I am...... So am I.

It’s been a while since I blogged and as I put pen to paper, rather fingers to the keyboard, (me thinks that the pen and paper expression would do well only in archaic folders now) it feels rather odd. Krash used to coax me to continue blogging. Rod once taunted me by calling me an R.I.P. blogger. Despite this, I wouldn’t: not that I cared a damn. A part of me always wanted to continue updating my blog space while the other part always procrastinated and we all know which prevailed. I wonder why I postpone things which I would really want to do.

Now that I’ve finally got over my other half and I continue writing, I smile to myself and say 'see, its the victory of good over evil'. 'What rot' chides my other half, 'By the way, do you remember you have four tasks still lined up before you call it a day?' Omigosh! I minimize my blog and get on with my work. But, before I wind up, I am determined to at least write something and I can almost hear myself say 'Hey! We can do this tomorrow, you see.' I keep going, all the more determined to finish what I started. Now when I’m satisfied with what I’ve got, I think about the other voice that keeps me from doing what I want. I shrug and laugh out loud at the thought that I’m a schizophrenic.... 'So am I.'

Rumours!

Rumours can work wonders. It can ruin you beyond salvation, but if proved baseless it can also raise you to a level previously conceived improbable, if not impossible. Such was the state of affairs at Maina Gul on Thursday that a curious whisper from a colleague in the office went from ear to ear before it spread like wild fire. Word got around that Ash, the most eligible bachelor in town er. . in Amboli… hmm..Maina Gul, who had accompanied his parents to Mangalore had got engaged. That set the cat among the pigeons; would resentment among girls be a better expression? I guess that would explain things literally, but i would stick to cat among pigeons. To get back to the point, tongues were wagging incessantly. Girls began to voice their opinion openly that they did not approve of this ungentlemanly behaviour. Of course, when pretty young things engage cupid to aim their love darts at you, the one thing that you are not expected to do is sneak off to Mangalore and get yourself engaged. Little wonder then that when Ash entered office, work ground to a halt. The questions hurled at Ash intensified with every passing moment though shutterbugs were kept at bay. Even stout denials from Ash were met with accusing stares. It was only when the near and dear ones intervened and an official statement, to the effect that Ash still remained an eligible bachelor, was released that the raging storm was quelled. Amboli, if not Andheri, heaved a collective sigh of relief. Ash now rose to a level unequaled. Accusing stares are again replaced by loving glances shot through fluttering eyelids. Pretty young things have again started engaging the services of cupid to hurl love darts at Ash. In a nutshell, it's business as usual.

DDW celebrates eight years!

The hangover’s died out. When I say this, I mean the hangover of the booze has.

Its five days since we have returned from our annual offsite. The three days at Murud Janjira were absolutely fun packed and spiced with incidents, many of which I remember and some that I don’t. We left office at around 4 in the evening and Raghu and Ivan made us assemble at the gate. They had arranged for some gunny bags and the bus was parked at a distance. We all had to step into the gunny bag and hop across to the bus. The fun had begun and it was a sight to behold, even for the people who were passing by but decided it was a better idea to play spectators to people playing Kangaroos. It was a while before everybody had boarded the bus; the singing had started before the bus moved and by the time we reached Sion the Vodka, Rum, Whisky and the Beer bottles were out. We reached the Resort at Murud by 11pm and we refreshed and assembled at 12 to raise a toast to DDW for completing 8 years. Minutes later, we could make out one voice above the din and it belonged to Vikas. Vikas had gone Ting-Tong i.e. he was sozzled. Moments later we had to drag him to his bed. A couple of rounds later, we all decided to call it a day as Ivan and Raghu had planned some activity for the morrow and we went to check on Vikas before we hit the sack. Vikas was changing his position on the bed so frequently that he was almost rotating and I was filled with a desire to switch off the fan and suspend him from the ceiling instead and conserve electricity. The next day our people threw a bucket of water on him to awaken him. He took it in the right spirit, the gentleman that he is. That day we were split into groups and each group had to make a presentation. It was eventful and fun but I won’t go into depth here. Night was again booze and music and dance. However, I had developed a headache and I hit the sack early.

The next morning Ivan and Raghu split us again into teams with me leading the Ferrari team, Ash leading the Red Bull team ('Double Bull' team, as he preferred to call it when he was a Double vodka down and 'Bull Shit' Team as we perceived it), Mel leading the Toyota team and Santosh leading the McLaren team. We were sent on a treasure hunt with clues leading to other clues back to back. Though my team was the last to leave the compound, we managed to gain lost ground when all the teams had to go to the market for the other clues and the autorickshaw that we hailed took us hither-tither at Ferrari speed. Team Ferrari was the first to reach the treasure and we won a gift voucher for a cool Rs. 5000. Celebrations for the win began and the booze started flowing while simultaneously we started playing a game of underarm cricket. I cannot recollect when I got drunk. One of the pictures, which captured me bowling, is enough to convince me that I was. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought that it’s a picture of someone trying to offer a piece of meat to some croc and is ready to spring back in case the croc decides to go for a bigger chunk. However we won the match too; don’t ask me how. We headed out to the beach and after some good fun in the water, we came back to the resort. This was where the camera captured me as the pirate, Capn. Jack Popat. After a good shower, we played a stupid game which involved passing the mint Polo using only the toothpicks in our mouth. Little wonder then, the pictures leave an impression of a party for ‘Happy’ people. I went to my room and grabbed a couple of hours’ sleep before I joined the gang for the party around the bon-fire. After a while, we started playing cards and lady unluck, miss fortune, simply refused to leave my side at I lost a good deal. We partied till wee hours in the morning and I had only gone to sleep when they woke me up so we could head back to Mumbai. I do not recollect taking the shower, but people tell me I did. I was having difficulty in packing my bag and my dear friend Ivan came to my aid. That ass simply dumped everything in. Before long I felt the sling on my shoulder and we were on our way out. We had lunch at Patilwadi before we took the route to Mumbai and as I boarded the bus I made myself a Tribal Mix(vodka in the bottle of a soft drink). Mel joined me in boozing and after a couple of good ones, I was on a roll again. I was full of the right SPIRIT but filled with the wrong one. I was blurting out stupid cracks and having a good time laughing and frolicking when the Guru Dutt in Ash came to the fore and he decided to go on the wrong side of the lens and capture all. Ash now has enough dope on me to blackmail me for a long time. I’m glad that the videos featuring me are not uploaded on the net. Thank God for small mercies. If my antics were revealed to my mom, I’m left with no doubt that she would disown me and expel me from the house with immediate effect. It’s been the best picnic for me in a very long time.

We were celebrating eight years and I was on cloud nine.


P.S.: I’m feeling terribly lazy to upload the pictures of the picnic. Those of you who wanna take a peek can check ‘em out at where my dear friend Ash has uploaded it. The sequence is page 4 bottom to page 1 up. Please do not check ‘em at http://www.flickr.com/photos/57218147@N00/page4/

My nights are becoming sleepless
My days are becoming restless
I asked God "Is this Love"
God said "Idiot.. Garmi shuru ho gayi hai!"

What do you think?

http://www.f1india.com/blogs/?p=12

Cut a long story short?

Happened to be at a friend’s place yesterday. Dude’s a nice chap. He’s a guitarist and he’s best when he’s at it. And he can belt out as many words in a staccato as he can the notes from his guitar. Give him a chance to speak and I’ll be damned if you can even manage a “uh-huh” in between. I’ve heard Ash tell him on numerous counts that he suffers from verbal diarrhoea. What makes it interesting listening is the witty ones he dishes out from time to time. He can narrate the script of a slow art movie and make it sound like a thriller. Yesterday evening, he invited us over to his place to watch an inspirational movie about a musician chasing her dream. Our drinks were out on the table and so were the ham and salami (Dude’s a good host as well). Before we begin the movie we raise our glasses and Dude launches on a prelude to the movie and I begin to wonder if I am really gonna get a chance to see it. Fifteen minutes of blabbering and fortunately the remote comes out and we are on a roll. However, we are not even five minutes into the movie and our Dude pauses the movie and begins a lecture on the sequence about to follow. I realize this was the first of the many intermittent ‘pauses’ to follow and I wonder if I’ll have to come back the next day to watch the other half. If I thought my granma was the only one I knew who would divulge the ‘end of a movie’ before we watched it, I now stand corrected. Today, I see my granma in a different light; she only disclosed the climax of a movie. Our Dude outdid my granma. It took us four and a half hours to watch the movie and I don’t know why I get the feeling that I’ve seen the movie twice.
Phew, that was one helluva long movie.

That puffa smoke!

I have stopped smoking. I don’t use the word quit. The first time that I actually stopped, I went around telling people proudly that I quit and that I finally got myself rid of this ghastly habit, only to fall flat on my face when someone casually passed me that not-so-harmless-looking drag in between rounds of drinks. The first drag always gets you strapped to the seat and before you know it you are on a roller coaster ride. Its that time of the year when I manage to stop smoking and its been three days since I have even bothered to look at it. Its really easy to keep away from smoking as long as you stay away from the first drag. Occasionally, ofcourse, there is this urge that makes you want to buy the tobacco stick from the oh-so many shops where it can be procured. Today is just one of those days. I see a guy approaching me with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He comes up to me and asks “You got a match?” “Yeah” I say to him before I walk away. “My butt, your face.”

Splash!

It was late Sunday afternoon. Glenn and Paul (names changed to conceal their identity, lest they get offended) accompanied me to meet Ash at his club and after a coupla hours of playing table tennis, we decided to hit the swimming pool while Ash decided to join the clowns on the treadmill who simply run like crazy without reaching anywhere. While I waded into deeper waters, Glenn and Paul contented themselves by remaining close to the edge at 4 ft depth with the railing at an arm’s length. I do not lay any tall claims to be a professional swimmer myself, but I guess I am comfortable in water. These guys reminded me of my earlier days in the pool, when I did the same. Once, after shedding my inhibitions, I had ventured into deeper waters when I developed cramps in my feet. I started beating at the water in a frenzy and I almost drowned myself and another person who happened to be close at hand. However, he saved himself and in the process managed to save me. According to my friends who were around, it was quite a sight.

When I looked towards Paul and Glenn, I saw that they were arousing more than a passerby’s curiosity. They were definitely upto something and it wasn’t swimming. It was as if they were competing to see who among them could make the most splashing noise. They were in sync with each other. One would be forgiven for assuming that these guys had taken it on themselves to drain the swimming pool of water. If these guys were seeking attention, they had it, and if a waiter is to be believed, even from people dining in a restaurant on the fourth floor of the clubhouse. If only it was internationally acknowledged an impossible feat to send the water at eighteen ft from a shallow depth of 4 ft, these guys have done our country proud. If a tsunami could be created in a swimming pool, the credit goes to these guys. If these guys are left to do their number in the Arabian Sea, they would attract the attention of a shark in the Pacific. If you think I've used an if too many in the last few sentences, you've no idea about the spectacle I've been an eyewitness to.

I made a shy exit from the swimming pool.

grrrr!

It is a li’l past eight in the evening and I’m headed home after a hectic day at work. I am at Andheri station on the east and I find myself among the sea of bobbing heads easing through, nudging and occasionally trampling on people’s feet on the way home. Andheri East at this time, if one was afforded an arial view, would resemble a carnival so much so that one should look with pity on the guy, rather than with scorn, who actually mistook it for one and is caught in the melee with no escape route in sight. Not that Andheri West is any better.
The day that had started off well took a nasty turn when there was an electricity failure at my office and not one nor two but three clients called in succession, inquiring about the jobs that were to be emailed to them and each of them apparently oblivious to the fact that without electricity, the computers do not function. Clients are impossible at times and when I told a lady (without doubt, a client) that she was being one, she giggled.
Even when the electricity was restored, there was no reprieve as jobs that had piled up since morn, were lined up and the calls from the clients never ceased. Finally, when I called it a day, I decided to walk it down to Andheri station and now here I am, a part of the throng. I manage to break away, hail an autorickshaw and I reach home, but not before getting caught up in numerous traffic snarls. I join six people in an elevator meant for five and I wonder if claustrophobia assumes any significance in Mumbai.
I hope I get to watch some TV. I hope I get to watch some TV. I open the door. Golly, my brother is already at it. He’s watching some movie where a race is about to begin.
On your marks… get set… go away!

travel travail

I hailed an autorickshaw and after telling the driver about my destination, I had only stepped in when he switched the radio on. As a rule, I usually ask the rickshaw drivers to turn the music off since most of them only play contemporary hindi music that plays on your soul like some chainsaw on timber. Today, however, was an exception where the track belted out was one from an old hindi movie and I let the speakers do their number while I mused that "VIDEO never really killed the RADIO star". My ravings were cut short and I was jarred into my senses when a cacophony of instruments, perceived by some as music, hit my eardrum till I thought my ear was going to bleed. A human voice accompanied it and it went "oooooh" and I immediately recognized it as belonging to the chap who sang, with a nasal twang. Listening to the voice, one cannot help wondering if The Creator, after downing a couple of stiff ones and probably in his haste to complete the job at hand, shoved the throat up this chap's nose. Another word that goes around has it that its not the Providence to be blamed at all; the chap, as a young devil at three, had tried swallowing a nut through the nose and it got stuck somewhere in the deep recesses enroute. It is indeed commendable of this man with a voice like it, that he has not just managed to survive it but also made a living out of it. I personally know of atleast 27, if not more, people who would give anything to take the hose of a vacuum cleaner, stick it up his nose, and suction off anything in sight at full power. Though his music and his voice play an integral part for people wanting to do it, we must not deprive the lyrics its due credit. I politely asked the autorickshaw driver to turn off the radio and it was only moments later that we came to a halt and as I paid the driver, I could perceive from without another track from the same chap with his all too familiar nasal voice and the trademark "oooooh". It didn't take me long to realize that some other autorickshaw driver, in the vicinity, was enjoying the song to an extent that he was playing it full volume, probably for the benefit of the deaf. I alighted and I was so irritated that when I set my sights on a fat ugly kid playing in the mud by the side, his trouser seat looked as inviting as a football asking for it: I could sense my leg twitch. However, decency and better sense prevailed. I merely gave it a tap, which sent the ugly kid rolling in the mud twice before he did the finest imitation of a cockroach on its back. It was only after I had covered much ground that I was entirely cut off from that voice bleating those senseless lyrics. Talk about lyrics; reminds me of what some wise guy once said and it goes: "Anything too stupid to be recited is sung."

Oooooh.... how trooooo!

Whadda trip down memory lane!

The trip to Goa in Dec. 2005 that me and my dear friends, Ash and Paul, embarked on is arguably the most memorable one, and it only serves to remind our passion and love for the state.
Allow me to begin at the beginning. It was 30th December, around 9 in the evening that me and Paul met Ash at a restaurant in Andheri for a drink and to plan for the celebrations for the New Year. The first pegs downed, the spirit caressing some part of our minds, the conversation was safely doing rounds of some happening parties and we only had to settle down on one, when Paul suggested New Year at Goa. By this time, it was so late that any hopes of catching the last bus or train to Goa were dashed. If the suggestion wasn't bold enough, Paul went a step further by recommending travel on motorbikes and in a matter of minutes we were putting our heads together and weighing the pros & cons for the trip. By now, we had abandoned thoughts of every other party so much so that not even fragments of the earlier conversation lingered and before we knew it, we had all said "Aye Aye" to the trip. We stopped drinking ALMOST immediately and proceeded to our respective homes to pack our bags and get some rest. At 4am on December 31st, we met at Paul's place. Paul had already searched the internet for a map detailing the road route and had a printout ready. By 4:30, we commenced our trip.
Among one of the highlights of the trip was that since my pulsar bike was causing problems, I was riding my sista's Kinetic Zing, which is a light bike and has a maximum speed o' 80 km/hr. What the #@*&#? I know, but at that time it somehow seemed like a good idea. And it was the least of our worries. Paul was riding his Pulsar and Ash acompanied him as the pillion rider. After withdrawing money from our respective ATMs, we filled up our fuel tanks at the Sakinaka gas station and proceeded on our journey. The weather was very cold; chillll-led, as Satan would say it. We had not even crossed the city limit and we were shivering down to our timbers. Only the liquid in our bladders was adamant and refused to freeze, and we had to stop twice to take a leak before we reached the Vashi toll naka. On crossing the toll naka, we were smooth sailing, or should it be riding (damn my habit to beat around the bush) except for the fact that we had to stop a coupla times more before we reached a flyover which we took. It was only after ten minutes on the flyover that we realized that we had missed the right turn to Goa and we were actually on the Mumbai-Pune Express way. After the initial bouts of slandering and hurling curses at each other and "blame thy neighbour" stuff, we turned our bikes around and made the distance back to the point where we could exit the Express way (For those who have not been on the Express way, it is lined with a divider which does not allow you a U-turn; we had to travel the distance back in the wrong direction and more importantly 'TWO WHEELERS ARE NOT ALLOWED' on the Express way). Once we took the exit, we went to a restaurant and had steaming cups of tea in the hopes of thawing our insides. It only worked momentarily, for the moment we stepped out and mounted our bikes, we were shivering like leaves in the breeze and I wished we had carried some RUM with us. Once back on the right track, we did not stop till we had crossed the toll naka at Pen and we would have continued relentlessly, had it not been for a bonfire that caught Paul's attention. We parked our bikes and hovered around the bonfire till it got us warm right upto our family jewels. By this time it was already 7 am, and we still had a long way to travel. Once warm, we were again on our way. Ash relieved me from riding and I joined Paul as the pillion rider. We were still a good distance from Chiplun and it was almost 10 am when Paul's bike had a flat tyre and we had to drag it to a garage to fix it. Now people, Paul is a braveheart and I figure when you have to drag your bike through a good distance before you come a place inhabited by humans and then finally find someone amongst them who can actually fix a flat tyre, doubts start creeping in and even the strongwilled start developing jellyfeet. And Paul was no exception. Once the tyre was fixed, Paul started reasoning with us on whether it was actually a good idea to continue. Ash and me debated with Paul, trying to convince him that it was so and again the environment experienced the heat as a flurry of abuses were hurled at each other. Hats off to Paul as he endured every bit of what was being said but he simply held his ground and refused to budge. Finally Ash and me gave in and with a heavy heart, we did a roundabout and started our journey back to Mumbai. We took many pit-stops on our way back, and Ash was having a ball in abusing Paul for succumbing and we were laughing and enjoying the ride all the way back. Finally it was 5 pm by the time we reached Mumbai and we simply headed out to our respective homes to freshen up and again team up to attend a party at a friends place, which we had earlier rejected in favour of Goa. We brought in the New Year with a blast. As for the trip, it was a hell of an experience with a thrill unmatched. To top it all, I didn't have my driving licence on my person during the entire journey. Ask Ash!!!