Doodles of a crazy man!

Most of the people unnecessarily hype up Akbar's religious tolerance. Not that he was not a religiously tolerant man, but what annoys me is that his other great qualities are completely overlooked in this frenzy. Akbar was not only one of the earliest kings who started the trend of inter-religious marriages, but also perhaps the first king to prove that inter-lingual marriages can work. Who was 'that' wife, you might be wondering right? Its the same Jodha, the rajput princess! "What? we saw the movie and both of them seemed to speak Hindi and as far as we remember we did not see any subtitles when either of them spoke. Are you sure?" If these are the questions you are having, step back for a minute and observe what you had overlooked. Jodha spoke 'shuddh hindi' with an overdose of sanskrit, a language that would have become extinct, if not for those uninhabitable suburbs of Barjatya's Sundarnagar. Akbar spoke his hindi with heavy influence...

What happens after a man dies? Is there a God waiting to settle things? Is there another world? An afterlife? Does Chitragupta use the latest version of Tally for his accounting purposes? Or do dead people get bored to death waiting in never ending queues for their turns to come up as he flips through the pages of his dusty old books? Would St.Peter's job be outsourced to some other Indian saint from a tier 2 city? Will the Indian saint have lost it to a mexican or a philipino by the time you reach there? Do the jehadis get their share of 72 virgins? Or will they be given a raw deal citing the dwindling male-to-female ratio as the reason? No, these are not the exact questions I am having. I am thinking more on the lines of what happens to the online world of a person after he dies. Have you ever wondered what will happen to the email account of a person once he dies? What happens to their blog? Their flickr account? Their adsense? I have no clue why, but this question h...

You are asked to do the estimation for a module or a task. You consider the coffee breaks, orkut scrapping and the innumerable hours spent on Wikipedia and IMDB. You make a very high end calculation and add 30% buffer to it and send it to your lead. Your lead takes into consideration the time he would lose in mindless discussions, unwanted conferences and adds his 30% buffer. Your manager thinks of time lost in motivational meetings, online trading and the estimation goes up by 30% more. Finally, your account manager not wanting to be left alone, follows the 30% funda and sends the final estimation to the client. Everybody seem happy dreaming about the happy days ahead. But, from the day the project starts till it ends, everybody starts slogging their posteriors off. I wonder, where all those 30 percents vanish! I know this was a lousy post. But, there are many reasons why I wrote it: One, I dont have enough time. Two, I am in a cribbing mood and is there a better listener than a blog?...

You know when the supposed-to-be-motivating team dinners and unavoidable lunches with acquaintances become much more painful to me than they usually are? When the topic happens to be on food habits. Here is a sample: "You dont drink?", asks the team mate in a friendly tone. "No" "You dont smoke?", unable to hide his surprise. "No" "You dont even eat chicken?", the italics for "even" would barely convey the utter shock he would experience. "No" "Man, you are amazing. Do you at least eat eggs?", the shock has now turned to pity and the look in his eyes tells that he cannot survive another "no" for an answer. "I eat eggs. In fact, I love them", would be my biggest sentence in the whole conversation. "Thank God, you at least eat eggs", he exclaims, a mighty relieved now - and in his book my existence is not as useless as it would have been if by any chance I did not eat eggs. I e...

Why dont the Lufthansa air hostesses smile? They seem too unfriendly, too cold. Its okay if Indians dont smile, we are used to it. Any others, we expect a smile, even a very fake one. Their entertainment facilities suck! There is a common TV on which we have to watch the movie being played. And why oh why are they so costly? I hate the Frankfurt airport too, it looks too hostile. I guess visiting Singapore raises the expectation too much. Not every airport is Changi! I observed that the seat numbers in a row are listed A-B-C, D-E-F-G, H-J-K. There was no "I". I remember noticing this in other aircrafts as well. Not sure what the funda behind this is. Any idea? When I asked for Asian Veg meals, I was told that it was over. I thought of taking a salmon meal and eat everything else except the main item. But, then the air hostess asked me if I am okay with a "Hindu meal". That was the first time I had heard something like that. What has a food got to do with religion? D...

Many guys dream of becoming pilots and many girls of becoming air hostesses when they are kids. Thats what I have heard. At least from so many movie stars. But, I was a different kid. I never wanted to be a pilot. In fact, I never wanted to be anything. I was happy spending long hours looking at my fishes photo book or drawing using my sketch pen set with 12 colors. Even when I was in high school, I did not know what I wanted to become. But, I could realize that not knowing an answer was looked upon with contempt. So at some point in time, I was giving the answer as "I want to do IAS in future". Till today, I have no clue why I gave that answer. A country as screwed up as ours definitely did not need an IAS officer like me. But seriously, I wish I had the guts to do an anti-Luther King and proclaim - "I dont have a dream"! After the PU, it was the usual medical or engineering question that was posed by the people. When you are quite decent in your studies and when y...

I often overrate my instincts. I do have huge self-destructive tendencies. On such days, I pick a really bad movie to watch. Today, it happened to be "Dus Kahaniyaan". I had no big expectations from the movie. The movie was just 2 hours long. That makes it a mere 12 minutes per story. Even if 3 stories are good and a few are not unbearable, I felt it was not a bad choice and it did not seem too risky. How wrong was I! I would not bore you by writing about all of them, but definitely a few that got on my nerves. Strangers In The Night Mahesh Manjrekar and the lady with the longest face, Neha Dhupia are a weird couple who spend their anniversary day disclosing their past infidelities. Neha discloses that she had kissed a stranger in a railway station before meeting Mahesh. Flashback, we get to see Neha kissing the stranger's palm, her chin touching his elbow! She kisses his palm, his fingers - some of the most innovative ways of kissing never seen before on celluloid....

Tring Tring. Tring Tring. Tring Tring. Tring. "You have reached the automated voice messaging system of so-and-so. Please leave a message after the tone" Can you talk to the voice messaging system the same way as you would talk to its owner? If you can, I envy you. If you cant, do you know if there is a name for this disability? :) Just like anyone else, I talk to different people in different ways - the way of addressing, the tone, the language changes with each individual. Its like a protocol set between two people. The response of the person on the other side of the conversation is very important to that protocol. If its a voice messaging system, which is nothing but a dumb recorder - I cannot talk to it like I talk to its owner. I have tried it too hard, but it does not work! I try to sound as normal as possible, but I sound too weird! My recorded-voice-o-phobia is not limited to voicemails. I also hate calling customer support centers - it makes me very uncomfortable. If...

Its a very chilly night, perhaps the coldest I have seen till now. The sleeping pads, the heater, razaai just making sure that the death count in Grand Canyon does not go up. The thermals, jacket, sweater, gloves, socks, sleeping bag - losing the battle against the invincible cold. I am slightly shivering, unable to sleep.The whooshing wind outside acts as the perfect partner for the cold. Just like the pace bowlers, they hunt in pairs. My co-occupants of the tent - Krupa and Saif are sleeping peacefully. May be they were too tired by the travel or they have had their share of struggle with cold already. After more than an hour of losing sleep, I feel a bit drowsy. I enter my home in Mysore. Its too crowded. Dont know why there are so many people, may be some function. I proceed to the backyard, where a few cousins are sitting and chatting. I join the conversation. All of a sudden, I realize that there was a cricket match the previous day. What happened to the match, I ask my brother...

I have always been fascinated by curse words or abusive words. Though I am quite familiar with abusive words in other languages, I will give more examples from Kannada, as those were part of my growing up. Let me start by analyzing how cursing works. The main intention of abuse is to insult and also hurt the other person. Thats the key. If you have a set of vocabulary that your recipient does not understand or does not consider derogatory, sorry sir, its a waste! Kids begin their cursing using simple words like "stupid" , "idiot" , "fool" etc. And it does not take too much time for them to realize that these qualities are so common and acceptable, they cease to be curse words in the long run. And as kids, our abuses were mainly restricted to the animal names. A typical kid fight when we were young would go like this: Kid 1: "Kaththe" (Donkey, not ass ;) ) Kid 2: "Kothi" (Monkey) Kid 1: "Naayi" (Dog) Kid 2: "Goobe...

It was just another tuesday evening. A bit more strenuous perhaps. Yet another conf call. Tired voices. Stressed out faces. The projector looks the brightest in the room, almost too inhuman. I am just rocking in my chair and all of a sudden I am rocking more. And suddenly less. I shiver. Tense faces show unusual signs of alertness. "Hold on guys, we may be having an earthquake", tells my manager. A less tiring day, he would have screamed it. The realization had not hit me. I could not visualize the wreckage, the pile of garbage and unrecognizable dead bodies yet. Its just a little jerky boat ride. And then a slightly bigger tremor, that gives me what cricket commentators call butterflies in the tummy. "Will call later" declares my manager as he disconnects the phone. We all head towards the door. A colleague is just standing there coolly checking the message on his phone. Another colleague gets a text message within a few seconds from his brother - "You felt it...

RK of RwB has tagged me to write on the kinds of people I judge and things I admire. People I judge: Myself (I am too self obsessed to ignore myself!) Who dont maintain eye contact while talking Who talk extremely loud Poor listeners Who give advice even if unasked Who cannot accept a different opinion or view Who are extremely polite or overtly nice Who watch soap operas Couples who sit side by side (and not opposite to each other) at a table in a restaurant Who dont have a passion about anything in life Who tell that they dont have time for anything Who use Internet Explorer (No, not exactly, well, yeah, may be!) Things I admire: Honesty Movies Music Cartoons Humor Exploring different things Inquisitive mind People who manage time very well People who accept their faults gracefully ...

No matter how strongly you love something, there are some aspects about it that will irritate you. I happen to love cricket very much. I think Manindar Singh - Yashpal Sharma - Arun Lal brigade's hindi commentary easily takes the first position among things I hate about cricket. The second place deservedly goes to Charu Sharma, "I-will-give-cute-smile-by-stretching-my-mouth-to-fit-wide-screen-tv" Mandira Bedi and the entire Sony channel who turn the game into soap opera. The next place definitely goes to the losing captain's cliched speech in the post match presentation ceremonies. Here are a few samples: "We had a bad day at the office" ( I hate the guy who invented this statement. Why not work from home for a change? ) ----- "We are playing non-stop cricket for the last few months. Its taken a toll on the players. I know we are professionals, we are proud of playing for the country, but, well, I mean, you know...(and the show me sympathy look)...

When was the last time I had met U? (No, I am not a messaging freak. So, U does not mean "you", U means "U") U looked majestic as she walked, her Irish skin glowing in that evening sun. And there was I accompanying her. (For the uninitiated blog readers, I does not mean "me", I means "I") Both U and I offer me handshakes and we sit on a bench nearby. All of a sudden, U asks me "Can I get some pepsi for us?" I looked surprised. It surprises me too. U was the laziest person we had ever seen and completely surprised by this question. "What happened Madame Lazee?", me teases her. "Hey dumbo, I loves searching vending machine, he will get the pepsi for us. Me aint goin' nowhere no more" My guess was that she has been listening to lot of R&B nowadays. I gets up and goes searching for the vending machine. "Know what, I have never told this to anyone. But, I was in love with U since the college days", I ...

"Impossible!" I have now learnt to use that phrase very judiciously. I would have used it two years back, if you had told me that I would open a blog. And here I am writing my 100th post! Yaaayy! Thank you, thank you (in advance, for all the congratulating comments :) ) There are a few posts that gave me great joy while writing and I happen to like them even now as I read them. So, here are my favorites - for those who came late to my blog, for people on bench with great taste, for people whose managers are on a long vacation and those who have to read a post for the second time to get motivated to leave a comment :) American GaadegaLu - This post got published in Vijaya Karnataka (with no reference to me) as a forward from some reader (this post still amuses me, apart from teaching a lesson on copyright protection) A few funny incidents, without such, life would be so dull - Howz it goin'? A What? Reducing Prices A trip down the memory lane posts like Pens a...

I have been tagged by Of This And That . There are 3 rules. Rule 1. The rules must be mentioned in the beginning of the tag. Rule 2 You must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your middle name. If you don’t have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had. Rule 3. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag. Well, I dont have a middle name. So, I would choose "NIHIL" (I like the sound of it. "Nihil" means "Nothing". So it kind of makes sense to have it when you dont have a middle name :D) N umbers I am obsessed with numbers. I dont like even numbers in general, more so if it is divisible by 2 and not divisible by 4. If I see a 4 digit number, I will try to see if the digits in that number has any relation or not. Prime numbers hold special fascination for me. (If you see a guy staring long at your vehicle number plate, that mus...

I love airports. I always remember the opening scene of "Love Actually" . There is so much positive energy in there. It is so unlike the air travel itself, which is pretty boring and congested. The lady standing next to me in the check-in queue had a quiet confidence about her, her hair carelessly tied up that made her casual look so lovable. "Shall I help you?" she asked me while I was trying to lift my heavy baggage. I guessed I was probably unconsciously mimicking someone, thereby exaggerating the difficulty in lifting my bags. "Girl, you look thinner than me. And I don't want to disrupt your carelessly tied hair" No, I did not say the exact words. "No thanks, I can manage". I am not against taking help, its just that I could easily manage myself. While standing in the queue for getting boarding passes, I was given a form to fill and filling forms is one thing that I hate so much! I am generally very conscious while filling forms, as I am ...

The dark lady was sitting on a chair in the opposite row. Next to her was an innocent kid in weird red pants. Must have been her son I guess. He had a story book in his hand. The book did not have many pages and each page had a colorful picture with a sentence describing the story. The lady was translating the story into Kannada, which the kid listened to with astonished look on his face. The story was something like this: Peter (looked like a small bear or rabbit or some animal - could not figure out properly from a distance) was strolling around near the forest. Peter stopped for a moment as he saw a car parked there. He thought for a while and approached the car. He noticed that the car was unlocked. He got into the car and turned it on. He pressed the accelerator as the car sped away. As he was going down the road, he tried to apply the brakes. The brakes did not work and he panicked. He shouted "Help, help" out of desperation. Finally, he jumped out of the car and fe...

I had been to "Chak De India" on Sunday. The movie was into its third week, yet the crowd was substantial considering a rainy afternoon. A group of "commenting" spectators were sitting a few rows behind us. As soon as Shahrukh took the hockey stick in the opening scene, the "commentators" yelled " Goal missed, guru "! Yes, they were right! During the players registration scene, when Nethra tells " Nethra Reddy from Andhra Pradesh ", one of them yelled again " Yaake Karnataka avru yaaroo ilwa? " (Why nobody from Karnataka?) This smart comment was received well by his friends, who cheered him with loud laughter, that would have put the movie villains of the seventies to shame. Even in the noisiest of scenes (when spectators in the stadium were cheering for the players) the group never missed an opportunity to comment. And loud enough to be heard across the hall. After the movie ended, we saw that this group had no more than 5 pe...

We often hear people talking very lightly of Indian cinema. I am myself guilty of this crime many a times. Agreed, we have never made a great biography (we needed a Richard Attenborough to make Gandhi ) We have not made a decent "road movie". The nearest we have gone to make an animation movie was the irritating parrot in "Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon" (other than Esha Deol making weird faces at the camera, of course!). Our war movies are always jingoistic, highly cliched boring sagas (Somebody try a " Thin Red Line " or an " Apocalypse Now " please!) Apart from the shameless Hollywood rip-offs and NRI romances, we have not actually fared that bad. We were the pioneers in a great many things (for which we rarely get credit) and some of them are so original that nobody has dared to copy. Here is an attempt to honor them. Lost n found King of all plot devices. Parents never learn to hold their children's arms firmly, children...