The NRI freshers party had got over. The only memorable incident that happened for that freshy was the Ramayanam2K, a lot of comedy. We had Pradeep Muralidharan playing the Ravan with Gangster's paradise song running in the background. Anila was Sita and then the characteristic "Ada poya" by her which was picked up from the "shakalaka baby" song. I remember myself and kartik sitting at the last bench and immitating her and irritating her all thru the practice sessions for the freshy... (later i came to know that she was real angry with me for that and was irritated to the core;-)). We did the "suno to diwana dil" dance and the girls, i guess, had done a dance for "rang de"...anyway that was over and all were enjoying their new found freedom, when we as mallus had ragging ongoing even now..The mallu freshers party was the following week. And i dont think in the 4 years of college life, we NRI mallus have ever looked forward for anything more eagerly than for this particular day when we would be freed from the bonds of slavery...no more slaps...!!
it was the most painful week of the lot. ur remaining NRI counterparts were partying..going places...having fun..goign to the gate for dinner...and we were content seeing the snaps of their outings with the girls and listening to the fun times they had outside while we were undergoing another week of brutality by our very dear seniors...!!hmmm....
anyway finally the day came . We got our freshie. I was happy beyond words...and i guess the feelings were the same amongst all of us...esp after the formation of IBMk and restart of ragging and all the crap that followed..this was a welcome shower of monsoons for us...!!During the freshy there was a proper mimicking by Kuttan of the seniors including Johnny n Vinod and it was mimicked so perfectly that all were rolling on the ground..!!All fresh memories and then we did perform the "Suno tho diwana dil" partly and performed some rubbish on the stage when we were supposed to do a proper drama or dance or something...anyway then we heard a lot of advices from the seniors ..abt the mallu unity and their freshers party stories...!!one memorable day..!!!
and this was the very day when i made my entrance into the world traversed by almost all my seniors!! I tried my first voluntary gulp that day- no tensions...no mind blocks( for the NRI freshie as well, I had gulped but then i was more worried about the mallu ragging that was scheduled for me the next day more than enjoyin the freshers party)..
it was bliss....i remember one of my seniors Subhash Narayan(mallu prod) challenged me and Addy to a competition. He thought he would get a easy victory over us. We too thought the same. But for the heck of competing we competed. We had the first swig - bottoms up - on the rocks and Subhash was aghast and he too without loosing a moment had his first glass...we were al pumped up now...!!It was the moment when we had to show that we were not the "pavam pavam" types which we had portrayed ourselves to be...!!We ahd another 2 swigs and Subhash followed suit...and then we slowed down on advice from final years...esp since it was the first time for myself and addy..so we had the 4th and 5th drink slow n steeady...and sudenly we saw someone was shouting and moving arnd completely drunk. Turned arnd to see that it was none other than our dear Subhash.
He was Blown...myself, prem, dwipin carried him to someone's room, i guess it was prem's room and left him there to sleep..and we carried on..
Later on heard that never before had Subhash drank so much in his life..and we had coaxed him into it..courtesy the challenge. Anyway after that the real fun began...All the guys were pretty high up and the singing session began with parady's and vallips and first years (us) abusing all our seniors to the core for what all they had done to us...!!
The night however belonged to Addy. He was drunk and all that vaashi n hatred that had built inside him against the seniors came out and he caught the seniors one by one..starting from final yrs Ashif and ending with Vinod (2nd yr) in Diamond hostel.\He ragged each one of them...with his tongue so much that all seniors were completely flabbergast. They dint have a word to say...the best was Addy's ragging of Vinod - a common irritating guy for all the first years then. Vinod had retired early from the freshers party since he was a teetotaller and he had obviously got bored...But that was not an issue for our dude Addy...he went to his rooom..pulled off the characteristic towel which was wrapped arnd Vinod's eyes when he slept...pulled him out of his bed and abused him beyond anything...so much so that finally Vinod got irritated and me and Yeda (anand P) had to pull him out and make addy sleep somewhere else..!!
Then me and Yeda continued talking about our past, got a pep talk from him about the various departments etc..etc..!!It was the same night when Ghattis (maharashtrians) had had also their freshy and we joined Chatlawar (a 2- time year back, then studying in second yr - and a pretty good footballer though hot headed). We asked him for water and he gave us a bottle...which was just on the rocks Vodka..and both me and yeda gulped it down and realised what we had drunk was vodka and not water...!!anyway...then myself, yeda and chaat sat and talked abt football for sometime..then we went to one of the dhabas outside and had some sweets...early in the morning by arnd 4:00 am and then got back. By this time 3 of us were properly high and we decided to play football to practice for the inter-year finals due to be played that evening between 1st yrs v/s 2sn yrs...kicked arnd the ball till abt 9:00 am...and then we went to mess and had breakfast and went back to the hostel and slept off...!!
i got up at 4:30 pm only just in time for the match which was to begin at 5:00 pm...went to the field..paddded up ...and match started.but there was no sign of Yeda or Chaat...2 main players for the 2nd yrs then..!!anyhow...we had a thumpin win of 3-0 - if my memory is right. and we were doing the victory dancing and shouting happily..when chaat and yeda came in...all droopy..they obviously had had too much to drink and their head was spinning even now...pity them and saw the look of hatred for them in the remaining 2yrs eyes..!!I was glad that i had got up in time for the match..>!!
and that day it dawned upon me..that I have a great capacity..!!I am a tank..!!The news spread fast to all seniors..the rest of the second semester was spent accompanying every other senior...giving company to many...roaming arnd with the seniors..seeing places...and enjoying every moment.!!Second semester - i hardly saw the classrooms...!!
After the eventful nights of comradeship...i would get baclk to hostel by 7:00 am...have breakfast and sleep till evening...and the cycle continued...!!!This was jut the beginning of the TANK...and more was yet to come....
Monday, February 20, 2006
Suno to Diwana Dil
Well for those of you, who could not make sense of the title, it is nothing but a song by Kamal Khan (the one who sang "oh oh jaane janna" - salman khan dance number) to which we danced.
Now the we comprised of Vineesh, Akhilesh, Kartik, Adarsh, Vithal, Ashwin, Pranay. I am not very sure how exactly we had started the whole process...but it was Akki's brainwave, if my memory is right...!!!
This was almost to the end of ragging when our seniors said that we would have to perform something for the fresher's party..some dance or skit or something of the sorts...and we were unsure of what to do exactly..!!!and then akki came up with this idea of dancing!!!
now before i get into how we started off and how we prepared ourselves and got guys to dance...let me tell u something...all those guys who danced for this..were novices?? no not even that...they (including me) never ever thought in their entire life till then that one day they would be dancing on stage and that too for a fast number..nothing folk or slow!!!
anywy it was intially for the freshers party and so the above said guys were all forced to dance along with me n akki..the entire choreography was directed by both of us only..!!!Basically we tried to recollect all those dance steps we had seen over the ages in the movies and on stage in school and tried redoing that!!
First myself and akki used to try the step and we would perfect it....and once we had perfected it..we would teach the rest of the guys and make them practice over n over again...until they were comfortable doing the step and even in their sleep, if asked, they would be knowin the sequence of steps..!!!we started with one step at a time and after perfecting each step , the song was played and we danced in one shot till the point where we had perfected..!!
I dont know if dance pundits (the girls - remya, shivani, anila etc) would call our dancing as dance but atleast we were giving it a shot and that is what mattered..!!we were, frankly speaking, doing more of aerobics than dance over there...!!!Lots of steps where we jumped, did splits (almost), made few formations...(picked up from watching numeroius dances over 18 yrs of life) etc etc..!!we initially had started off practice in A-22. We used to move the beds to the sides and create space and dance...and slowly coz of the music (whch was vey upbeat) we attracted a small crowd from the neighbouring rooms and iut became a everyday routine for 7 of us to dance and practice for our fresher's party while the crowd just looked on...!!
anyway we had reached only half way thru the song when one of the guys, Shantanu Das, asked us to perform for the first year Rotract function. He was a member of the Rotract Club of RECT and they were conducting a function for the first years and this guy wanted us to dance for the same..!!initially we were very reluctant...as none of us have danced before and we were not sure if we could pull it off together..and moreover our Ragging schedules might clash and we would not be able to make it after all..!!so kept declining but he never gave up and kept pestering!! the 7 of us sat and thought abt it.and decided to give it a shot..!!we told him that it might be the case that one of us might not turn up for the dance due to some ragging calls by senior and if the dance went bad...never to point the fingers at us..!!after all this was said and dance..the practice sessions became even more vigorous...coz the Rotract function was just a week away and we still had another stanza to put the dance steps for and then practice from beginning to end for a few days..!!we shifted our dance room from A-22 to the bathroom verandha...where there was just sufficient space for the 7 of us to dance together..!!!
the main problem we were facing was that in between one of us without fail ended up forgetting the steps...and thus it would look bad on stage..slowly our confidence level was going down but then we held together. In between Adarsh even gave up sayin, it was beyond his capacity..but somehow convinced him and all others and gave them the incentive that this might be the chance to break the ice with the girl folks.
Which guy would not like to be famous and attract girls?? in my opinion None..!!and that indeed was the driving force...it worked like a charm!!myself and akki used to dance less for practice sessions and conc more on coordination and perfecting everybody...!!!
we jst did 2 -3 rounds wherein all of us danced together!!!
anyway the finaly D-day arrived..!!!We wore our cargoes and tight t-shirts, and shoes for the first time..(remember it was ragging time and we were not allowed all this little happiness' of life) and to avoid being called for raggin at the same time...what we did is..we invited all our second year seniors (both mallu n NRI's) for the program and it helped to some extent that few of the NRI n Mallu seniors(3rd yrs n Final yrs) were members of the Rotract club and they warned us not to skip the dance and go for ragging..else we would be done for..!!that was the last straw!!there was nothing that could stop us from dancing now...and after days of practice and perfecting the steps...finally the D-day had arrived...!!morning we bunked couple of classes to practice on what was going to be our final stage for the evening!!We were committing mistakes now...getting tensed..our first dance performance and thoughts of getting battered by tomatoes and rotten eggs did pass thru our minds!!!
anyway like they say in mallu "randum kalpichu njangal irangi" meaning leaving our faith in the ONE above we got onto the stage when we were beckoned upon by Das!!and the music started and we started dancing full fledged...emotions on our face..atleast we thought so...and in between mine n akki's eyes were darting behind to check if all was in sync!!and amazingly everythin seemed fine..!!we were dancing our hearts out and when one of the steps came where in myself and akki bent backwards...did a step and then fell to the ground and jumped back up...the crowd was on its feet...everyone were shouting, dancing clapping...in APPRECIATION and finally the song came to an end...we bowed and we had a really loud ,strong and all superlatives possible round of applause...!!that was one of the best moments in my life...!!!
This had put us the NRI's of 1999 batch in the lime light...everyone knew us..and the following days we spent baskin in glory and then for the freshers party (every state) the first years (our batch mates) came to us..to learn the steps and all of them performed the same for their freshie and it became so famous that we were ordered by our seniors(mallu) not to p[erformthat dance for the freshie...!!every tom, dick and harry were performin that for the freshies now and we had established our stand as NRI's...the STUDs..and later on known as the DUDES in final yr...!!!
And this incident was just the beginning of my talent in dancing...;-)
Now the we comprised of Vineesh, Akhilesh, Kartik, Adarsh, Vithal, Ashwin, Pranay. I am not very sure how exactly we had started the whole process...but it was Akki's brainwave, if my memory is right...!!!
This was almost to the end of ragging when our seniors said that we would have to perform something for the fresher's party..some dance or skit or something of the sorts...and we were unsure of what to do exactly..!!!and then akki came up with this idea of dancing!!!
now before i get into how we started off and how we prepared ourselves and got guys to dance...let me tell u something...all those guys who danced for this..were novices?? no not even that...they (including me) never ever thought in their entire life till then that one day they would be dancing on stage and that too for a fast number..nothing folk or slow!!!
anywy it was intially for the freshers party and so the above said guys were all forced to dance along with me n akki..the entire choreography was directed by both of us only..!!!Basically we tried to recollect all those dance steps we had seen over the ages in the movies and on stage in school and tried redoing that!!
First myself and akki used to try the step and we would perfect it....and once we had perfected it..we would teach the rest of the guys and make them practice over n over again...until they were comfortable doing the step and even in their sleep, if asked, they would be knowin the sequence of steps..!!!we started with one step at a time and after perfecting each step , the song was played and we danced in one shot till the point where we had perfected..!!
I dont know if dance pundits (the girls - remya, shivani, anila etc) would call our dancing as dance but atleast we were giving it a shot and that is what mattered..!!we were, frankly speaking, doing more of aerobics than dance over there...!!!Lots of steps where we jumped, did splits (almost), made few formations...(picked up from watching numeroius dances over 18 yrs of life) etc etc..!!we initially had started off practice in A-22. We used to move the beds to the sides and create space and dance...and slowly coz of the music (whch was vey upbeat) we attracted a small crowd from the neighbouring rooms and iut became a everyday routine for 7 of us to dance and practice for our fresher's party while the crowd just looked on...!!
anyway we had reached only half way thru the song when one of the guys, Shantanu Das, asked us to perform for the first year Rotract function. He was a member of the Rotract Club of RECT and they were conducting a function for the first years and this guy wanted us to dance for the same..!!initially we were very reluctant...as none of us have danced before and we were not sure if we could pull it off together..and moreover our Ragging schedules might clash and we would not be able to make it after all..!!so kept declining but he never gave up and kept pestering!! the 7 of us sat and thought abt it.and decided to give it a shot..!!we told him that it might be the case that one of us might not turn up for the dance due to some ragging calls by senior and if the dance went bad...never to point the fingers at us..!!after all this was said and dance..the practice sessions became even more vigorous...coz the Rotract function was just a week away and we still had another stanza to put the dance steps for and then practice from beginning to end for a few days..!!we shifted our dance room from A-22 to the bathroom verandha...where there was just sufficient space for the 7 of us to dance together..!!!
the main problem we were facing was that in between one of us without fail ended up forgetting the steps...and thus it would look bad on stage..slowly our confidence level was going down but then we held together. In between Adarsh even gave up sayin, it was beyond his capacity..but somehow convinced him and all others and gave them the incentive that this might be the chance to break the ice with the girl folks.
Which guy would not like to be famous and attract girls?? in my opinion None..!!and that indeed was the driving force...it worked like a charm!!myself and akki used to dance less for practice sessions and conc more on coordination and perfecting everybody...!!!
we jst did 2 -3 rounds wherein all of us danced together!!!
anyway the finaly D-day arrived..!!!We wore our cargoes and tight t-shirts, and shoes for the first time..(remember it was ragging time and we were not allowed all this little happiness' of life) and to avoid being called for raggin at the same time...what we did is..we invited all our second year seniors (both mallu n NRI's) for the program and it helped to some extent that few of the NRI n Mallu seniors(3rd yrs n Final yrs) were members of the Rotract club and they warned us not to skip the dance and go for ragging..else we would be done for..!!that was the last straw!!there was nothing that could stop us from dancing now...and after days of practice and perfecting the steps...finally the D-day had arrived...!!morning we bunked couple of classes to practice on what was going to be our final stage for the evening!!We were committing mistakes now...getting tensed..our first dance performance and thoughts of getting battered by tomatoes and rotten eggs did pass thru our minds!!!
anyway like they say in mallu "randum kalpichu njangal irangi" meaning leaving our faith in the ONE above we got onto the stage when we were beckoned upon by Das!!and the music started and we started dancing full fledged...emotions on our face..atleast we thought so...and in between mine n akki's eyes were darting behind to check if all was in sync!!and amazingly everythin seemed fine..!!we were dancing our hearts out and when one of the steps came where in myself and akki bent backwards...did a step and then fell to the ground and jumped back up...the crowd was on its feet...everyone were shouting, dancing clapping...in APPRECIATION and finally the song came to an end...we bowed and we had a really loud ,strong and all superlatives possible round of applause...!!that was one of the best moments in my life...!!!
This had put us the NRI's of 1999 batch in the lime light...everyone knew us..and the following days we spent baskin in glory and then for the freshers party (every state) the first years (our batch mates) came to us..to learn the steps and all of them performed the same for their freshie and it became so famous that we were ordered by our seniors(mallu) not to p[erformthat dance for the freshie...!!every tom, dick and harry were performin that for the freshies now and we had established our stand as NRI's...the STUDs..and later on known as the DUDES in final yr...!!!
And this incident was just the beginning of my talent in dancing...;-)
Formation of the IBM;)
Well one would be wondering where IBM came from in my first year of college days..!!well this is not the S/W company that all of you know..but this is Ist Boycotted Mallus, Kerala. This was formed as a result of merciless ragging by our mallu seniors on the guys who had come thru the Kerala quota and later on the NRI mallus also joined the group. An account of the events leading to the formation of this group is.. given below. Since I myself did not have a first hand experience here, i had asked Kuttan (sankar) to write this chapter for me. And i have added on in the end describing what was happening simultaneously at the NRI mallu front.
KutTy's account starts here:
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read vin's blog abt his 1st day of ragging n' wuz reminded of my time. well.. there were innumberable incidents, n' i rem. all of 'em vividly, but the one that stands out the most is the session by the FUMS. before i go into it, there are a few basic things abt RECT that readers shud be aware of.. tho' those very readers are all RECTians themselves n' need no explanation. anyway, here goes:
one's family is constituted of by people who occupied his/her seat in subsequent n' previous years. we have baap [known as 'technical father' in REC bhopal, as my friend sunil told me later], dada n' pardada. slapping is the way ragging happens at RECT, of course accompanied by other things that appear as humorous to seniors. at least to mallus, they don't do indecent things. kandus have to do grosser things like **** on a pole at a junction. UPs probly strip their juniors to satisfy their innermost desires. odiyas only slap, but they do enuf to compensate for all other forms of ragging.. an average odiya score is around the figure of 300. score is the no. of slaps you received n' is a figure that lives in ur brain as long as ur degree does on ur CV ;)
one day i'm reclinin in ravi's room.. when sandeep n' darsan walk in at noon.. sandeep has red marks on his cheeks- darsan is unscathed. i ask 'em what happened n' they say they'd been to the bank, where they met 'basheer'. he'd taken sandeep to a toilet near the bank [which i never knew existed!] n' banged him a few times n' sent him off with darsan to get me. well.. shiver me timbers! i didn't have a choice but to obey the wishes from above n' accompany darsan outside. we were picked up by deepu [yeah dwipin, that bastard who's made it to my list of top ten best friends] n' a guy who introduced himself as manu narayan. but i knew from my sis [who incidentally, had graduated from RECT a year earlier] that this 'manu' wuz 1 yr her junior. i guessed it wuz karthik, my dada. well they took us to BHEL [a nearby township], where we took on the role of pack-asses to carry their laundry; another common phenomenon during ragging. they treated us well for pack-asses tho', feeding us supper at abt 7 at 'bhuvaneshwar', an open-air eat-out at BHEL. we returned to college later.. n' continued beyond agate [that safe haven- the 1st yr hostel] to the dark n' dreary regions of the senior hostels.. we passed diamond on the way, the 2nd yr hostel that hid untold pain n' suffering. we'd never been there as our 2nd yrs found it fit to take us to BHEL for their exclusive pleasure in our ragging experience.
soon lapis loomed into sight.. n' we crossed it n' exited via the rear gate as we were sapphire-bound - when suddenly, into the night, erupted the wild yell of 'POOOYEEE!!!'. all four of us glanced up n' to see a row of dark faces at the top floor beckoning wildly.. and we knew that moment that we were done for. prayers flew up to the heavens from darsan's n' my throat like disturbed pigeons fluttering from a treetop.. but we cudn't evade the prospect of havin to climb up those stairs which got over all too fast for our liking.. as we walked down the corridor towards the wing-end.. wild screams n' laughter greeted us.. i don't exactly rem. what transpired afterward except that a pugilist complete with red gloves appeared from nowhere n' dealt out a series of swift punches to the region of darsan's tummy. he then turned onto me to playfully dab my nose. it wuz getting quite dark, when the play wuz abruptly cut short by someone pushing us unceremoniously into a room.
they closed the door n' asked us to latch it from inside. the door had a barred window which could be swung open. they asked us to switch the lights off n' await our destiny while they went out for dinner. the last person to leave changed his mind n' came back, to inquire of me.. 'kutty, ninakku ente adi kondattundo da?"(kutty, have you got slaps from me ?). i squinted out into the night n' realised that it wuz none other than the famed 'basheer'.. well, i replied truthfully in the negative, wishing i wuz fortunate to have done otherwise. basheer's slap wuz a legend which i was about to witness firsthand... 'engottu vaada'(come here), i heard n' complied. he slid his right hand thru the bars n' dealt me... ONE SWIFT BLOW. the force of the slap flung me backward, n' i landed on the bed at the other end of the small single room. basheer left, darsan switched off the light n' bolted the window n' came n' lay down beside me. i wuz still shocked with that slap. we consoled each other..
the wait that ensued wuz among the most fearsome periods of darsan's n' my lives.. we waited for what seemed to be just minutes, but really wuz closer to an hour, before the knocking on the door began. 'THORAKKADA'(Open the door) they yelled, as we fumbled with the latch n' finally threw it open. they burst into the room one by one.. n' arranged themselves around us.. basheer pushed me to the ground n' somebody took the sole comfort that wuz darsan, away from me.. outside the room. then began the legendary session of ragging which wuz to be related again n' again to an awestruck audience.. no less than twenty exclusively-basheer stunners landed on my poor cheeks.. soon the slaps stopped hurting n' all i felt wuz the dull pain in my head n' the jerks which came as each new blow wuz dealt. at the end of it, both sides of my face were bleeding. the surprise on their faces was evident but they grinned outwardly n' brought basheer a small vial of dettol.. he applied it on my cheeks n' they smarted like mad. i hid all emotion n' after ten mins of respite, he resumed to relentlessly take my score ahead another twenty n' then ceased..
darsan wuz brought into the room n' taking my sorry state into cognizance, he saddened.. they sat him down next n' mr. basheer meted out twenty of 'em unabated.. after which they released us. we went back to agate the next day n' our friends paled at the sight of us.. that day, we decided to boycott further ragging n' under the able n' hidden-for-long leadership of giridhar, forged IBMK.. Ist Boycotted Mallus, Kerala..
The next few months saw us released from the torture of ragging.. we enjoyed while the others suffered. a coupla seniors called us for a peaceful meeting, where we refused to return.. another meeting with the final years occurred where we stubbornly held onto our resolve.. but the walls fell apart one day, when i wuz home for the weekend n' darsan, jithu n' sandeep relented to attend non-physical ragging, the biggest mistake. giri, anil n' sumesh held back, n' escaped from physical fitness sessions consisting of push ups, etc.. which gave in to slaps again.. i had to give in too.. n' had a lone session with basheer where i confirmed that his slaps had lost the splendor of lore.. probly after peer-counsel. it all ended well.. with us getting our freshie- the only drawback being that giri, anil n' sumesh missed it.
basheer.. wuz an alias.. his real name being premlal p. k.. yeah, the same guy who accompanies dwipin on my list of top ten best friends ever.. surprising, isn't it? ;)
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Well this is what exactly happened on the mallu front...well till then..rather till before the formation of IBM, the NRI mallus had a choice of going for mallu ragging...!!As in only if they wanted to be close to their mallu seniors and wanted to attend the mallu freshie they had to atten!! but with the mallu first years all boycotting the ragging completely, the seniors were all frust. This was considered to be a humilation for any seniors to not have their juniors come for ragging and that too the main reason being excessive ragging!! So then what else..but rope in the NRI mallus and after a long tug of war we finally acceded to attend mallu ragging...!!!We were promised by the mallu third yrs and final yrs that we would not be ripped apart like how our mallu quota counterparts had faced (pun intended here:-))But intially we were not convinced coz during the begining of ragging, Ashwin had his ears slammed out by none other than Johnnie George in the train compartment's toilet. The slaps intended for face ended up on Ashwin's ears due to lack of space and this had become a major issue which is why we were given a choice to go for mallu ragging by our seniors....however this sudden twist of fate forced us to go for mallu ragging..to save the pride of the mallu seniors..!!so we became the bakraas and every day we had some ragging session euther by the NRI's or by the Mallus' and if we skipped one to attend the other...the next day all hell was loose!! Many of the guys even thought of runnin away from college due the excessive amount of slaps we were facing every other day...!!The mallu seniors used to rag us severely for the formation of IBM and for those guys not comin for ragging..!!The situation was getting pathetic.
We as NRI's at times slowly develpoed an aversion too for the mallus since it was their boycott due to which we were suffering...anyway this went on for the first semester and second semester on one fine day when i was returnin from kerala...lo!!behold...all the NRI/mallu final yrs were on the train and i had a small session of ragging there.!!Thats when i met the likes of Sajan Abraham, Sonu Sam varghese, Chandy, Pavil Jose (my par-dada) - these were the terror final yrs and i got ragged by them in the train on my return journey. One humorous incident that had happened, i shall narrate now..!!!
well in one of the previous raggin sessions one of my batchmates(mallu - dont remember who exactly) was ragged by Johnnie george!! Johnnie asked him the ? "which state do i belong to?" when the junior answered him "Kerala" , he got whacked beyond belief coz the expected answer was "Solid state" (with reference to chemistry "states"). And telling each other's ragging experiences was a commoner in first yr hostel and this was there in my mind when Sajan asked me to guess his state. Prompt came the asnwer "SOLID"!! The expressions on all these final years face i remember to this date. If i had had a camera then and had the balls..i would have taken a snap of al lthose 4 wonder strucken face as if they were struck by lightning !!! They didnt get the flow of what i was saying..and suddenly it dawned on them what i was referring to and they thought i was trying to get cheeky with them...!!sheesh poor me:-(;-)) and the rest what happened to me...its better untold...i am leaving it to your imagination!!!!
After reachin trichy i was asked to come for raggin that evenin by these seniors for my cheekiness..and i meekly agreed (as if i had a choice)...and along with me came sankar and sandeep...their first return session after boycotting!!man..the whole day..atleast half of the day..i saw them gettin physical fitness ragging...everythin except slaps...pushups...and what not...!!!This was done to so much extent that finally both these guys agreed to getting slapped than going thru this painful physical torture..!!and voila..i could just hear then what was happenin...just could not keep my eyes open seeing them get thulped...!!Sandeep almost as on the verge of tears !!!and then it was done..they were back and in for the ragging...!!and then they were left free..!!
Suddenly the seniors realise that i was just a spectator for the whole session today and their poor minds thought that i was feeling bad for being ignored and they called me...and i had a lone ragging session courtesy all of them just conc on me while kuts n sandy watched on..!!perfect reversal of roles...!!!anyway the dreaded day came to an end...!! We were then taken to Celestine Michael's room (Ghatti Mallu) where half of the guys were drunk and remaning were doped...!!and there me,kuts and sandy were forced to drink liquor for the first time - RUM to be precise..!!3 of us didnt feel anything...we resisted intially but then the seniors forced us to...Asif being the one who forced it down my throat...!!!This was just the beginning of the drinking days for all of us..!!hmmmm....and with this day over..it also meant another thing...as of now atleast the NRI's were also automatically included in the mallu ragging (NRI mallus) and henceforth one commmon freshie for mallus and NRI mallus and no distinction between the two!!!
the only good part of the whole thing for me personally was that it just brought me closer to all the mallus - kuts, sandy, Darsan, Anil, Jithu and to some extent to giri, sumesh and anil!!
KutTy's account starts here:
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read vin's blog abt his 1st day of ragging n' wuz reminded of my time. well.. there were innumberable incidents, n' i rem. all of 'em vividly, but the one that stands out the most is the session by the FUMS. before i go into it, there are a few basic things abt RECT that readers shud be aware of.. tho' those very readers are all RECTians themselves n' need no explanation. anyway, here goes:
one's family is constituted of by people who occupied his/her seat in subsequent n' previous years. we have baap [known as 'technical father' in REC bhopal, as my friend sunil told me later], dada n' pardada. slapping is the way ragging happens at RECT, of course accompanied by other things that appear as humorous to seniors. at least to mallus, they don't do indecent things. kandus have to do grosser things like **** on a pole at a junction. UPs probly strip their juniors to satisfy their innermost desires. odiyas only slap, but they do enuf to compensate for all other forms of ragging.. an average odiya score is around the figure of 300. score is the no. of slaps you received n' is a figure that lives in ur brain as long as ur degree does on ur CV ;)
one day i'm reclinin in ravi's room.. when sandeep n' darsan walk in at noon.. sandeep has red marks on his cheeks- darsan is unscathed. i ask 'em what happened n' they say they'd been to the bank, where they met 'basheer'. he'd taken sandeep to a toilet near the bank [which i never knew existed!] n' banged him a few times n' sent him off with darsan to get me. well.. shiver me timbers! i didn't have a choice but to obey the wishes from above n' accompany darsan outside. we were picked up by deepu [yeah dwipin, that bastard who's made it to my list of top ten best friends] n' a guy who introduced himself as manu narayan. but i knew from my sis [who incidentally, had graduated from RECT a year earlier] that this 'manu' wuz 1 yr her junior. i guessed it wuz karthik, my dada. well they took us to BHEL [a nearby township], where we took on the role of pack-asses to carry their laundry; another common phenomenon during ragging. they treated us well for pack-asses tho', feeding us supper at abt 7 at 'bhuvaneshwar', an open-air eat-out at BHEL. we returned to college later.. n' continued beyond agate [that safe haven- the 1st yr hostel] to the dark n' dreary regions of the senior hostels.. we passed diamond on the way, the 2nd yr hostel that hid untold pain n' suffering. we'd never been there as our 2nd yrs found it fit to take us to BHEL for their exclusive pleasure in our ragging experience.
soon lapis loomed into sight.. n' we crossed it n' exited via the rear gate as we were sapphire-bound - when suddenly, into the night, erupted the wild yell of 'POOOYEEE!!!'. all four of us glanced up n' to see a row of dark faces at the top floor beckoning wildly.. and we knew that moment that we were done for. prayers flew up to the heavens from darsan's n' my throat like disturbed pigeons fluttering from a treetop.. but we cudn't evade the prospect of havin to climb up those stairs which got over all too fast for our liking.. as we walked down the corridor towards the wing-end.. wild screams n' laughter greeted us.. i don't exactly rem. what transpired afterward except that a pugilist complete with red gloves appeared from nowhere n' dealt out a series of swift punches to the region of darsan's tummy. he then turned onto me to playfully dab my nose. it wuz getting quite dark, when the play wuz abruptly cut short by someone pushing us unceremoniously into a room.
they closed the door n' asked us to latch it from inside. the door had a barred window which could be swung open. they asked us to switch the lights off n' await our destiny while they went out for dinner. the last person to leave changed his mind n' came back, to inquire of me.. 'kutty, ninakku ente adi kondattundo da?"(kutty, have you got slaps from me ?). i squinted out into the night n' realised that it wuz none other than the famed 'basheer'.. well, i replied truthfully in the negative, wishing i wuz fortunate to have done otherwise. basheer's slap wuz a legend which i was about to witness firsthand... 'engottu vaada'(come here), i heard n' complied. he slid his right hand thru the bars n' dealt me... ONE SWIFT BLOW. the force of the slap flung me backward, n' i landed on the bed at the other end of the small single room. basheer left, darsan switched off the light n' bolted the window n' came n' lay down beside me. i wuz still shocked with that slap. we consoled each other..
the wait that ensued wuz among the most fearsome periods of darsan's n' my lives.. we waited for what seemed to be just minutes, but really wuz closer to an hour, before the knocking on the door began. 'THORAKKADA'(Open the door) they yelled, as we fumbled with the latch n' finally threw it open. they burst into the room one by one.. n' arranged themselves around us.. basheer pushed me to the ground n' somebody took the sole comfort that wuz darsan, away from me.. outside the room. then began the legendary session of ragging which wuz to be related again n' again to an awestruck audience.. no less than twenty exclusively-basheer stunners landed on my poor cheeks.. soon the slaps stopped hurting n' all i felt wuz the dull pain in my head n' the jerks which came as each new blow wuz dealt. at the end of it, both sides of my face were bleeding. the surprise on their faces was evident but they grinned outwardly n' brought basheer a small vial of dettol.. he applied it on my cheeks n' they smarted like mad. i hid all emotion n' after ten mins of respite, he resumed to relentlessly take my score ahead another twenty n' then ceased..
darsan wuz brought into the room n' taking my sorry state into cognizance, he saddened.. they sat him down next n' mr. basheer meted out twenty of 'em unabated.. after which they released us. we went back to agate the next day n' our friends paled at the sight of us.. that day, we decided to boycott further ragging n' under the able n' hidden-for-long leadership of giridhar, forged IBMK.. Ist Boycotted Mallus, Kerala..
The next few months saw us released from the torture of ragging.. we enjoyed while the others suffered. a coupla seniors called us for a peaceful meeting, where we refused to return.. another meeting with the final years occurred where we stubbornly held onto our resolve.. but the walls fell apart one day, when i wuz home for the weekend n' darsan, jithu n' sandeep relented to attend non-physical ragging, the biggest mistake. giri, anil n' sumesh held back, n' escaped from physical fitness sessions consisting of push ups, etc.. which gave in to slaps again.. i had to give in too.. n' had a lone session with basheer where i confirmed that his slaps had lost the splendor of lore.. probly after peer-counsel. it all ended well.. with us getting our freshie- the only drawback being that giri, anil n' sumesh missed it.
basheer.. wuz an alias.. his real name being premlal p. k.. yeah, the same guy who accompanies dwipin on my list of top ten best friends ever.. surprising, isn't it? ;)
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Well this is what exactly happened on the mallu front...well till then..rather till before the formation of IBM, the NRI mallus had a choice of going for mallu ragging...!!As in only if they wanted to be close to their mallu seniors and wanted to attend the mallu freshie they had to atten!! but with the mallu first years all boycotting the ragging completely, the seniors were all frust. This was considered to be a humilation for any seniors to not have their juniors come for ragging and that too the main reason being excessive ragging!! So then what else..but rope in the NRI mallus and after a long tug of war we finally acceded to attend mallu ragging...!!!We were promised by the mallu third yrs and final yrs that we would not be ripped apart like how our mallu quota counterparts had faced (pun intended here:-))But intially we were not convinced coz during the begining of ragging, Ashwin had his ears slammed out by none other than Johnnie George in the train compartment's toilet. The slaps intended for face ended up on Ashwin's ears due to lack of space and this had become a major issue which is why we were given a choice to go for mallu ragging by our seniors....however this sudden twist of fate forced us to go for mallu ragging..to save the pride of the mallu seniors..!!so we became the bakraas and every day we had some ragging session euther by the NRI's or by the Mallus' and if we skipped one to attend the other...the next day all hell was loose!! Many of the guys even thought of runnin away from college due the excessive amount of slaps we were facing every other day...!!The mallu seniors used to rag us severely for the formation of IBM and for those guys not comin for ragging..!!The situation was getting pathetic.
We as NRI's at times slowly develpoed an aversion too for the mallus since it was their boycott due to which we were suffering...anyway this went on for the first semester and second semester on one fine day when i was returnin from kerala...lo!!behold...all the NRI/mallu final yrs were on the train and i had a small session of ragging there.!!Thats when i met the likes of Sajan Abraham, Sonu Sam varghese, Chandy, Pavil Jose (my par-dada) - these were the terror final yrs and i got ragged by them in the train on my return journey. One humorous incident that had happened, i shall narrate now..!!!
well in one of the previous raggin sessions one of my batchmates(mallu - dont remember who exactly) was ragged by Johnnie george!! Johnnie asked him the ? "which state do i belong to?" when the junior answered him "Kerala" , he got whacked beyond belief coz the expected answer was "Solid state" (with reference to chemistry "states"). And telling each other's ragging experiences was a commoner in first yr hostel and this was there in my mind when Sajan asked me to guess his state. Prompt came the asnwer "SOLID"!! The expressions on all these final years face i remember to this date. If i had had a camera then and had the balls..i would have taken a snap of al lthose 4 wonder strucken face as if they were struck by lightning !!! They didnt get the flow of what i was saying..and suddenly it dawned on them what i was referring to and they thought i was trying to get cheeky with them...!!sheesh poor me:-(;-)) and the rest what happened to me...its better untold...i am leaving it to your imagination!!!!
After reachin trichy i was asked to come for raggin that evenin by these seniors for my cheekiness..and i meekly agreed (as if i had a choice)...and along with me came sankar and sandeep...their first return session after boycotting!!man..the whole day..atleast half of the day..i saw them gettin physical fitness ragging...everythin except slaps...pushups...and what not...!!!This was done to so much extent that finally both these guys agreed to getting slapped than going thru this painful physical torture..!!and voila..i could just hear then what was happenin...just could not keep my eyes open seeing them get thulped...!!Sandeep almost as on the verge of tears !!!and then it was done..they were back and in for the ragging...!!and then they were left free..!!
Suddenly the seniors realise that i was just a spectator for the whole session today and their poor minds thought that i was feeling bad for being ignored and they called me...and i had a lone ragging session courtesy all of them just conc on me while kuts n sandy watched on..!!perfect reversal of roles...!!!anyway the dreaded day came to an end...!! We were then taken to Celestine Michael's room (Ghatti Mallu) where half of the guys were drunk and remaning were doped...!!and there me,kuts and sandy were forced to drink liquor for the first time - RUM to be precise..!!3 of us didnt feel anything...we resisted intially but then the seniors forced us to...Asif being the one who forced it down my throat...!!!This was just the beginning of the drinking days for all of us..!!hmmmm....and with this day over..it also meant another thing...as of now atleast the NRI's were also automatically included in the mallu ragging (NRI mallus) and henceforth one commmon freshie for mallus and NRI mallus and no distinction between the two!!!
the only good part of the whole thing for me personally was that it just brought me closer to all the mallus - kuts, sandy, Darsan, Anil, Jithu and to some extent to giri, sumesh and anil!!
Freinds - VAAKS!!
Well these are the ppl who became thick pals of mine..some of them stuck..rather most of them stuck but for a few...!!!
Kartik- My best pal...who knows everythin about me..and vice versa...the initial days were just ok with him..but as time went past...we became as thick as thieves...going after the same girls...having the same likes n tastes...and the very attitude coz of which i thought i would hate him..ended up being our common attitude...(i guess i had the same attitude and he would have felt the same first impression about me )He is the only one who has seen me crying , i guess , in my 4 years of college life...!!there was nothing that was kept between us...theremight have been delays in communcation but then ultimately we used to tell each other anything and everything...from parents,girlfriends,relatives,guys,girls etc..etc.....he has hardly done his studies in the gulf. it was all Delhi, Delhi and more Delhi. Basically from alwaye!!
Sankar - Another one close pal that i had made. Many thought he was intolerable / not compatible but amazingly i found nothing wrong with him..just another normal guy but with major LEO attitude bursting within him...ego,vanity etc..etc...u searchin for someone with this...someone who thinks he is the best ...then Sankar..lovingly called Kuts is your man:-)a genius in the field of computers (this is not my view point -everyone else feels the same. for me everyone and anyone is better than me in computers..)
Akhilesh - He came, he conquered, he lost and he went..thats my relation with him...till 2nd year mid...he was my best pal...and kartik was also second to him...infact 3 of us together were the cool dudes...we started this group called VAK (acronymn for vineesh,akki,kartik). we were very close...tellin each other about our past experiences and present experiences and everything until that dreaded day in Second yr when things took a turn and that is a different story altogether which i shall narrate later on...!! there never was a moment (other than when we went for ragging) that we were not together and 3 of us were very naughty too...to put it in juvenile terms..playin pranks with everyone else and makin a fool out of everyone..!!!and this guy was a shahrukh fan!
Adarsh - a typical gulf kid...as in never seen the outside world...hardly knew anything abt anythin in the first year..rather first semester and then the VAK's trained him to know everythin about everything...!!A real gem at heart...with the mickey mouse ears and expression..he had stole a place in my heart permanently..atleast i had thought so then..!!we both used to run away to his uncle's house to escape raggin during weekends in first semester and used to hog out like crazy with his uncle and aunty..!!!amazing guy..a great all time sallu fan...(salman khan)!!
and eventually the 5 of us together came to be known or rather called ourselves as the VAAKS - the first letter of the 5 of us..!!!!
almost everythin and anything we used to be together doing it..atleast in first 2 semesters..!!the rest of the guys and girls (NRI's) only used to call us Quack Quack.but we considered it their jealousy for not being in this group !!!anyway thats us..the VAAKS!!!and unity amongst us was amazing at that point of time..it was a "one for all and all for one" motto which was our driving force!!
our headquarters used to be A-22 (IF MY MEMORY IS RIGHT)..this was Adarsh's room...!!
the other guys who were my friends in first year were Sandeep, Ravi, Darsan, Talwar, Thakur, Pranay, Vithal, Kiran, Anil, Dejice, CG, Baba, Ashwin , Angyan and Das!!
but it was more or less always gthe VAAKS roamed together everywhere and anywhere!!:-)
There were few more to come in second year..Siddharth menon - Siddhu especially who along with me and Kartik called ourselves the "Dil Chahtha Hain"'s and our Pndy trip (simulating the Goan trip). All this later on probably!!:)
Kartik- My best pal...who knows everythin about me..and vice versa...the initial days were just ok with him..but as time went past...we became as thick as thieves...going after the same girls...having the same likes n tastes...and the very attitude coz of which i thought i would hate him..ended up being our common attitude...(i guess i had the same attitude and he would have felt the same first impression about me )He is the only one who has seen me crying , i guess , in my 4 years of college life...!!there was nothing that was kept between us...theremight have been delays in communcation but then ultimately we used to tell each other anything and everything...from parents,girlfriends,relatives,guys,girls etc..etc.....he has hardly done his studies in the gulf. it was all Delhi, Delhi and more Delhi. Basically from alwaye!!
Sankar - Another one close pal that i had made. Many thought he was intolerable / not compatible but amazingly i found nothing wrong with him..just another normal guy but with major LEO attitude bursting within him...ego,vanity etc..etc...u searchin for someone with this...someone who thinks he is the best ...then Sankar..lovingly called Kuts is your man:-)a genius in the field of computers (this is not my view point -everyone else feels the same. for me everyone and anyone is better than me in computers..)
Akhilesh - He came, he conquered, he lost and he went..thats my relation with him...till 2nd year mid...he was my best pal...and kartik was also second to him...infact 3 of us together were the cool dudes...we started this group called VAK (acronymn for vineesh,akki,kartik). we were very close...tellin each other about our past experiences and present experiences and everything until that dreaded day in Second yr when things took a turn and that is a different story altogether which i shall narrate later on...!! there never was a moment (other than when we went for ragging) that we were not together and 3 of us were very naughty too...to put it in juvenile terms..playin pranks with everyone else and makin a fool out of everyone..!!!and this guy was a shahrukh fan!
Adarsh - a typical gulf kid...as in never seen the outside world...hardly knew anything abt anythin in the first year..rather first semester and then the VAK's trained him to know everythin about everything...!!A real gem at heart...with the mickey mouse ears and expression..he had stole a place in my heart permanently..atleast i had thought so then..!!we both used to run away to his uncle's house to escape raggin during weekends in first semester and used to hog out like crazy with his uncle and aunty..!!!amazing guy..a great all time sallu fan...(salman khan)!!
and eventually the 5 of us together came to be known or rather called ourselves as the VAAKS - the first letter of the 5 of us..!!!!
almost everythin and anything we used to be together doing it..atleast in first 2 semesters..!!the rest of the guys and girls (NRI's) only used to call us Quack Quack.but we considered it their jealousy for not being in this group !!!anyway thats us..the VAAKS!!!and unity amongst us was amazing at that point of time..it was a "one for all and all for one" motto which was our driving force!!
our headquarters used to be A-22 (IF MY MEMORY IS RIGHT)..this was Adarsh's room...!!
the other guys who were my friends in first year were Sandeep, Ravi, Darsan, Talwar, Thakur, Pranay, Vithal, Kiran, Anil, Dejice, CG, Baba, Ashwin , Angyan and Das!!
but it was more or less always gthe VAAKS roamed together everywhere and anywhere!!:-)
There were few more to come in second year..Siddharth menon - Siddhu especially who along with me and Kartik called ourselves the "Dil Chahtha Hain"'s and our Pndy trip (simulating the Goan trip). All this later on probably!!:)
Warm welcome by the Seniors!!
Day 2...i was just back from class and for a change that day |Trichy was not HOT..there was a slight breeze which prompted me to come outside the hostel where there were hazaars of freshers acquainting each other. This guy almost as tall as me..though on the thinner side with specs walks up to me and introduces himself as Ashwin Menon - NRI - basically mallu!!He asked me if iwas an NRI and i said YES!!He said then i will have to go for the ragging today itself and this was a one time thing..!!he told me he was providing me a soft cushion for gettin least possible raggin!!and that if i voluntarily went along for raggin today..i wud get the minimum and i could be a fre bird henceforth!!and if i chose not to go for raggin today..then i would be caught someday or the other by seniors and thulped to a squishy-shquashy white pulp (picked from "the mark of Vishnu";-))..and i decideed..then and there...i am grabbin this opportunity of "Soft cushion" provided to me and finish it off..once and for all....!!
and i was waiting then for some sign from Ashwin to go to the senior hostels. He had asked me to hold on for sometime...!!!
In the meanwhile...this dude comes up to me..!!he had a sort of arrogant look on his face..i mean a guy with attitude!!He was as tall as me..maybe a niche shorter;-)(i hope he doesnt see this) with rectangular specs...hair centre split and slightly curly and build pretty much like mine...!!we shook hands...i told him i am Vineesh, NRI from qatar, basically mallu. And he introduced himself to me..."Hi, I am Kartik Krishnan, NRI from Delhi - the 'i' here being pronounced as in "I" and not as "e" - i too am basically mallu" and i was taken aback for a moment...the accent..the superiority in him..hmmm..i decided then and there that this guy would be someone whom i would not interact much with (how wrong first impressions can be:-)...he turened out to be my best pal till date...anyway all that will come up in the later chapters:-))). Anyway by then Ashwin came back and pointed at this huge figure who was walkin about 100 mteres ahead of me and told me...just follow that guy to the senior hostel.
I was shit scared man..!!This guy walkin in front of me was huge. He was abt 6' tall..double my size...lookin at his forearms i got the creeps in me...imagine gettin thulped by him..!!hmmm..anyway pissin in my pants..i followed him..heads down..not daring to look anywhere else...and justlookin at this huge figure and followin him like a good disciple of his!!anyway suddenly this dude in front of me disappeared and i could see a hoard of seniors, hungry lions, waiting for me in front of 2nd year hostel - DIAMOND.one by one they caught me and asked me who i was...where i was from etc..and when they heard NRI n mallu..al lof them just left me..sort of sympathizin with me...now this frightened me even more..!!it looked as if i belonged to a diffrent class altogether...!!!and this senior guy then came..a proper hairy guy..and he was sweatin profusely and he takes me away...from all these seniors..explainin to me the norms and conditions of ragging etc..etc..!!
I was taken into this room...and there was this guy sleeping there. This senior who had brought me to this room asked me to wake him up...and i tried wakin him up..but no use...i tugged at him and shook him and finally he woke up..!!man this guy had a cold stare in him...i was like..oops..i have woken a sleeping lion from its sleep..!!!he took me to the corner of the room..and started talkin to me...it turned out he was a mallu too and started talkin in mallu..!!
i sort of eased down as soon as he started talkin in mallu...but from the corner of my eyes i suddenly saw the big guy whom i had followed enroute to the senior hostel..was kneelin down and gettin whacked left n right...!!wow...i realised then..the huge guy whom i was scared of was indeed a guy from my batch only..!!hmmm..that was one relief!!
anyway continued talkin to this senior in mallu and i started smiling and laughin too at somethin he said...and he asked me not to smile..but i just could not hold back the smile..till...................................
till...i got SLAP number 1 from him...and voila...the very smile i was finding it hard to stop automatically disappeared from my face..i realised my raggin had begun...This guy who started my raggin was none other than Yeda (Anand P. - ICE mallu - 1 yr senior) who turned out to be one of my closest association amongst seniors!!!and the guy who took me to the room givin me all the fundas was Krur singh aka Anil Kumar Kuruganthi - NRI ece !!!
Then suddnely someone rushes into the rooom...and says Gururaj was in the hostel. This was the first year warden and he kept frequentin the senior hostels to catch someone who was involved in ragging and save the pitiful souls like myself...!!I thought my saviour had come and i would be left back to my hostel..but behold..we were asked to run..thru the back gate of diamond and we entered a bigger hostel with even more seniors awaiting us there!!!
We entered hostel LAPIS - 3rd yr hostel then..and myself and the huge guy were waiting for some 2nd yr seniors to guide us where to go..they were comin to lapis thru some other way..!!And here i had another experience..!!This group of seniors came to me and asked me who i was and to give my intro. I did that and then followin conversation took place:
X : Kaunse branch ka hain?
me: Electronic and communication Engineering
X: Quota?
me: Non-resident Indian
X: kahan se ho?
me: Kerala
X: oh NRI mallu ( and the entire group laughs out loud)
me: (silent and looking down)
X: Baap kaun hain tumhara?
me: Mathew Oommen
X: kaun?
me: Mr. Mathew Oommen , sir (thought they were demanding respect!!!)
X: kaun sa branch?? ( a bit perplexed all of them)
me: Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Y: magar tumne bola tumhara branch ECE hain na??
me: (nod my head in agreement - y shold my dad n me be in the same branch i wondered)
X: kaun se batch ka hain Mathew Oommen
me: 1971 REC-calicut
X: (gives me one tight slap o nmy face) tumhe tumhara REC baap ka naam poocha saale
me:(SHOCK OF HAVIN got a slap and not able to make head or tails of the conversation...i had told them the truth and nothin but the truth)
suddenly out of no where another guy comes up and says that this is my first day of ragging and i didnt know the funda of baap and dada and all that!!and i was spared.
For those who didnt follow y i was slapped..well baap, dada, pardada..are all RECTIAN terms of your immediate senior, 3rd year senior, and final yr senior and these guys are supposed to be your mentors kind..!!!and i a novice in getting ragged had told them details of my DAD (father) who was also a REC product and that had pissed them off and i got slapped!!!
anyway X here was gy called SIKKIM. and Y was Saurabh Ghosh. and the guy who saved me from further thulping from them was my Baap to-be - Rajgopal Bodapati - NRI ECE - basically from Hyd...the most loved senior for all the firts years in the time to come...
amazing guy...!!!
anyway he took me to lapis hostel room - a small one..in which there was hardly space for 2, there were about 15 seniors and myself and the other huge guy - my batchmate!!
and there started our actual ragging...we were hit by seniors left n right...me and the huge guy were made to hit each other...and both of us showed what potential seniors we could be by slappin each other as hard as possible..!!met a lot of seniors that day...to name a few Gotti (Madhav), Vishal (my pardada), tintin , pip (who turned out to be a distant relative of mine),premlal (3rd yr mallu senior - the terror aka BASHEER) and cant remember the rest...!!all of them ragged us proper...made us massage vishal's legs...and dance and jump and sing and what not..!!
another fresh memory was when my batchmate was asked his favourite song and the dude replied "Britney spears - Kiss me baby one more time2 and he was asked to sing that and when he sang "Hit me baby one more time" a round of slaps fell on his face..and i was lke...if ever they ask me any song that i would want to sing..i would make sure tat it had no violence in it...!!
anyway they got fed up ragging us both!!and took us to Juicy which was forbidden area for the first years unless they were accompanied by seniors. the risk of going to juicy those days were that even though u would have finished a raggin session and would be with a senior having something..and this other senior would come n pick u up and rag u for somemore time.>!
neway on the way back to the hostel after havin juice RAJ AND GOTTI gave us fundas in ragging..how to behave..how not to behave...the DO's and DONT's..and left us at our hostel gate!!!
oh!i forgot to introduce my batchmate who accompanied me on my first day of ragging...none other than K.V.S. Vithal..who was to be another one of my closest pals esp in eating n drinking;), in the years to come...!!!
After we got back to hostel...there was a crowd of NRI's who were waiting for us to relate our story of ragging to them...!!and we told them everything..obviosuly puttin it in a light manner..so that none would complain against the seniors...!!!
it was so very funny comin to think of it..!!the very guys who had thulped u..who had crushed your ego.your self esteem..now we were tryin to safe guard them from being caught by faculty when normally it should have been the other way round..!!anyway thats college..and thats ragging i guess..!!!
Lookin back now..the first year was the best year of colege life...though there was a lot of ragging...it was fun..and there were no tensions!!:-)
and i was waiting then for some sign from Ashwin to go to the senior hostels. He had asked me to hold on for sometime...!!!
In the meanwhile...this dude comes up to me..!!he had a sort of arrogant look on his face..i mean a guy with attitude!!He was as tall as me..maybe a niche shorter;-)(i hope he doesnt see this) with rectangular specs...hair centre split and slightly curly and build pretty much like mine...!!we shook hands...i told him i am Vineesh, NRI from qatar, basically mallu. And he introduced himself to me..."Hi, I am Kartik Krishnan, NRI from Delhi - the 'i' here being pronounced as in "I" and not as "e" - i too am basically mallu" and i was taken aback for a moment...the accent..the superiority in him..hmmm..i decided then and there that this guy would be someone whom i would not interact much with (how wrong first impressions can be:-)...he turened out to be my best pal till date...anyway all that will come up in the later chapters:-))). Anyway by then Ashwin came back and pointed at this huge figure who was walkin about 100 mteres ahead of me and told me...just follow that guy to the senior hostel.
I was shit scared man..!!This guy walkin in front of me was huge. He was abt 6' tall..double my size...lookin at his forearms i got the creeps in me...imagine gettin thulped by him..!!hmmm..anyway pissin in my pants..i followed him..heads down..not daring to look anywhere else...and justlookin at this huge figure and followin him like a good disciple of his!!anyway suddenly this dude in front of me disappeared and i could see a hoard of seniors, hungry lions, waiting for me in front of 2nd year hostel - DIAMOND.one by one they caught me and asked me who i was...where i was from etc..and when they heard NRI n mallu..al lof them just left me..sort of sympathizin with me...now this frightened me even more..!!it looked as if i belonged to a diffrent class altogether...!!!and this senior guy then came..a proper hairy guy..and he was sweatin profusely and he takes me away...from all these seniors..explainin to me the norms and conditions of ragging etc..etc..!!
I was taken into this room...and there was this guy sleeping there. This senior who had brought me to this room asked me to wake him up...and i tried wakin him up..but no use...i tugged at him and shook him and finally he woke up..!!man this guy had a cold stare in him...i was like..oops..i have woken a sleeping lion from its sleep..!!!he took me to the corner of the room..and started talkin to me...it turned out he was a mallu too and started talkin in mallu..!!
i sort of eased down as soon as he started talkin in mallu...but from the corner of my eyes i suddenly saw the big guy whom i had followed enroute to the senior hostel..was kneelin down and gettin whacked left n right...!!wow...i realised then..the huge guy whom i was scared of was indeed a guy from my batch only..!!hmmm..that was one relief!!
anyway continued talkin to this senior in mallu and i started smiling and laughin too at somethin he said...and he asked me not to smile..but i just could not hold back the smile..till...................................
till...i got SLAP number 1 from him...and voila...the very smile i was finding it hard to stop automatically disappeared from my face..i realised my raggin had begun...This guy who started my raggin was none other than Yeda (Anand P. - ICE mallu - 1 yr senior) who turned out to be one of my closest association amongst seniors!!!and the guy who took me to the room givin me all the fundas was Krur singh aka Anil Kumar Kuruganthi - NRI ece !!!
Then suddnely someone rushes into the rooom...and says Gururaj was in the hostel. This was the first year warden and he kept frequentin the senior hostels to catch someone who was involved in ragging and save the pitiful souls like myself...!!I thought my saviour had come and i would be left back to my hostel..but behold..we were asked to run..thru the back gate of diamond and we entered a bigger hostel with even more seniors awaiting us there!!!
We entered hostel LAPIS - 3rd yr hostel then..and myself and the huge guy were waiting for some 2nd yr seniors to guide us where to go..they were comin to lapis thru some other way..!!And here i had another experience..!!This group of seniors came to me and asked me who i was and to give my intro. I did that and then followin conversation took place:
X : Kaunse branch ka hain?
me: Electronic and communication Engineering
X: Quota?
me: Non-resident Indian
X: kahan se ho?
me: Kerala
X: oh NRI mallu ( and the entire group laughs out loud)
me: (silent and looking down)
X: Baap kaun hain tumhara?
me: Mathew Oommen
X: kaun?
me: Mr. Mathew Oommen , sir (thought they were demanding respect!!!)
X: kaun sa branch?? ( a bit perplexed all of them)
me: Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Y: magar tumne bola tumhara branch ECE hain na??
me: (nod my head in agreement - y shold my dad n me be in the same branch i wondered)
X: kaun se batch ka hain Mathew Oommen
me: 1971 REC-calicut
X: (gives me one tight slap o nmy face) tumhe tumhara REC baap ka naam poocha saale
me:(SHOCK OF HAVIN got a slap and not able to make head or tails of the conversation...i had told them the truth and nothin but the truth)
suddenly out of no where another guy comes up and says that this is my first day of ragging and i didnt know the funda of baap and dada and all that!!and i was spared.
For those who didnt follow y i was slapped..well baap, dada, pardada..are all RECTIAN terms of your immediate senior, 3rd year senior, and final yr senior and these guys are supposed to be your mentors kind..!!!and i a novice in getting ragged had told them details of my DAD (father) who was also a REC product and that had pissed them off and i got slapped!!!
anyway X here was gy called SIKKIM. and Y was Saurabh Ghosh. and the guy who saved me from further thulping from them was my Baap to-be - Rajgopal Bodapati - NRI ECE - basically from Hyd...the most loved senior for all the firts years in the time to come...
amazing guy...!!!
anyway he took me to lapis hostel room - a small one..in which there was hardly space for 2, there were about 15 seniors and myself and the other huge guy - my batchmate!!
and there started our actual ragging...we were hit by seniors left n right...me and the huge guy were made to hit each other...and both of us showed what potential seniors we could be by slappin each other as hard as possible..!!met a lot of seniors that day...to name a few Gotti (Madhav), Vishal (my pardada), tintin , pip (who turned out to be a distant relative of mine),premlal (3rd yr mallu senior - the terror aka BASHEER) and cant remember the rest...!!all of them ragged us proper...made us massage vishal's legs...and dance and jump and sing and what not..!!
another fresh memory was when my batchmate was asked his favourite song and the dude replied "Britney spears - Kiss me baby one more time2 and he was asked to sing that and when he sang "Hit me baby one more time" a round of slaps fell on his face..and i was lke...if ever they ask me any song that i would want to sing..i would make sure tat it had no violence in it...!!
anyway they got fed up ragging us both!!and took us to Juicy which was forbidden area for the first years unless they were accompanied by seniors. the risk of going to juicy those days were that even though u would have finished a raggin session and would be with a senior having something..and this other senior would come n pick u up and rag u for somemore time.>!
neway on the way back to the hostel after havin juice RAJ AND GOTTI gave us fundas in ragging..how to behave..how not to behave...the DO's and DONT's..and left us at our hostel gate!!!
oh!i forgot to introduce my batchmate who accompanied me on my first day of ragging...none other than K.V.S. Vithal..who was to be another one of my closest pals esp in eating n drinking;), in the years to come...!!!
After we got back to hostel...there was a crowd of NRI's who were waiting for us to relate our story of ragging to them...!!and we told them everything..obviosuly puttin it in a light manner..so that none would complain against the seniors...!!!
it was so very funny comin to think of it..!!the very guys who had thulped u..who had crushed your ego.your self esteem..now we were tryin to safe guard them from being caught by faculty when normally it should have been the other way round..!!anyway thats college..and thats ragging i guess..!!!
Lookin back now..the first year was the best year of colege life...though there was a lot of ragging...it was fun..and there were no tensions!!:-)
Day 1 in college - Land of the unknown
well, i had another blog where i had penned down - the first year of my college. But no point in wasting space/blog in the webworld....i shall put down over here, whatever i had penned there. so here goes...my day 1 in college!!
It was something of a different feeling altogether the day i entered the well known reputed college of R.E.C.-Trichy!!
Didnt know how i was going to survive there. For a person who has spent 18 years of pretty much a posh life in the gulf enjoying the air-conditioned rooms, travel by cars and food in the likes of KFC, HArdees, Pizza huts and Mcdonalds, it was a drastic change to take up...an man didnt i dread the place for the first one week...!!it was hell on earth for me..the heat was unbearable!!frankly it was not much of heat compared to deserts of gulf but then i was missin the A/C's which had shielded me from the heat for 18 years.!!anyway...after settlin down myself in the room Agate - 7...I went to the mess...and man that was the Biggest MESS i had seen!! (for those who didnt get it...the mess - where we eat- was a total mess).Anyway somehow had something and ran out of that place...!!you can imagine the agony of a guy surrounded by strangers in a land which was absolutely new to him..!!
on my way to the room..i met my first senior - Johnnie George..he had the typical - bollywood villian looks with scars on his face...completely bald and a very straight stern face!!he talked a bit rude for sometime and then left me!!and innocent little me (hmmm) thought...i was done with the ragging abt which i had heard lots n lots of horrifyin stories from seniors in school and family..!!was not i glad at that moment that i had got thru the worst phase ( this was to extend upto next one whole year - though then i didnt know that). I just ran to my room and covered myself in blanket and slept scared that if i roamed arnd too much i would face ragggin again..!!didnt even bother to introduce myself to my room mates!!
next day mornin i got up at 5:00 am..nothin unusual then for me..took bath and was ready for my first day of engineering at 7:00 am itself:-)That day i made my firt friend in college...T.Shivashankar - later called by everyone as BABA - This guy was actually innocent, had his father with him for the first couple of days. he was from kanyakumari/nagercoil region !!
then there was another uy by the name Udayakumar in my room. This guy had a slight squeaky voice and his dad stayed with him for one week..!!man!that was the only time i actually ever missed my parents a lot...in my 23 yrs of life so far!!i envied all these guys for their parents being with them!!anyway I used this guys' dad as a guide for me to go to bank and open my account!!!
Let me describe the way to the bank from the first year hostels...!!it was a long stretch of road with almost all the senior hostels fallin in the way...!!there was not a way you could avoid a senior and go to bank and be back.>!!now u understand my plight fornot havin my dad with me.>!:-)) anyway went with Udaya's dad to the bank..opened my account and back with him...!!on the way..there were a humpty number of seniors who cast their evil eyes on this poor lamb me!!me just looked down and continued my walk...never dared to look back at anyone..!!
Class was ok the first day...had this impression that this would be real huge rooms with 100's of students in each class...but all my impressions completely went wrong when i entered the class for the first time - Section B. It was a small room similar to the ones we had in school and we had hardly 60 in a class and all my hopes of a college romance also went down the drain when i saw the girls of my class...not that they were bad lookin but someohow the thought of having BABES in my class whom i would have loved hanging out with...ended right then ...right there!!All this thoughts courtesy the movies "Kuch kuch hotha hain" "pyar mein kabhi kabhi" etc..etc...i had thought i would be sitting on the college balconies, gardens singing "musu musu " and so many other fun songs and romantic songs and all i got was a Green colured steel bench in the class with hardly any greenery (forget the garden) and girls who interested me in the least bit in my class..!! if someone had shown me a cliff or something at that point of time..i would have happily taken a jump then!!Imagine what must have been runnin thru my mind!!!:-)
then came our teachers one by one..and only one who was of some interest was Miss Hilda - our physics teacher..who was a paka thambi in talk but pretty looking..!!and once again my hopes came alive...!!imagine having an afair with a teacher!!amazing at that moment!!:-)) but then interest in her took a steep curve downwards after we heard her talk..!!one of her most quoted dialogues were "You come to the room. We will spend time together"...this was her response when of the guys asked her some complicated doubts..!!She was just intending to ask him to come to the staff room where she would clear her doubts..!!but the perverted minds of the adolescents sittin in the class -...imagination runs wild:-)!!guess she never had even the slightest clue of the inner literal meanin of her statement!!!anyway...that was that..after that..none of us dared to ask her doubts for the fear of gettin a similar statement from her and then being ragged by fellow mates on the same lines;-))))
those were the dayssssss...in short...first day of college - disaster day!!
It was something of a different feeling altogether the day i entered the well known reputed college of R.E.C.-Trichy!!
Didnt know how i was going to survive there. For a person who has spent 18 years of pretty much a posh life in the gulf enjoying the air-conditioned rooms, travel by cars and food in the likes of KFC, HArdees, Pizza huts and Mcdonalds, it was a drastic change to take up...an man didnt i dread the place for the first one week...!!it was hell on earth for me..the heat was unbearable!!frankly it was not much of heat compared to deserts of gulf but then i was missin the A/C's which had shielded me from the heat for 18 years.!!anyway...after settlin down myself in the room Agate - 7...I went to the mess...and man that was the Biggest MESS i had seen!! (for those who didnt get it...the mess - where we eat- was a total mess).Anyway somehow had something and ran out of that place...!!you can imagine the agony of a guy surrounded by strangers in a land which was absolutely new to him..!!
on my way to the room..i met my first senior - Johnnie George..he had the typical - bollywood villian looks with scars on his face...completely bald and a very straight stern face!!he talked a bit rude for sometime and then left me!!and innocent little me (hmmm) thought...i was done with the ragging abt which i had heard lots n lots of horrifyin stories from seniors in school and family..!!was not i glad at that moment that i had got thru the worst phase ( this was to extend upto next one whole year - though then i didnt know that). I just ran to my room and covered myself in blanket and slept scared that if i roamed arnd too much i would face ragggin again..!!didnt even bother to introduce myself to my room mates!!
next day mornin i got up at 5:00 am..nothin unusual then for me..took bath and was ready for my first day of engineering at 7:00 am itself:-)That day i made my firt friend in college...T.Shivashankar - later called by everyone as BABA - This guy was actually innocent, had his father with him for the first couple of days. he was from kanyakumari/nagercoil region !!
then there was another uy by the name Udayakumar in my room. This guy had a slight squeaky voice and his dad stayed with him for one week..!!man!that was the only time i actually ever missed my parents a lot...in my 23 yrs of life so far!!i envied all these guys for their parents being with them!!anyway I used this guys' dad as a guide for me to go to bank and open my account!!!
Let me describe the way to the bank from the first year hostels...!!it was a long stretch of road with almost all the senior hostels fallin in the way...!!there was not a way you could avoid a senior and go to bank and be back.>!!now u understand my plight fornot havin my dad with me.>!:-)) anyway went with Udaya's dad to the bank..opened my account and back with him...!!on the way..there were a humpty number of seniors who cast their evil eyes on this poor lamb me!!me just looked down and continued my walk...never dared to look back at anyone..!!
Class was ok the first day...had this impression that this would be real huge rooms with 100's of students in each class...but all my impressions completely went wrong when i entered the class for the first time - Section B. It was a small room similar to the ones we had in school and we had hardly 60 in a class and all my hopes of a college romance also went down the drain when i saw the girls of my class...not that they were bad lookin but someohow the thought of having BABES in my class whom i would have loved hanging out with...ended right then ...right there!!All this thoughts courtesy the movies "Kuch kuch hotha hain" "pyar mein kabhi kabhi" etc..etc...i had thought i would be sitting on the college balconies, gardens singing "musu musu " and so many other fun songs and romantic songs and all i got was a Green colured steel bench in the class with hardly any greenery (forget the garden) and girls who interested me in the least bit in my class..!! if someone had shown me a cliff or something at that point of time..i would have happily taken a jump then!!Imagine what must have been runnin thru my mind!!!:-)
then came our teachers one by one..and only one who was of some interest was Miss Hilda - our physics teacher..who was a paka thambi in talk but pretty looking..!!and once again my hopes came alive...!!imagine having an afair with a teacher!!amazing at that moment!!:-)) but then interest in her took a steep curve downwards after we heard her talk..!!one of her most quoted dialogues were "You come to the room. We will spend time together"...this was her response when of the guys asked her some complicated doubts..!!She was just intending to ask him to come to the staff room where she would clear her doubts..!!but the perverted minds of the adolescents sittin in the class -...imagination runs wild:-)!!guess she never had even the slightest clue of the inner literal meanin of her statement!!!anyway...that was that..after that..none of us dared to ask her doubts for the fear of gettin a similar statement from her and then being ragged by fellow mates on the same lines;-))))
those were the dayssssss...in short...first day of college - disaster day!!
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Footsie
ManU lost !!!:( secretly wished they had won against Liverpool. Not exactly able to decide my favourite between these 2 teams. Both have their own style of game but i feel ManU is a better team though off late they aint clicking much!! and to think, one of my least favoured players scored the goal - Peter Crouch...in no way does that dude look like a football player. He seems more like a volleyball player (not even basketball)!!
His only advantage and only good thing - his bledy height which the Liverpool team uses to the full advantage during free kicks/set-pieces!!Coz of this guy ManU is out of the FA cup...The only remaining thing for ManU is the Carling cup final against Wigan next week!!
On the brighter side, liverpool is still performing well following their champions league victory last season!! this is one team to reckon!! On the EPL front, they seem to be doing well but not as well as they perform(ed) in Champions league. In the latter, they are an altogether differen team playing vengence and vigilance!!
Hope atleast ManU secures this one!!Wigan is surely the team of the future. Having come from the First Division into Premiership this season, they have done extremely well so far. If they continue playing the way they are, they surely are going to be one of the top teams in the near future!!
Anyway now the match to be watched is the Chelsea v/s Barca on Wednesday (Feb 22)!! last year the match between these 2 was a spit of fire between Rijkaard and Mourinho with accusations and what not!!! Lets see what this years' match holds!!!!
Just came across this in the UEFA website -
Team of the year:
Coach - Jose Mourinho (Chelsea)
Striker - Samuel Eto (barcelona)
Striker - Andriy Schevchenko (Milan)
Attacking Midfielder - Ronaldinho (Barcelona)
Central Midfielder - Steven Gerrard (Liverpool)
Right Midfielder - Luis Garcia(Liverpool)
Left Midfielder - Pavel Nedved (Juventus)
Central Defender - John Terry (Chelsea)
Central Defender - Carles Puyol (Barcelona)
Left back - Paolo Maldini (Milan)
Right Back - Cafu (Milan)
Goal Keeper - Petr Cech (Chelsea)
Wow!! thats what i call a team but i wonder how they will function as a team - the above actually reminds me of Real-Madrid!! A world class team with top-flight players but not coming out with the right combination as expected (But they manage to stay right behind Barcelona in the Spanish league)!!!
Thats the footsie news/ my thoughts for the time being!
signing off!
His only advantage and only good thing - his bledy height which the Liverpool team uses to the full advantage during free kicks/set-pieces!!Coz of this guy ManU is out of the FA cup...The only remaining thing for ManU is the Carling cup final against Wigan next week!!
On the brighter side, liverpool is still performing well following their champions league victory last season!! this is one team to reckon!! On the EPL front, they seem to be doing well but not as well as they perform(ed) in Champions league. In the latter, they are an altogether differen team playing vengence and vigilance!!
Hope atleast ManU secures this one!!Wigan is surely the team of the future. Having come from the First Division into Premiership this season, they have done extremely well so far. If they continue playing the way they are, they surely are going to be one of the top teams in the near future!!
Anyway now the match to be watched is the Chelsea v/s Barca on Wednesday (Feb 22)!! last year the match between these 2 was a spit of fire between Rijkaard and Mourinho with accusations and what not!!! Lets see what this years' match holds!!!!
Just came across this in the UEFA website -
Team of the year:
Coach - Jose Mourinho (Chelsea)
Striker - Samuel Eto (barcelona)
Striker - Andriy Schevchenko (Milan)
Attacking Midfielder - Ronaldinho (Barcelona)
Central Midfielder - Steven Gerrard (Liverpool)
Right Midfielder - Luis Garcia(Liverpool)
Left Midfielder - Pavel Nedved (Juventus)
Central Defender - John Terry (Chelsea)
Central Defender - Carles Puyol (Barcelona)
Left back - Paolo Maldini (Milan)
Right Back - Cafu (Milan)
Goal Keeper - Petr Cech (Chelsea)
Wow!! thats what i call a team but i wonder how they will function as a team - the above actually reminds me of Real-Madrid!! A world class team with top-flight players but not coming out with the right combination as expected (But they manage to stay right behind Barcelona in the Spanish league)!!!
Thats the footsie news/ my thoughts for the time being!
signing off!
WeekEND!
And there goes another weekend..Saturday morning woke up at 6 to play football. Reached the field to find just 5 of us. We played 2-a-side v/s 3-a-side - burnt a lot n lot of fat:) it was more like a table-tennis score than football at the end of it - score read 19-14!!!lol!!
anyway got back home - had a refreshing bath - made burger for myself and had it along with Tropicana Apple juice! read the papers for a while - especially Mittal v/s Luxembourg v/s Arcelor!! Man - this dude is dead after getting this Company - he just does not seem to be satisfied being the steel tycoon. He wants this too!! is it just a sure shot way of getting his competition out of the way - after all arcelor was the biggest before Mittal took over!!!
anyway back to the topic, reading the newspaper, i dozed off - only to be woken up by the sweet essence of food being cooked in the kitchen!! (drooling) - woke up and had lunch..In the evening just watched some tv, got food ordered from Nandhini palace and hit the sack early!!
Sunday - as usual went to church. This was followed by lunch at Empire - me, Anila and kutz!! Went there to have chicken Shwarma but they were serving that only from the evening. So had kerala parotta with pepper chicken masala and got back home. In between we bought kutz a football boot - Nivia - size 11!!We actually found boot of "Vector" to be better than "Nivia " but they had only one size which was bigger than kutz foot!! so stuck on to Nivia:) Evening we had Kutz, deepu, akutty, tahir and rajiv at home. Tahir was on his way from kolkata to EKM. CHatted with all of thm..had a nice time. They left arnd 9 pm and we(me n anila) had dinner of mushroom curry n bread:)
Well that was quite a quiet weekend!:)
anyway got back home - had a refreshing bath - made burger for myself and had it along with Tropicana Apple juice! read the papers for a while - especially Mittal v/s Luxembourg v/s Arcelor!! Man - this dude is dead after getting this Company - he just does not seem to be satisfied being the steel tycoon. He wants this too!! is it just a sure shot way of getting his competition out of the way - after all arcelor was the biggest before Mittal took over!!!
anyway back to the topic, reading the newspaper, i dozed off - only to be woken up by the sweet essence of food being cooked in the kitchen!! (drooling) - woke up and had lunch..In the evening just watched some tv, got food ordered from Nandhini palace and hit the sack early!!
Sunday - as usual went to church. This was followed by lunch at Empire - me, Anila and kutz!! Went there to have chicken Shwarma but they were serving that only from the evening. So had kerala parotta with pepper chicken masala and got back home. In between we bought kutz a football boot - Nivia - size 11!!We actually found boot of "Vector" to be better than "Nivia " but they had only one size which was bigger than kutz foot!! so stuck on to Nivia:) Evening we had Kutz, deepu, akutty, tahir and rajiv at home. Tahir was on his way from kolkata to EKM. CHatted with all of thm..had a nice time. They left arnd 9 pm and we(me n anila) had dinner of mushroom curry n bread:)
Well that was quite a quiet weekend!:)
Friday, February 17, 2006
Hola!!!
Well, i am coming back after a long breeeeeakkkk!! The last I blogged was on 12th November 2004:) From then , till now - life has moved on a lot..rather a LOT.
Just a gist of what happened- I got back from UK in June. It was a happy re-union with all my friends and it felt good to be back in India!!! Well i came back to India for a purpose - i got married in August 2005 to my one n only!!:) Now happily married and settled in Bangalore. Leading life as a family man (as they all say). But then life has not taken a major turn even after marriage - Many said there would be added responsibilities..blah..blah..blah!! But then for me, i was just living with my best friend and thats about it and both of us were immensely happy. It didnt change anything apart from the fact - the rent of the house we are staying had to be divided by 2 now (me and my wife) rather than by 4 - 6:) But then there were too many advantages to get married and being with her coz of which the above said disadvatange became too trifle to be bothered about:)
And wonders of wonders, i am leading a healthy life too now:) Firstly, i started eating food at home rather than the oil immersed, ghee dripping parathas/ sabjis...
Secondly i started going to gym - well this may or may not be attributed to getting married. Well the argument for is that - i started eating a large amount of the HEALTHY food prepared by my beloved and hence started gaining tyres n spare tyres and what not!!!!!! and the argument against is - ::)))))the work load at office reduced majorly and i had to kill time. What better way than spending an hour or so at the gym:)
Thirdly but not the least - I started playing football once again regularly - every day morning from 6:45 a.m. to about 8 a.m. This being more convenient now since i work in UK timings:))) So mornings, i have all the time to myself!!
Well so thats how lifez been treating me or should i say thats the way i have been treating life!
On the MBA front, i took a break last year - dint meet the deadlines and work pressure was to omuch for me to conc on the applications. I have started concentrating on my MBA once again now. The first one was the ISB:) Got shortlisted and had an interview about 3 weeks back. The interview went good but then you never know what is expected of you in such interviews. These are the kind of interviews where you come out feeling on top of the world coz you supposedly performed well, then you chat with ur friend(s) about the iview and suddenly realis - "I could have done better/ I should have answered this in this manner which would have been more impressive" and then you hear experiences of other candidates and lively iviews they had had (thanks to the yahoo groups/ forums:P) and at end of one week, you feel like a total jackass with no hopes of getting through unless the ONE above performed some miracle!! - One of my friends actually told me the same - "tumne apna part kiya - ab har sunday ko church kaao aur bhagwan se bolo admit dene ke liye" (you have done what you can - now go to a church every sunday and ask God to give you an admit)!!
Remaining universities - wel i am stil shortlisting - had attended a session by Tuck school of business and one great learning from there was - there aint much point in sending out applications to 10 - 15 different universities. Rather Shortlist just 4 -5 where you think you have the maximum scope and give in your best in writing the essays to these 5. So i am in Step 1 of the process!!
Well thats it for now...will be more regular now!!:)(hopefully)
Just a gist of what happened- I got back from UK in June. It was a happy re-union with all my friends and it felt good to be back in India!!! Well i came back to India for a purpose - i got married in August 2005 to my one n only!!:) Now happily married and settled in Bangalore. Leading life as a family man (as they all say). But then life has not taken a major turn even after marriage - Many said there would be added responsibilities..blah..blah..blah!! But then for me, i was just living with my best friend and thats about it and both of us were immensely happy. It didnt change anything apart from the fact - the rent of the house we are staying had to be divided by 2 now (me and my wife) rather than by 4 - 6:) But then there were too many advantages to get married and being with her coz of which the above said disadvatange became too trifle to be bothered about:)
And wonders of wonders, i am leading a healthy life too now:) Firstly, i started eating food at home rather than the oil immersed, ghee dripping parathas/ sabjis...
Secondly i started going to gym - well this may or may not be attributed to getting married. Well the argument for is that - i started eating a large amount of the HEALTHY food prepared by my beloved and hence started gaining tyres n spare tyres and what not!!!!!! and the argument against is - ::)))))the work load at office reduced majorly and i had to kill time. What better way than spending an hour or so at the gym:)
Thirdly but not the least - I started playing football once again regularly - every day morning from 6:45 a.m. to about 8 a.m. This being more convenient now since i work in UK timings:))) So mornings, i have all the time to myself!!
Well so thats how lifez been treating me or should i say thats the way i have been treating life!
On the MBA front, i took a break last year - dint meet the deadlines and work pressure was to omuch for me to conc on the applications. I have started concentrating on my MBA once again now. The first one was the ISB:) Got shortlisted and had an interview about 3 weeks back. The interview went good but then you never know what is expected of you in such interviews. These are the kind of interviews where you come out feeling on top of the world coz you supposedly performed well, then you chat with ur friend(s) about the iview and suddenly realis - "I could have done better/ I should have answered this in this manner which would have been more impressive" and then you hear experiences of other candidates and lively iviews they had had (thanks to the yahoo groups/ forums:P) and at end of one week, you feel like a total jackass with no hopes of getting through unless the ONE above performed some miracle!! - One of my friends actually told me the same - "tumne apna part kiya - ab har sunday ko church kaao aur bhagwan se bolo admit dene ke liye" (you have done what you can - now go to a church every sunday and ask God to give you an admit)!!
Remaining universities - wel i am stil shortlisting - had attended a session by Tuck school of business and one great learning from there was - there aint much point in sending out applications to 10 - 15 different universities. Rather Shortlist just 4 -5 where you think you have the maximum scope and give in your best in writing the essays to these 5. So i am in Step 1 of the process!!
Well thats it for now...will be more regular now!!:)(hopefully)
Friday, November 12, 2004
Why money is good? - Brian Tracy
The way you think about money will determine how much of it you accumulate more than any other factor. Your attitude toward money affects your emotions and your motivations.
In psychology, money is what is called a “deficiency need.” This means that it only motivates you when you feel deficient in it, when you don’t feel that you have enough. Above a certain level, when you feel that you have enough, it is no longer a motivator. Put another way, when you have enough money, you don’t think about it very much. But when you have too little, you think about it all the time.The effect money has on your emotional life depends on your attitude toward it. If you feel that you have too little, money can become an obsession for you. It can dominate your thinking, feelings and actions. Arguments over money are a major reason for marital breakdown. Problems with money are the primary reason for business collapse, the ruination of friendships and psychosomatic illnesses of all kinds. Its not uncommon for people to even kill themselves over money problems.
The Reality Principle applies especially to matters of money. This principle states that, “You must deal with life as it is, not as you wish it were, or could be.Most people live in a world of partial self-delusion, or even fantasy, with regard to money. They wish, hope, and pray about their financial futures while at the same time, deep in their hearts, they know their dreams will never materialize.In Lewis Carroll’s book, Alice in Wonderland, one of the characters says quite happily that he is quite capable of believing several impossible things before breakfast each day. In the same way, many people believe quite impossible things about money and then they wonder why they are having so many financial problems.
One of the most common obstacles to achieving financial independence is a deep-seated belief that somehow money is wrong and that people who have a lot of it are inherently evil. This belief is not based on any factual foundation. It goes back to early childhood conditioning when the growing child is often told this because of other people’s desire to rationalize away their own financial failures.
The fact is that money is good. It takes money to buy homes, cars, clothes, toys, food and most of the good things in life. Money has an energy of its own and it is largely attracted to people who treat it well. Money tends to flow toward those people who can use it in the most productive ways to produce valuable goods and services, and who can invest it to create employment and opportunities that benefit others. At the same time, money flows away from those who use it poorly, or who spend it in non-productive ways.
Here are two things you can do immediately to improve your attitude toward money:
First, be perfectly honest to yourself with regard to money and to the amount you want to acquire in life. Pretending that you don’t care about money when you really do will only make you unhappy.
Second, begin today to think about all the wonderful things that you could have in your life if you had more money. Then, begin to think of all the things that you could do to increase the amount you earn and the amount you keep.
In psychology, money is what is called a “deficiency need.” This means that it only motivates you when you feel deficient in it, when you don’t feel that you have enough. Above a certain level, when you feel that you have enough, it is no longer a motivator. Put another way, when you have enough money, you don’t think about it very much. But when you have too little, you think about it all the time.The effect money has on your emotional life depends on your attitude toward it. If you feel that you have too little, money can become an obsession for you. It can dominate your thinking, feelings and actions. Arguments over money are a major reason for marital breakdown. Problems with money are the primary reason for business collapse, the ruination of friendships and psychosomatic illnesses of all kinds. Its not uncommon for people to even kill themselves over money problems.
The Reality Principle applies especially to matters of money. This principle states that, “You must deal with life as it is, not as you wish it were, or could be.Most people live in a world of partial self-delusion, or even fantasy, with regard to money. They wish, hope, and pray about their financial futures while at the same time, deep in their hearts, they know their dreams will never materialize.In Lewis Carroll’s book, Alice in Wonderland, one of the characters says quite happily that he is quite capable of believing several impossible things before breakfast each day. In the same way, many people believe quite impossible things about money and then they wonder why they are having so many financial problems.
One of the most common obstacles to achieving financial independence is a deep-seated belief that somehow money is wrong and that people who have a lot of it are inherently evil. This belief is not based on any factual foundation. It goes back to early childhood conditioning when the growing child is often told this because of other people’s desire to rationalize away their own financial failures.
The fact is that money is good. It takes money to buy homes, cars, clothes, toys, food and most of the good things in life. Money has an energy of its own and it is largely attracted to people who treat it well. Money tends to flow toward those people who can use it in the most productive ways to produce valuable goods and services, and who can invest it to create employment and opportunities that benefit others. At the same time, money flows away from those who use it poorly, or who spend it in non-productive ways.
Here are two things you can do immediately to improve your attitude toward money:
First, be perfectly honest to yourself with regard to money and to the amount you want to acquire in life. Pretending that you don’t care about money when you really do will only make you unhappy.
Second, begin today to think about all the wonderful things that you could have in your life if you had more money. Then, begin to think of all the things that you could do to increase the amount you earn and the amount you keep.
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
Chick - Scene??
Well...Came to Edinburgh in high hopes of seeing gorgeous looking babes with amazing figures n even better looking legs n what not...was under the impression that all babes (??) here would be in mini / micro-minis and anything shorter than that, if it existed...!!
But what a surprise to see that 90% of the females here wear pants n formal suitings..and the only ones that are commonly seen in such skimpy dresses (in the pubs mainly) are the English-desis (Indian / Pak babes who have been born n brought up here) and most of them would have this air about them that you would not even feel like giving them a second glance...!!And the babes here are all the sweet kinds and so far i have seen - very few with s*xy figures. And this minority group of "babes" can not be approached..not when they have some 6' guarding them, supposedly their boyfriend rather than her body guard...ahhhhh...Dont stand a chance man in this place. Back in college, used to have this feeling that "patafying" a foreigner is child's play...well...it may be easy ..dont know..but then therez always a chance of a broken nose!! And why risk such things when you know you can sit back and enjoy life just by looking at them...sorry..let me rephrase...glancing at them..!!
Here if you stare at a girl..for all you know, the next moment you would be hearing abuses swung at you from all directions..not by anyone else but by the same girl and her friends...damn!!!
I have got fed up of staring at girls (ogling is a better term i guess)...have lost the enthu after leaving college!!I guess i can safely say i have settled down finally..
Maybe all this has to do with maturity or something of the sorts...or maybe its coz when u have had plenty n plenty of a particular dish, you tend to get fed up of it...
I think in my case it is the latter scenario combined a bit with the former one..You cannot deny the fact that all of us are maturing and all the eve-teasing and whatever used to be done in college/ school..would look really uncouth now..!!We have grown old??? Things have started taking a different perspective...As the age factor creeps in, all of us ( i guess..atleast most)stop looking at girls as mere objects of pleasure :P..the female community starts getting more respect from us..
Think of it...How many of us would actually tease / abuse a girl whom we used to abuse/ tease in college? worse comes to worst we would ignore her right??
Shit man! i am stopping this blog right now...
Vithal dude, sorry i diverged from what you asked me;-) The excitement has died down...I aint any more what I was;-)he hee....
But what a surprise to see that 90% of the females here wear pants n formal suitings..and the only ones that are commonly seen in such skimpy dresses (in the pubs mainly) are the English-desis (Indian / Pak babes who have been born n brought up here) and most of them would have this air about them that you would not even feel like giving them a second glance...!!And the babes here are all the sweet kinds and so far i have seen - very few with s*xy figures. And this minority group of "babes" can not be approached..not when they have some 6' guarding them, supposedly their boyfriend rather than her body guard...ahhhhh...Dont stand a chance man in this place. Back in college, used to have this feeling that "patafying" a foreigner is child's play...well...it may be easy ..dont know..but then therez always a chance of a broken nose!! And why risk such things when you know you can sit back and enjoy life just by looking at them...sorry..let me rephrase...glancing at them..!!
Here if you stare at a girl..for all you know, the next moment you would be hearing abuses swung at you from all directions..not by anyone else but by the same girl and her friends...damn!!!
I have got fed up of staring at girls (ogling is a better term i guess)...have lost the enthu after leaving college!!I guess i can safely say i have settled down finally..
Maybe all this has to do with maturity or something of the sorts...or maybe its coz when u have had plenty n plenty of a particular dish, you tend to get fed up of it...
I think in my case it is the latter scenario combined a bit with the former one..You cannot deny the fact that all of us are maturing and all the eve-teasing and whatever used to be done in college/ school..would look really uncouth now..!!We have grown old??? Things have started taking a different perspective...As the age factor creeps in, all of us ( i guess..atleast most)stop looking at girls as mere objects of pleasure :P..the female community starts getting more respect from us..
Think of it...How many of us would actually tease / abuse a girl whom we used to abuse/ tease in college? worse comes to worst we would ignore her right??
Shit man! i am stopping this blog right now...
Vithal dude, sorry i diverged from what you asked me;-) The excitement has died down...I aint any more what I was;-)he hee....
a passing thought.........................................
"Love is an irresistable desire to be desired irresistably"
Monday, October 04, 2004
My Astrological readings
he he...check the following out. In college, one of those days when i was absolutely jobless, i subscribed to this astrology site of indiatimes - free sampling for 1 week or something of the sorts and i used to get daily mails regarding how my day was supposed to be like ...?????
And once the free time was over, i stopped checking it. Just couple of days back, was cleaning up my inbox and saw the following in the junk mails section. Found it pretty interesting so much so that i almost subscribed to the astrologer..but then decided i would not...was not sure of the authenticity of the same...though many of the things said about me in the following is quite true;-):-)))
************************************************************************************
I have come to realize that you do not use the incredible potential which you have inside of you to the fullest and certain of your considerable capacities are completely unused. This is a real shame as I now know that you are someone very
different and that you have immense qualities ! wh! ich are simply not exploited. Your potential is stifled and has been for quite some time now and I think that this is a real waste. In the rest of this letter I am going to give you a precise
example to show you in which situation you are at the moment.
I fully understand how you feel at this time, I know who you are, what you are feeling and how you are living. As way of proof, here are certain aspects of your personality which you are no doubt already aware of but which I wish to you to demonstrate to you just how well I know you: This is what I can sense about you Vineesh. The first point is that, and this is why it will be difficult to convince you about all of this, you are a person with fresh an innovative ideas and are not willing to settle for what others tell you. You have to see things for yourself and if you d! on! 't like what you see or what you hear you will change it. As a matter of fact recently you have been energized by thoughts of exciting changes but have not acted due to fear. You are terrified of failing and making the wrong choice and I think that this stems from the fact that although you don't always consciously admit this but deep down inside you need the respect and admiration of others. I can even say that without a doubt, Vineesh, you are your own strongest critic. You have a tenancy to be too hard on yourself. Your unique perspective in life has been forged from the school of hard knocks,and you know deep down inside that you are better for having gone through what you have endured. I am getting the distinct sense that you are street smart and you value this ability much more than classroom smarts that others may have. I can see that the experiences you had in life have made you a bit more perspective than most . You are wise beyond your years in many ways. This has ! be! en noticed by your family and friends as those who are closest to you say that you are a very fair person and some seek your counsel because of this. Vineesh it's very clear that you are a person of strong moral character and you are trustworthy to a fault. You have actually been in a situation or two because you were perhaps a bit too trusting. I would like to say that I really appreciate your relationship with other people and I have also noticed that you have a certain paradox within you. I will now give you a couple of examples of this paradox. Vineesh, you are an unusually generous person, with the genuine desire to help others, but you also have a bit selfish side. It's this taking care of yourself that allows you to better take care of others. I can also perceive another paradox Vineesh. You believe that telling a little white lie can sometimes be necessary and you don't always tell the truth, mostly because you don't want to hurt the other person's feelings. but at t! he! same time, you have very strong values and definite sense of right and wrong. In this day of questionable characters, you feel grounded by your strong values. I could speak about you for hours Vineesh but what you must retain from all of this is that you have an enormous amount of latent potential which you sometimes come close to realizing as you are often frustrated with the fact that others don't always recognize this or appreciate what you could offer. I can tell you that there is a very strong aura around you and an energy that is truly powerful. I am sensing vibrations from you much more intense than those I experience with most clients. Your intuition and your power may be one reason why you are drawn to astrology readings and psychic experiences. Finally I would like to conclude with another point. You know what you have inside of you and you have known for some time now that you have been given certain talents.... very special talents unique only to you. and while ! yo! u have known of these abilities , you haven't fully acted on them now, have you ? I hope that these few lines have convinced you Vineesh that I strongly perceive who you are and what you are feeling. You already know most of what I have written about however you may not realize to what extent the potential within you is really powerful and here is an example which could help to illustrate what I am trying to tell you. Imagine a person who has never known any modern technology (for example someone living in the heart of a dense jungle). One day this person is given a radio tuned in to a very precise radio station and he finds it suddenly extraordinary to be able to listen to music through what is essentially a small box. He is told that to listen to this music he need only press the 'on' button without having to do anything else to listen to this music. This person thinks this radio is a wonderful invention and then spends a number of years listening to this radio and to the ! sa! me program as the radio stays on the same station all of the time. And then one day someone else comes along and shows him that there are a multitude of other stations and frequencies to listen to with many other programs that can be as interesting as the first.... You are in the position of this person Vineesh and your potential can be compared to this radio. Your potential is not yet fully exploited and you are not yet aware of certain of your hidden talents. I find myself in the place of the person who's duty is to show you exactly how you can tune in to these new frequencies. This is a metaphorical example but it demonstrates clearly the situation in which you find yourself at this time. Considering the important information which I have discovered about you Vineesh, I know that it is possible to help you through this key moment in your life and I also know that this change can be considered as a rebirth of sorts as you are not really who you thought you were - you are in fact much much more than this and you need to want to make this change happen with all of your heart and soul.
**********************************************************************************
HOWZATT!!!??:-)
And once the free time was over, i stopped checking it. Just couple of days back, was cleaning up my inbox and saw the following in the junk mails section. Found it pretty interesting so much so that i almost subscribed to the astrologer..but then decided i would not...was not sure of the authenticity of the same...though many of the things said about me in the following is quite true;-):-)))
************************************************************************************
I have come to realize that you do not use the incredible potential which you have inside of you to the fullest and certain of your considerable capacities are completely unused. This is a real shame as I now know that you are someone very
different and that you have immense qualities ! wh! ich are simply not exploited. Your potential is stifled and has been for quite some time now and I think that this is a real waste. In the rest of this letter I am going to give you a precise
example to show you in which situation you are at the moment.
I fully understand how you feel at this time, I know who you are, what you are feeling and how you are living. As way of proof, here are certain aspects of your personality which you are no doubt already aware of but which I wish to you to demonstrate to you just how well I know you: This is what I can sense about you Vineesh. The first point is that, and this is why it will be difficult to convince you about all of this, you are a person with fresh an innovative ideas and are not willing to settle for what others tell you. You have to see things for yourself and if you d! on! 't like what you see or what you hear you will change it. As a matter of fact recently you have been energized by thoughts of exciting changes but have not acted due to fear. You are terrified of failing and making the wrong choice and I think that this stems from the fact that although you don't always consciously admit this but deep down inside you need the respect and admiration of others. I can even say that without a doubt, Vineesh, you are your own strongest critic. You have a tenancy to be too hard on yourself. Your unique perspective in life has been forged from the school of hard knocks,and you know deep down inside that you are better for having gone through what you have endured. I am getting the distinct sense that you are street smart and you value this ability much more than classroom smarts that others may have. I can see that the experiences you had in life have made you a bit more perspective than most . You are wise beyond your years in many ways. This has ! be! en noticed by your family and friends as those who are closest to you say that you are a very fair person and some seek your counsel because of this. Vineesh it's very clear that you are a person of strong moral character and you are trustworthy to a fault. You have actually been in a situation or two because you were perhaps a bit too trusting. I would like to say that I really appreciate your relationship with other people and I have also noticed that you have a certain paradox within you. I will now give you a couple of examples of this paradox. Vineesh, you are an unusually generous person, with the genuine desire to help others, but you also have a bit selfish side. It's this taking care of yourself that allows you to better take care of others. I can also perceive another paradox Vineesh. You believe that telling a little white lie can sometimes be necessary and you don't always tell the truth, mostly because you don't want to hurt the other person's feelings. but at t! he! same time, you have very strong values and definite sense of right and wrong. In this day of questionable characters, you feel grounded by your strong values. I could speak about you for hours Vineesh but what you must retain from all of this is that you have an enormous amount of latent potential which you sometimes come close to realizing as you are often frustrated with the fact that others don't always recognize this or appreciate what you could offer. I can tell you that there is a very strong aura around you and an energy that is truly powerful. I am sensing vibrations from you much more intense than those I experience with most clients. Your intuition and your power may be one reason why you are drawn to astrology readings and psychic experiences. Finally I would like to conclude with another point. You know what you have inside of you and you have known for some time now that you have been given certain talents.... very special talents unique only to you. and while ! yo! u have known of these abilities , you haven't fully acted on them now, have you ? I hope that these few lines have convinced you Vineesh that I strongly perceive who you are and what you are feeling. You already know most of what I have written about however you may not realize to what extent the potential within you is really powerful and here is an example which could help to illustrate what I am trying to tell you. Imagine a person who has never known any modern technology (for example someone living in the heart of a dense jungle). One day this person is given a radio tuned in to a very precise radio station and he finds it suddenly extraordinary to be able to listen to music through what is essentially a small box. He is told that to listen to this music he need only press the 'on' button without having to do anything else to listen to this music. This person thinks this radio is a wonderful invention and then spends a number of years listening to this radio and to the ! sa! me program as the radio stays on the same station all of the time. And then one day someone else comes along and shows him that there are a multitude of other stations and frequencies to listen to with many other programs that can be as interesting as the first.... You are in the position of this person Vineesh and your potential can be compared to this radio. Your potential is not yet fully exploited and you are not yet aware of certain of your hidden talents. I find myself in the place of the person who's duty is to show you exactly how you can tune in to these new frequencies. This is a metaphorical example but it demonstrates clearly the situation in which you find yourself at this time. Considering the important information which I have discovered about you Vineesh, I know that it is possible to help you through this key moment in your life and I also know that this change can be considered as a rebirth of sorts as you are not really who you thought you were - you are in fact much much more than this and you need to want to make this change happen with all of your heart and soul.
**********************************************************************************
HOWZATT!!!??:-)
If's n But's...continued
From the responses i got for the last post, all seem to be saying the same thing to me...Dont give out the whole of your heart to one person alone...
A junior of mine (Kicha) commented to me..sayin...Life is like a Stock Market..!!You invest high in just one, the risk of loosing it is extremely high, but then the returns/ gains are also high...So one should believe in diversification and invest in more than one and play the game of life according to ur market value..!!
Amazing right? All of a sudden the "bears n bulls" of stock market started makin sense to me. I guess it is the same, when you try relating things to your life, they start making more of sense.........
Well ...dont know if taking a couple of swigs of beer/ 7. something shots of tequila will help...coz the possiblity of thinking more on the same lines and going deeper into the prob is higher after getting drunk, i guess. After drinking, the whole world shrinks and you feel lots of things running inside your brain..and then a lot of issues which would never have made sense start getting clear in your head..and thus u tend to think more...and come out with more creative n better ideas after getting drunk...and one thing i dont want to think of in such a situation is about LIFE!!No way am i going into a rewind mode and then PLAY everything all over again in my mind...aint crazy..!!so dudes...beer/ tequila aint the solution...
that brings me to ask the question...are all of us happy at any point in our life...why is it that humans (atleast the few i know inclusive of me) are never happy with what they have? When you finish your 12th grade, everyone wants to get into an IIT / REC (NIT) and that is the biggest tension..!!And once you are thru into the reputed institutions...the tensions just increase..one is never at ease..you have the cycle tests (whoever derived this name, should be given an award...the tests just keep cycling n coming back over n over again..you never seem to get rid of it..ever..till u pass out) and then the sem exams..and what not...once into the final yr..everyone wants a job...it does not matter what u did 4 yrs in your college...ultimately you just need a god damn job...and what all lies does one fabricate for the same...!!and there are a few ppl who are trained to teach others to lie/ talk effectively/ look smart n ultimately get thru the iview as well - CIC reps..i was a part of this team as well..(no offence to any CIC rep here..:-))and once you get a job...the World is yours..atleast for the next couple of weeks...
and then you done with college and you step into the corporate world...and shit!! you realise you are in hell!!what seemed so cool n stylish n amazing on the projector screen of your college abt the life in each software campus ..all bollocks..absolute crap..!!the only thing thats true in all these presentations is the infrastructure and nothing else...All dreams of being the one of the cool dudes in your cool company..shattered...your bubble burst, you look ahead...you think of job switches...higher studies..(CAT/ GMAT/ GRE etc), onsite opportunities...and what not...!!Some are successful...while others stay on cribbing every other day about their colleagues, PM's, the company, the corporate system, the project he is involved in and what not!!!!!!!!
Then slowly the marriage comes up...Some are lucky to get the bride of their dreams..while few remaining others just nod to their dad n mom saying "Yes, i agree" over a cup of tea n pastries in their to-be-in-law's house...once this phase is over...then there are tensions of wife / stayin together/ wife working/ children / their future....and what not..!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Few others have the responsiblity of getting their sisters (elder / youger) married off into a good family...and God forbid..anything screws up there...then you are the one to be blamed..after all, didnt you find the groom...weren't you supposed to do the checking on the groom n his family...!?? Is the brother the only one responsible for his sister's marriage...dont the parents/relatives have any responsibility???
When will one have the peace of mind that he is so desparately yearning for? When will he lead life for himself and not for his parents/ siblings / wife / children and whoever else that is there in this list?
When will we - each one of us - ever attain a level of satisfaction...when we can boldly say.."I AM HAPPY...I AM SATISFIED..I NEED NO MORE IN LIFE AND HAPPY WITH WHATEVER I HAVE"..and stick on to this statement for atleast 6 months at a stretch. Myself have made this statement humpty number of times...but then the next moment, prob the next day, i reverse my thoughts and start the crib process.............
I guess...this is a never ending cycle...The grass is greener on the other side ALWAYS...Till the day u die...you will keep seeing greener pastures...and would be wanting to be there than where u are currently...We may not agree when someone says "You are greedy"...but think of it...i feel all of us are...wanting more everyday..!!!!!!!!!!
ps. I need a break...i guess i am thinking too much..!:-)
No offence to anyone in the above article. Just a chain of thoughts:-) Peace!!!!!!!
A junior of mine (Kicha) commented to me..sayin...Life is like a Stock Market..!!You invest high in just one, the risk of loosing it is extremely high, but then the returns/ gains are also high...So one should believe in diversification and invest in more than one and play the game of life according to ur market value..!!
Amazing right? All of a sudden the "bears n bulls" of stock market started makin sense to me. I guess it is the same, when you try relating things to your life, they start making more of sense.........
Well ...dont know if taking a couple of swigs of beer/ 7. something shots of tequila will help...coz the possiblity of thinking more on the same lines and going deeper into the prob is higher after getting drunk, i guess. After drinking, the whole world shrinks and you feel lots of things running inside your brain..and then a lot of issues which would never have made sense start getting clear in your head..and thus u tend to think more...and come out with more creative n better ideas after getting drunk...and one thing i dont want to think of in such a situation is about LIFE!!No way am i going into a rewind mode and then PLAY everything all over again in my mind...aint crazy..!!so dudes...beer/ tequila aint the solution...
that brings me to ask the question...are all of us happy at any point in our life...why is it that humans (atleast the few i know inclusive of me) are never happy with what they have? When you finish your 12th grade, everyone wants to get into an IIT / REC (NIT) and that is the biggest tension..!!And once you are thru into the reputed institutions...the tensions just increase..one is never at ease..you have the cycle tests (whoever derived this name, should be given an award...the tests just keep cycling n coming back over n over again..you never seem to get rid of it..ever..till u pass out) and then the sem exams..and what not...once into the final yr..everyone wants a job...it does not matter what u did 4 yrs in your college...ultimately you just need a god damn job...and what all lies does one fabricate for the same...!!and there are a few ppl who are trained to teach others to lie/ talk effectively/ look smart n ultimately get thru the iview as well - CIC reps..i was a part of this team as well..(no offence to any CIC rep here..:-))and once you get a job...the World is yours..atleast for the next couple of weeks...
and then you done with college and you step into the corporate world...and shit!! you realise you are in hell!!what seemed so cool n stylish n amazing on the projector screen of your college abt the life in each software campus ..all bollocks..absolute crap..!!the only thing thats true in all these presentations is the infrastructure and nothing else...All dreams of being the one of the cool dudes in your cool company..shattered...your bubble burst, you look ahead...you think of job switches...higher studies..(CAT/ GMAT/ GRE etc), onsite opportunities...and what not...!!Some are successful...while others stay on cribbing every other day about their colleagues, PM's, the company, the corporate system, the project he is involved in and what not!!!!!!!!
Then slowly the marriage comes up...Some are lucky to get the bride of their dreams..while few remaining others just nod to their dad n mom saying "Yes, i agree" over a cup of tea n pastries in their to-be-in-law's house...once this phase is over...then there are tensions of wife / stayin together/ wife working/ children / their future....and what not..!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Few others have the responsiblity of getting their sisters (elder / youger) married off into a good family...and God forbid..anything screws up there...then you are the one to be blamed..after all, didnt you find the groom...weren't you supposed to do the checking on the groom n his family...!?? Is the brother the only one responsible for his sister's marriage...dont the parents/relatives have any responsibility???
When will one have the peace of mind that he is so desparately yearning for? When will he lead life for himself and not for his parents/ siblings / wife / children and whoever else that is there in this list?
When will we - each one of us - ever attain a level of satisfaction...when we can boldly say.."I AM HAPPY...I AM SATISFIED..I NEED NO MORE IN LIFE AND HAPPY WITH WHATEVER I HAVE"..and stick on to this statement for atleast 6 months at a stretch. Myself have made this statement humpty number of times...but then the next moment, prob the next day, i reverse my thoughts and start the crib process.............
I guess...this is a never ending cycle...The grass is greener on the other side ALWAYS...Till the day u die...you will keep seeing greener pastures...and would be wanting to be there than where u are currently...We may not agree when someone says "You are greedy"...but think of it...i feel all of us are...wanting more everyday..!!!!!!!!!!
ps. I need a break...i guess i am thinking too much..!:-)
No offence to anyone in the above article. Just a chain of thoughts:-) Peace!!!!!!!
Friday, October 01, 2004
If's n But's
Just thinking of life as such now...things always seem to happen out of the blue. One can never predict whats going to happen the next moment..it can be anything varying from slippin on a banana peel n cracking ur bones to being made the prime minister of the biggest/ largest democratic country in the world.
Is there any way of knowing what is going to happen to each one of us in the future...it would be fun to know all such things as to whether u would get admission into an IIM (for all the MBA / CAT aspirants)..whether there is a scope for promotion...(for all who seems to love their jobs)...or as to whether u would be in a totally different field..enjoying your work more than ever before..(for all those never-satisfied-guys like myself??)...
Well there are 2 aspects to this whole ideology of seeing the future...i mean..if i knew that 2 years down the lane, i am in a different company doing a better job / enjoyin my work/ earning more...i would obviously loose my interest in doing my present work...y should u slog ur ass off and do all this when u know tat down the lane u r gonna be in a better position.....right?? the argument seems pretty valid to me.. but then think of it in this way...the future u saw may come true only if you continue to work the way u are working right now..? now this looks more or less like printing on one side of a paper "The statement on the other side is TRUE" and on the other side you print "The statement on the other side is FALSE"...?? cool eh??
I for one firmly believe that my actions of today will speak for me tomorrow...what i do today...will have an impact on my life sometime down the lane...it may not be very evident or explicit but then down the lane, you look back at the string of events leading up to the situation, you will realise that it was coz u said a "yes" at some moment (for eg.) that you are in the postion that you are today...and if you had said a "no" to the same situation, for all you know you might not have been in this situation today - be it good or bad...!!
This infact reinstates the theory ..."you are the decider of your own future..of your own fate".......
Life is full of "ifs" n "buts" (mind u single "t" only;-))...and it is the outcome of this "if" loop which decides the output/ solution...in this case your life...
hmmm...the chain of thoughts have absolutely no connectivity..and i have wandered away from what i started i guess...but then its fun just putting into words watever goes thru ur mind...let the mind do the talking...dont think twice..who knows..the time i am spending putting these thoughts down may in some way affect my future....(crossed-fingers..hoping its for the good)...as i continue on my rambling...i am reminded of an eminent personality's words which said something like - Never love your company so much that you feel upset when you are asked to leave , for the company may not be loving u so much....
lets extrapolate this a bit further ...Should we love one person so much so that his/ her loss can affect us real bad?? Loss can be a physical distance...or the person being dead or anything for that matter...does one person alone deserve all the love that you have in ur heart...Should a husband love his wife so much so that a day without her and he would go insane...n vice versa??? should a kid love his mother so much (rare possibility) or should a mother love her kid so much so that a day without her kid n she feels completely incomplete (hmmm...is that an oxymoron now "completely incomplete"?)
How does one know that the person whom he/she loves loves him/ her back as much...
taking my own case...i would be broken if i came to know that any person whom i respected/ loved a lot does not love/ respect me so much..!!i mean..it may look like i am imposing myself onto others...it aint necessary tat everyone be the same as you are...(if that was the case..then the world would have been such a peaceful place to live in)..but is it expecting too much...am i asking for too much?? I have been broken many a times..(often came as a shock to me) when out of the blue, one fine day..i come to know that the person i love/adore/ admire n what not...does not like me...rather hates me...and whatever he/ she was showing...was all farce............
I have had it plenty n enough...dont want anymore of it... I Have had my share of agonies...and i pray all those ppl who are reading this dont go thru what all i have gone thru in the past and have a pleasant...joyful...love filled life..!!
God bless you all!!
Is there any way of knowing what is going to happen to each one of us in the future...it would be fun to know all such things as to whether u would get admission into an IIM (for all the MBA / CAT aspirants)..whether there is a scope for promotion...(for all who seems to love their jobs)...or as to whether u would be in a totally different field..enjoying your work more than ever before..(for all those never-satisfied-guys like myself??)...
Well there are 2 aspects to this whole ideology of seeing the future...i mean..if i knew that 2 years down the lane, i am in a different company doing a better job / enjoyin my work/ earning more...i would obviously loose my interest in doing my present work...y should u slog ur ass off and do all this when u know tat down the lane u r gonna be in a better position.....right?? the argument seems pretty valid to me.. but then think of it in this way...the future u saw may come true only if you continue to work the way u are working right now..? now this looks more or less like printing on one side of a paper "The statement on the other side is TRUE" and on the other side you print "The statement on the other side is FALSE"...?? cool eh??
I for one firmly believe that my actions of today will speak for me tomorrow...what i do today...will have an impact on my life sometime down the lane...it may not be very evident or explicit but then down the lane, you look back at the string of events leading up to the situation, you will realise that it was coz u said a "yes" at some moment (for eg.) that you are in the postion that you are today...and if you had said a "no" to the same situation, for all you know you might not have been in this situation today - be it good or bad...!!
This infact reinstates the theory ..."you are the decider of your own future..of your own fate".......
Life is full of "ifs" n "buts" (mind u single "t" only;-))...and it is the outcome of this "if" loop which decides the output/ solution...in this case your life...
hmmm...the chain of thoughts have absolutely no connectivity..and i have wandered away from what i started i guess...but then its fun just putting into words watever goes thru ur mind...let the mind do the talking...dont think twice..who knows..the time i am spending putting these thoughts down may in some way affect my future....(crossed-fingers..hoping its for the good)...as i continue on my rambling...i am reminded of an eminent personality's words which said something like - Never love your company so much that you feel upset when you are asked to leave , for the company may not be loving u so much....
lets extrapolate this a bit further ...Should we love one person so much so that his/ her loss can affect us real bad?? Loss can be a physical distance...or the person being dead or anything for that matter...does one person alone deserve all the love that you have in ur heart...Should a husband love his wife so much so that a day without her and he would go insane...n vice versa??? should a kid love his mother so much (rare possibility) or should a mother love her kid so much so that a day without her kid n she feels completely incomplete (hmmm...is that an oxymoron now "completely incomplete"?)
How does one know that the person whom he/she loves loves him/ her back as much...
taking my own case...i would be broken if i came to know that any person whom i respected/ loved a lot does not love/ respect me so much..!!i mean..it may look like i am imposing myself onto others...it aint necessary tat everyone be the same as you are...(if that was the case..then the world would have been such a peaceful place to live in)..but is it expecting too much...am i asking for too much?? I have been broken many a times..(often came as a shock to me) when out of the blue, one fine day..i come to know that the person i love/adore/ admire n what not...does not like me...rather hates me...and whatever he/ she was showing...was all farce............
I have had it plenty n enough...dont want anymore of it... I Have had my share of agonies...and i pray all those ppl who are reading this dont go thru what all i have gone thru in the past and have a pleasant...joyful...love filled life..!!
God bless you all!!
Saturday, September 25, 2004
Bad Morning:-((((
Any guesses where I am right now?? IN OFFICE. My first project (though i had claimed in the last mail all was going fine)..well...i guess it was waiting for me to say it and a small screw up happened which was again not our fault but then to get things back in order, it became the headache of ours. So in the early hours of a beautiful (i hope) Saturday morning, Me and my 3 other colleagues - Srijith, Randeep and Vinay are sitting here and trying to get things back in shape.
Just hope that everything goes fine. Life aint that easy eh? Things never seem to go the way we expect them to. And to think of it, today this issue came up just as we were packing up for the day and going back home...damn...a minute earlier and we would all have been happily tucked away in our sweet bed!!Its 6:45 am in the morning and the issue has not yet been resolved.
God alone knows when we will get back..when we will sleep...when i will get up..and GODAMNITT!! WHEN WILL I PREP FOR GMAT!!!!!!!!!!?????????????/
Sometimes , things just dont go the way we want them to...
All of a sudden, I am feeling fed up of this job...My sould thirsts for something more challenging..somewhere where i can use my speaking skills...talk to ppl..interact with them...organise events..where my brain is worked a bit more...All these makes me seriously want to jump into "Event Management". But then, I dont know where i am headed to right now. One thing for u sure i know, that i aint gonna stick to the software industry for long...This aint my cup of tea..no way!!
Damn!!I am drinking my 7th coffee of the night (or should it be morning) in the past 8 hours. What they say seems to be true tat this stuff is addictive. I mean after my 3rd cup, i could not stay off it...i had to have it and go on sippin it to keep me awake. And 10 min away from this, i start feeling drowsy and i mst have my next cup before i sleep off on my desk.......
ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.........................
Just hope that everything goes fine. Life aint that easy eh? Things never seem to go the way we expect them to. And to think of it, today this issue came up just as we were packing up for the day and going back home...damn...a minute earlier and we would all have been happily tucked away in our sweet bed!!Its 6:45 am in the morning and the issue has not yet been resolved.
God alone knows when we will get back..when we will sleep...when i will get up..and GODAMNITT!! WHEN WILL I PREP FOR GMAT!!!!!!!!!!?????????????/
Sometimes , things just dont go the way we want them to...
All of a sudden, I am feeling fed up of this job...My sould thirsts for something more challenging..somewhere where i can use my speaking skills...talk to ppl..interact with them...organise events..where my brain is worked a bit more...All these makes me seriously want to jump into "Event Management". But then, I dont know where i am headed to right now. One thing for u sure i know, that i aint gonna stick to the software industry for long...This aint my cup of tea..no way!!
Damn!!I am drinking my 7th coffee of the night (or should it be morning) in the past 8 hours. What they say seems to be true tat this stuff is addictive. I mean after my 3rd cup, i could not stay off it...i had to have it and go on sippin it to keep me awake. And 10 min away from this, i start feeling drowsy and i mst have my next cup before i sleep off on my desk.......
ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.........................
Friday, September 24, 2004
Beautiful Mind...........
The new project is going on full fledged. There is a status update meeting every 2 days with the clients. The last project i did went on successfully (so far) into production environment and today the live data going to be tested. So my first project is a sucess (touch wood).The new one seems to be challenging esp since i am involved in the requiremnt analysis stage.
Never thought that 1 yr into work and i would be doing analysis..and though i have just got into the analysis phase, i am already startin to like development better where your PM / ML (module leader) gives u a KT (Knowledge transfer) and you can just bombard them with questions and keep going back to them for more n more clarifications n doubts. And yeah then there is the development phase which though can get boring is much more challenging than analysis..i guess...;-)In the analysis stage, the only ppl whom u can approach with your doubts are the clients and that , trust me, at times gives u the shivers..the various questions they shoot back at you..and there are moments when u dont know what to answer..for all you know , your colleague working in the same project may have told something quite contradictory to what you are about to say..anyway..Jo Hoga dekha jaayega!!! Hope n pray i dont do any blunders in the analysis stage..coz if i do then this would not be realised till about half way into development and then reverting back from whatever i had commited is going to cost me my job/ my career and prob loss to the company and what not..!!Ok - its not like i am plannin to stick to one company for my entire life span but even then, a sort of commitment to the company u working for right now..after all i am where i am , what i am due to this company as of now..right?:-)
The weekend is here..dont have much plans..my room mates srijith n basu are on-call and in-office respectively. So this weekend i would be spending my time doin my mock tests for GMAT, watchin telly, listening to music and sleepin away to glory.Speaking of Music, been real long since i heard some rock. I believe its the situation, the place where you are, the kind of friends that one has which influences your various tastes in life..be it music, eating habits, the language u use (the slang rather)..when i joined my college 5 years back, i only used to listen to limited Hindi songs, and once in a blue moon English ones (likes of BSB, Bzone etc..) but then once into college, i was introduced into the world of Rock by none other than Naveen Babu Bitla who down the lane turned out to be a very good friend of mine. This guy was probably the only one who heard the likes of Metallice, Iron Maiden etc. in our first yr batch. And i still remember that day when we were havin a party in Adarsh's room. I guess it was his bday (Oct.3)..when this guy walks in . We introduce each other..and then he makes us all listen to the rock that he listens to daily..and lo!!in a span of probably less than 3 months, you had almost an entire batch of students listening to "Nothing else Matters", "enter sandman" etc..etc...It was a revolution..what a shift in the atmosphere of the rooms that we used to hang about. From the normal sallu/ shahrukh numbers that everyone used to listen to, focus shifted to Hard rock and everyone enjoyed it. And since that day, i have atleast in the 4 years of my college listened 95% of the times to only Rock (be it soft or hard)..
And then again, there was a turn of circumstances...and i was in this group in blore where none listened to anything but the songs of "BOYS" (eniku oru girlfriend venamada;-)) and i started listening to that and many more tamil songs..in fact the 3 other guys whom i shared rooms with were also tamilians and i ended up listening (the 3 months of my infy Training) only to Tamil songs of the latest movies....and i used to watch tamil movies on CD / theatre as well...I may look like a guy who can be easily influenced by others / surroundings..hmmm - that may be true but then i would like to look at it as I am an extremely adaptable person who blend in easily with his surroundings and can go to either extremes..WOW!!aint i feeling good about myself.
This actually makes me wonder what would have happened if there were only Self appraisals in the companies.. Man, every tom, dick and harry would have been a Bill Gates in his or her own way. Who would like putting himself / herself down in front of others...oopss..work came in...gotta go...
Have a grt weekend!! Bubye!!
Never thought that 1 yr into work and i would be doing analysis..and though i have just got into the analysis phase, i am already startin to like development better where your PM / ML (module leader) gives u a KT (Knowledge transfer) and you can just bombard them with questions and keep going back to them for more n more clarifications n doubts. And yeah then there is the development phase which though can get boring is much more challenging than analysis..i guess...;-)In the analysis stage, the only ppl whom u can approach with your doubts are the clients and that , trust me, at times gives u the shivers..the various questions they shoot back at you..and there are moments when u dont know what to answer..for all you know , your colleague working in the same project may have told something quite contradictory to what you are about to say..anyway..Jo Hoga dekha jaayega!!! Hope n pray i dont do any blunders in the analysis stage..coz if i do then this would not be realised till about half way into development and then reverting back from whatever i had commited is going to cost me my job/ my career and prob loss to the company and what not..!!Ok - its not like i am plannin to stick to one company for my entire life span but even then, a sort of commitment to the company u working for right now..after all i am where i am , what i am due to this company as of now..right?:-)
The weekend is here..dont have much plans..my room mates srijith n basu are on-call and in-office respectively. So this weekend i would be spending my time doin my mock tests for GMAT, watchin telly, listening to music and sleepin away to glory.Speaking of Music, been real long since i heard some rock. I believe its the situation, the place where you are, the kind of friends that one has which influences your various tastes in life..be it music, eating habits, the language u use (the slang rather)..when i joined my college 5 years back, i only used to listen to limited Hindi songs, and once in a blue moon English ones (likes of BSB, Bzone etc..) but then once into college, i was introduced into the world of Rock by none other than Naveen Babu Bitla who down the lane turned out to be a very good friend of mine. This guy was probably the only one who heard the likes of Metallice, Iron Maiden etc. in our first yr batch. And i still remember that day when we were havin a party in Adarsh's room. I guess it was his bday (Oct.3)..when this guy walks in . We introduce each other..and then he makes us all listen to the rock that he listens to daily..and lo!!in a span of probably less than 3 months, you had almost an entire batch of students listening to "Nothing else Matters", "enter sandman" etc..etc...It was a revolution..what a shift in the atmosphere of the rooms that we used to hang about. From the normal sallu/ shahrukh numbers that everyone used to listen to, focus shifted to Hard rock and everyone enjoyed it. And since that day, i have atleast in the 4 years of my college listened 95% of the times to only Rock (be it soft or hard)..
And then again, there was a turn of circumstances...and i was in this group in blore where none listened to anything but the songs of "BOYS" (eniku oru girlfriend venamada;-)) and i started listening to that and many more tamil songs..in fact the 3 other guys whom i shared rooms with were also tamilians and i ended up listening (the 3 months of my infy Training) only to Tamil songs of the latest movies....and i used to watch tamil movies on CD / theatre as well...I may look like a guy who can be easily influenced by others / surroundings..hmmm - that may be true but then i would like to look at it as I am an extremely adaptable person who blend in easily with his surroundings and can go to either extremes..WOW!!aint i feeling good about myself.
This actually makes me wonder what would have happened if there were only Self appraisals in the companies.. Man, every tom, dick and harry would have been a Bill Gates in his or her own way. Who would like putting himself / herself down in front of others...oopss..work came in...gotta go...
Have a grt weekend!! Bubye!!
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
VAMPIRE!!
You're a Vampire. Vampires were the creatures of
the night that were believed to live off of
human blood. Count Dracula, being the most
famous vampire, set the stereotype. They had
dark hair and pale skin from being away from
the sunlight. If they actually existed, it's
very possible they had the skin disease that
made you allergic to the sun so whenever the
sunlight would hit it, it would hurt like
crazy. They were usually snobbish and control
freaks and kept werewolves as pets. (If you
cannot see the picture, go to my userpage and
look near the bottom. There should be the
picture and description for all the results)
What Mystical Creature Are You? (Pictures)
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Past 1 month
Been one solid month since i blogged and about 1.5 months since i stopped bloggin on a daily basis..Life has been very very busy for me the past month or so. Was into the implementation / project set up of this particular project in Business Objects, which consumed my time right from 9:00 am in the morning till 7:00 pm atleast and then once that was done, i would too tired to do anything at all for the day. Just wanted to get back home n crash. Just lie on the bed..read something..and happily sleep.
Well the implementation part of the above mentioned project got on to a steady state about last month end and things slowly were getting even paced and voila!!i was put into this new project, where in I have to start from scratch. Right now we (myself and Srijith) are doing the requirement gathering / analysis..and once that is done, will have to propose an ideal tactical solution and then one of us would be goin to blore for the development phase while the other stayed on here or London. This new project is outside the current dept of RBS. We will be working for another department all together and we were to be ideally based in London but then since our previous project (my first one) is going LIVE next weekend, we have been asked to stay on here for Production support and for any subsequent problems that might crop up!!!Right now i am 100% into this new project while Srijith is 50%.
Happenings in life...nothing much other than for the fact that myself and basu shifted into Srijith's house. This is a new house with 2 bedrooms, a kitchen, hall and a bathroom. And we have als got cable TV now..so the time flies after getting back home just switching channels and not really watching anything in particular.
My weight has become steady and not increasing..but then thinking of it..it aint decreasing either....
last weekend, one of my colleagues - Parveen - was leaving to Cardiff for a new assignment. So the Infoscions in Edinburgh had a bachelor's party and boy didnt we enjoy. Atleast i did. Danced a real lot as it is very evident in the snaps. Anyway had a grt time after really long time.
Other than that couple of weeks back (August last weekend), had gone to Isle of skye. About 6 of us in a Merc C class. There were 3 guys - myself, srijith and Basu and 3 girls - Priti, Madhuri and Sapna. We thought the car was big enough to accomodate everyone but then we realised our folly a bit too late. We went yet again to Inverness & Fort Williams(which included the trip to Ben Nevis as well) en'route isle.This was a good trip> Being the second trip to this place, there was nothing new to appreciate but the scenic beauty. The thrill of driving was also not much since the Merc C- class was auto geared. Frankly the legs used to get numb having just one pressed on the accelerator which would get locked as well if u maintained the same speed over a period of time. So imagine driving a car to the highlands with both of ur legs curled up under u and hands on the steering...:-) reminded me of my childhood days when before my dad started the car, i would be kneeling on the driver's seat (to get a view of the front) and just holding the steering n turning it either ways and making the vrrroommmmmmmmm..bbbbbbrrrrrrrr...sounds from my mouth trying to mimick the start of a car and its driving. In this case i didnt have to put even that effort of makin a sound...he he:-)))))))
Hmmm...my scope of giving CAT this year has gone down the drain. I sent in my application but have my doubts if it would have reached before Sept 10th or not. Anyway have got the GMAT Princeton review / Barrons books n CD's. Have started on the prep for GMAT. Will have to book a date in the next 2 months time as well..so that i can apply to the universities here for the course next Fall. Just hope that i get a scholarship for which again i have to prove my credentials. Lot of things to be cleared and applications to be submitted and the first step in this direction is getting a good GMAT n TOEFL score.Thats it for today!!
Hopefully i should start blogging on a daily basis once again. Keeping my fingers crossed for everything:-)
CHeers!
Well the implementation part of the above mentioned project got on to a steady state about last month end and things slowly were getting even paced and voila!!i was put into this new project, where in I have to start from scratch. Right now we (myself and Srijith) are doing the requirement gathering / analysis..and once that is done, will have to propose an ideal tactical solution and then one of us would be goin to blore for the development phase while the other stayed on here or London. This new project is outside the current dept of RBS. We will be working for another department all together and we were to be ideally based in London but then since our previous project (my first one) is going LIVE next weekend, we have been asked to stay on here for Production support and for any subsequent problems that might crop up!!!Right now i am 100% into this new project while Srijith is 50%.
Happenings in life...nothing much other than for the fact that myself and basu shifted into Srijith's house. This is a new house with 2 bedrooms, a kitchen, hall and a bathroom. And we have als got cable TV now..so the time flies after getting back home just switching channels and not really watching anything in particular.
My weight has become steady and not increasing..but then thinking of it..it aint decreasing either....
last weekend, one of my colleagues - Parveen - was leaving to Cardiff for a new assignment. So the Infoscions in Edinburgh had a bachelor's party and boy didnt we enjoy. Atleast i did. Danced a real lot as it is very evident in the snaps. Anyway had a grt time after really long time.
Other than that couple of weeks back (August last weekend), had gone to Isle of skye. About 6 of us in a Merc C class. There were 3 guys - myself, srijith and Basu and 3 girls - Priti, Madhuri and Sapna. We thought the car was big enough to accomodate everyone but then we realised our folly a bit too late. We went yet again to Inverness & Fort Williams(which included the trip to Ben Nevis as well) en'route isle.This was a good trip> Being the second trip to this place, there was nothing new to appreciate but the scenic beauty. The thrill of driving was also not much since the Merc C- class was auto geared. Frankly the legs used to get numb having just one pressed on the accelerator which would get locked as well if u maintained the same speed over a period of time. So imagine driving a car to the highlands with both of ur legs curled up under u and hands on the steering...:-) reminded me of my childhood days when before my dad started the car, i would be kneeling on the driver's seat (to get a view of the front) and just holding the steering n turning it either ways and making the vrrroommmmmmmmm..bbbbbbrrrrrrrr...sounds from my mouth trying to mimick the start of a car and its driving. In this case i didnt have to put even that effort of makin a sound...he he:-)))))))
Hmmm...my scope of giving CAT this year has gone down the drain. I sent in my application but have my doubts if it would have reached before Sept 10th or not. Anyway have got the GMAT Princeton review / Barrons books n CD's. Have started on the prep for GMAT. Will have to book a date in the next 2 months time as well..so that i can apply to the universities here for the course next Fall. Just hope that i get a scholarship for which again i have to prove my credentials. Lot of things to be cleared and applications to be submitted and the first step in this direction is getting a good GMAT n TOEFL score.Thats it for today!!
Hopefully i should start blogging on a daily basis once again. Keeping my fingers crossed for everything:-)
CHeers!
Friday, August 20, 2004
Chicken Soup for the Soul
The Worm
By Julie Long
I couldn't put the worm on. I prided myself on being a tomboy - I
hated Barbies and baths, and loved climbing trees and playing with Tonka trucks -
but something about sticking a hook through a wiggling worm gave me the heebie-
jeebies. Dad had somehow understood, but how could I tell old Mr. Lyons,
who never had any kids? I almost hadn't gone fishing with him because of it,
but Mom talked me into it. Then, the closer we got to the river, the more it
worried me. It was nice of Mr. Lyons to take me fishing. Since my dad had died the
fall before, it was just my mom and us four girls, and I knew we wouldn't go
fishing or camping or canoeing anymore.
I missed my dad and had taken to hanging around Mr. Lyons's yard as he
worked on building his houseboat. I loved the smell of sawdust and stain -
a scent that was fading from my dad's unused workshop. I think Mr. Lyons
liked my company, too. He'd be hammering a nail or planing wood with his eyes
squinting in concentration until his dog Brownie would announce my arrival with a
bark. When he'd look up and see it was me, he'd set his tools down and scratch his
gray, scruffy chin and say he was glad I came by because he needed a break.Mr.Lyons had finished the houseboat in the spring, and he'd already taken it down to the river.He pulled the truck up next to the houseboat.
"Well, how's she look?"
"Real nice, Mr. Lyons."
"We'll just fish right off the front bow. It's nice and shady there.
The fish'll be keeping cool and waiting for a worm to wiggle on by."
We got the fishing poles out of the bed of the Ford. Mine was just the bamboo pole I had dug out from the camping supplies in the basement. Dad had tried to teach me how to cast his rod and reel but I had tangled the line up something awful. Maybe now that I had turned eleven I'd have better luck. Mr. Lyons reached back in the truck bed for the tackle box, then reached in again and handed me the Styrofoam container of worms. I followed him down the bank and onto the boat, keeping an eye that the lid stayed on. Once on the bow, Mr. Lyons started getting everything set up. Any minute now I'd have to admit to him my aversion to worms. Then he'd probably never ask me to go fishing again. He handed me my pole, then set the container between us and fished out a worm for his pole. Then, just when I was ready to confess, Mr.Lyons confessed to me instead.
"Always hate this part," he mumbled as he held the worm in one hand and his hook in the other. "It's silly, but stickin' the poor little guy with a hook makes me feel, I dunno what you'd call it. . . ."
"Like you have the heebie-jeebies?" I offered hopefully.
"That's it exactly. The heebie-jeebies. You get 'em, too?"
"A little," I admitted, relief washing over me.
"Yeah. I guess sometimes we gotta go through the bad to get to the good. Want me to hook your worm for ya?"
There it was. My way out. All I had to say was "yes" and I'd be off
the hook and my worm would be on. But I felt bad making Mr. Lyons put the worm
on if he hated it as much as me. So I reached into the cool dirt and picked up a
fat worm between my fingers. I tried not to think about how slimy it felt as I
quickly poked the hook through its middle and wiped my hand on my jeans.
I had done it! It definitely gave me the heebie-jeebies, but I had
gotten through it. I looked up at Mr. Lyons. He gave me a wink. I grinned with
pride and tossed my line in the water. The bad part was over.Today, of course, I realize my mom must have shared my problem with Mr.Lyons;
I'm fairly certain he didn't have a case of the heebie-jeebies at all.But I also know that he helped me grasp, on a child's level, the principle of persevering through the bad to get to the good. My mom and sisters and I never did fish together again; the days of camping and canoeing died with my father.But we struggled through the grief and, when we got through the bad, we eventually found other good times to enjoy as a family. And I continued to fish with Mr. Lyons . . . and bait my own hook.
By Julie Long
I couldn't put the worm on. I prided myself on being a tomboy - I
hated Barbies and baths, and loved climbing trees and playing with Tonka trucks -
but something about sticking a hook through a wiggling worm gave me the heebie-
jeebies. Dad had somehow understood, but how could I tell old Mr. Lyons,
who never had any kids? I almost hadn't gone fishing with him because of it,
but Mom talked me into it. Then, the closer we got to the river, the more it
worried me. It was nice of Mr. Lyons to take me fishing. Since my dad had died the
fall before, it was just my mom and us four girls, and I knew we wouldn't go
fishing or camping or canoeing anymore.
I missed my dad and had taken to hanging around Mr. Lyons's yard as he
worked on building his houseboat. I loved the smell of sawdust and stain -
a scent that was fading from my dad's unused workshop. I think Mr. Lyons
liked my company, too. He'd be hammering a nail or planing wood with his eyes
squinting in concentration until his dog Brownie would announce my arrival with a
bark. When he'd look up and see it was me, he'd set his tools down and scratch his
gray, scruffy chin and say he was glad I came by because he needed a break.Mr.Lyons had finished the houseboat in the spring, and he'd already taken it down to the river.He pulled the truck up next to the houseboat.
"Well, how's she look?"
"Real nice, Mr. Lyons."
"We'll just fish right off the front bow. It's nice and shady there.
The fish'll be keeping cool and waiting for a worm to wiggle on by."
We got the fishing poles out of the bed of the Ford. Mine was just the bamboo pole I had dug out from the camping supplies in the basement. Dad had tried to teach me how to cast his rod and reel but I had tangled the line up something awful. Maybe now that I had turned eleven I'd have better luck. Mr. Lyons reached back in the truck bed for the tackle box, then reached in again and handed me the Styrofoam container of worms. I followed him down the bank and onto the boat, keeping an eye that the lid stayed on. Once on the bow, Mr. Lyons started getting everything set up. Any minute now I'd have to admit to him my aversion to worms. Then he'd probably never ask me to go fishing again. He handed me my pole, then set the container between us and fished out a worm for his pole. Then, just when I was ready to confess, Mr.Lyons confessed to me instead.
"Always hate this part," he mumbled as he held the worm in one hand and his hook in the other. "It's silly, but stickin' the poor little guy with a hook makes me feel, I dunno what you'd call it. . . ."
"Like you have the heebie-jeebies?" I offered hopefully.
"That's it exactly. The heebie-jeebies. You get 'em, too?"
"A little," I admitted, relief washing over me.
"Yeah. I guess sometimes we gotta go through the bad to get to the good. Want me to hook your worm for ya?"
There it was. My way out. All I had to say was "yes" and I'd be off
the hook and my worm would be on. But I felt bad making Mr. Lyons put the worm
on if he hated it as much as me. So I reached into the cool dirt and picked up a
fat worm between my fingers. I tried not to think about how slimy it felt as I
quickly poked the hook through its middle and wiped my hand on my jeans.
I had done it! It definitely gave me the heebie-jeebies, but I had
gotten through it. I looked up at Mr. Lyons. He gave me a wink. I grinned with
pride and tossed my line in the water. The bad part was over.Today, of course, I realize my mom must have shared my problem with Mr.Lyons;
I'm fairly certain he didn't have a case of the heebie-jeebies at all.But I also know that he helped me grasp, on a child's level, the principle of persevering through the bad to get to the good. My mom and sisters and I never did fish together again; the days of camping and canoeing died with my father.But we struggled through the grief and, when we got through the bad, we eventually found other good times to enjoy as a family. And I continued to fish with Mr. Lyons . . . and bait my own hook.
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