Munnabhai

Saturday night... Sajal's room... A mumbaikar putting intro... My name is...blah blah blah.... 'I feel bad for Sanjay dutt'... In a moment, both of us recovered from our leaning postures and well..sat in attention. 'Why do you feel bad for him?'... 'because he got a 6 years term and that when he had already served a good amount of time on the wrong side of those bars and another person, with similar charges, got only 4 years'... 'Who told you that?'... 'The Idiot box which is getting more idiotic by the day' ...

That was just one incident... There are, I'm sure, others like him who also feel bad for Munnabhai. For them it doesn't matter what his crime was and how much of the punishment he deserved and in a good no, they don't even know the details. they feel bad just because the media paints a sorry picture through the TV and people, as idiotic as the box itself, can't think for themselves. He is found guilty and he is punished, simple as that. His crime was hiding the RDX used for the blasts which crippled the very spirit of the city, and giving India its 1st taste of urban terror. Think I've made my point... Adios...

Oye Freshie!!!

I remember the 1st envelope I received from IITM, the ones foll0owing it hardly memorable, carrying the grade sheet. Well the 1st one carried some papers regarding admission and that GCU introductory booklet. G.C.U. stands for guidance and counselling unit, it proclaimed. A student's body, which makes your entry into the campus smooth and memorable. To be very honest, I didn't get past the 2nd page of it. coming to campus, I discovered their was a whole network of counsellors, coords etc. who talked more and worked less. I don't remember filling any GCU feedback form or attending their programme and so I assume I didn't do either of it. A friend later told me that he had filled it up as negatively as he could and still wasn't contacted. Well I blame that on the inefficiency of a member rather than the unit itself. At this point I can add that neither me, nor my GCU counsellor bothered to see each other. I still don't know who he was.

Fast Forward to 2007. New entrants are being sent a CD showing life in campus, which I'm told, overdoes it and ends up suggesting that we should be introducing ourselves to the freshies. I don't really believe that someone be shown respect just because he was born an year earlier and all the juniors who know me would swear by it but at the same time, 1st 15 days or so are bound to be different as you are beginning a new life and it's the ones around you who are going to matter and they deserve to know a bit about you. I can say by experience and many more can too, that the seniors ragging you most( which ain;t much compared to annny other col) usually turns out to be the most helpful one and in my case, no less than a friend.

This time around, our verrry innovative administration decides to allot hostels by branches and I have no idea if anyone can benefit from it but this ain't the topic and I won't digress from the main subject. Well another brainwave was to start college from 30th, while freshies begin from 2nd. This may be due to some other reasons but I suspect the idea was to get us busy even before the freshies turn up. Result: Parents thronging the campus, with no plans of leaving the campus before the weekend due to which, I have to curb my habit of hurling abuses and roaming in the wing without a tee. I'm not against parents coming to the place to settle their child, mine did too, but a week? The scene at Gurunath might as well have been the same at a boarding school canteen but this is a College and half the kids are adults already and now with the GCU spoon-feeding and protecting them against their seniors then why worry. I know he's your aankhon ka taara madam, but we aren't exactly butchers. Like your child, we too have cleared JEE and we too were once as ignorant and shy as him and in most cases know our limits and honestly if he can't bear an IITian's ragging, the real world is far worse. On a more conceited note, you should thank us for teaching your son all about sex, who at 18, should already have known., which is, by the way, not the only teaching we impart. He will also learn to at least give company to boozers and smokers.

P.S. : Politics is an elective here with every hostel having at least 2 seasoned profs.

Muzik n' Me

Nother game...
though it's somethin I'm not quite interested in, will give it a shot anyway, being tagged by Twilight Fairy...

Statutory Warning: All the answers contain songs you may never have listened to, they being hindi or punjabi numbers...

Here goes...

1. which song is being played in ur mind rite NOW!

Ans: Sadho re by Agnee

2. one song that describes ur life.... (no self made compositions please!)

Ans: that's difficult... Kandisa by Indian Ocean (don't understand wat the song means, neither what my life does n like both of 'em)

3. the song u listen to most on ur i-pod/ MP3/ cell/ PC/ etc

Ans: Aadat by jal, Highway to hell by ACDC

4. a song that describes best the foll stages in ur life:

Ans: musafir hun yaaron...

5. your all time favorite song, nd the reason for it... mebbe some memory/ some funny story/etc!!!

Ans: Hothon se choo lo tum... you will know why if you ever listen to ghazals

6. a song u wish u hadn't heard!!! (more than one is always a pleasure!!!)

Ans: Bheege hoth tere, most of the so called melodious ones released of late n yeah... Kiss of love in JBJ

7. a song that would best describe..... me(tagger)

Ans: Paathshala(RDB) n' duniya by raageshwari

8. (i jus cudn't miss this!!!) If, u were in an elevator with Himesh Reshammiya and Altaf Raja, you would..........

Ans: Well I'd congratulate himesh... He's managed to sell albums despite singing slight variations of some basic rythm... You gotta admire him for that... Altaf???? I'll ask him to recite a sher n put it as my status msg,, crappy as they usually are...

Tagging..well only 1 once again... Bhava...

Die Hard, Bruce ishtyle

A boring afternoon and looking at a monotonous evening. Yours truly jumps as if hit by lightning. Through the stack of newspapers, he unearths the Die Hard review.4 stars... Awesome. The evening suddenly looks promising. After a few phone calls, Batman manages to find a Robin, who is as yet ignorant of the latest feats of 'detective' John McClane. Batman n' Robin are staring at a Bagpiper club soda commercial(better than Nalli saree, for sure) within an hour. A woman is wearing a perfume so heavy, that she dragged under it's weight. A baby cries... Gosh... Someone's watching THIS with a toddler? people shuffle through to their seats... Cooling ain't good... complaints galore... So much for a good start... Focus on the screen... A guy is chatting, presses delete and his existence is deleted(bombed)... Everyone sits tongue-tied.

Bruce Willis enters, pulling out his daughter's date and that's the calmest part of the movie. He is then sent to round up a hacker and we know what we have to do. Just shut up, that is. Some cool action is followed by even cooler stuff. The tech-stuff is too hi-fi to even bother, as long as you get the idea of new-age terrorism or 'fire cell'...It's the one-liners you should be looking for...

Just before intermission is the tunnel sequence, which is by far the best part. I can never go in a tunnel now without praying...

Robin speaks as we are leaving the hall " 4 stars ain't right, it deserves above 5 man"( He rates Matrix 10 on a scale of 5)

In the end, it's just an action movie with little story but great action... Took my breath away.

P.S.: I'd give my right arm for that foldable keyboard ;)

Rendezvous with a kid

Every time I go to someone's home, someone with a small kid, It just seems that an old film is being remade hazaar times over. The man calls the kid. He is told I'm his uncle, brother, whatever. Now I call the kid and start asking the same old stupid set of questions, out of sheer formality. What's ur name? What's your father's/mother's name? School , age etc. The kid answers everything confidently. After all, he faced an interview loaded with the same questions to get admission in a prep school and passed with flying colours. His parents had put in long hours to drive this stuff into his head. Coming back, now that I have exhausted the usual set and by experience, have learnt that kids are not used to new queries, I have no idea what to do next. The parents are naturally enjoying their little angels quick answers and swelling with pride. Sometimes I even fear a kid telling me to ask something new as he is bored of these questions.

I am fond of kids but I'm not good with them. I like it when a kid pulls one on me but somehow most of them find me repelling. Perhaps it's my just that I can't get to talking with them or maybe it's just the absence of a deo-spray, I don't know. I just hope that you know a way out of the situation I talked about and if you do, please, please help me!!!

The 8RF Game...

I was surfing through blogs yesterday and found this new tagging thing going on. To my disappointment, I hadn't been tagged, being the rare blogger I am.Now that I am, thanks to Twilight Fairy, I'll play along.Here goes....

Here are the rules:

1.Players start with 8 random facts about themselves.
2.Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts.
3.Players should tag 8 other people and notify them they have been tagged.


Eight Random Facts about me:

1. I'm flat-footed and can't run fast.
2. I'm the most comp-illiterate guy to have ever owned a laptop. I somehow manage it, thanks to Rajesh and Sajal( I.P.), my neighbours on either side.
3. When I was about 5, I locked my mother in a hospital bathroom to avenge her doing the same a day back. I then went to have lunch with some docs, who were quite fond of me. She sat there locked for over an hour. I was never locked after that ;)
4. I have been living away from home since 7th standard. 1st Ajmer, then Kota and now Madras.
5. I hate it when someone tells me I look younger than I am, though I know it's true.
6. My father calls me a 'half' ateist because of my attitude towards God and my mother is constantly miffed with me over that.
7. Among my 4 cousins and a younger bro( I live in a joint family) I was always the naughtiest, breaking more stuff then all the others out together. My brothers later surpassed me when they drove a tractor straight into an old wall.Luckily, all 3 came out unharmed.
8. I started blogging because Bhaavaas offered me a treat for it and I'm glad that I did. I still am a terribly irregular blogger and do not even know 8 bloggers who I can tag.

All I can think of tagging is Bhaavaas.

Route to reservations

Guess it's too late to write this now. The revolt ceased a month back but ever since the Mahindra classic jeep was torched in front of my eyes, the passengers escaped though, this was due. It all started when yours truly, against everyone's wishes, decided to board the overnight bus to Jaipur. Oh wait that wasn't the beginning. This was just the backdrop. The action started when my cousin insisted that I delayed my journey back by a day and attend his friend's wedding at some small village, a few hours from Jaipur. I must here say that I actually enjoyed a wedding in a long time with only about 20 'baratis'.

Things were all going well when we got the news that the Gujjars, OBCs as of now, detested their higher social position, as compared to Meenas and demanded social equality. Now the Meenas had not managed to rise, despite boasting of families which have all, yes my dear ALL working members placed in the IPS or IAS. Keeping this in mind, the Gujjars demanded that they be granted a lower social status. They wanted to descend to their level when their bretheren could not rise.

This was all fine till it was a peaceful, civilised request to the government. Things went sour when they resorted to disobedience of govt. Vehicles were stopped and turned back leaving people starnded. Police forces were attacked whereever they could be spotted. Confusion, Panic, Trauma, Agony. My limited vocabulary gives way. The canvas was way larger than I can narrate. For a week every sunset would leave behind a few more corpses, every moon was reflected in the tears of a few more families. Ah...Rajasthan my homeland. It never was like this. My grandpa says even the partition was better. Though I believe memories fade with time and partition must have been worse but this wasn't a partition or was it?

Thanks to the vote hungry politicians, the administrators lacking foresight, we are now officially and strictly divided into religion, region, caste and class. Left out someone to blame? YES, me and you for not doing anything. Not making any small difference that we can. I know I'm getting all worked up and hence the outburst. I also know this feeling won't last but I hope the blog will.

Forgot to put in a word about the media. I believe they think Policeman means martyr. Everytime a shot was fired by the Police, even after being attacked, the media went after it with hammer and tongs. What are they supposed to do? Die with the gun in hand without ever firing a shot?

Don't know how to end this. So I decided I'll end my mournings here and now.