Functions, Idli Manchurians and a great writer…

We know. We know. We have been quite irregular for past few months. We are currently on vacation in India. We traveled to US two years ago and this is our first trip back to India since. We were obviously pretty excited to come home. After a long flight, we finally reached Bangalore via Paris. Our lady had already traveled to India sometime back to be with her mother. We thought many changes would have happened here in two years. We were right. Except Bangalore traffic that is. Still, home sweet home. Two years away would mean catching up about what has happened in two years and delightful homemade food as well. As you would agree, It’s a wonderful time.

The reason we came to India was that our brother, of whom we had written sometime back, finally jumped into the well. Yes. He got married. How can we miss it? The function and all the poojas that came with it went fine. There was the Naandi at tenth and marriage on 14^th. It was fun. Its always fun to see another guy jump to the same well. Since we were family, we had the front row seat as well. We took three weeks of to be here. Now that marriage is over and the newlyweds have traveled to Kashmir for their first trip together, we are spending some quality time with family. Our home town has not changed much in past two years. It’s pretty much the same buildings and same environment.

Since we had quite a bit of free time we went around the little city and watched lot of TV as well. The stupid TV shows have become even more stupid. And lot of reality shows to add. One delight we want to mention is Chintu TV. It shows various animated shows dubbed in Kannada. Sure we can laugh at the voice overs and the accents they use. But we strongly feel that it is a great development to entertain the kids in regional language. We hope it stays and grows and rivals the best in business.

Also, on TV we saw a live interview of SL Bhyrappa. We have been endorsing him for quite some time. We feel he is greatest writer in India currently and one of the greatest ever in India. Sure there are some people criticizing him due to their limited thought process. Some people who have not achieved much in literary world as they actually think they have, tend to make a hoopla to get some publicity. Add some famous names to support these voices, and you see why SLB has been missing on Jnanapeetha till now. He has been the best selling author for decades and yet, he keeps missing it. If URA, Karnad and Kambara can get it,  why not SLB? We hope it changes soon. Saraswati Samman is a good start.

We will end this on a lighter note. We, with our lady, had gone out for dinner with the newlyweds. We knew Indians are good at adapting. But we saw what we can call a new level of adaptation. We all know Gobi Manchurian is a very popular food item. We also know Idli is considered world’s best breakfast item by South Indians. What if you want to eat Manchurian but don’t want to miss the goodness of Idli. Fear not. Hotel Hariprasad in Puttur has an anwer. Idli Manchurian. We had our mind blown when we read it. What ingenious mind came up with this? To top it, next item was Chinese bhel. Talk about Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai. We also want to mention the items were not as bad as we thought it would be. We were left to wonder what will be the next big thing. Dimsum vada pavs? Pooris with Kung Pao veggies? Masala Dosa with duck sauce? We eagerly await…

One English movie and some Kannada songs.

Right. Let’s start this with a paragraph movie review.  We saw Cars 2 this weekend. We have to say. We liked it a lot. The detailed analysis of the world from a car’s eyes is truly awesome. Here Lightning McQueen plays a supporting role. The movie revolves around Mater, the bumbling tow truck best friend. How some old cars play villains and how Mater is mistook for a spy and in the end how he saves  the world is the story. Without discussing about story line much, we will tell you this. Very rarely a sequel is better than the first movie. Here is one such movie. Larry the Cable guy is totally delightful as Mater. We give this movie two thumbs up and a 9 out of 10. This is like your childhood dream come true. All your Hotwheel cars and all your yeeeeoooowwww’s.  Watch this movie.

We came back and we were not feeling sleepy. So we thought we will listen to songs. Kannada ones.  One song was from Hudugaru.  It was an item song called Pankaja. Somewhere between “Akka nim maneyalli naayigu Dancu barutta” and “Nim ooralli thamaTena hodyakke chancu sigutta” , we started thinking about how Kannada songs have gotten back their mojo. There was a phase where Kannada songs were qualitatively poor. Once Ravichandran and Hamsalekha kinda broke up, the Music became more to the mass than class. Apart from some movie exceptions, most songs did not catch our fancy much. But then suddenly it seemed like all is well again. What happened?

If you think about it, this seems to have begun from Mungaru Male. Everyone tends to agree that Mungaru Male really started this upward trend. It increased the listener count by many folds. Many of our friends who were not really fans of Sandalwood music started listening from then. And then the quality started improving. Not just the lyrics. If lyrics are outrageous, tunes became catchier. It was like the music industry picked itself up and decided, “Right, We need to show others what we are about.” We like this new trend.  We do not mind listening to nothing but Kannada songs.

After that almost every movie that has been released, has had at least one beautiful or catchy track. Even movies which were pretty horrible had one nice track. We don’t want to start listing the songs we like. Because there are plenty. Our phone has hundreds of new Kannada songs. And every day we get to add some song or the other from a new movie. We, being a Kannada movie fan, absolutely love it. Kannada Industry has always had people who make some really good musical movies. But in late 90’s it was limited to Ravichandran. He had his way with the leading ladies and always had flowers and fruits and honey around and on them. But it was not just about visually pleasing his male audience. He made sure that the songs were melodious. He was immensely talented when it comes to picking songs.

But now the number has increased. Every other director, every other producer, every other actor seems to crave for quality. There is some flip side to it as well.  The local talents seem to have been neglected. Sonu Nigams and Kunal Ganjawalas started hogging the space and have replaced Rajesh and Hemanth. Shreya Ghoshals have replaced Pallavis and Nandithas. Sure the Bollywood singers are talented. But shouldn’t these songs go to the local talents? We are pretty sure any good Kannada singer can sing the same songs just as well. Why do we have to go to Bollywood and pay more money? Pallavi Arun is the best and most versatile singer in Kannada industry. Give more chances to her than Shreya. If the songs are as good as they have been for past few years, audience will listen no matter what.

Oh Please.. Stop.. No really... STOP.

How dumb can you be? No. Don't feel offended. We are not asking you personally. Relax now. You can keep that secret to yourself. We just wanted to cite an incident that happened. We have a regular call with our client manager. You know what one of our team mates discussed for whole 15 minutes? His Piles problem and how he cannot do his morning work properly. While we do understand that it is a very unfortunate situation, what we cannot understand is how someone can discuss about it. Let alone with client managers. He went on and on about how it has been occurring from past year. We sat fidgeting in our very seat (pun, if anyone notices, is intended). Its something for which you are not responsible but you are embarrassed nonetheless. It was like watching Fardeen Khan act.

Now that we have given today's blog a humane start, We should warn you. This is a dirty blog. we mean dirty dirty. Not that dirty which makes guys sit up and notice. Let us talk about how we embarrass ourselves. When we say we, we mean general public. That's right. "We" includes you lot too. There are so many situations where people don't realize they are embarrassing others. We have lot of examples.It almost makes us feel as if we are a country of self centered people. Since we are writing about the stories, we make sure that none of our stories are included here. Well, it can also be because we are not a dimwit and we watch ourselves.. Ahem. Aren't we a role model.

The main thing we have noted here is loud talking on cell phones. Some people simply cannot realize that they have cell phone in hand. It will be their mother tongue and since they feel that no one can understand what they are talking, they feel free to use lot of expletives. What's that? Isn't that a "cool" thing you ask? No. For us its not. We are not against talking in mother tongue. We very much prefer it ourselves. (Now we want make a bad tongue joke here but we are bound by the contract we have.). We use expletives when people are around and understand it. Its like bling. What is the point of using it if no one knows you are using it? You clearly shouldn't be ashamed of letting people know that you are using it. General public may not like it. But then if you are someone who uses such words, why fear the general public?

Another thing we noticed is how the some people clean their lunch boxes in the sink and dump the leftovers in the sink. That makes sure that water doesn't drain and everything gets clogged. You want to imagine how bad it can get? Think about variety of foods eaten by Indians. There is a trash bin man. How tough is it to dump stuff there? Before you know it, all the foren peepuls are looking at you as if you are the culprit. We may be of the same colour as the person who did it my dear lady, but we are not the same character. We did try telling someone about it and we got a sly grin. Now we have a notice there (put by foren peepul no doubt) saying don't wash your dirty dubbas here. Some foren peepul make sure they discuss such stuff when Indians are around. Just to rub salt to the wound.

We want to talk about our accent issues as well. Oh boy. Aren't we a diverse nation. Mallus, Tamils, Telugites, Kannadigas, Punjabis, Bengalis, Oriya, Bihari, North-east, Gujjus. Every one has their own accent. When we join any meeting nearly half the time goes just to decipher the accents we feel. Plus people treat grammar like that kid who stole your toys. We want to give you two examples. Imagine a Oriya/Bengali accent. " itj a bhird dokyumaint. Bhee need microsopt bhird". Most Indians have trouble understanding when they hear the sentence. Imagine how gora's felt. He had to repeat thrice and then type it over chat session. Thank god that our accents don't carry over to the chat sessions. or how about this for a conversation between two of our guys in a call including clients. "We are did the testing. We naat getting what result we wanted." "you caantacted yuvar subject myatter expert aa?" "Hmmm. we did told Smith John but he busy. so weeyar waiting". Take that grammar. Everyone knows that you are a bitch.

There are lot of things which people need to sort out. From Using text lingo in emails and chats to using aa to form a question. From using regional language fillers to trying to explain songs in movies, From scratching your privates when in public to opening the fly when one enters the restroom without even checking the urinals. There are lot of things which we are embarrassed about. When you are in India, people tend to ignore such things only because most people tend to follow it. Not because its accepted as social norm. And when people enter another country, shouldn't they realize that everyone is representing the country here? (We wanted to include From Akshay Kumar to Sharad pawar, but apparently some people actually like Akshay Kumar. So there goes one example.)

We have just noted couple of things we observed here. We are not against our country or our country people. We believe that our country has a great culture. We feel good when someone explains about the how great it is or about how diverse it is. We really do. But there is always some minor thing that ruins the fun. Imagine how proud you are when you tell how beautiful is the morning there or how you played cricket during last weekend and how your team won. And someone bursts the bubble by telling how you were stuck in traffic jam excluding the fact that major traffic jams are due to gazillions software engineers coming to work every morning Or a very 'talented' software engineer tells about how he couldn't do his morning stuff due to piles. Yes. That's what we want to avoid.

Our favourite author....

Ever heard of Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn? We're not sure how many have. Well if you have not, we humbly request you do learn a little about the man. A Nobel Laureate, he is one of our most favourite authors. One of the legends in Russia's vast and wonderful literary history. He has written many books regarding Soviet communist regime. But for us mainly, two books stand out. Gulag Archipelago and One day in life of Ivan Denisovitch. Latter being the best book we have ever read. We read this book online today. We had left the book in Bangalore and it had been sometime since we had read it. That’s right. We re-read the books. In fact, we love this book so much; we have identified it as one of the greatest we have read, if not the greatest. We will tell you about the man. We would suggest you to read Wikipedia but being the lazy ones that you are we will give a gist.

Born in 1918, his father was an imperial Army soldier who died while Solzhenitsyn was still in the womb. This fact had to be hidden since Lenin and his 'people', Well.. Hunted and killed any royal loyals. They killed their family and they killed anyone who ever knew the person. Solzhenitsyn grew up under the influence of his mother. It’s pretty obvious that the man was a genius. Why do we say so? He studied Mathematics at a Russian university and at the same time did correspondence courses in history, philosophy and literature. Maths and philosophy together? That ideally won't end well. You usually would spend your nights wondering why geometry cannot actually spend the life happily with algebra, or have nightmares about how god will destroy the world with dangerous weapons like probability or calculus. In short, cuckoo... But anyway, the man was not a cuckoo.. He was influenced by communist thoughts at that time. Yes. But not cuckoo.

He fought in World War II, and even became captain of artillery. But in 1945, he was arrested for insulting Joseph Stalin and sent to the Soviet labour camp for eight years. It was here that he realized that Marxism isn't actually helping. We had read somewhere that communism is mass distribution of poverty rather than property. We tend to agree with that thought. Anyway, back our hero of the story. He was diagnosed with cancer and was treated in Tashkent. He was released eventually. After the release he spent his days as a teacher and nights as a writer.

In '62, his book Odin den iz zhizni Ivana Denisovicha or Odin den' Ivana Denisovicha (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich) was published with the approval of then president Khruschev. It was a instant hit and was marked as classic. This short novel describes how one day in the labor camp is spent and we get to see it through the eyes of a prisoner, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. This was one of those rare books that touched us (No. No pun here. Move on). We were moved by the accounts given in that book. How people fight for pieces of bread and one puff of a cigarette. It is a heartbreaking story but does end with hope that all this will end one day. The west suddenly woke up to see what is happening in Soviet. This was one of the first instances where someone openly distributed the ills of the Stalin rule. It even became a part of then curriculum. You cannot but root for the 'prisoners' as they lead their monotonous and strenuous life.

But once liberal Khruschev was removed, the ideological freedom also died slowly. KGB had heard that he will be writing about the Gulag and they damn sure wanted to make sure that this doesn't materialize. Washing dirty Lenin (see what we did there?) was not OK with them. The manuscripts and drafts had to be hidden at his friends' houses. It launched a massive action plan to discredit Solzhenitsyn. The government sources in many countries were included in this. Some secret agents joined as translators to work with him and kept KGB informed about all his activity. The plan bore fruit and finally he was expelled from then USSR in '74. KGB even published a biography of Solzhenitsyn maligning him.

In 1970 he got the much deserved Nobel. While the most people were happy about it, the Soviet Government was the party pooper again. They did not let him go out. And it was pretty clear that he would not be let back in if he steps out. He had his speech delivered to the Nobel ceremony. He finally received his award after he was expelled. There is an online article about how he got his Nobel. Interesting one. You should check it sometime. He eventually moved to USA and spent two decades. His Soviet citizenship was restored once the country fell. Upon his return he was honoured by, irony of ironies, an ex-senior officer of KGB, Vladimir Putin.

The Gulag Archipelago is considered to be his second best work. It tells the story of his experience in the labor camp and stories of other witnesses. He wrote it in secret as KGB wanted to destroy the script. It describes the arrest, interrogation, conviction, transportation, and imprisonment of the Gulag's victims as done by Soviet authorities. The first part was release in '73 and the Government and its loyals criticized him and branded him as a traitor. This lead to his exile. The second and third volumes were released when he was in US. The book changed west's perspective about Lenin who till then had a legacy.  Solzhenitsyn argued that Stalin merely improved the idea of labor camps which was in fact created by Lenin. It is now included as a Mandatory read in Russia's school system.

You would be surprised to know that the man, who was against the communist regime, did not prefer democracy either. He in fact supported authoritarian regime. He hated the way Boris Yeltsin's brand of democracy and that delayed his return to Russia after its collapse. Solzhenitsyn's books after he returned, which included essays on Russia's future, stirred quite a bit of controversy. He passed away in 2008 at his home near Moscow. OK we really do not know how to end a biography kinda article. We are not that good a writer to give some nice senti ending. So we will just recommend the two books mentioned and leave it at that. You don’t read it, it’s your loss.

P.S : We would like to thank Jimmy Wales, Larry Page and Sergey Brin for indirectly helping us with the details to write this blog.

Controversial ramblings due to Temporary insanity

We wanted to title this as "Is God an a**hole?". What do you think the answer would be if you make a public poll? We will tell you. There will be three responses mainly. Are you crazy? WTF? And Dude, you are going to hell. Caring about people is not really something we are good at. We care about it as much as world cricket cares about Australian spinners now. Are we being blasphemous? May be. But looking at what all has been done to us, we are pretty much sure that this may be true.

By the way world was supposed to end couple of days ago and it is still intact. Nobody has gone to heaven or nobody has gone to hell. Apart from some regular people whose time had actually come. What does this mean? There are three things we can speculate. Two are about God and third is the truth. One God doesn't care about judging people. Yet. Two, presumably God got high on Friday night and totally forgot about work. Three, religious fanatics are nutcases. Even though third option is correct we would like to take a moment and ponder about the second option. Typical of us you say? May be.

What’s even more important is people did not heed to it. Why did we give so much importance you ask? Well, you know us. We like to have a small topic stretched out of proportion. It’s like Hariharan singing old classics. Unnecessary alaaps and voice variations etc. but you would still like the song. Think of us as Hariharan of blogging. Without the talent and flair. OK that didn't quite come out right. Still. We hope you get the point we are trying to make. We are just looking for topics to right. We are so having writers block (Blogger's block?).

Sometime back we had told you that our lady is getting the visa done to come here to us. We were wondering how everything is going smooth considering how wonderful Geeta aunty has treated us (we are beng sarcastic). And no don't think too much. Geeta aunty is not like Savitha Bhabhi.. For those who do not know, Geeta aunty is the slang(ish) word we have for geeT (luck). One new word you have learnt after reading so many junk stuff. Good. Coming back to topic, turns out something did go wrong. There was some typo in the visa. Of all the things, they interchanged two letters in our name. That made us ponder couple of questions. 1.Is god playing with us? 2.If yes, WTF? And 3.Doesn't he have more important work than messing our life?

Ever since we became smart enough to cheat during exams (i.e, reached thinking stage), we realized that God wasn't really our best friend. We had lot of issues always. if its lab exams, we used to get the toughest one available. Stand in Queues, others would move fast or counter would close. Go out for dinner and someone would call reminding of a function to attend and leaving us sad about free food wasted. If we planned to relax and watch TV, Boom. Akshay Kumar was there laughing at us. We had all the good cards and people moved on to chess. You know.. Basic Murphy stuff. We kind of speculated that Murphy and God are almost same. Murphy's law was our Bible. When our company asked us to travel, we had to get our passport corrected twice. Once just because they screwed our DoB to 30 instead of 03. Geeta aunty never liked us.

The problem is God is not treating our life like Amey Khurasia's cricket career. That’s why we used a different term than bad or nonexistent etc. Stop giving us that look. We never said we don't believe the G-man. We don't believe as much as you people do. Sure. We don't believe in Poojas and Homas and stuff as much as we believe in the prasadam we get. We read somewhere in internet and we believe that statement. Going to temple makes you as religious as standing in a garage makes you a car. We do not believe in festivals and ceremonies. We are dentally forward and mentally backward when it comes to such things. And we are not sorry about it. We have told you our case. We still reserve our judgement on that whether God is actually Good. Its infuriating to see others worshiping him as a divine entity whereas he is actually a naughty schoolboy persona who likes to play with our life. But we also want to say whatever has happened till now; we have come on top (No innuendos meant). It’s like he plays pranks and then his daddy twists (wrings?) his ears to correct his mistakes.

Ok what we meant to say was, even though he has played with our life so much and made us curse him , he has finally redeemed himself by making sure that things get done. So can’t he just make things work in the first place? Why give all the trouble before getting things done? You know who behaves like that? That’s right. Sadistic a**holes.

By the way, we heard this totally awesome joke shared by a friend of ours. Its part hindi part english. So if u don’t understand Hindi, this blog ends here for you.

Santa took part in a cooking Contest and during contest woh khali bartan mai spoon firane laga.
Judge: Kya bana rahe ho?
Santa:- Chutiya...
We laughed so hard when we read this.. that was few days ago. Its still funny and we still laugh when we recall it.

Our last blog words.. Apparently.

Dear readers, however few in number you are. Actually we think we can count the readers. You, you and you in the corner. We have tried our best to talk about general knowledge stuff and sometimes we have spoken about personal stuff. We know we have not been a success. But hey. we take solace in the fact that we know you have not been a success either. Why would you be reading this else? OK just joking. We actually liked the fact that we had some readers at least. Thank you. It was fun writing to you. But this may be our last blog. If you have not heard, here is the news.

The world is going to end. May 21st. A lot of religious fanatics and other similarly crazy people are abuzz with fact that the earth is going to be a goner. Considering the fact that its already 6PM on the 20th here, we have only some time left. Also, we don't know which time zone is being used. We checked if Australia and New Zealand have vanished already. But they are still there. Considering that God is middle eastern, will he use Jerusalem time zone? or considering the fact that America is the big brother, we are assuming that it will start with EST timezone. We are calm still. We will write this blog drinking a coke. That's how much we will not worry about the world going to end. Have you seen Titanic? Yes. Those idiots with violin die instead of being saved? Imagine us there. Instead of violins, a coke. Que Sera Sera.

Wait.. Didn't people say it was December 2012? Some Mayan calender shit? Well some others point to Bible as the reason, some say Emraan Hashmi is no longer kissing heroines. But we know none of these have been proved. We want to know how this calculation of the year was done. Because there are many different calenders in use. There is a Radio preacher by the name of Harold Camping. A cheap name related pun will ensue and we will not resist. His brain has gone camping. He had been claiming about the end on 21st. But since nothing happened he has now told that its just that the devastation will start on 21st. Make up your mind Grandpa.

Some say doomsday and some say judgement day. What is judgement day? God will come to earth and take the faithful to heaven it seems. How does he select? Is it similar to the rating and appraisal in software companies? Will have a one on one? Do we have to fill out an excel sheet? Being software engineer, we do not have much hopes to in free society, do we? Anyways, lets hope God has not gone corporate. If he did, we do not have much hopes. All the people in higher position are going to be saved and rest of us will be screwed. We are also interested to know how it is going to end. Is it going be slow and painful? Is it going to be water logged? Is it going to be like a nuclear holocaust? or will it be like in H2G2?

We are actually confused if we do want the world to end. We just worked hard and got our lady the dependency visa and she is planning on coming here by June first week. Now see, Dec 2012 in that case would have been fine with us. As our mother said, we need to go back to India in Nov 2012 max. So we would be seeing our family before God gets drunk and trashes the place. Now with May 21st, we have little bit of problem. We have spent a lot of time and energy in completing the process and have listened to the lady nagging about how tiresome the process was. Now if the world ends, that's a whole lot of hours we will never get back.

The good thing about world ending is Justine Beiber is going with it as well. But sad part is we are going to hell and we have a feeling he is quite popular there. We know some of you Beliebers are not going to like the statement. Also for those who do not know those people are they are fans of Justin Beiber. Yes. Such a thing exists. A sad sad thing but true nonetheless. OK no use in bashing one person when there are thousands of people who will definitely be going to hell. Also, we know at least one person will be happy with it. Sharad Pawar. He is going home to meet his elder brother, the red horny one. (we couldn't resist that horn joke about Satan. Manchi joku kaadandi?)

But ever since we got to know that May 21st has been singled out, we are a bit miffed. We would have been happy if it were on our birthday. How awesome would it be? Whats special for birthday people would ask and we would say we are ending the world with an evil grin. Wait... Can we have a cat? We so totally want a cat for that scenario. We would be like a Bond movie villain. Everyone would remember us (Those who survive. The good people. You don't have much chance). Our name would be in shining letters amidst all the lesser mortals. That would have been a great birthday gift. Yes. We know. We have already told you. We are going to hell.

P.S : We know we said we are drinking Coke. That should not be considered as product endorsement. We actually prefer Diet Coke.

Personal life of someone else? Yumm...

Today we want to talk about how people like to watch public figures. We will be generous and will add stories of tapes. Yes we know. Its not for decent folks. And yes we are talking about controversial tapes. Hey listen alright. We have never been a good person. and we have know every person who proclaims that he/she is good is secretly a pervert just like everyone else. There is no one, absolutely no one, in the world who is not interested in juicy gossip about other people. However dirty it may be. We have seen people portray that they are extremely irritated to discuss the happenings of other people. They snarl at you if you are a rotten sleazebag. Then they go home and watch Big boss or some singing reality shows that treat kids like commodity or, worse of all, Roadies.

For all who think intruding other peoples private lives is incorrect and have decided that you will not do it, congratulations. Your life is as real as Faisal Khan's acting career. Or Ajay Devgan's laugh. Or Sharad Pawar's heart. Or Mallika Sherawat's dignity. Well.. You get the hint. The reason why we thought of writing this was we recently came across a tape. It had the conversation between a Plump middle aged balding politician and a sultry bong siren. Yes. That's right. We are talking about that tape only. Amar Vichitra Katha (Sorry Uncle Pai but couldn't resist it). Amar Singh calls her Baby and she calls him Sweetie. Wonderful. John Abraham should finally learn that having a fit physique is as good as having a sporting spirit when playing against Aussies. Its power that matters. Paunch is the new punch (we invented this line and we are claiming the copyrights.)

Did he have it coming? Politically he was not really going anywhere. Before people forget about him, he has given them a chance to talk . Also note that he has never denied the claims. The best line given is that he had light-hearted private conversations with actresses. Really? Thats all? The basterds. How dare they? How can they make a secret tape in a improper way? Agreed that he did mention about age mattering between legs and stuff. But he was just being light hearted. Do you guys need to make it big? There were lot of other conversations with Mulayam, Anil Ambani and other bigwigs. But Indian people are more interested in movie stars.

But these are just audio tapes. There are some interesting video tapes as well. Come on. You know what we are talking about. OK we will give you five words as clue.. Pamela Andersen and Paris Hilton. Got it now? We knew you would. There are literally hundreds of celebrities whose tapes have been released. There are few Indian ones as well. All the Bollywood stars have refused to acknowledge the fact that they have 'acted' in those. Even if it turns out to be their best performance. At this point we want to clarify that we have not seen any such tapes and our opinion is based on most of our sources . But Hollywood is much more professional. Some even make sure they get a share of the profit (We are looking at you Paris).

Why is it that celebrity life enthralls people so much? As we said earlier, we would like to point out that everyone is a pervert. Its not because they are celebrities. People watch Big boss also. There are no celebrities there. All these reality shows. OK forget about reality shows, what about Ekta Kapoor serials? The family melodrama where it takes a whole episode for a daughter in law to stare at mother in law. And people are so happy to discuss a girl's tragic life on TV. It makes us sad. It's pathetic. Don't public figures have the right to lead their personal life without intrusion? By the way did you see Kumaranna's photo with Radhika and the kid? I mean that man is married. His wife is a MLA. He still has affair with a known film actress? You know what. Sod it. They are public figures and we are the public. Let us totally enjoy discussing stuff.

News about another celebrity whose life people love to dissect. The prince of Kolkata has returned. With Pune. But that’s not what matters. Kolkata may have ditched its prince but we still supports him. Many fans are cheering for Dada and so are we. We are really glad about his return. He is a fighter. Love him or hate him, you cannot ignore him. There was a time when Dada was the greatest ODI batsman of his time. Even better than him. We love to see him bat. The man was a cricketing royalty. His arrogance was made fun of. He may not be a hard worker. But a very talented player and a fighter to the core. We wish to see him succeed and slap Dhoni and rest of anti-dada mob. Metaphorically of course. We do not support violence unless its justified, like in all Mithun movies.

We are glad to announce, there's been a death.

Osama Bin Laden died… That is the third death we are covering in our blog. Third time lucky. As Ravi Shastri would put it, “What a big wicket this is”. We wanted to include tracer bullet pun here but somehow couldn’t quite come up with one. He was in Pakistan (Now there’s a surprise.. No really. Ask Musharraf.). A city called Abbottabad. He was hiding in a huge mansion which had no internet and phone connection apparently. We have not been happier to tell about somebody’s death. We were reserving it for Kasab but it looks like the Government will never do it (*cough*votebank*cough*). Anyway this is a huge news. But there is only a small question in our mind (most people’s mind we should say). Is it true? Has Osama really died? We hope so and we will write this blog with the positive attitude. If he releases another tape, we will apologize later for giving you false info. Okay?

Fox News, charmingly different as always, called the dead man Obama Bin Laden. You stay unbiased, Fox. Good job. We should be glad they did not cover it as African-American kills an elderly man from the middle-east. Coming back to topic, this is a significant day in the history of the world. When was the last time someone who was not ruling any country had terrorized millions? Apart from Himesh releasing a movie, we cannot think of one. May be in medieval times but we don’t know. Our history is as good as Keanu Reeves’ acting skill. He has been the crown prince of terrorism for decades now (we are struggling to contain a cheap Vivek Oberoi joke here). Anyway this fellow can be marked as Satan’s best disciple who tried to outdo his master. As Ozzie(not Osborne, that’s what we think OBL’s cool friends would call him) enters the doors of hell, Satan will be getting up from his bed of fire and coming to the door to greet him.

We have another good joke about 72 virgins which he will get (we mean OBL. Not Satan). This is something we read in Twitter. Have you noticed that they have promised 72 but there are no details on how they will be? They can be like Rakhi Sawant for all we care. Anyway some twitter fellow hoped that OBL would get his share of 72. But they should be 40+ and male. Wonderful. That is what we would wish too. We want to right an open letter to Satan on how to treat him but we are scared that since we do not believe in God that much, people would mark us in occult territory. We don’t fancy that. We also will not be referring to OBL as Ozzie as that was just a hunch we had. We are not friends with him.

A major point to note would be OBL was in Pakistan. So many people were of the opinion that that’s were he has been hiding. Except Pakistan Government and its officials. For someone who has openly supported Dawood and could not get enough proof that Kasab is from their country, hardly surprising that it turned out to be untrue. Even that creepy janitor from Scrubs knew that. But Musharraf was ‘surprised’ that they found him in Pakistan. Pak say that they were involved but USA says Pak was not involved nor were they updated about the raid being done. Let us not go to conducting raids in other countries without telling them. This probably needed that as we know how trustworthy they have been all these years. The man was hiding in a huge mansion two hours away from the capital and little distance away from a Military camp we have read. Now tell us how is it possible without the involvement?

We have not read the statement by Zardari but we are guessing that it will be very interesting. Considering that fact that they want to show the brotherhood that they support whatever crazy war going on but they do not want to lose the billions donated by uncle Sam. Even more interesting situation if you have noted the fact that Zardari is a cunning man. As cunning as Batman villain. Except with less intelligence and less super weapons. OK we don’t know why we wanted that comparison. We just wanted a batman comparison somewhere. We are sorry. Everyone makes mistakes. Let us move on.

Apparently the the fact that the dead person was indeed OBL was confirmed by DNA testing. Also apparently his body was given due respect and buried in the sea. Let’s hope no fisherman gets it. Also, why was there a hurry to throw away the body? And why was respect needed? A bloody terrorist died. And you give him 70% of the earth as funeral ground? Really? As we said earlier we don’t believe in respecting the dead. The Body should have been displayed like a prized trophy. Like the Karnataka/TN Governments did with Veerappan or Sri Lankan one with Prabhakaran. Was there a photo taken? Who shot the death shot? Will that soldier get a medal? Also, can someone tell us if Donald Trump has already asked to check OBL’s death certificate. How else are we to know whether it’s the truth?

By the way the stock market rose with the news of OBL’s death. Interesting. A terrorist dies and stocks of banks and software companies go up? We do not want to speculate stuff. Okay we will go ahead and speculate just one thing. The stock market people are idiots and do not have common sense. You know who else are senseless? The rest of OBL’s gang. They will be hoping to avenge his death. Next few months we may be seeing lot of threat alerts. We just hope that just like they killed OBL, they hunt down the rest of the pack. But it would be great if they can get it done in little less time. We are not very good at righting motivational stuff. We are usually negative and sarcastic you see. But anyway.. Die you bloody crazy fundamental bitchezzz.. Die.. There,for us, that’s motivational speech. Short and straight to the point.

We have arrived....

Last blog we spoke about Bodhi Tree. What can you think of when you think about Bodhi Tree? Godmen. Well, divine wisdom but since such things stopped happening like hundreds of years ago, we will consider people who claim that they have divine wisdom. Also, we like this idea of calling ourselves us. So we will start that from today. We will explain, but let's start with a bulletin first.

Sathya Sai Baba died on Sunday. Are we sad? Not exactly. Now don't mark us as a bad person (Actually, we do not care.) because we do not respect the ethical idea of "respecting the dead". People whom you have hated or were indifferent to do not become great by just dropping dead. It may depend on how that person dies. If its in a huge fireball while driving a Lambo, it may. Anyways, we never liked the fellow. Sure. He has done some great charitable work. But as a person we never liked him. We are unsure on whether it is because of the Godmen part or because of all the sexual escapade stories. But we have to admit. He has spent thousands of crores on hospitals, eduaction, clean water facilities, sanitization. Indians shoulld be grateful to him. We will not accept him as a Godman. He has millions of followers. If he were just a social worker, we would have been too. But the moment you start comapring a good work to God work, things get complicated. We have never been fans of Godmen and politics that revolves around it inevitably.

We will tell you why we are against Godmen. Its not because we don't believe in God. We do. (Epecially after Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman, we also beieve he occassionally is kind to human race.). We have read Abraham Kovoor and AN Murthy Rao and have realized that all this magic stuff is pretty much balderdash. We did read them explaining all the stuff in some eye opening books. When Mr Kovoor repeated the tricks done by the Godmen and requested to meet the Godmen to discuss, they refused to acknowledge his request let alone reply. Its a shame. We would have seen some major revelations if he had met a few. He would have unmasked a few and brought them back to earth. While we agree that people need to believe in something to face their troubles, we would explect it to be themselves. Why not believe in oneself? If you can believe that God created Godmen, how hard is it to believe that same God created you?

And now we will tell you why, even with our Anti-Godman view, we will still aspire to be one. We have seen how the Government usually pimps Godmen. Ever since we started to think on our own (fairly rare occurence that. still.. it counts.. ), we have seen people in a position where they can exploit others. Now thats how powerful we want to be. We have seen many fraudsters acting as Godmen and cleaning up funds ( and knocking up ladies. Its a controversial topic. Let's not go there.). Because we want to be pimped as a power broker. First step is recognition. Who better to recognize the power that oneself? But we are not going to care much about others' opinions . We are not here for the ladies but who says no to money and power? (Now we do not drive on the other side of the road. We are married and committed to the one lady we have.)

The Government likes Godmen. Why is it? We think it is because they control a majot vote bank share. If they diss the Godman, they will lose the voters. Is it easy becoming a Godman? Step 1. You need to be good with magic tricks. I mean quite good. Step 2. You capture a few supporters and convince them that God above has sent you. Step 3. You are hailed as a God. Pretty straightforward that. Well, you (Yes. You.. there. ) think we may have some issues with common sense? History suggests that it has worked on many till now. And Money and power pretty much truimph goodwill. You can check history lessons if you want.

Now, just because we are at the topic of Godmen, we would like to take a moment and point our fingers and laugh heartily at Nithyananda. Agreed that he is not the first Godman who got caught "preaching" private lessons to a lady devotee. Few have fallen harder. But come on. How dumb do you have to be, to get caught? Almost all stories we have read which have Godman as a villain, have them doing lot if this "preaching" and granting children to childless mothers stuff. And some had CD angle too. If they had read at least one of them they would have been smarter.

Ok. We have just thought about another point and that has lead us to a slight confusion. Kings talk about themselves in plural. A King gets pretty good share of money and power as well. We like this idea very much. So we will do it anyway. But we are confused because we need to decide what we will be. A king or a Godman. We are planning to keep a good name for ourself as well. So should we be ChaTa chakravarthi or Chakotaananda, we have not decided. Please do email us if you can find a better name. Also, don't point about marriage. Marriage does not come in the way of being a King or a Godman now. Kings are married. And have you ever seen the advert of that Kalki fellow with a beard? He has a family. So do we. We need some time to decide.

By the way we saw a movie on saturday evening. It was called "Super" and had Upendra and Nayantara. It was the first time ever that a Kannada movie was screened in Charlotte. Now we were not going to miss this historic event, were we? We darned well were not. After sitting for two and a half head ache inducing hours, we had no idea why the movie was called Super. Dialogues, screenplay, songs, acting. None were. We saw a good example of over compensation we feel. The story is about how Karnataka becomes a super power by 2030. International airport in Mysore, everyone waering traditional attire, 80 Pounds per Rupee, white people as workers/cleaners/beggars/taxi drivers, Ferraris and other high ends cars as Taxis. Fantastic dream that one. We have been a great fan of Fantasy Genre (Except for LOTR. sorry you hobbits and the fans but a Snoozefest that one..). But this movie is a little overcooked. You need to back a good story with other elements. We sat through the entire movie waiting for Uppi's punch and we were very disappointed. Upendra is a good actor and a wonderful director and normally has his way with words like Fardeen Khan has with coke. We hope he comes up with something better next time.

Annavru twozaa.....

April 24. Two people were born on this day. Well actually many were born this day. Two of them went on to create history. Both legends in their fields. Two genii (well, geniuses is not correct. Google uncles told me) who touched many hearts. One is a legend in Arts and the other in sports. No. You are wrong. I am not talking about Jean Paul Gaultier and Alessandro Costacurta. I am talking about Dr Raj Kumar and Sachin Tendulkar (This is the only time the name will appear in this blog as some of you may still be struggling to think who the sport legend is. The man was and will be referred to as him or he or his) . With the knowledge that I may have pissed Raj "non-Marathi hunter" Thackeray already, I am going to  praise a kannada legend along with a marathi manoos.

Let me talk about him first. A lot has already been said about him. Still Indians never get tired of talking about him. He was a child prodigy.  Not the Mozart or Kim Ung-Yong type. But still a genius nonetheless. Scoring centuries in all three major Indian tournament debuts is no ordinary feat. Impressed by his performances, the selectors gave him an opportunity to showcase his talent at the international level when he was 16. (Thats right, the same age you were drawing hearts and in it writing the name of that boy or girl in your class) and Boy, did he. People still talk about Abdul Qadir's humiliation. Along with him, Waqar Younis also made his debut. Waqar's inswinging yorker for me is the greatest delivery anyone can bowl. Anyway, coming back to him, whoever saw him play realized that there was something special. I wonder what Rameez Raja would have thought considering how well chosen his words are when he praises any Indian player.

I am not fanatic about him. Personally, I feel Rahul Dravid is the greatest player India has produced. He is third in my list of greatest ever batsmen. (With RD being second, Guess who is first?).  I hope none of the cricinfo type fans read my blog. Else I will have thousands of hate mails for having my personal opinion. But I will take nothing away from him. He is a magical player. When he gets going there is nothing in the world that can stop him (except Optimus Prime may be but nobody has proof about that). The stats show that almost everyday is his day. But sadly the trend is such that in shorter versions if the opposition lets him score, the other team members will just fall apart. If he scores century the rest feel too awed to score I guess. Be it international or IPL, the team loses the match.

He has played some of the greatest innings' I have seen. 98 against Pak is the best ODI innings by an Indian, 175 against Aussies(remaining ten couldnt score 175), Two back to back centuries vs Aus in Sharjah,  I do not want to go on listing. Also, 99 international centuries is just mind blowing. The man has more number of boundaries than runs scored by many solid batsmen.  Donald "Holy-God-how-did-he-do-it" Bradman saw himself when he saw the little master play. I guess that says enough about him. There can not be another one like him. Happy Birthday Sirji. You have provided hope and entertainment to a country, you have made sure millions forget their troubles albeit for a brief period of time. As an Indian and as a sportsfan I thank you for being there for us.

Now coming to the lesser talked about person. Annavru as he is known to us. The legend, the star, the super star ( to rajini fans - Yes, he is.), Natasarvabhouma, Gana Gandharva, Karnataka Ratna, Padmashree, Padmabhushana, Dada Saheb Phalke Prashasti vijetha, Vara Nata, Rasikara Raja Dr Raj Kumar. I may have missed few here but you get the idea. For Kannada Cinema Industry, there cannot be a bigger star than him. For millions of Kannadigas he is the greatest actor. He did not resort to stunts, smoking , drinking or fancy style. He was the simple human being and it showed. And till his end, he was dedicated to Kannada only.

I for one started idolizing him late. Till I was 15 or so I never really figured out the persona. When i grew up, i started reading more about him and watching more of his movies. The more I saw, the more I was hooked. This man was better than all the actors I had seen before. Kasturi Nivasa was one of the first movies I saw. Till date I have not seen a better acting performance from any other actor.  Here was the great actor whom I had not cared much about till then. Kasturi Nivasa was my Bodhi Tree. Suddenly, Annavru became a major part of my movie watching schedule.   

All his movies, you can not help but root for him. He may be a crook ( Daari Tappida Maga) mentally retarded guy  (Mallammana Pavada) ,  a king (Krishnadevaraya), a patriot fighting for his rights (Mayura), A son wronged by his father and a father who has forgotten about his son (Babhruvahana), a kind hearted man facing a tragic end ( Kasturi Nivasa), a villain (Bhakta Prahlada) and the list goes on. So many versatile roles and so many memorable movies.  He was a part of life for millions. Almost everyone had grown up watching him fight evil and truimph. No wonder people were distraught when he passed away.

His legend is not just his on screen personality. Once the grease paint came off, he was this humble, down to earth man. He was a superstar who could change the course of an industry and if he really wanted, a state. But he always remembered that deep down he was "Mutthuraj", the ordinary man. How can any person who has studied till only fourth standard make it so big? Here is the answer. Humility, self-belief, loads of talent and even more loads of discipline. Just leaving school after fourth and standing outside the movie studios will help? Since most lack on the talent part, let’s just study, pass our exams and end our life by becoming software engineers, shall we?

Educated, yes. Intelligent?

Intelligent doesn't have to mean educated. And Converse is also true. Educated doesn't mean intelligent. When I see these "secular people", I realize how true it is. Here we have people who are well educated and who can guide people. But instead they are acting like dicks. What is the point when you are doing the same thing which you oppose. Did not get me? Religion. The root of and the "solution" to all problems now a days. Whatever happens, take out the religion card. Is someone doing good? Point out the communal issues. Is someone opposing evil and you don't like it? Point out the communal issues. I read  two important news today and blog is about that. SL Bhyrappa's interview and Medha Patkar's statement about Anna Hazare praising Nitish/Modi.

Now religion is a pretty sensitive issue. Especially when you have over a billion people practicing tens of religions. Politicians have long been using it as a stepping stone for success. Vote banks were created decades ago so that then ruling party can help itself. I'm not saying people are stupid, but they have been letting the 'neta log' make mockery of everything they believe in. Be it ever sensitive Babri, progressive Modi/Nitish or something as trivial as a cricket match, we always are shown the communal context.

We have people like Medha Patkar and Arundhati Roy. I was at first impressed by the way these two ladies fought for the people. So I thought. As i grew older, I realized they are no different than these politicians. Like a kid who soiled themselves, they were always trying to get people's attention. Narmada bachao was a good one I can remember. But finally they ended up with same politicians whom they despised. Money? Fame? or plain crazy? I do not know. I do not care. What I do care is how these "secular people" always play with public sentiment. So many cries were raised and some still try to raise a cry about Godhra. But when 26/11 happened or after a Naxal attack, they are no where to be found.

We caught one bloody idiot of the bunch of bloody idiots who came to destroy the city. Others were killed. One was unable to get his 72 virgins that day. Fine. It should be our Government's duty to make sure he gets there. Virgins or not, let him check it out himself. Why are these "secular people" trying to save him? Why is it that when so many Indians are rotting in the jails of our "bhai", nobody is asking for their release? How come one maniac gets so much importance? Arundhati Roy vouched for Kasab's release. May be we need to release Afzal guru as well. Is she kidding? Is she Serious? What is she smoking? Can she share it?

That's at the national level. If we come to my state, Kannada literature is honoured by presence of a Jnanapeethi. Jnanapeetha literally means seat of wisdom. Here I am tempted to quote YNK. "ಜ್ಞಾನ ಇರುವುದು ಪೀಠದಲ್ಲಲ್ಲ but at the other end". Here is someone who has achieved a lot in literary field but cannot admit that someone else is more popular. Yes, I am talking about URA vs SL Bhyrappa, the man most people of my age prefer to read than anyone else. With the exception of Poornachandra Tejaswi may be. I recently read SLB's interview regarding Saraswati Samman. He said some people do not like it. They tried to prevent it from happening. He is a Kannada literary legend. He surely deserves Jnanapeetha than Mr Peethi himself. Its sad that due to some people's jealousy, he is being denied of something he deserves.


SL Bhyrappa is a social scientist. A man with vast knowledge and wonderful skills for narration. I am only 27 and I may not have read as many books as a buddhijeevi, but I have not read a book better than VamshaVrisksha. I admire the man for his courage. He may sound like someone who supports RSS, but can someone come forward and tell that whatever he has written is not true? If you can, then you are wrong. People who protested against "Aavarana", forgot to check the books he has provided as reference. They were more happy to degrade Bhyrappa personally. It was sick. They even came up with a book to degrade him. They selected articles which condemned Bhyrappa, written by "seculars". How low can you go? Also, has there been any other instance of so many people trying to ruin one person's career and failing?

Sure. It was a controversial subject of Muslim rulers vs Hindu subjects. The seculars were against it. Now hold on a minute. The writers from the kings' court themselves have written about that stuff. What wrong did SLB do? And what about the references he had provided? URA vehemently protested and even wrote a condemning review. Sorry dear sir. You wrote Samskara. A book to mock Brahmins. How is it that you can criticise a certain caste but others can't? Now some people said that it was because he wanted to please a certain political party for the rajyasabha seat. May be true, may not be true. How can one person be ready to lose credibility because he wants power? Oh wait. That doesn't make sense. Anyone can.

SLB has always been attacked for his books. Not for the truthfulness of the content but the nature of it. They say he is biased in his support for a particular religion. God knows when they will realize, they are doing the same. Blaming one religion to score brownie points with another . Same with Medha Patkar. She did not like Mr Hazare's statement it seems. Lady, how hard is it for you to credit where credit's due? Mr Hazare did not support violence. nor did he support the Chief Ministers. The CMs have done an amazing job of transforming their states and he acknowledged that fact. Now if you cannot accept it, that may mean that your brain has gone for a walk. Wait for it to come back. Eventually it may. And truth will dawn on you.

Cricket.. and Whats wrong Scarlett?

Its been couple of days since I welcomed Scarlett. Sadly Scarlett is not in right mood. You see, It has been raining ever since and the weather is gloomy. No. stop it. We are not going to make a those days joke. We are mature now. Anyways, I like rain and I like getting drenched in rain (No, I dont sing and dance.. ). But there is something in this Charlotte rain that makes you very lazy. Only time you get up from the bed is either to fill yourself or empty. Its cold outside, gloomy and cold and well.. just gloomy and cold... Going to office seems such a horrendous task in such a weather. Most people try woking from home. Well, thats even worse. Its ok if you have work. Else, its too boring. You do not have anyone to talk to.

Whole week you wait for these two days. And when it actually arrives, you do not do anything. Now a days at least we have some task.. Of searching couple of cars. Me and my roommate are searching for cars. (Any help is appreciated.) From past few weeks we have been searching for a car and we still have not found the right one. Finding my life partner was easier than this (No offense meant sweetheart..). Usually on Sunday evenings you start getting frustrated at the fact that you have not done anything and decide that next weekend will be different. I have taken that decision more than 40 times myself.

Why don't I go and get a life you say? Good question. I have forgotten what it means to go out with friends. We had a pretty good group once upon a time. We had lot of fun trips. Now everyone has his own bag of burdens to carry. So thats that. May be its just that people here are mostly bummed by work so much that weekends most prefer to laze around. Its like there are two moods on weekends. Lazy and Very lazy. By the way, if you have a regular cell phone (I have a *clears throat* iPhone) type onsite, one of the options you can see is "morgue". Also, cricket has not started yet.

Speaking of cricket, Ponting scored a century before Indian team punished his team like a naughty victorian era child. This may be his last stint as captain. With bizarre choices and even bizarre attitude, he is trying to convince himself that he has much left in him. But its more like an old man going to pubs to score. Some may pity him but nobody would believe what he says. But he deserves some respect as a batsman. As a cricketer, not much. He has been the epitome of what Australian cricket stands for. But as a batsman, he has been maginificient. At least till couple of years ago. I dont like him but still I do consider his 140 vs India in 2003 WC final as one of the finest I have watched. It may as well be marked as the finest ODI innings by an Australian.

India played pretty well to send back the champions.. Except for Gambhir, who at one point decided he is a headless chicken and started running all over the place. Yuvraj is making the KG king Inzy proud with his batting. Inzy still wouldnt approve your runnign between wickets though. A weighted (get it??) batsman scores with his bat, not legs. Next stop Mohali. Arch rivals playing their 5th encounter in worldcup. Can India continue their unbeaten run? There is video that says India may lose as bookies have put lot of money. Well. I do not believe in it. I have not seen Arnab Goswami talk about it. If the GMan doesnt wage a war, it probably is not true. Also, Aaj Tak has not had a special yet.

We will be watching the biggest drama of this world cup hopefully. We have had all England matches in group for thrills but this should be better than that. Indian strong batting lineup which is one batting powerplay away from hara kiri are facing Pakistani bowling attack who can commit hara kiri anytime they want. Its Nehra who is horrible in front of the wicket vs Kamran who is horrible behind it. Bhajji who can slap his Indian teammate vs Shoaib who can go one step better and hit the teammate with a bat, two batsmen of Pak vs two bowlers of India, Its the man who defies all common sense vs well.. India does not have any one to match Afridi.. Afridi is someone who can rip any team apart. He can harm the opponents or he can harm his own team. Lets hope its the Second one. As usual, let the best team win. Sorry Pakistan. You played well. Thanks for the entertainment . See ya.

Hello Scarlett...

Ah.. The spring is here... The Scarlett Johansson (Ok if you are not a Scarlett fan, think of Natalie Portman.. Or Rani Mukherjee.. But seriously. Its Scarlett friggin' Johansson..) of all seasons is here. This is quite clearly the best time of the year (Yes. I'm not allergic to pollens). Nature has moved on from the Angelina Jolie phase (Winter.. cold and Ugly yet some people like it) and made everyone realize how pretty it actually is. Being someone who likes fashion, it makes me glad to see designer short skirts/hot pants and Ts all around.. They may carry pretty girls.. I am not aware. Being the committed happily married person that I am, my eyes are focused.

Spring is here everyone... Be happy...

This is the time when all the Indians in this place start playing cricket. By evening everyone tries to go to a school ground where the highschool boys play football. Not the original beautiful game. This is the one where you have people dressed like warriors and aim to kill or maim each other and blame everything on the elliptical foot long thing they call the "ball". Its like a war.. But of course a war has less casualties. I never understood the rules. They always try to make sure that nobody is holding the ball.. Why teach kids to be violent? Whats the whole purpose? Manly? balderdash. Its like watching Andrew Symonds and Matty Hayden do ballet.


Coming back to cricket.. Of course the school people do not want us to play cricket there. No. Don't use the word racism.. Its just that they have neatly mowed the grass for the football practice and in order to play cricket, we have.. um.. destroyed the 22X2 yards in the middle. By the way, we do have a designated cricket ground here. Somthing I never expected in Amrika. It will remind you of New Zealand grounds. Its scenic and its very small. And its inside a park. The park also has frisbee golf. All around the park amidst trees you have 18 markers to aim to. So there is no shortage of Gora's staring at all the Indians playing odd brother of baseball.


We do have a Intra-company tournament as well. You can see mostly unfit guys dressed in athletic clothing huffing and puffing (Puffing is quite true. Most of them come so that they can smoke without the wife knowing). There are some good players. Now since the ground is small and most of the other players attack like Manjrekar, defend like Maninder Singh, bowl like a combination of Agarkar and Raju, its fairly easy for those good players to make a fool of everyone else like me. Oh and we have a team too. Its called C4, after the explosive. The tagline says "Blast radius is greater than the ground radius". Our captain came up with that. Doesn't make sense. You would hv assumed that it means hitting sixes. But thats not true. We fold up and hope that their team is worse than ours (kinda like Indian batting Powerplay vs West Indian batting against spin).


Spring also means time for outings has returned. We are usually not very enthusiastic to go out during the cold and also sunset happens by 5/5:30 PM here. People become lazy to go out and snack their way through the evenings (And most of the people are from Chennai. When u put them here and if temperature goes below zero, you can see many many layers of clothing. Like Victorian ladies.). Very few people can survive the cool weather comfortably (Are you thinking of Anil Kapoor, God's greatest tribute to body hair and the mascot of the Grizzlies? if you are, we are birds of the same feather. We should totally hangout. Booze's on me) Now you will see half naked people running in streets with their iPods on. No.. no.. Not Indians. May be because we are proud folk. Togadiya said so.


This spring may not be as good. Most of the people I know here are planning to go back before the summer ends. That makes me sad. It also makes me wonder on how fast time flies. (Philosphy starts.. )You say it is monotonous and boring but you never realize how fast life is actually moving. It has been more than a year already. It seems like few days ago that I landed in Chicago and forgot my bag in the airport. The life here becomes a routine after the euphoria of "I'm at onsite" wears down. You struggle throughout the week, waiting for the weekends to come and when sunday evening comes and you need to go to Walmart or Harris Teeter for shopping, you realize that the weekend you were waiting for has passed.  I read somewhere "  Time, by moments, steals away, First the hour, and then the day; Small the daily loss appears,Yet it soon amounts to years". You know what, before you know it, Angelina will be back.

 

I am Cold and yes thats Blood..



Note to wife : If you are reading this blog.. Are you really? aww.. thanks.. Also, I may hv spoken abt prettty girls etc, but you are the prettiest for me. I was just generalizing. You understand right?

trust and see what happens...

Why woud someone who trusts you a lot put you in a spot? You get to know that they are unhappy and you make your best attempt to get in touch with them and they simply ignore you. Is it because they want to know that they are not happy, but do not wish to discuss with you? For someone who wants you to know they are depressed, shouldn't they be making an effort to talk as well?

You are in middle of something, and you get to know that the person is depressed. You are concerned and you try to contact him/her. You mail/call/skype/gtalk or whatever you can. But there is no response. How do you feel? Scared that he/she has done something to self? How many people felt that way? or how many have done that to you? I figured out that it happens to me more often than not. Is it just me? or people love to play with me? I do not know.

Normally, I'm not an emotional person and im not that sentimentally attached to people around me. But there are some who have proved special and I care about them. And the sad part is they dont bother about it. Whenever I talk/meet, they paint the sad picture. But will not respond when I want to be there for them. They are busy shopping or going out with other friends.

Walter Anderson had said "We're never so vulnerable than when we trust someone - but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy". I feel trust is the most important part of an relationship. Be it love or friendship. That is the best thing you can get. Not mutual admiration, not love, not the time spent together. Its the knowledge that you have the other person come what may and you will be there for him/her. There are people who misuse this. I'm not denying the fact. But if the person really is worth it, you will stand by him/her. Let me use another quote here. This by Ralph Waldo Emerson -"The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it's the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with his friend."

Marriage they say is not a word but a sentence. Life long sentence. Love is blind and marriage is an institution. Its been two years since I entered the institution for clinically blind. We have maintained a long distance relationship pretty well, with our fair share of fights. She drives me up the wall sometimes with her attitude and mood swings. But i know how good she is and how much she loves me. Even with all her shoutings and yellings, I know that at the end of the day she will be there for me always.

If you cannot trust a friend, then are not allowing that friend to be the friend that you need them to be. I'm not sure if that made sense. OK, Why do I end up writing philosophical bullshit on my blog? I have no idea. Tried to stop but somehow I just cant help it.

Needed.. Peace..

Melancholy.. Someone asked me how is life treating me. Did not get the verb form of melancholy. So just said fine. Life as we know it is nothing like we know it. I realized it recently while planning my life. It always waits for us to take a decision and then decides to take the alternate route.

Staying away from loved ones, working your ass off, staying up till late, not getting enough sleep, still you do not wanna leave although you tell everyone that you have had enough.. Well.. If you are experiencing all these, it means you are at onshore. Or made a shitty career choice.. or both..

Why is it that some people have all the happiness? Im scared that blog is becoming too philosophical. Enough of this...

I read about verdict on Aruna Shanbuag. The poor lady has suffered enough. Cant they end her pain? The man who did this to her was released after 14 years. Even sadder part is he was charged only for assault and robbery, not the sexual offence. Why did they let him go? they should have hanged him, By his balls. Some government, some laws...