY coin. The second side more often that not turns out to be a pain in the posterior. Do you know the most dangerous thing mankind ever invented after H-bomb and A-bomb? It happens to be the bloody SNOOZE button. My trysts and the resulting troubles with the snooze button can go on and on forever. Then there is this travel part. If you work in Bombay and if your office is in SoBo, then travel to work becomes a separate distinguishable part of your life. Having already dealt in detail about travel in Bomabay here and not wanting to relive the terror through my words, I am moving on to the most notorious culprit - the rains. Actually rains deserve a separate paragraph for themselves.

It has been pouring like hell outside for the last 90 minutes now and only God knows when it will stop. That was pretty much the situation over the last month and that will pretty much be the situation over the next month. Bombay's monsoons are like a lady. Please don't mistake them to be beautiful, elegant and graceful. They are actually highly unpredictable! And when rains team up with winds, they have immense fun at our expense. Umbrellas flip before you can bat an eyelid. Umbrellas don't flip back even after everyone around you have batted their eyelids ten, fifteen times! If you lose grip on your umbrella, you will be made to look like a crazy toddler running after a confused cockraoch. Of course, you can ROFLMAO in case you are not the crazy toddler chasing the confused cockroach. But, Caution: Wet floor, ok? There is more. Even army trained mine field navigatiors can't figure out the placement of pot holes on these submerged roads. Not to mention you have to polish/wash your shoes every time to venture out. You are still wondering how you completely got wet below the belt (!!), even though you had an umbrella. You cannot figure out why that random guy designed the auto such that the driver never gets wet but you always do. Lunch table debates typically revolve around whether you drive through or swim across subways... Jolly good stuff, heh?

Well, thanks to Standard Chartered for making me an International graduate. Ping me on gtalk for further details. Here is to all the international graduates who joined with me (this time no sarcasm, ok?), you are one great bunch of people. Life has been made much easier becaue of all those faceless interactions we everyday have. Thanks folks! Thats all for now. I will keep ranting here as and when I get enough content and motivation. Till then...

Cheers... hic... ;)

P.S - For those of you who have still not discovered Google, BAU means Business As Usual and SoBo means South Bombay!

The Last Quarter

I am back to blogging after a yawning gap. Truly a lot of time has elapsed between my last post and this one. Actually I might have easily forgotten that I had a blog but for those kind hearts that inquired what happened to my blog! I thought nobody read my blog (of course, except myself :P). What with the number of followers increasing but the number of comments decreasing. I guess people just want to show off that they read my blog by clicking the 'follow' button. #awesome But I was wrong. Apparently, people do read this page and more so, someone looks forward to it and someone enjoys these ideas. For all those kind hearts that never forget to remember this blog, a big Thanks! This blog also remembers you! :)

The purpose of me starting to blog is to have a digital account of my life. My blog is a chronological satire on my life itself. The idea is to provide the older me with jokes to laugh at when I eventually run out of them! Naturally, when there is nothing on my blog, there is nothing happening in my life that is even remotely interesting. That was how the last quarter was. A dumb, monotonous, routine oriented, pale 3 months fading away from what was once a pulsating, colorful life. To some extent there was a profound nothingness everywhere. Whatever you find in this post after this sentence is an attempt to capture that nothingness. Please don't take it seriously if there is nothing, absolutely nothing after this in this post!




















Well, I told you there might be nothing, absolutely nothing in this post! The one good (or bad) thing that happened in the last quarter is that I turned 24! I am just getting older not any better, therefore happy! Starting a fresh life in a fresh year. Having bid adios to formal education and all its thrills recently, I am stepping into the longest phase of my life - career. Only time can tell whether times will be exciting or exasperating as they pan out. However they are, we will keep poking fun at them in this blog! And now I truly promise to do it regularly. Happy to be back blogging.

Dear nothingness, RIP! Dear world, here I come to raaak!

Cheers :)

The Un-terview!

Hypocrites. Who? Us. Yes, you heard it right. It is all of us I am talking about. Think about it, don’t we do a lot of things according to an unwritten credo? Nobody knows why, nobody asks why and nobody wants to know why. We all just follow what we are told we are ‘supposed’ to do. Let me restrict myself to just one ritual we all (well, mostly) must have gone through, campus interviews. So now how many of you are smiling at your computer screens? Lies, cold blooded lies, aren’t you thinking? Yeah, me too, same feeling.

One thing I could never understand is how we were able to get away with all those lies. Everyone knows it. I know it. You know it. Everybody who ever gave an interview knew it. Everyone who will give interviews will come to know of it. Even the HR who took your interview knew it. I know I have shared my blog link on my linkedin profile. So the future HR who might recruit me might come across this. And even he knows it! Then how do we get away with it? Is it some sort of a capitalist conspiracy? Do they select the guy who lies most convincingly and with conviction? The girl anyways gets selected, she doesn’t have to lie. Chivalry, apparently! Now shall we stop calling it interview and refer to it more appropriately as un-terview?

Being the humourist, creativist and couragist I am (comedian, creator and bold dint go well together!), I started thinking how it would be if I decide to talk in an interview after taking an oath on the Bhagavad Gita. Well, find the transcript of the fictitious interview below. Warning – The transcript is fictitious. I advice you not to use it in any space other than pointless lunch table conversations. Rest is up to your risk taking capabilities. At least, I am not gonna use it.

In the transcript below, Q denotes the question posed and A denotes the answer to be given. Lets start.

Q – Why did you choose to do MBA?
A – There is no better and safer way to become rich!

Q – Why did you come to this college?
A – Well, this was my best admit card! (This was my only admit card!)

Q – Why do you want to join our company?
A – I am finding it really irritating to cough up a new idea for every company (especially when I have multiple interviews on the same day.)

Q – What are your short term and long term goals?
A – Short term – To get this job. Long term – To get a job in a profile and company I want to!

Q – Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
A – Yes, I can’t even see whether I will get through this interview or not but I will be able to see five years into the future. Perfectly valid question!

Alternate answer, choose between the two based on your courage and humor levels.
Q – Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
A – Happily married with one kid and another on its way.
Sub-Q – No, no, I meant something ambitious.
Sub-A – What I just said was pretty ambitious!

This seems more like it. Can somebody do this? Whoever does this will be my undisputed corporate hero. Lets wait for him!

Cheers

P.S1 - I wrote this blog on April 1. Join the dots if you are smart, move on to PS2 if you are not!

P.S2 - Sarcasm is not a dead art, yet!

The 'H' factor

Dear people reading this, people not reading this, Barrack Obama, the pretty girl that travles with me in the same bus everyday, Lalit Modi, the unsuspecting Gorilla in the African forests, and everybody in general, my name is Vasanth Kumar and my patience is running out.

You must be wondering what went so wrong with me that I had to suddenly come out and proclaim my name. I had to. I am fed up of (almost) everyone spelling my name wrongly. For heavens sake, my name is not Vasant, its Vasanth. This is a trend I have observed especially in north India. Yeah I know, being a domicile of Tamil Nadu, the rest of India is north for me. But I still find solace by using 'north India' in the conventional sense. I don't understand what is wrong with them. What do you call that that comes after ninth? It is tenth. Not tent. Nint is not even a word! You get my point? This is how the English language is supposed to work.

Forget the esoteric nuances (?!?) of the English language. Can't you people respect somebody's name? Can't you see the e mail signature and just copy the name written there? Or are you simple oblivious to the letter 'H' when used in such connotation? Disrespecting somebody's name is as serious as disrespecting that somebody itself. When will you learn that? The worst part with this behaviour is the look on their faces as if they are completely innocent and the fault is mine to have had such a wierd name! I don't know how I am supposed to explain it to them that this is not how the rest of English speaking world (what? where does it exist?) percieves the 'H' factor. I am growing tired, really tired of this. Please spare my name!

I have nothing against north India (again) or north Indians (AGAIN!), its just that I feel like biting your head off when you misspell my name... whoever you may be, even that unsuspecting Gorilla in the African forests!

No cheers this time...

Vasanth Kumar K

P.S - For those who still don't get the drift, I am trying to stir a controversy against north Indians (oh come on...) by blaming them for their magical talent. Spread the word, make me famous. I see myself giving interviews to 24x7 news channels. Make it happen.

P.S2 - If I REALLY become famous (half hour interviews in at least two national news channels), I will sign autographs for free to all those who comment on this blog. Hurry, offer valid till stocks last!

The curious case of my fellow human's brain!

Again, no blog for two months. I prefer to blame it on my tight schedule rather than on my lack of motivation :) Well, now I have motivation on my right hand and time on my left hand (I wear watch on my left hand :P), I decided to do this thing - write random things in the hope that it will come across random people's monitors when they are randomly searching the web for random items!

The last sentence was completely random. Anyways, getting to back to my story, the curious case of my fellow human's brain. We have all been told humans are blessed with a special something called sixth sense. Might be. But the problem is most of my fellow humans refuse to even accede that they have it! (No, no, not you. The rest of 'em!) Unlike that genius Calvin opting to ignore common sense, our friends ignore their sixth sense inadverdently. One leadership guru once said, "Don't ask why, ask why not". As usual, we listened only to the first half of his speech (slept through the rest) and followed it diligently. We never ask why. We never conteplate why we do stuff. We never realise we appear plain stupid in the eyes of who ask that dangerous question, why! Let me quote a few instances.

The scene is set in an airport where I am waiting for my boarding call. The aunty with my microphone finally announces my flight is ready for boarding. Immediatley everybody picks up their luggage, go stand in the long queue in front of the boarding gate. It is ok if a coupe of ladies do it, but smart gentlemen in suits doing it is just hilarious. No offence ladies. I don't mean you are dumb, I just mean it appears dumber when men do the same thing as you! Now, I have my boarding pass with my seat number printed on that. Its not like if I go late, I might see an adamant kid sitting in my window seat refusing to get up. (Even if it happens, you anyways get to see nothing after take off!) Now that I have a boarding pass, the airlines cannot operate the flight without me on board. They have to find me and throw me in. So why can't I use it as a privilege? Why should I go stand in a queue for 15 minutes carrying my luggage waiting for them to open the gates? When these people do it, it gives me a feeling that they are waiting to board a B.E.S.T. bust at Andheri bus stop, not an aircraft! Why?

This is one scene I watch everyday. Mumbai, central railway line, train compartment. From the outside it seems damn crowded, from the inside it appears half empty! Yeah, these commuters pick the most strategic position to crowd - the passage between the doors on both sides of the compartment. It causes great inconvenience to other passengers alighting and boarding the trains but they never seem to care. These are not the bunch of blithe college kids hanging on the foot board for some fresh air. I would know them, I was one of them. These are family men, mothers, grown ups, all regular commuters. They just stand there, they don't care if there is space to stand inside the compartment, they don't care if there are vacant seats in the compartment. I have to wrestle my way everyday to get off at my station. There are also other kind of people, the ones who come and stand in between seats even when the compartment is half empty. Dude, did you drop your brains when trying to board the train? Why?

There is a theory that we are living in a 'Matrix' style simulation of some extraordinarily smart aliens. Seems right! The above mentioned are just some flaws in their 'code'. Areas were intelligencce was forgotten to be programmed into the omnipotent (what?) human brain. May be the aliens' testing department is not as competent as the one at my office!

The more I think about it, the more similarity I find in humans' outlook towards brains and money. For instance, we always think we need more of both. We always think our neighbour has more of both. Even if we were given copious amounts of both we would simply misuse them and waste them. At the back of our minds we know, if not used both gets wasted and we never cared to change our outlook towards both of them! I rest my case here. Don't ask why.

Cheers!  :) 

P.S - It seems if I don't blog for a long time, I compensate by writing a long post!

...and we are done !

The last time I had to write a similar post I started it with, 'all good times come to an end'. But now I am starting with, 'all best times come to an end as well'. Its done. The blissful stay at a slice of heaven on earth, NITIE, is just about to end. Now I feel like that F1 car that rammed into a wall! Lost, confused, sad, out of shape and out of comfort zone. WTF!

You tend to notice that you are growing up when you start losing stuff. People lose youth, people lose free time, people lose freedom, people lose brains, and some people lose hair! Now I have lost one thing that I have had since my very early days of childhood, formal education. It feels really awkward. No more waking up late, no more bunking classes, no more classes, no more hostel rooms, no more getting dad's sign in report card. But on the flip side, no more attending useless classes for attendance, no more insane writing for 3 hours in the name of exams, no more assignments, no more homework.

Everybody has gone through college. Everybody knows how it feels to get out of college. So I will stay out of the touchy-feely stuff here. My kith and kin have always asked me what was my biggest value add in MBA. I've always maintained a modest, 'I don't know', and its true. I seriuosly don't know. But I am sure about one thing, the experience here was worth screwing 18 months of my life. Seriously I never imagined I would get to share my plate with a Delhi-ite, share my glass with a Odiyan, party with a Punjabi, get drunk and blabber to a Marathi manoos, teach Hindi to a mallu, watch a goult movie in Mumbai with a confused Kannadiga, get bumps from gals for my birthday and many more! I am definitely much more sophisticated and refined than what I was. I guess that was the biggest value add.

Well, even a thousand pages wouln't suffice to describe the 600 odd days spent here. But even in a sky sprinkled with sparkling starry moments, some stars do sparkle brighter than the others. The crazy room mate, legendary 422, awesome 4th floor, overwhelming tam gang, kickass fourth hostel gang, rocking PMG, dangerous baba's office, pond, night outs, maddu mess, insane parties, nescafe, ten people sitting in a dinner table meant for four and things like these can even stand the test of amnesia. I have friends from all parts of India! The humble fact that I am carrying more than 32 GB of photos out of this place sums it up!

It would be sheer betrayal if I don't mention Prerana here. If Prerana'08 redefined the concept of hardwork and responsibility, Prerana'09 redefined the concept of struggle, setback and stress. Prerana is not an event, its an institution unto itself. The most meaningful thing I've been a part of in NITIE has to be Prerana, not even the MBA. Prerana taught us a lot of things which cannot be put in words. Although what takes the cake is the scientific art of handling the dragon! NITIE rocks, Prerana double rocks!!

I am emotional, I am sleep deprived, I have nothing to do, I am leaving this place is less than 36 hours, I feel like writing about NITIE for hours. I rather choose to end this post here as it is wrong to try and fit every emotion into words. No human language is capable of doing that. It would only distort those emotions. Let them be unsaid and better remembered. I minced my brain really hard to come up with a simple sentence to explain it all and I think I succeeded. All those of you who cared and shared, thou shalt never be forgotten!

Pepole going through this blog, kindly take out a minute to comment. That would remain as a proof that our lives were intertwined at some portion of the space time continuum!

Cheers

P.S - Things are really changing. After a really long time, I am going to sleep before midnight!

P.P.S - On second thought, certain things never change. I am yet to submit assignments worth 80 marks! NITIE rocks, in past, present and future!