Attending the press conference was fun because I had a chance to get myself a cool press kit with a Metallica black album CD.

When an obscure / relatively unknown band shows up, it sprouts new fans that go ga-ga over it. When a really popular band is scheduled to arrive, its former fans who shunned it because it had become mainstream now return to the fold, as prodigal as can be.

I find that the same thing is happening with Metallica as well. But then again, Metallica is BIG! Enough teenagers have jizzed their pants playing the opening sequence of ‘nothing else matters’ and not getting anywhere else after that. I can’t even begin to imagine the mass hysteria that will engulf people at Gurgaon on the 28th and at Bangalore’s Palace Grounds on the 30th.

This post is primarily about how to have a great concert experience in Bangalore, based on the gazillion times that I’ve gone there and committed all the mistakes in the book that one can commit regarding what to do and more importantly, what not to.

Step 1: Keep food ready at home.
By the time the concert gets over, you will be famished. You will be dehydrated, probably high on substances and / or alcohol and you will be adrenalyzed but also tired beyond words. Scrounging for food when it is late in a city that shuts down early is a bitch. If you head to the nearest Empire / Paramount that stays open late, you will end up waiting in line and getting even more late since those restaurants will have to contend with a deluge of stinky black t-shirt wearing metal fans and fanbois.

Therefore, the best thing to do is this – pick up / prepare some food that you can reheat peacefully in the microwave oven when you get home. Stack it up in your fridge. Keep a beer or two as well. Get home and eat and drink LIKE A BOSS.

Step 2: Plan your entry and exit.
Traffic around Palace Grounds will be an undeniable bitch. I promise you that. Check your ticket out and figure out the point of entry and map out your point of exit. Getting in and out will be quite crappy and the more aware you are of how you can optimize your time in this period, the easier life will be for you.

Step 3: Public transport is King.
Leave your car / bike home. Getting it in / out of traffic will delay you further. Walk out, use one of the more obscure entrances and then just head back home in peace. The airport shuttles are also running and if you can figure out which bus takes you closest to your house, you’re home in no time once the band finishes playing ‘Nothing else matters’.

If you don’t want to take the bus / haggle with an auto, park your car / bike away from the grounds and walk there. It will be easier than driving out of the place when its all over.

Step 4: Choose your poison(s) wisely.
Iron Maiden – 2009. I started consuming alcohol copiously and then shooting Kryptos’ concert performance in a state of major inebriation. The video is hilarious. Someone said something about my junk. His mum was insulted many times over.

In case of long concerts, it makes immense sense to pace oneself and choose what to imbibe and when. Drinkage must happen, but it can wait till the time everyone is sozzled and the bar counter boys don’t give a shit anymore and pour you extra larges just to get you out of the way. You don’t want to hit your peak high much before the right time.

So what are you waiting for? Judas Priest? Yeah, I know. Me too.

That is because a lot has been happening over Chai, at the new firm I am working at.Do check us out on Facebook and be a fan already!

A six day week at work has made life hectic and intense, but immensely fun at the same time. The Bangalore love that I was displaying to bore the living daylights out of anyone that cared to listen still exists, lousy traffic and some weird encounters notwithstanding.

The weather is still wonderful and I get to work on my laptop on a comfortable bus with my data card while in transit. Pick up a Volvo pass – the darn thing costs INR 1500 and is worth its weight in gold.

The expression on the faces of people that speak to me in Hindi only to be asked if they don’t know Kannada in turn is also as priceless as ever. While travel has taken a backseat, a Gurgaon trip is on the cards to reacquaint myself with the awesome North Indian winter and with good friends that were the reason that Gurgaon seemed like a crazy fun ride when it lasted.

Sometimes, when I work from home, I take a break in the afternoon by taking a fifteen minute walk around this place and that helps recharge my batteries brilliantly. The high that I get from being so comfortable in the afternoon sun continues to maintain the extreme love I have for the Bangalorean weather.

JP Nagar phase 2 reminds me of Hogwarts in some ways. There’s small alleys and roads within the Marenahalli area that have shops and random eating joints that show up out of the blue sometimes and can’t be located at all on other occasions.

There is a certain delight in walking less than 100 metres from one’s house to discover within that radius a movie hall that shows ONLY Telugu movies (including a dubbed version of ‘Return of the King of the Rise of the Planet of Apes’ or some such), an MTR eating joint that is visited even by bovine customers, a north Karnataka food store, a bakery, a clothes ironing store, a cycle repair shop, a grocery store and a couple of temples.

During my first month of living here, I have realized that I can successfully postpone the thought of setting my kitchen up, given the plethora of eating options within a 500 meter radius, most of which are actually easy on the wallet too. Or maybe after the expensive eating options of my native place Gurgaon, the relative reduction in price per meal has been quite easy to digest. Notice the cute pun there?

The mixed-up alleys have resulted in an impulse-based scoping out of all the food joints, instead of a sequential approach towards sampling all the places. However, the time is ripe for me to embark upon a discovery of JP Nagar, the proper way.

Reading books on war strategy and in-city combat has certainly had a direct impact on my approach to tackle the food discovery situation. I now have a map complete with markers and an excel sheet tracker that I have used to record various parameters such as name of place, location, food item(s) ordered, price per meal, satisfaction ratings, turn-around time and such.

The importance of being earnest in data collection hasn’t ever been as evident, as far as I am concerned.

Just so you know, the sort of places I am scouting out comprise the whole gamut of food options, including Coffee Day, Subway, McDonalds, KFC, Daily Bread, The Great Kebab Factory, Nandhini and other such places, to the hole in the wall juice shops, the dal + chawal + roti + subzi + salad + pickle joints, the darshinis and others.

All this for science and progress. Nobody said it was easy, but I’ll take it up from the start.

I paid what I thought was a reasonable rate for the books, clothes, tv, washing machine, bicycle, utensils and other miscellaneous items that I shipped out, given the net value of the goods. Much to my disappointment, the goods were delayed by two additional weeks, ensuring that I had to live out of my suitcase for more time than I’d have liked.

That psychological feeling of settling in hadn’t sunk in completely thanks to the fact that my not-so-immaterial material positions possessions were still in transit somewhere. I found out during the course of the long, agonizing wait that the truck carrying my belongings was involved in an accident that lead to the death of the driver. The packers and movers claimed that the delay was as a result of this untoward incident.

When my stuff finally arrived late this afternoon, the cartons seemed mauled and the meticulous effort that that I had put in into laying out content to make it easier for the packers seemed to have been wasted, and how.

The cartons seemed to have been through a sumo wrestling match and some of my treasured books had been bent out of shape in a way that I’d not imagined paperbacks could be twisted into.

My copy of “The Last of the Just” by Andre Schwarz-Bart has been martyred, as has my copy of “Video Night in Kathmandu” by Pico Iyer. A couple of other books have also gone through rough days, but with careful nursing, they should be back to good condition, especially with nice, thick covers around them.

My beautiful Trek 3700, sadly has borne the brunt of the assault on my belongings, with the rear tire bent so badly out of shape that it looks like a big fat black ribbon. Mercifully, the good folks at Bums on the Saddle are not too far away from where I live, and I can go there and see how to make the best of a bad situation.

I’m just counting my blessings that my goods showed up, one way or the other. I have a good mind to sue them unprofessional packers and movers and there is a distinct possibility that I might. I will post the series of events should that happen as time goes by.

The other thing I can do, in addition to not being a cheaper than usual guy is to move only within the city or ensure that I am driving the bloody truck that carries my stuff the next time around, should unforeseen circumstances make me move out of Bangalore.

That was the bad part, so to speak.

On the other hand, a lot of good has been happening as well. I joined my new job in Bangalore sans a break on August 1st and have been at it for a fortnight now. I worked on Independence Day and partly on both the Sundays during my brief tenure here.

I’m enjoying what the job entails and enjoying Bangalore and its oh-so-delightfully salubrious climate. Adjusting to life in Bangalore has been easy, and I feel like USB drive, plug-and-play style. Friends are around aplenty and the lack of effort required to develop a social eco-system post-shifting has been heartening.

There’s also been random walks in the light, drizzly rain with my office in my backpack and the leisurely BMTC bus rides that give me time to reflect and think of what to do when I get to where I have to next during my quite random work days.

There was a really nice thing that happened to me just this evening. It was raining and I took my umbrella out to walk to the KFC that is located 300 metres away from my apartment (beat that!). I was listening to a really nice song and walking away, only to get to the store at exactly 2300.

The store remained open and I got my boneless chicken strips with salsa, much to my relief. Depriving oneself of a 1 AM snack is the kind of abuse I will never put my mind or my body through.

However, this was not the best part.

The really nice song I was listening to? It got over at the very moment I stepped into KFC. I took my ear plugs out to place my order only to realize that the same song *just* began playing again within the store.

On some days, that is all that is needed to make you realize that the heart of life is good.

I had lived in Bangalore until 31st March 2009, following which, I had lived in Hyderabad and in Gurgaon. Two years and four months of traipsing around has made me realize that Bangalore is the most comfortable Indian city for me to live in (with the exception of Mysore, which is beyond any list, in just the same way as those that you love are excluded from any best-of lists that you’d compile).

After a sixteen month stint in Gurgaon that involved multiple visits to Mysore, with Bangalore being my transit point, I was sufficiently enticed to be part of the returning diaspora and discard the quite crazy, albeit highly entertaining life up north in search of salubrious climes, moderated lifestyles and armed with a yearning to grow roots in a particular place.

For the most part since I moved out of home seven years ago, I’ve always felt this strong feeling of transience that accompanied my stay at most of the places I lived in, including Gurgaon. Previously, I was keen on studying further and as a result, chose not to get fully committed to a particular place by making huge investments in home appliances, in renting a comfortable house and settling in, because I knew that this wouldn’t last forever. The same happened in Hyderabad because of studies and was happening in Gurgaon as well.

Gurgaon seemed like a wonderful place with which you could have numerous one night stands, but didn’t seem like a place one could enter into a long term relationship with. Of course, YMMV.

Bangalore, on the other hand is comfortable, familiar, promising and is close enough but not too close to my hometown and was thus the most obvious place to settle in. It does have its cons – bad traffic, mediocre infrastructure ripped apart by the construction of the metro and has a way of life that I still at some level consider too fast paced for my Mysorean demeanour.

However, Bangalore is also a place that is supremely chilled out. It lets you be. It allows you to wallow in your sloth and throws things at you that you can choose to dodge or embrace wholeheartedly. It is placed beautifully at the appropriate intersection of the NED and the GTD mindsets.

On Sunday, the only day off for me in the new job I am at, I took a walk around where I live. The sidewalk is dug up on the main road and with the rains, it is quite inconvenient to walk around. But I took a long, 5 km walk all around JP Nagar in order to scout for furniture to setup a home office and to pick up essentials for my new place and was able to get everything except for nice laundry baskets and an appropriately priced carpet for my living room.

Walking around, I discovered this seedy hotel near Sarakki layout where I had lived at in September 2004 when I’d just arrived in the city. My first firm had put me and the other new joinees there, unaware that there were unsavoury characters who walked the hotel corridors at night, scaring the daylights out of fresh engineering graduates who were trying to engage in whispered conversations with their then girlfriends who lived in other cities not so far away.

As I passed it by, listening to ‘Summer’ by Joe Hisaishi from one of my favourite mp3 mixtapes of all time by Beatzo, I was glad that I would never have to live in that stupid hotel again. I also realized how, just like that long walk I took on that beautiful Sunday afternoon, things have a way of coming full circle, but that time separation shall ensure that the twain shall never meet. Mercifully so.

On my first day in Gurgaon, as I walked into cybercity, not knowing what to expect, I was listening to Winding Road by Bonnie Sommerville, hoping that someday I’d find my way home. That song eventually became such a big influence that it crept into my limited musical repertoire for party entertainment as well.

As I stood at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on 31st December 2010, I prayed for “next year in Bangalore”. Apt, since my wish of wanting to spend “next year in Jerusalem” was already granted.

I’m glad my prayers were answered. It is good to be back in Bangalore and back to bedlam.

Truth be told, my first job was one that I had soon after I had completed class 12.

In July 2000, I’d taken the Karnataka CET and was waiting for the engineering admissions to begin. There was the usual bullshit that accompanied seat allocation in engineering colleges and some ranking revision to add to the mayhem.The confusion led to delays in the process which eventually led to a delay in the start date of all courses. My class 12 board exams had been done with by 24th March and the CET exams were also done by 9th of May.

I had nearly five months of blissful unemployment and I wasn’t sure of what to do. Mooching off my folks to do something outrageously random was out of the question. What helped my situation, in retrospect, was the fact that I wasn’t quite cognizant of the gravity of the situation and that while most of my contemporaries seemed to have a plan, I was quite content with just drifting and seeing how four years of engineering college turned out.

I wasn’t looking forward to it too much, to be honest. Having chosen electronics and communication as my major after using the tried and tested method of ‘inky-pinky-ponky’ at the seat selection process in Bangalore, I was quite unsure of what to expect.

However, seeing so many people that would qualify as borderline retards getting through the course before me gave me enough solace. The only thing I was reasonably certain of, if nothing else was my intelligence. In retrospect, I shouldn’t even have ruminated and wasted that amount of time, dabbling away in uncertainty.

Five months and nothing to do. It was around that time that I began discovering the internets, with browsing centers mushrooming all over Mysore. Some of them were offering decent hourly rates and I chanced upon one such that was slightly far away from home, but was cheap enough to offset the pedaling distance that I had to cover both ways on my trusty bicycle.

Inspired by all the books I read about kids having summer jobs, I decided to get one for myself and to that effect, I spoke to the owner of the 24 hour browsing center, that was also doubling up at Mysore’s first internet service provider. The browsing center was located in Kuvempunagar in a house, with the computers on the ground floor and what passed off as the corporate office on the first floor.

The owner was caught off-guard by the fact that I just walked into his cabin and said that I wanted to make some pocket money in the summer. I was then introduced to the staff and was asked to work Mondays through Saturdays for at least eight hours. I was allowed to drink all the coffee I wanted and I could browse for free. At the end of each month, I was promised a princely sum of INR 750 and I was kicked beyond belief.

Some of the most interesting times I have ever had at a job have been during the one month that I spent there.

There was Rakesh, the owner of the place who was a sound and sensible chap, whose hiring methods seemed suspect after I had spent one day at the job. The other people that worked there seemed like characters straight out of a loony bin.

Firstly, there was B, the accountant lady who had a perpetually surly expression on her face. Whoever was managing the browsing center and allocating PCs for customers to surf at was required to record the time. B would tally the books at the end of each day, collect money and sign off to close books for the day. She was unnecessarily rude to me at the outset, but warmed up enough to discuss problems and tell me about how the other people at the office would bitch her out and how her folks wanted to get her married soon. One particular evening, she narrated her situation while getting teary-eyed and I remember telling her that I was seventeen and that I didn’t know what to do or say.

There was P, the cocky, self-assured chap who had setup the systems. He would regularly snoop to look at what other people were browsing on and occasionally meddle with people’s computers using WinVNC from the main system that used to monitor the connections. When I told him that he wasn’t doing the right thing, he told me to get lost and mind my own business.

Being a 24 hour browsing center, there were occasions when I’ve been present overnight and certain others when I’ve woken up as early at 5 AM to cycle in pitch darkness along the edges of Kukkarahalli lake in Mysore to get to work.

If the staff was full of people straight out of the funny farm, the customers were a few notches above, insofar as their level of crazy was concerned. I encountered the Indian version of the perpetually online slobs that were addicted to the internet. These guys, that were part of the great unwashed, actually had food stuck in their beards and would spend eight to ten hours straight browsing away late at night.

The browsing center was frequented by a few chaps that wanted seats whose monitors weren’t visible to the others so they could peacefully access gay porn sites (I know this because the parent system would display what sites were being visited by each user). There were other people that were addicted to internet relay chat to a point where they’d browse all night, sipping away on endless cups of coffee that I’d deliver to their browsing stations on a tray.

On the flip-side, there were people that were genuinely interested in trying out ‘this internet thing’ as they’d come and tell me, and I take pride in having setup the first email address for many a newbie web-surfer. In fact, a few months after I quit this job, I was asked by my class 12 biology teacher to help her navigate the web.

I learnt a lot of stuff on my first job. Most of it good, some of it bad. It helped me understand people better and exposed me to individuals that I wouldn’t have encountered in my (until then) sheltered existence. I got my first paycheck and I learnt that internet usage and browsing can be monitored extensively even if browsing histories are deleted. This has taught me to never, ever, ever, ever, ever open a website that I didn’t want traced back to me in a corporate setup. Surf p0rn only at home, basically.

I quit the job after a month because I joined guitar classes and I wasn’t able to juggle class and work at the same time. Simultaneously, I’d stopped having fun there. I’m surprised by how 17 year old Hari knew when to call it quits, because as I’ve grown older, I’ve had some trouble discontinuing stuff when I have stopped enjoying myself. Not anymore, though.

In retrospect, the decision to quit and continue with guitar classes turned out to be the best decision ever, thanks to all the good times that knowing to play the guitar brought about in my life.

Google+ seems promising, for me at least. This is why:

• I don’t need to open a separate browser window. I google millions of things each day and having a tab on top to help stay in touch is effective.
• Google has had a previously built up reputation of erring on the conservative side so far as user privacy is concerned, save for when it got all ‘Buzz’ed up. Facebook, on the other hand seems to have had a policy of “We know it might annoy our users. Let’s implement and enforce it. If we are pushed back, we can go ahead and tweak features to reduce privacy-related complaints.“
• The prima facie logical grouping in circles (already present on facebook, but somewhat painful to manage on its UI) might help make communicating between different groups more effective, given how our personal circles are expanding at a considerable rate.
• With all the good, positive ways that google has used to help change lives as we know it (not drastically, but in small, cumulative ways that add up to be greater than the sum of the constituent parts), this would help too. Admit it, the odds of staying in touch with and subsequently putting blade on (hitting on) people you’ve met in real life has increased drastically since the time of Orkut previously, though Facebook has now taken that role up effectively.
• Lastly, do check this video out. I quite like the soft, lilting background music interspersed with voice-overs that has me sold completely on Google+.

Granted, it will be a pain to migrate from FB to google, but I’m sure there’s ways and means that this product will have to facilitate a smooth transition.

With Amazon hitting the Indian shores, there’s enough heat being generated in the domestic front along with this battle between Google and Facebook to keep us all intrigued on the competitive strategy front.

I think it is time to sit and re-read my Competitive Strategy course pack from B-school, this time without exams in mind and with more relaxed time lines to boot.

It is a little scary how one can get attached to those little kids in such a short span of time and I guess the fact that they’ve not yet lost their innocence and are yet to have their heads fucked-up plays a huge part in that.

My second tryst was at a Harijan basti (and hence the title) where people from our firm, along with some kind volunteers from an NGO had to do multiple things, including help give the residents of that locality some tips on basic sanitation, setup a medical camp for the children and have a street play for the entire locality that would serve to entertain and educate.

My outlook towards CSR in general has evolved since I began working. My first organization had a strong part to play in its approach to CSR and would use some of its work done during its corporate showcase presentations. They did a lot of good work, but did it openly and quite blatantly. This was similar to conspicuous consumption in that it was a form of conspicuous charity and that made me largely cynical towards the efforts undertaken.

My view is that charity should be done in as understated a manner as possible and the best ulterior motive that one can have is to have it serve as an anodyne for one’s need to do something for society, with the only reward being good Karma points.

It is with this cynical bent of mind that I did not take part in any initiative at my first workplace, with the exception of donating blood, which was also made into a PR stunt at the end of the day.

When I went back to study, the students there organized something for underprivileged children as part of an all-day event and even then, I decided not to participate and caught up with some much needed sleep after a particularly raucous evening the previous day.

However, a change of season and a slightly broadened world-view has made me aware that organizations have their own reasons to undertake CSR activities and that it would invariably involve the participation of company employees and it is better to conform because it is for a good cause.

What I liked most about the two initiatives I participated in, besides being voluntary were the fact that these were understated, wouldn’t be used for a PR campaign to promote the firm and were only done as an internal check-box of sorts in the list of annual requirements to address.

That resulted in it being a fun experience for those involved.

What I am concerned about is the impact that we have had on the people in the locality. Visiting it was one of those experiences that makes you count your blessings many times over. I will not get into descriptions of how these people live in the conditions that they do because I don’t want to paint word pictures and I’d rather people, especially those that can serve as change-agents go have a look for themselves.

I walk through some Gurgaon villages as short-cuts rather frequently and when we were informed that some of the locations would be quite dirty, I was rather dismissive of the warning given. What I saw when I went there was that the Gurgaon villages such as Nathupur and Chakkarpur that have now been absorbed inadvertently by a greater sprawl of suburbia have much better living conditions than these places that are devoid of some of the most basic amenities that human beings are required to have by right.

I scooted off early to spend Friday afternoon with a couple of my buddies and missed out on office lunch, but as I was sitting and eating lunch at an up-scale coffee shop in comfortable air-conditioning in Gurgaon’s Galleria market, I couldn’t help but let my mind wander briefly to think of all the varied hues and colours that humans tend to come in.

At the end of the day, I just hope that we left behind at the Harijan basti a lot more than just strategically placed multi-coloured plastic dustbins and medical cards with children’s information on them. The most realistic hope that I have is that some people have had a positive change in mindset and if that has happened, I’d consider this endeavour a success.

From a good Karma perspective, I think I’ve raked up a few decent points here. One of the things that is reinforced through exercises like these is the happiness that comes from a lack of expectation of something in return when you’ve done some work for people that are anonymous to you and that you are in turn anonymous to.

Lastly, it was also fun to have encountered someone whose name truly fits who they are.

Wordsmiths are geniuses.

They make your head spin. They take you places you’ve been to that you never thought you’d go to again, mostly because you willed yourself not to. But once you’re there, you stay. You stay because you can’t go away soon enough.

They write all the nice and funny lines that millions of people all over the world use to make their lives more interesting. Sometimes, they get credit for it.

Sometimes they come up with something that is brilliant beyond words. Gaiman, after Pico Iyer will only be the second author I have quoted in posts. I don’t agree entirely with what he has written here, because cynicism towards love isn’t really my thing.

Have you ever been in love?

Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up.

You build up all these defenses. You build up a whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life… You give them a piece of you.

They didn’t ask for it.

They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore.

Love takes hostages.

It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ or ‘how very perceptive’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart.

It hurts.

Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love.

I hate love.

Well, I don’t.

But I love how Gaiman put it all together. I don’t know if he actually hates love either, just between you and me.

Seth Rogen as Mantis in Kung Fu Panda 2 3D put forth one epic line in the second half of the movie that now makes me believe that subliminal adult messages set in movies are a thing of yore, with things being more up-front and blatantly obvious now.

Mantis, on being captured and tied up, facing impending death says this:

All I wanted in life was to meet a nice girl who would eat my head…

Respect. Also, while I wouldn’t mind writing a review, I’m plagued by the twin demons of sloth and ennui. As a result, all I’d say is that if you’ve not watched Kung Fu Panda 2 3D already, please do so as soon as you can. It is a really fun, well made movie.