Rocking in the Free World » Peter Pan in Real Life

Weekends in the NCR

Hari — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:01:00 +0000

After moving out of home in 2004, Gurgaon is the third city that I have lived in after Bangalore and Hyderabad.

In Bangalore, my weekend planning was initially governed by when I would leave the city to head to Mysore. When things settled in and I began discovering, exploring and understanding Bangalore, and eventually falling in love with the place (for the most part), my plans revolved around spending time in the pursuit of various things within the city, as I slowly trudged up the Maslovian pyramid.

That glorious run of nearly five years came to an end in 2009 when I had to move to Hyderabad to study and weekends there were mostly spent working on assignments or studying or doing something or the other that entailed being on campus for the most part, as a result of which, there was no real need to make any weekend plans or follow through on them had they been made in the first place.

Cut to the NCR where I have been at for the past three months now, and I find myself in completely different circumstances. I don’t have the comfortable proximity to Mysore that I had previously found myself in when I was in Bangalore. Nor do I have enough work yet (if work at the office is discounted from the equation) like I did either in Bangalore or Hyderabad to keep me completely preoccupied.

In such situations, weekend planning becomes vital to one’s attempts at keeping the ennui monster at bay. When travel to places outside of the NCR isn’t conducive due to constraints that narrow down to lack of time or money or enthusiasm or a mix of two or more of the these factors, checking out the sights, sounds and tastes that Delhi has to offer then becomes part of the weekend menu.

As part of my sojourns, here’s snippets of experiences I’ve had that I find worth documenting.

A walk down Chandni Chowk – I had a chance to walk down the world-famous Chandni Chowk, built by Shah Jahan’s daughter Jahaanara Begum one particularly humid evening in early July when the train I had to take to head towards the mountains was delayed by two and a half hours.

I’d had a tiring week, I hadn’t had enough sleep either and this delay only compounded my misery. Since I had to board my train from Delhi junction (the old Delhi railway station) which is served by the Chandni Chowk Metro station, I figured I might as well see why this place deserved as much fame as it had.

The exit from the metro station led onto a temple and a huge Gurudwara right opposite it. It was late in the evening and most of the shops were closed. Traffic volumes weren’t as high as they’d have been during the day, but there was a lot of hustle and bustle still around. I walked westward and could see lines of shops on both sides and it seemed quite like most crowded main streets in most towns or cities that I’d visited.

What was different, however, was the sight of the iconic Red Fort looming large on the horizon. I am not quite sure how long the walk was, since I was numb from having walked so much already. But the heat and dust notwithstanding, with tracks from Incubus’ ‘Morning View’ playing in my ears, the sight of the Red Fort in Old Delhi was majestic and the way it awes you when you see it first is probably a good reason to visit it both during the day as well as after sun-down.

I am however still to figure out what the big deal about Chandni Chowk is. Only time will tell.

I’m going to be there at the Red Fort on Independence Day to see our Prime Minister give his speech live and that, I think, is quite a big deal.

Safdarjung’s Tomb – My forays into the capital have been more or less through South Delhi, thanks to its proximity to Gurgaon and also thanks to the yellow Delhi Metro line running along in that direction.

On this route, I’ve seen the remains of Tughlaqabad and even the sight of the Qutub Minar is now something that I’m used to. But whenever I get a chance to go to any monument or building that looks like it is older than a hundred years, I make it a point to step inside and take a look. I like them much better than the glass high-rises that dot the landscape, air con being the only redeeming quality about most of these buildings.

At the start of Lodhi Road lies Safdarjung’s Tomb. The tomb is a majestic building with water fountains on all four sides, making the aerial view of the place look like a plus sign with the tomb in the center. One can clearly tell that Safdarjung wasn’t probably as historically important as the Mughal rulers (SJ was in Ahmed Shah Bahadur’s court), since my friend and I were the only two people that were at that place at half-past five on a Saturday evening.

There was a solitary guard and pretty much nobody else with administrative capacity in that huge plot of land dotted by numerous trees including the coconut palm, the sight of which, I confess, was a refreshing change from the traffic outside.

My landlady, who seems to be a bibliophile, judging by the huge number of books lying around in her house, has been nice enough to give me two books on the history of Delhi, and combined with ‘City of Djinns’ by W. Dalrymple and some other literature that I plan to read, should give me enough information about these buildings and more when I begun a self-initiated tour to check out all the seven cities that make up our capital. Of course, this requires a strong dip in temperatures to set the ball rolling.

The Delhi Metro – I am a big Delhi Metro fan boy. My cheapness to a large extent and my sensibility to a smaller degree have made me like and enjoy public transport immensely. I am a judgmental person, and how much I like a city is governed by, among other things, how efficient its public transport systems are.

Gurgaon’s score on this is quite low, but the saving grace for now is the presence of the metro line that serves some parts of the city.

However, travel around Delhi is so convenient thanks to the presence of the Metro. In fact, the first time I used it was when I was traveling from the Indraprastha station to Rajiv Chowk in early June this year.

I wasn’t aware of the smart card / token systems that one needs to know about while traveling on these trains. The important difference between other regular modes and this one is that your token / smart card needs to be checked in at the turnstiles twice, once while entering the station and once, while getting off at your destination.

My first journey had me face quite a few d-uh moments; including being unaware of where to place the token at the turnstile and such, but casual observation of how other passengers behave is more than enough to understand how to go about using this service.

One of these d-uh moments was when it temporarily slipped my mind that Connaught Place was now officially named Rajiv Chowk. It was only thanks to a funny dinner-time conversation I’d had at home with the family that I remembered in time and was thus able to choose the right station while buying the token.

Since that day, I’ve got me a smart card and my frequency of visits to the capital has gone up. Most commuters, yours truly included, are waiting for the time when the metro line will open up fully until Rajiv Chowk. So far, trains travel only until the Qutab Minar metro station from Gurgaon.

The fact that the Metro is brilliantly air conditioned only adds to the charm of traveling on it in the cruel, cruel summer. But its presence has so far prompted me to not buy a car and instead divert all those funds into travel.

The weekends will get more interesting with time, as the mercury shall fall and more opportunities to indulge in new, interesting things present themselves.

Wanted : Psychedelic-Coloured Pyjamas

Hari — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 22:01:42 +0000

So we’re already into January 4th 2009. The first four days of this year have turned out to be so full of office work that I’ve left the motorbike in the parking lot and taken a cab to head back home instead, for it is too dark, too late and too dangerous to head out on a motorbike at the unGodly times that I exit from the office.

Why not my blessed cycle that I’ve been raving about, you wonder. Yeah, it makes me wonder too. But the sudden onset of a bad cold, a cough, a chest congestion that has caused my phlegm to come out almost solid-like isn’t really the best condition to be riding a bicycle in to work. Discretion is the better part of valour and all that junk.

Turns out, I’m now humming ‘All I want for this year is sleep’, to the tune of ‘All I want for Christmas is you’, and it isn’t even sounding funny. I have three grand ideas that I want to blog about, but in the classic case of (and this is a new one) my head and my heart v/s my body, the latter’s fatigue and NED seems to be overcoming the former’s zest for opinion expression.

In line with my current theme for 2009, and my wanting to sleep, I have decided that I want some psychedelic coloured pyjamas. I’m not a particularly big fan of sleep wear, having slept in old t-shirts and miscellaneous pyjamas all through, and shedding some of those during the hotter months.

But now, as I sit at the office at 3-30 AM on Sunday, the 4th of January 2009, working to get the GStreamer code integrated with my code for some audiobook to run on a hand-held device, all I can think of is polka-dotted pyjamas that I want to fall asleep in.

The pyjamas should be red. The dots should be blue, green, yellow, orange, pink and purple. (Any resemblance to the rainbow coloured flag is unintended, though I am all in support of those brothers and sisters who want to wave it unabashedly) I want even Govinda and Dennis Rodman to avert their eyes from said pyjamas and say ‘chi-chi’.

I think I couldn’t possibly write an arbitter post. So much for the first great weekend of this year. Have a great remaining 2009.

The Wonderful World of Sargeant Thikanov

Hari — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 04:03:11 +0000

Before your mind goes off on random tangents, thinking of how I am writing fairytales surrounding the life and times of a mysteriously named Russian World War I soldier, stop.

Thika, in Kannada, refers to one’s gluteal region, a.k.a Kundi as do other more detailed graphic words that I’m not going to mention simply because I am not too keen on spoon-feeding you, and thereby fostering your spirit of enquiry regarding matters that relate to what my English teacher in school used to refer to cutely as bowel language.

Thikanov refers to pain in the kundi, which is what I’ve had after a weekend of cycling all over the city. I must’ve done about sixty km on my trusty new machine, and the whole experience was just so brilliant that I know for sure that I am either going to maintain my cycling sprees or up the ante further as and when time permits.

I am certain that with a few more weeks of riding the cycle, I am going to feel zero pain, but in a weirdly fraud-masochistic way, the aching muscles are weirdly satisfying.

In addition to cycling, I also had to, on one occasion carry the bike up four flights of stairs to the house of PeeGeeKay, where I’d crashed on saturday night post dinner at Shiok with Skimpy (who now says ‘GuDgaon’ for Gurgaon and has effectively crossed the rubicon), Baada and PeeGeeKay, who’s been singing bittersweet symphony about once every five minutes, and rightfully so.

It has been my third visit to Shiok this month, and each time, I leave with happy in my belly and happy on my countenance. I usually end up eating so much that I can afford to miss out on my midnight snack thereafter and not risk dying of hunger.

In my first weekend of hardcore cycling, I learnt a few things:

Wear a helmet if you have one. Its ok if you think you look dorky or if junta make fun of your wearing a helmet on your cycle. It is your head on the line and not theirs. Additionally, motorists give you more respect if you look like a serious cyclist.
Avoid main roads, not because you have to, but because you can. I discovered some astounding roads in Jayanagar 1st block near the Ashoka Pillar statue when I took a random detour to get towards Bannerghatta road. Most of them ended up being cul-de-sacs, but as Skimpy later informed me, that area is considered the coldest part of Bangalore. Cycling around will sure help me discover new places and make me like the city even more than I already do. (Far cry from how I felt more than four years ago when I first landed here from Mysore.)
Stand your ground. More often than not, cars and two wheelers behind you tend to treat you with disdain, contempt or possibly with a significant amount of disrespect. So long as you are aware that they are as worried about hitting someone as you are worried about getting hit, you’re fine and you know that they’d not collide with you intentionally. However, this rule doesn’t apply to taxis, trucks, lorries, rented transport vehicles of any kind and it is necessary to give these characters a wide berth, to propagate your genetic material further.

What was nice was that I was able to find a place where I could tether my bike to at Crossword, Indiranagar and also in a couple of other places where I had to stop. Once I discover more bike-parking friendly places closer to areas that I frequent, I would feel sanguine about taking my bike there and using it more and more.

Full respect to Rohan and Nikhil from Bums On the Saddle for having helped me get my bike!

Every Band Needs a Sound Engineer

Hari — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 03:06:25 +0000

Every band, big or small needs a sound engineer. This painfully obvious fact struck me like a thunderbolt (ok, I am exaggerating. It sort of just came to mind arbitly) when I was at a pub gig in Mysore.

For those unaware – yes, Mysore has pubs. Shocking but true. Sadly, it is going the Bangalore way, and while the ban on live music in places serving alcohol continues unabated in Bangalore, Mysore seems to have been unaffected by it all. The branch of Purple Haze in Mysore is hosting a rock / metal fest showcasing eighteen bands over the weekend before Diwali.

I had been there last evening to check out a few of the bands, including Crucifix Guide, Today’s Special and Ston’d (about whom I’ve written in the upcoming issue of RSJ) and during the whole time I was watching them bands perform live, I could only think of how the guy behind the sound console was not mixing the sound properly into the PA (public address), as a result of which the volumes of individual instruments weren’t being balanced correctly.

In some cases, you couldn’t hear the vocalist who was being drowned out by the guitar tones. The bass guitar was not heard in a few instances. If a band had two guitarists, their volumes weren’t balanced properly.

The guy in charge of sound at the pub couldn’t entirely be blamed either. This is because he is not aware of their setup, and isn’t aware of how the instruments and vocals are interspersed in each song, and whether there needs to be any modifications in the sound levels done across different songs. It isn’t his business either. All he needs to do is to keep all instruments at certain preset levels to ensure a minimum sound output that each band can adjust to. Think of it as being akin to the common minimum program for bands.

If each band has a dedicated sound engineer who knows all their songs perfectly, he can either take charge of the sound console, or assist the main sound guy in adjusting levels, to negate the most obvious complaint that most bands have of how the sound sucked.

For sure, a sound engineer is way more important to a band than even a manager is. At least in the initial phases of its existence. Unless of course, the manager can also double up as a sound guy.

Drinking Theories

Hari — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 06:44:30 +0000

I have two theories on alcohol consumption that I wanted to blag about. I know neither will make it to a research paper, but then again, what else is my awesome blag for, aye?

Drinking on a Sunday Evening: Most people tend to drink on Friday or Saturday evenings, once the working week has come to an end. Thereafter, uncontrolled alcohol consumption eventually results in hang-overs on Saturday / Sunday mornings and screws up most of the weekend.

However, I propose that people who want to drink to their hearts’ content should do so on Sunday evening. This is because one can conserve precious time on weekends, and since Monday mornings are shitty anyway, the presence or absence of a hang-over at work doesn’t really make a difference.

Plus, most watering holes are less crowded with riff-raff on sunday evenings, but that is a moot point, given that you can drink anytime and anywhere in Bangalore city.

It was the cheap Monkee who spoke about this again last night, and made me think about blagging about it.

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The Alcohol Buddy Theory: An alcohol buddy is someone you hang out with in order to have a drink. The surest sign that a friend is an alcohol buddy is if you are unable to hang out with this person unless alcohol is involved in the equation.

If you can’t figure out who your alcohol buddies are, hang out with them even when alcohol is not part of your meet-up and see if you end up having a good time regardless. If that is not the case, then you’ve got an alcohol buddy on your hands.

If you’re a social drinker, and you want to kick the bottle, all you would have to do would be to stop hanging out with your alcohol buddies, and all your problems would be solved. Voila!

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A Jet Airways Anecdote

Hari — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 11:03:59 +0000

The recent firing and re-hiring of the 1900 Jet Airways employees, which makes Naresh Goyal look very much like a certain Mohammed bin-Tughlaq, has brought back memories of an arbit incident that took place slightly over two years ago, involving someone from Jet Airways.

It was sometime in the first week of August 2006, when I was supposed to fly to Oslo for the second time in three months and had landed up at the HAL airport in Bangalore about four hours before my flight took off. Unlike the first time, when some six friends of mine showed up to see me off, there was absolutely zero fanfare this time around.

However, in this trip I had plans of utilizing my weekends better, since I had explored Oslo as thoroughly as one could in a month and a half, and it was time to check out other cities and Bergen and Copenhagen were on my list. My friend, who lives in Copenhagen had asked me to bring him ITC King and Old Monk Rum while coming along.

The recent liquid scare at Heathrow had taken place a few days before my departure, and hence I was unable to carry the rum, but I was going to buy him the cigarettes anyway and I was planning to buy cigarettes at the airport.

I picked up a trolley and placed my heavy bag on it, and proceeded towards the shop just outside the airport building in the parking lot where I could pick up cigarettes from. The shop was at an elevation and I was not able to bring my trolley around to the shop, and had to leave it someplace behind out of my line of sight to go and perform the necessary purchase.

I asked a couple of people who were standing there to help me watch my luggage for a short while, so I could run along, buy the pack and then head into the airport. I suspected that only high-end international brands were available in the duty free section. However, nobody seemed to want to help me with it, and understandably so, considering this was borderline suspicious behaviour. No amount of putting Bambi eyes and pleading seemed to work, until I spotted this cute girl who was standing there, drinking tea.

She was wearing a Jet Airways flight attendant uniform, and I just walked over to her and asked her the same thing, and after a long pause during which I guess she was thinking of what to do, she relented. I was quite happy, and even offered to buy her another cup of tea while she waited.

I remember saying the following to her:

“I’m no terrorist and I WILL come back for the bag, I’m just not strong enough to lug this monster bag till there and back, and risk losing this trolley, since I’m too lazy to go get one more. But I’m not so lazy that I won’t walk till that shop to buy you tea/coffee. Its lighter to carry, you see.”

“So, your name is Blanche. Isn’t that French for white? Are you from Pondicherry?” (I make horrible starting conversation, I know.)

“Are you given Carte Blanche to do what you want wherever your flight halts, so long as you get back to the airport on time?” (Covering up for Pondicherry gaffe with some idiotic wordplay)

I wanted to say this, but I thankfully didn’t – “Yours would be a nice name if you were born in a white-supremacist family.”

I narrated this incident to a friend of mine, who told me that I might’ve put borderline blade on her (meaning I might’ve almost hit on her), although that wasn’t my intention.

In any case, it was due to her help that I wasn’t beaten to pulp by my friend in Copenhagen, and she did say that it would be cool to bump into her if I were to fly Jet Airways, though I didn’t ask which sector she flew in.

I hope she wasn’t one of those 1900 people. Considering she would’ve worked for more than two years by now, it seems unlikely that she’d be on probation. Much good Karma to her, nevertheless for having helped me out.

Notes about Nothing – Work Anniversaries

Hari — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 12:02:00 +0000

Its official now, I’ve spent more time outside college than I did within it. Not that I attended too many classes and all that, but I guess I’ve been a Corporate Ho longer than I was an undergrad student. Four years have passed since I graduated from being a dorky engineering graduate to a dorky engineer who had to earn his living.

This officially earmarks the longest voluntary relationship I have ever had in my life. Either party could’ve broken up at will, but both of us have weathered many storms together and have stuck on, for some reasons best known only to the both of us, while most other reasons for aforesaid situation remain significantly inexplicable.

This NaN is going to focus on the memories I have had of September 1st over the past five years, and for sure, it has been quite interesting in more ways than I could have previously imagined.

2004: First day of work. I was unwell, and I had worn a light green full sleeve shirt my sister had got me as a present. She had overestimated my shoulder width, my height and my girth and in the process purchased a shirt that was two sizes too big for me. I wore it nevertheless, because I thought it was important. My cousin, who’s house I was at on the first day I was in Bangalore, dropped me to the office and I walked in through the doors into the room where we had our induction at 0859, one minute before proceedings began.

For the first ever time in my life, I fell asleep in something akin to a class, because the person who was giving us the corporate presentation could as well have been spraying valium through an atomizer four inches away from my nostrils. In addition to my acute somnolence, I had also been, as I had mentioned previously, unwell, and the medicine that I’d been prescribed had given me a light tremor in my right hand, and for one of the first ever times in my life, I was scared as hell about whether I’d ever benormal again.

The doctor’s reassurance about it being a reaction to some expectorant tablet did nothing to remedy the situation, and it was only after I got better and I was able to write properly did I heave a huge sigh of relief.

I had been to the office a fortnight prior to my joining date, on 18th August to hunt for accommodation that was close to where I had to work. Seeing the amount of dirt, dust, traffic and the accompanying madness and mayhem was too much of a shock for me, given that Mysore was diametrically opposite insofar as the state of affairs on the roads were concerned.

Three days after the entire rigmarole began, I had called my Mum up and told her that I wanted to quit and open a grocery store in Mysore, or teach in my college and I’ve had constantly recurring thoughts of quitting work ever since, but the idea has been mulled over so much that its now relegated to that part of me that tends to over-romanticize trivial situations and circumstances.

Its been four years, and, as is quite evident, I still haven’t quit.

2005: I was not doing too well at work, being torn apart between travelling to Mysore on weekends and attempting to work away on the weekdays, while trying to see if I could get a life outside of work, but failing to do so miserably. Whatever remenants of quizzing I had once thrived on in college had now been reduced to nothing, and things didn’t seem to be going well.

Music, which was such an important part of my life, had also been relegated to oblivion.

In the last week of August 2005, I contracted bronchopneumonia, and as a consequence spent the first anniversary of my starting life as a working professional in bed with a fever of 104 F, getting more pale and gaunt by the minute, but sleeping like a baby and feeling happy about not having to work during that time.

Not the best of times, but not the worst of times either.

2006: Oslo. My second visit there in three months. Awesome place, awesomer experiences overall, and with a trip to Copenhagen under my belt, I was having all the fun I could in the available time. Work was also fun because it was challenging and hectic, and I didn’t really bother much about anything else apart from calling family on occasion and telling them how I was having a blast all over the place.

On the morning of September 1st, I saw two mails – one of them said I had my august salary credited to my account, and another one congratulated me for two years of work in my company. I said Meh to both, as I had said to some other formerly important stuff at the very start of the trip and continued to work, without those two mails bothering me much until a few days ago when I took a lazy stroll down memory lane.

In retrospect, that second trip changed my life for the better in more ways than I’d have imagined it would.

2007: It was three years of loyal service to le company, and for some strange reason, it was supposed to be a monumental occasion, given the attrition rates in the industry. I had put NED by that time to want to stay and celebrate at the office, so I instead took a few days off and chilled out at home instead, growing my beard, combing my hair, trying to figure out the best way to remove knots and having my respect for women go up tenfold because of how they were able to manage their long hair all their lives without wanting to stick their heads in a lawn-mower and be rid of it all.

Nevertheless, this was quite a tame and incredibly lazy time for me, and this anniversary passed on without much ado either.

lt;b>2008: So far, I’ve put one post up on my LJ abusing badly behaved kids, been working away as usual, had a good lunch and am about to go watch Rock On with the band. Nothing out of the blue, just another day at work with the usual stuff taking precedence over anniversaries that don’t really amount to much.

Even if I end up going home after work and just crashing after watching some arbit stuff on TV, I know that I’ll have had fun simlpy because I’ve reached a stage where I don’t give a damn about too many things, and am in a controlled free-fall mode.

I still get goosebumps when I recall Jeff Daniels’ voice in the last episode of The Wonder Years – growing up does happen in a heartbeat, but sometimes, that ain’t such a bad thing either. The important thing is to protect one’s balls to make the most of what you can when you can.

Notes about Nothing – Seattle Diary

Hari — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:22:00 +0000

Its been five months since I returned from Seattle, but somehow something or the other happens that invariably takes my mind back to my trip there. This is a post about some of those memory refreshing incidents that have happened since I got back.

Grey’s Anatomy:
My sister follows the serial, although I haven’t seen more than ten minutes of it, not counting the constant promos on Star World interspersed with a song by ‘The Fray’. Everytime I end up going home, she’s called dibs on the remote whenever the damn serial is on air. The rest of the family sulks in other rooms until such time that the serial is finally over.

However, some evening, I was to lazy to go do something else and I ended up watching the first few minutes of the serial, only to see helicopter shots of the Space Needle, the Seattle Center and 3rd Avenue, after which my sister told me that the serial was based in Seattle. It was kinda cool to see an overhead view of the city and visualize myself having walked along those streets for the various arbit activities I’d undertaken.

A Guy Thing:
Having seen Julia Stiles in ‘The Bourne Supremacy’ and ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’ as well as in ‘10 things I hate about you’ (whose DVD is now selling like hotcakes since it starred Heath Ledger), I thought she was a real cutie, and since I was in the mood for a romantic comedy last evening, I picked up A Guy Thing from my friendly neighbourhood DVD store, only to find out that the entire frigging movie was based in Seattle.

Familiar streets, some shops I’ve walked past, references to Broadway and more shots of the over-rated Space Needle were enough to bring about feelings of nostalgia. The movie itself is something people can watch when they’re feeling brain-dead, and still enjoy it all.

The Hungry Tide:
The Hungry Tide, a book by Amitav Ghosh, and the second book by him that I’ve received as a birthday present after having been given The Glass Palace as a birthday gift a long time ago has one of its major characters based in Seattle. She’s a marine biologist who’s here on some research work, and during moments of reflection has her thoughts drift towards the city she’s grown to call her own.

I’ve gone through only about a hundred pages of that book, given my currently pathetic reading speeds, but so far its not been a bad read.

Gimme S’More:
I’d got enough chocolates from my trip to last me all of five months. I’ve been on a recent sweet consuming binge which has resulted in me eating ice creams, chocolates, sweets of all kinds and drinking unmeasurable quantities of Tropicana Twister, ensuring that my blood sugar levels have reached all-time highs. It was during one of these instances when I was gorging on a Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bar that I was reminded of a S’more.

On my last evening in the city, I had been to a birthday party thrown by some of my ‘native’ friends (I used to refer to American citizens as natives) and while sitting out in someone’s backyard surrounding a fire, sipping slowly on one beer for four hours to as to maintain levels of sobriety necessary to ensure I was at the airport on time the next morning, I was introduced to a S’more, and I can’t honestly think of something else I’ve eaten that’s so brilliantly sweet and tasty at the same time. I gave it my own name at that time, I called it a Hershmellow, because I guess I didn’t think too much of the Graham cracker that was also part of the S’more.

Never pass upon a S’more if given a chance to consume one. In fact, ask for more.

Starbucks, endless solo walks along all the streets, hanging out at the CHAC enough to be a regular there, working decently hard on weekdays and being unerringly slothful during the evenings and weekends, phone calls to India, fond memories of my entire trip and the good times I had have remained, and will be counted as one of the nicest travel xperiences I’ve had.

The times they are a-changin, but the memories remain.

Bangalore Rocks!!!

Hari — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:44:00 +0000

Bangalore rocks! Totally and absolutely.

Although Mysore will always be city no.1 so far as I am concerned for the rest of my life, I’ve grown to love Bangalore so much more after a weekend trip to Chennai. Three days in Chennai on band related work and within twelve hours of landing there, I was pining away for Bangalore and its weather.

Although an inefficient public transport system, bad traffic and moronic motorists and too many IT junta show up as some definite downers against the city’s name, the positives are way too many to discount.

I’d initially taken Bangalore weather for granted, given the fact that Mysore shares pretty much similar weather, although it has been the trend over the past few years to have hotter summers and colder winters in Mysore, but three days in Chennai has made me realize how awesome this city is.

I’d never ever spent more than 24 hours at a stretch in Chennai, and in the absence of air conditioned hotel rooms or an air conditioned studio, death would’ve ensued.

On returning to Bangalore, after getting off the train and heading back home, the cool breeze that kept messing up my short hair in the auto, the familiar Kannada abuses that the auto driver was heaping on other motorists that were navigating the roads as badly as he was, the fact that I could map out the entire route to my place from the railway station (as opposed to not being able to do such a thing at a new place) just made me feel so good.

True, Chennai is slightly more ordered and the infrastructure seems to be in place in a much better manner vis-a-vis Bangalore, and Anna Salai is everywhere in Chennai, but Bangalore just rocks. Period.

Click

Hari — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 12:44:00 +0000

As usual, weekend comprised of some mindless movie-watching spree, one of which was this movie called ‘Click’, starring Adam Sandler, Christopher Walken and Kate Beckinsale.

Adam Sandler is an associate at a design firm, with David Hasslehoff as his boss, and he desperately wants to be made partner, and is willing to sacrifice family time in order to get there. He has a wife (played by Kate Beckinsale, who is a Goddess!!!) and two kids and a dog, who he neglects, despite his best efforts not to, given the fact that his boss knows about his aspirations and wants to milk the zeal and enthusiasm that Sandler displays to the max, while slacking away himself.

Unable to watch TV because the remote is not even remotely simple to handle, he goes into some store and asks for a universal remote, and Christopher Walken gives him a remote that is to forever change his life.

It is a universal remote in every possible sense, and works on human beings as well as it does on things that can actually work with a remote control. He begins to mute/fast forward through those phases that he doesn’t want to endure, and keeps doing this with disastrous consequences.

At the end of the day, it is a feel good movie for the entire family, that stresses on the importance of family values, how children are not to be neglected, and how it is vital for one’s life to not neglect someone as hot and beautiful as Kate Beckinsale in bed.

I had seen Serendipity, that starred Kate Beckinsale and John Cusack, and would, like all foolish people out there, want to endure something similar in the course ofmy life, not because I want my life to be like a movie, but because I would like it to be like a romantic comedy in its truest sense.

Anyway, I am falling in love with Kate Beckinsale, she’s so beautiful, I have no words. She joins the elite ranks of Elisha Cuthbert, Winona Ryder, Meg Ryan, Nandita Das and quite a few other womens that I am not able to recall straight off the top of my head as of this minute.

As far as ‘Click’ is concerned, watch it just before you are about to go to sleep, and want to sleep well with a big goofy retard-like smile on your face.