yes! google did it again! after recently akila surprised me with an email, out of the blue - i decided to google some of the old school chums myself and there was sony waiting for me with open arms!

i immediately wrote out an email to him and was pleasantly surprised when it happened to be the same old pal that i sat besides (much to his chagrin) for three impressionable years of my life!

i still vividly recollect our times together - how he would complete most of his homework within school! how i would irritate him by discussing or asking him questions when i didn't understand something that pherwani, marwah or bhalla was saying or by eating the wada pav that veny would get for him at lunch time when he did not get a tiffin box! i am rather excited at establishing contact after such a long time!

google rocks!

i suddenly recollected this one that was hurled at me by viraj (sudha tai's kid) and wanted to post it - lest it will be lost in the sands of time

I am a dog, you are a flower...
I raise my leg and give you a shower!

there was a pregnant pause between the first line and the second. so when he recited the first line, i was gullibly surprised at why the otherwise abusive viraj was calling himself a dog and giving the other person the honor of being called a flower. it took just a few moments to be brought back to the ground with a thud when he recited the second line.

remember the good ol' fireball XL5 of our childhood?
i was always facinated by Cap'n Steve Zodiac's adventures around the universe!
so also by the amazing title track!
i was hunting for some songs on coolgoose when i came across the title track, reproduced below! the lyrics are quite romantic, what say?

I wish I was a spaceman,
The fastest guy alive
I'd fly you round the universe,
In Fireball XL5
Way out in space together,
Conquerers of the skies
My heart would be a fireball - a fireball
Every time I gazed into your starry eyes.


We'd take the path to Jupiter,
And maybe very soon
We'd cruise along the Milky Way,
And land upon the Moon
Through a wonderland of stardust,
We'd zoom our way to Mars
My heart would be a fireball - a fireball
Coz you would be my Venus of the stars.


But though I'm not a spaceman,
Famous and renowned
I'm just a guy that's down to earth,
With both feet on the ground
It's all imagination
I'll never reach the stars
My heart is still a fireball - a fireball,
Every time I gaze into your starry eyes.

with due regards to Mario Puzo, Sarkar is a stunner of a movie from the Ram Gopal Verma camp! A must watch (all 4 voted in favor).
I doubt if anyone other than the father-son jodi of the big and small B could have done better justice to the movie! Brilliant performance and brilliant cinematography!

another one of the movies, that give u an impression that the hindi cinema has come of age and has moved on to what can be truly termed as cinema-next-gen !

watch it on the big screen, please do!

I had written this verse (worse?) last year when I was so pained with the rains!
I have decided to make the most out of this year's shower, so haven't reached the pain limit yet!
Read on:


Do you like it when it rains?
Doesn't it remind you of all the pains?

"Drip, Drip Drip Drip"That's the song your clothes sing"
Trip Trip Trip Trip"That's you falling o'er things

Look out, doesn't the sky seem dull?
Look in, You have a bunch of things o'er which to mull.

You seem to think you can go home at six.
But beware, the clouds will have you in a fix

All it takes to fight this is a cup of garam chai
and with Sujju's bhajiya's you are sure to be on a high.

Pray tell me: The morrow would be bright and sunny
and I would return to my self, funny!


(ps: reference to my best friend and sis Sujata was meant to urge her into cooking. She neither makes bhajiyas, nor any chai)

sundays are usually spent getting up late and watching some telly. this sunday we were woken up by a call to inform that one of our family friends that was suffering from cancer expired last night. sad? no actually good - he was delivered of his pain, wasn't he?

well, took me into musing what shall death lead to and the associated thought process. this was followed by a philosophical program on the idiotbox that talked about how GOD is within our self and stuff.

I found myself staring at the sky and the stars and then sudden realization struck that we are so miniscule in this vast universe! was it the big bang and the associated physics that explains our existence or is there some supreme power sitting up there, who, as we speak is reviewing this blog?

any thoughts?

the hot summer always takes me back to this topic:

back in college, we always had a scarcity of water and cool water was something unheard of. so in the huge campus that our college boasted of, there were few oases, like our Electrical Engineering lab which had concientious keepers that cared to store up water in earthen pots!

now, after each lecture that lasted about an hour and half, most of us (amanna and me at least) would toddle downstairs to the electrical lab, to gulp a glass or two of the naturally cooled water. heavenly feeling! each one really wanted to drink first! it was an uncontrollable urge, really!

now on one such occasion where amanna and me were fighting for the first glass and were sprinting towards the matka (or the earthen pot) we saw another colleague of ours kamraan already reaching the lab ahead of us. we got irritated by the fact that we would now have to wait for one more person to quench his thirst before we could get to gulping. also during some nightmarish occasions, after someone drank ahead of you, the pot would be rendered empty and that fact would be too much to bear. more than the actual summer heat!

however what gave birth to this term "kamraangiri" was a strange fact! read on...
amanna and me reached the pot and saw kamraan filling the glass. we were looking at him irritatingly - hoping he would finish off quickly and we would get our chance! amanna got too impatient and even lifted the lid off the pot to check if there was enough water for everyone. now kamraan's glass finally filled up from the slow stream coming out of the tap, and what was really touching was instead of he drinking the water himself, handed the glass over to amanna! amanna was really stunned. he almost fainted, not able to believe the act of selflessness that he had just witnessed. for that entire day, he just kept repeating "how could he have done this?"

but then there are some people like kamraan!

did you have your dose of kamraangiri today?

i remember we got in sleeping bags for those good ol days when we used to stay back for the night.
put em to use after a real long time today! fun and even got some work done for a change. i am beginning to feel that night shifts are the most productive!

met up with good old sanjay on the weekend. he is en route to the united states and is back to mai mumbai for a sabbatical. funny how we (jay and biru) have come a long way - together from ncst to working at bently and now hes gone his own way...

sanjay has been synonymous with friendship for me as we have shared some very great moments together and i haven't had such a strong bonding with almost anyone that i can remember of... with the exception of amit (don) amanna i guess.

took me back to thinking about friendship and how it is an essential color of the rainbow that is life and also got me thinking about how that lack of friend creates a good deal of vacuum.

looking at the horizon for a bumchum pal again! anyone game?

height of desperation?

Ok - I was fishing for something when I came across some old articles I had jotted down. Now this one takes the cake! How desparate can a guy get? I remember I wrote this in one go - possibly trying to woo a non existent lady! Obviously nothing happened - I know I expected Kavitha to atleast come and slap me! But I was safely ignored!
Then again, I liked the way I wrote the last line - "friend"! hahahaha!
The font is obviously courier to indicate nostalgia!

Yesterday morning when I woke up, I had an eternal smile on my face. So much so that Mum asked me if I had finally got a solution to the problem at work that had eaten my head for the whole of last week.
I gave her a passing nod which was neither a yes nor a no! I made my cup of tea (For once I did not wait for Mum to make it for me) and then sat, cup in hand, on the window ledge gazing at the myriad of colors on the horizon. I wanted to re-live my dream that had made me smile throughout the night!

A sip of the chai took me to back to the time when I was speaking to Seema about her friends and her life. One of her friends seemed so much in her life that I could almost picturize her?. (Kavitha Pillai) was how Seema referred to her. "She is very close and has done her B.Tech from the Vatumal Institute", said Seema.
Seema was occasionaly glancing at her wrist watch and I could sense she was getting late for her class. I didn't hold her back, but by then I had almost started imagining what kind of person Kavitha would be and if I could ever get to know her!

I raised the cuppa to my lips, only to find that I had drained the last drop of the elixir already! I came out of my reverie and started getting ready for work. I was already late!
I started my sprint to the Andheri station and was immediately back to my thoughts. "Hi", someone jogging besides me said.

I looked up and found myself gazing straight into the eyes of Kavitha! "Hi", I said looking sideways but not stopping my jog. Kavitha continued jogging with me. It was somewhat strange. I could see straight through her! She was transparent. And then I realized it was just a continuation of my dream. But then I wanted it to continue, so I played along...

"Will you be my friend?" I asked her. She smiled at me. I took that for an Yes. I had a new friend! WOW!
Seema had told me about Kavitha being a VB Programmer, and I was searching hard to make conversation.
"How do you create COM Components in VB, Kavitha?", I asked not desiring an answer. Kavitha looked up at me and gestured with a snap of her fingers - her thumb rolling of her middle finger "Like that!", she said. I was impressed!

I looked at her and smiled and she smiled back. We had reached the bus-stop. We got into the first 415 that came along. I talked to her from a wide variety of topics ranging from my favorite author to her favorite music; from my favorite jean to her favorite dupatta; from my favorite avyal to her favorite dal fry!

"Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech" The bus had reached SEEPZ and I was out of my dream with a start! Everyone was gazing at me. Obviously they were taking me for some sort of lunatic with all my talking into thin air like that!

But then, I was still smiling! - I had a new friend, hadn't I? Kavitha!

mumbai meri jaan

I'm the usual bumbaiyya that keeps on telling others - they can kiss dirt because nothing can come close to mumbai when it comes to convenience. Bangalore is one place that I visit often because good ol' bro is settled there and the fact that the periodic, "planned" power cuts are something unheard of here in mumbai - is what i always rub in!

On my way to work today in the morning - all the above mumbai-loyalty hubba hubba that I have been doing just seemed to evaporate in the summer air, as I grimaced and almost "kissed the dirt" myself while manouvering the car on a nearly impossible muddy stretch on the Jogeshwari-Vikhroli link road! I survived but the thought of that muddy stretch in the monsoon sent shivers down my spine!

Bangalore calling?!

moment of truth

this weekend was real fun. got to feel the power of truth in this strange incident...

we are presently 'doing' up our windows (read converting them into sliding windows). so in the hall, the window frame just 'juts' out of the level of the external building wall. a new concept indegionised (if thats the word) by our local 'contractor'. he's done that to a few other residents and it looked good, so we gave him the go-ahead. now our neighbour, that has no reason to interfere, chips in - "biradar saheb - this is looking awkward and is spoiling the elevation of the building." further goes on to complain to the secretary that we should get the 'jutting out' portion chopped off. we explain to him that once the box grill comes in that encompasses that jutting part, it would never be visible. we further go on to explain to him that if others that have already done it did not have to face the music why are we being singled out. he seems to shut us up saying that that is another building in the society. we wave him off with a "we'll see".

later the secretary calls up and asks us to chop the jutting portion off too. he says he is unaware of others that might have done it.

towards evening i get a good opportunity - when I am getting out of the house for a drive, the complainin' neigbour happens to get out of his house too. I use the opportunity to 'snub' him! while on a normal day i would have smiled or wished him a cordial "good evening", i just walk off without even noticing him. this probably triggers his guilt complex and he calls up in the night to talk to dad. dad, the usual emotional variety screams at the top of his voice, saying that the decision has to be fair and applicable to all, so once others in the society chop off their extensions, we will too! Neighbour, guilt complex more fired up, walks in to our house and attempts to cover it all up by saying, he wants to advise us to take this stand - "ask the secretary to apply the rule to all others and that you are ready to wait for a period of 8 days after which you will go ahead and construct it as decided"!

bah. some advice this? we didn't ask for it mr. neighbour.

what i enjoyed most was he coming up to talk to us, fired by his guilt :)

exploring blogger today - i noticed that one can publish to blogger via email. this may sound very "simple" or "taken for granted" for many but sounded like a cool publishing tool. trying this out as the first post via email.

edited the way my blog looks today. something to brighten up the otherwise drab look that I usually have on anything that i publish!

blogger to the rescue

well - was feeling so much under the weather that i took sharan in blogger!
last night i found me mumbling to myself - where do you want to go today! thoroughly microsoftish!
but as usual, got no answers. i also ended up asking wife if the return value of the new function in the dll that she was writing was long or int (just that she has got nothing to do with dlls - she is a doc, the kind that brings babies out into this world!) in "return", i think she mumbled back an answer that translated into "get a brain scan done"

the only resolution seems to me to take a break and take some time out to stand and stare... (anyone game?)