Doodles of a crazy man!

I woke up at 9.00 AM on the saturday morning. Not yet done with the full quota of my sleep, I said to myself and went into the extraaa sleep. Then, I had this weird dream. I am inside a very long house. Must have been constructed in a 20 x 2000 site! I suppose I am talking to a group of people I did not see very clearly. I feel very hungry and the people tell me that there is no food left in the house and I need to go to a nearby hotel. It takes me quite a long to reach the entrance of the house (the house was so long that the back door of the house cannot be seen from the entrance) I try to wear my slippers and I see somebody has put anna-sambar inside my slippers. I sit down near the door and I try to clean up my slippers and realize that the amount of food in my slippers can feed at least three people. There are three kids sitting in a queue near the entrance of the door, the eldest one first and the youngest one last. Only the first two kids are having food and I realize that the ...

It was almost 3.00 AM. A series of lousy ads like Fit-kit biscuits, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy's soul-mind garbage, Anda Khao-Haath thodo were being shown back to back. We, the devoted cricket lovers, were waiting to see the presentation ceremony of India-Srilanka match. We knew, we would be listening to the usual "We did not do what we were capable of", "things did not go our way" or "we were outplayed and outclassed in every department" crap! Its not the losing that hurt, but the way we lost - there was no pride, no commitment, no character. I remembered that old joke from Annie Hall . That two women were sitting in a restaurant. One says "the food here is pathetic". And the other says, "yeah, and in such small quantities". Thats how I felt about India's World Cup campaign - full of misery, suffering, unhappiness and its all over much too quickly. All the channels were full of cricket analysis the next morning. One channel was runnin...

Just a day before Ugadi, I remembered the conversation I had with my brother a few years ago. As you might know, we prepare Bevu-Bella on Ugadi day ( Bevu means neem and Bella means jaggery) and its significance is that life is a mixture of joys and sorrows and we should accept both in the right spirit. We had heard this explanation from childhood, so we thought of giving some new dimensions to this. Here are a few we came up with. 1) If you have eaten Bevu-Bella , you would know that jaggery gets dissolved instantly while the taste of neem lasts on your tongue for a long time. This denotes that joy is short lived and the bitterness or sorrow stays on with us for a long time. 2) Before eating Bevu-Bella , we get mentally prepared for the bitterness of the neem (and totally forget that there is also jaggery with it) This is how we look at life, don't we? Always scared of the bad things, apprehensive about the future, fear of losing - that we don't even realize that there were ...

Its yet another lousy friday evening. I am standing near the Corporation bus stop. So many people in there, which would make a claustrophobic person die twice in a minute. Lots of BTS buses pass by. Each one is hopelessly overcrowded. No auto driver is ready to come to Majestic. Friday and majestic, no way mate! I wish I could fly like those crouching tigers and hidden dragons. Should I somehow get onto the foot boards of one of those overcrowded buses? Somehow. What if my grip loosens and I fall down and die? Is it really a nice way to die? No! But, is dying due to suffocation and smoke worth it? Could not quite decide. Hell, this does not make any sense. Suddenly, I see the bright red volvo with orange colored number lights on the other side of the road. I somehow manage my way in the sea of honking vehicles. "Majestic?" I ask the conductor and rush inside the red giant, not even bothering to wait for his affirmation. I look at the small TV next to the driver (an alternativ...

I read this topic on some blog and I have auto-tagged myself :) 1. Slow drinking I can eat pretty fast, but I cannot drink anything fast. Be it hot coffee, a milkshake or even plain water, I drink very slow. I drink in very small sips, as if I don't want to let those moments go. I take more stoppages in drinking a glass of water than Hugh Grant would take in talking a simple English sentence. One of my friends used to say, "You drink water with so much love"! 2. Repetitive Musical Disorder If I get obsessed with a song, I will listen to that song (in repeat mode), till I get over that obsession. " Careless Whisper " played for a week, " Preethiya Kare Keli " was around a fortnight and Prem Joshua took more than a month for me to come out of that obsession. I know, among all my weird qualities, this has been the most annoying to my friends. 3. Fear of dogs You know why I missed the award for the bravest man on the planet? Because of the existence of ...

"Hey Pinky baby, Mama told me that you did some great painting today at school" , said papa as he entered the room with his brown suitcase late that night. "Yeah papa", smiled Pinky, obviously happy for the recognition she was getting. Pinky, the 6-year old was wearing a baby pink skirt. She had two short pony tails that made her look like a mickey mouse with a normal nose. "Good, so what did your teacher say?" "Very good". She smiled, as if a smile represented the end of a sentence. "So what did you paint today?" "I painted a...a..." "I got it. I know you are not into too much abstract or symbolism. You must have done something representational. Was it a scenery?" "Yes. I painted one hill, one river, one sun...", she was interrupted by the over-enthusiastic papa. "I know sweety, it must be as wonderful as Koppelaar's 'Landscape Near Bologna'. Your last year painting of your school was very...

"Araluthiru Jeevada Geleya ... Snehadaa Sinchanadalli ... " (Blossom O Dear Friend...In The Sprinkle Of Friendship) Shreya Goshal has been singing this song for more than a hundred times at least, in my ipod from the past few weeks. I am simply in love with this song. Easily the best song from " Mungaaru MaLe ". Perfect song for a morning travel. I don't like Shreya Goshal in general (she reminds me of Aishwarya Rai!) but the way she has sung this song is divine. Jayanth Kaaykini's lyrics is superb (when was the last time I heard a song with good lyrics?) and the orchestrization is amazing (guitars, drums and sax used very intelligently) Many of the guys whom I talked to have agreed this was the best song from " Mungaaru MaLe ". But, I was surprised to know that an overwhelmingly higher percentage of girls liked the Sonu Nigam version of the same song " Anisuthide ". I just asked myself "What would Freud say?" (the new slogan...

I got a forward from a friend which was something like this: "Arjuna always wondered why Rama did not build the bridge to Lanka himself and took the help of monkeys. So he met Hanuman to clarify this. Then, Arjuna had a bet with Hanuman that he would build an unbreakable bridge and if he failed he would enter the fire. Then, he skillfully built a bridge of arrows. Hanuman prayed to Rama and placed his tail on the bridge and it broke down. As per the bet, Arjuna was about to enter the fire when an old Brahmin happened to come there. He told that since a bet is not valid without a witness, they should start over again. Arjuna prayed to Krishna and constructed the bridge of arrows. Hanuman stepped on the bridge arrogantly, but nothing happened. He walked around, jumped, but no, the bridge did not move an inch. Now, the old Brahmin turned into Krishna and he said - 'The first time Arjuna thought that he was building the bridge and Hanuman took Rama's name, so the bridge fell d...

The bus comes to a screeching halt. I open my eyes ever so slightly. Its somewhere near Hanakere. The road is blocked. We are the first vehicle to get stopped. Che, we should have started 2 mins early! There are very few villagers near the road blockade. Only a few teenage tapori looking guys orchestrating the road block. One guy with a gaudy t-shirt and a faded cap, looks like the leader of the group. Yaakkh thoo! He spits on the ground, emphasising the sense of ownership he feels for the road. The group starts making some jokes and laugh loudly. They hardly convey the pain and distraught you would expect from the farmers. They get a good number of old tyres, collecting which might have taken some effort. They distribute two tyres per person and start burning it on the road quite religiously. The fire brings a festival mood among that group. I could easily visualise the leaders of futute generation in them. Honestly speaking, I am not aware of the complexities and the extent of diffic...

I watched the movie "The Abyss" yesterday. Unadulterated hollywood alien-sci-fi garbage. Pseudo-emotions mixed with american-arrogance, so much crap that it would have given Karan Johar some serious inferiority complex. But, this made me think why so many alien stories are so similar. Lets come to the assumptions in the alien movies: 1) Aliens always love to make contact with the humans (If I were an alien, I would try to make contact with crocodiles - much more interesting, right?) 2) Aliens are generally much more intelligent than humans (Its hard to beat the dumbness of humans - probably aliens don't watch Big Boss! Also, since 'they' contact us by reaching 'our' planet, they must be better than us!) 3) Aliens by default understand or learn English (by intercepting the cerebral signals and interpreting with the aural waves and decoding to hexadecimal system - you will be given some such nonsense by the story writers) If you tell the aliens "howdy...

I am not a very gifted person. No, I am not talking about talent or the obvious lack of it. I am talking about gifts (or presents). I got one such rare gift from my cousin Krupa . "Do you read books?", asked Krupa when I had called her. "I don't read regularly, but I read. Yaake?" (The latest survey shows that 8 out of 10 questions people ask me will have the reaction 'yaake?' from me. May be I am too curious to know what made people ask me such a question!) "Nothing, I just asked" I met her that evening and she handed over me a book, with a note inside - "To a person who is almost as irritating as the author of this book!". The book was "Without Feathers" (and the second page of the book containing an Emily Dickinson quote - "Hope is the thing with feathers") Guess who the author is? Yes, its the same bespectacled genius - Woody Allen ! I was like "Wow, where did you get this?". I was as excited as a si...

Conversation 1: (Having dinner at a restaurant in Basaveshwaranagar on thursday night) "Do you remember there used to be a hero in Kannada films?" "Who? How did he look like?" "He was not very famous. He had curly hair" "Oh okay, Sunil?" "No, but he acted around the same time. I think he has acted movies with Sudharani." "Who else? Shashikumar? Ramkumar?" "No, he was not a Kumar. I know him, but I cannot remember the name" "He has acted with Shruthi? Abhijit?" "No, he was not very famous I guess" "Raghuveer? Gulzar Khan?" "Namskaar pa. He was not that bad. He was generally a poor guy, a tailor in some movies. He always has lot of problems." "There were lot of bad movies and bad actors around that time. There was a movie called 'Mangalya' around that time. Malashree and Sunil are lovers and Sunil's brother Sridhar marries her so that..." "Yeah, its S...

(Late evening discussion at my home on sunday) "You have got a pimple, anna", exclaimed a friend of mine. "So?" "Somebody has a crush on you!" "Really? This is the first time I am hearing this theory" "Yeah, you did not know about it?" "No, I am getting pimples from more than 10 years. I never realized who all those people were", I started laughing. What started out as casual talk soon turned out into serious discussion. I was proposing theories, building stories around it. Okay, lets assume that the pimple-crush connection is right. But, whats the use? We will never know who the person is. Its like getting missed calls in old phones which don't have caller ids! May be there should have been ids associated with pimples. Then, it would have helped the crushee recognize the crusher (is that the right word? ;)) Nobody there calls this pathetic joke of mine as a pathetic one. They are such nice people! Okay, this theory sounds...

"Hey, you got the mail?" "No, what about you?" "Just got the mail from Alexandra" "What does she say?" "Prices are reduced" "Again? Really?" "Yeah, its just $2.00 for 100 mg now" "Wow, last week it was $2.38. Its a huge price drop" "Will it reduce still?" "What? You mean the price?" "Ha ha, of course the price" "I don't think so, the holiday season is over" "Okay, what are you going to do now?" "Mark the mail as spam and delete it" "Hahaha" - we all have a hearty laugh. A typical conversation in our cubicle block every time any of us receive a spam mail on aphrodisiacs!

Location : Meeting Room Number of people : Twelve, may be thirteen "So how are things going on?" "Good, good" "Are we on target for friday?" "Yeah, we have a couple of difficulties, but we should be in a position to fix them up" "So, no other hurdles other than that?" "We fixed a few blocker bugs, so hopefully the testers will test those modules. But, we cannot rule out any other blocker bugs being detected since these features started working." "That seems scary to me. What do you say?" "No, lets see how it goes. We will monitor things closely and we only take a call after that. We should just prioritize and move forward" "Okay, if you are confident, I am okay with it. So, how are the remaining modules looking up? Do we have enough clarity or is it blurred?" "We are okay, just need answers to some questions thats all. So, I would say we have a clear vision" At this point of time, I turn...

The Christmas trip to Goa was quite amazing. We had planned for this trip from a very long time. What was planned as a trip needing a tempo traveller turned out to be a Tata Indica trip. No R&D was done for the trip, no planning. We had not even booked for any hotel rooms (Take that for audacity!) We leave Bangalore pretty late on friday night (as usual all estimates got screwed up) and even an uncomfortable car like Indica could not stop me from having a decent sleep. I was half awake the next morning near Karwar and I was humming the song "I ain't gonna miss her tonight". Hey, I don't seem to remember whose song it is. Have I heard it before? Then, it strikes me that it was some stanza and tune I had composed during early morning sleep! It does not take me even a minute to realize that the inspirations for this song are two contrasting songs - Jim Reeves' "I Miss Me" and Eric Clapton's "I Ain't Gonna Stand It". Its not plagiarism,...

My deep "second innings sleep" of monday morning was disturbed by the familiar loud voice. The radio in the volvo bus had caught the signal of some number one radio station of Bangalore (Did you know that there is no "number two" radio station in Bangalore? Every channel claims to be number one!) Harsha and Shwetha were as loud and incoherent as any RJs (I feel only Sunaina Lal is tolerable, for that contagious energy!) Their job was not only playing bad songs, but to give irrelevant solutions to unwanted problems of useless people. Some guy called Raja had mailed them about his problem! Raja knew Pinky from the last two and a half years. It looked like they were in love. Or at least they were headed that way. From the last month or so, Raja was not able to talk to Pinky. He had mailed these experts to help him out! Shwetha was shouting her lungs out "Should Raja wait for Pinky? Or should he forget her and get on with his life? For option A, SMS A to...okay Raj...

Running out of original ideas is not the only reason why I am writing this article. ;) I happened to stumble upon Devil's Dictionary last week. It is a satirical book by Ambrose Bierce , having funny interpretations of English words. There are very few things that have made me laugh whole-hearted and this was definitely one among them. Here are a few definitions that I loved very much. Abstainer : A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. Absurdity : A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. Acquaintance : A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to. Admiration : Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves. Apologize : To lay the foundation for a future offense. Armor : The kind of clothing worn by a man whose tailor is a blacksmith. Brain : An apparatus with which we think we think. Congratulation : The civility of envy. Conservative : A statesman enam...

I am quite a cricket fan myself and I love watching and playing cricket (arguably the best left handed batsman of Kuvempunagar ;)) I don't care if it is a test match or one-day, Indo-Pak series or World Cup. I can even watch the galli cricket, as I adore the art in the game. Its the poetry in the game that appeals to me. I always considered that Indian cricket team consists of some amazing players, but we are nowhere near when it comes to a good team. We have never won convincingly for too long and we are never predictable (Its not just a problem with India, but all the sub-continent teams) Off late, India have been playing pretty badly (as bad as they are capable of) and we are seeing intense reactions from the "fans". I somehow don't understand many of the logic behind the anger of the "fans"! 1) The most stupid statement I hear very often is "Cricketers are playing badly because they are concentrating too much on advertisements". Come on, can an...

I looked at him as I locked my computer on this friday evening. He was finishing the final few activities in the project, as he was supposed to leave onsite on another assignment. I queued Anoushka's Yaman Kalyan and Kirwani back to back in my ipod and lifted my bag. He was playing some old country songs in his winamp, while his IDE was talking to cvs to check in the last set of files. I entered the cab and removed my slippers. (Being barefoot makes me so happy!) He was tying the lace of his shoes - getting ready for his longest association with shoes, after his high school days. He is 26, well, an year younger to me. I know him quite well. Its not surprising that we share the same name. People have told me that we are so alike (many can't differentiate between the two of us), but somehow I feel we are pretty different, in spite of all those similarities. He has never seen snow, never been to skiing. He has never heard Prem Joshua (Jeez, and he still claims to have a great co...