December 21, 2005

HOOKED!!

head over to the link on the title of this post for a puzzle that has had me hooked for the last 3 days or so...very very fun!!...I've made it till level 27...(of 29 levels, or so i've heard from reliable sources)
If you get similarly hooked, do thank me!!

November 16, 2005

Next Sunday...

Will be my third crack at the billi...
Forget fingers, I am crissing all parts of my body and crossing all available joints in the hope of bringing me some much needed additional luck...
Will post en masse after the CAT is out of the way

September 05, 2005

On Teacher's Day...

In India,Teacher's Day is celebrated on September 5, in honour of Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, our second President and noted educationist and Philosopher.

No better time than today to pay a small tribute to the teachers who have made a huge difference in my life...


THANK YOU

August 10, 2005

Independence Rock...I will be there!

Last year, I-rock happened two weeks late and was almost on the verge of non-occurence on account of the Rang Bhavan fiasco...nor could I make it on account of my roomies as I've lamented in a previous post so i'll spare you the story this time 'round...This year, hopefully, I-rock will happen on independence weekend...but where?..that is the million dollar Q that no one, not even google.com, knows the answer to..whoever is organising the I-Rock this year has sure done a poor job of publicising the venue dates and places for tickets to the gig...

By Contrast, The "Mosh Mania" gig organised by 3G and Mumbai mirror at the Goregaon Sports club seems to be a good bet ( and well publicised too) as well and that's happening on the 13th, however infringing as it does on a working day looks unlikely I can make it to the show...and it boasts a mean line-up as well Pentagram, Them Clones, Zero, Pin Drop Violence Helga's Fun Castle and Sceptre will be there.... now, that's a line-up that I'm hoping can only be upstaged by the mai-baap of all rock concerts in india, the I-Rock alone

........anyways, come hail/ storm ( or torrential rains !!!) I will be there at I-Rock this year....Muhahahahaha!!!!

August 07, 2005

My first day at JBIMS

Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (JBIMS) happens to be nestled in a cosy road not more than two minutes walk from T.I.M.E's Churchgate office which is itself bang opposite K.C. College which is less than a stone's throw from Churchgate station...JBIMS also happens to be one of the premier institutes for management education in India...

So, when my roommate Ravneet Gandhi wanted to shift into his hostel and needed help with samaan and generally for timepass, I accompanied him to J.S.Hall which happens to be the hostel for the JBites....

We spent the night there, with me farting to be a JBite myself, a night hyphenated by my "seniors" ragging me!!(rotflmao)... one fine night, also, these JB seniors of Ravneet's, they're fine people-- helpful, fun-loving, and concerned about the welfare of their juniors...

Only dampener to the night was probably the fact that I dislocated my kneecap, while dancing for the seniors during ragging, and that, I'll have to live with the agony of, for the next three days, at least.....

August 02, 2005


At Shreekalp!!!... Posted by Picasa

On how the Iconos get jiggy with it...


Kt, Deoras and Savvy getting jiggy with it... Posted by Picasa

ICONOs Junta Seeing off my Sis at Pune Station: (L to R) Dorli,Kesri,Das,Savvy,Didi, Me (fresh from my accident),Saggy,Deoras Bhai Khandale and Thote, Anna completing the set.. Posted by Picasa

On the Boat Club Quiz Club


The folks At my Quiz club..this at the COEP Boat Club Posted by Picasa


The BCQC aka the boat club quiz club meets most Saturdays at the Boat Club lawns at the College of Engineering Pune, and comprises of mostly studs, gods, quizzes par excellence and a few random blokes flitting through for alark such as yours truly... Fun times are had quizzing geekiness is appreciated and the jokes are superstellar!! 

July 30, 2005

On Feynman and Nanotechnology...

What defines a true innovator?...Whatever your definition, Richard P. Feynman would have to top your list..Incidentally he'd top a lot of my lists: genius, humourist, talent, maverick and men-who-innjoyed lists to begin with....

You read people like Asimov, Jules Verne and A.C Clarke who conceptualised actual inventions decades prior to available technology, and you know you're reading the works of more than mere equals...and on this count Mr. Feynman can hold his own against the likes of these Titans with playful ease.

What can you do but marvel at THIS TALK, delivered at Caltech way back in 1959, mind it!..we're talking late 50's prior to the semiconductor revolution...We're talking current technology not even at micron levels and this guy says Nano( 10^-9 m)...what's more he 'd developed a sound theoretical basis for it with his QCD (not part of the talk)...in the talk, he explains why thinking nano is smart even with the available technology of the day..then goes on to enumerate practical approaches to the challenges he throws open to the general public( actually he targets school kids)...not only that, he predicts possible pitfalls and provides insights on how to approach these problems as well!!....problems that surfaced practically only about a year or two ago... well into the arrival of Nanotechnology as a big time science initiative with funds like crazy.... or about 45 years after RPF's clairvoyant note to the future generations..

That, then, is one sexily innovative mind....

Surely I'm not Joking, Mr.Feynman!...HATS OFF TO YA!!!!

July 24, 2005

July 17, 2005

Evolving Lingo...

Smart advertising and the best Engineering college( any college actually) lingo have one thing in common...they're huge fun...remember any lingo peculiar to your college?...tell me about it!!

At COEP , we Iconoclasts and Dhu#$%masti public at meta dept. used to generate copious amounts of lingo..some of them became world famous in COEP..e.g :

"jhakaas me makass.edu.co.in"{ can be used in "N" situations}

"eet ees" { which actually and literally became a cult in the meta dept}

"mareeeezuaaana!!" & "Ek number!!" & " OK me thankk you!"
{ Sawai baba meherbaan to lingo bhi mahaan...prolly the most versatile ones of the lot...e.g ---> " boss!!...X and Y ka affair fullto chaloo hai.. kal woh BC pe "mareeezuaaana!!" karte hue dekhe gaye re Baawaa!!!!"
OR
"Me: Abbe Sawai? Exam kaise gaya?...Savvy:"Mareeezuaaana!!"
"Savvy: Abbe Arkus? Exam kaise gaya?...Me:"Mareeezuaaana!!"

P.S: note the beauty of it, see how the lingo is perfect despite the different situations, on that particular exam, Sawai was the only person in Pune University to flunk, and in my case I'd topped Pune Univ. }

"Mokaaaar !"{introduced to this one recently on my Rajasthan trip by Avya bhai}

"{random word}.com" e.g.--->" Abbe aay "jhingoor.com", idhar aa!"

" O.K me?"{ to be used to enquire if person can drive}

"Okkay me?"{asked prior to breaking out the barf bags}

Nowadays however, me and my roomies generate lots of lingo as well, but then, it's topical and we don't have a hostel type scenario to popularise it...but then again, who the frick cares..we have endless moments of ha-ha-mirth when someone uses a typical "Lingo liner" in a perfectly set up moment...

Do feel free to comment nostalgically on the unique language takes at your alma mater below in the comment box...

July 09, 2005

15 Straight Days...

...of unwilling sobriety....some big daroo occasions and some small have converged together on me like only once before in my life ( last year of engineering..when i had a 23 day streak ended by a two wheeler accident!!)...will break my streak...but, the biggest problem is nowadays I don't get that kutte-type-chad-gayaa-be!! feeling...

Looking forward to straight day #24...hic!

July 06, 2005

Sawai Singh Rajpurohit's Wedding....2

The story so far...

As we shifted ho from Kunwarda towards the nearby village of Bhadrajun, we were greeted by a road that slipped in towards a vale encircled on three sides by mountains, and seemed headed for what seemed like a dead stone wall ( you've seen Rajasthan hill fortresses in the movies and tourism shows, then you know the kind)...which magically turned into a well disguised opening that led us straight into a well populated walled city rather similar in layout and appearances to infamous Wadas of Pune..and then leading towards the royal palace.

As we were inspecting our rooms we were accosted by Raja Gopal Singh of Bhadrajun himself ... royal hosts are something else!

Having enquired after all our creature comforts he invited us to breakfast at his palace the next morning...

Our rooms at the Rajwada were situated on either side of a nice long terrace where we were decided we would spend the night , accordingly the instructions were given and we came back to find a neat row of 8 beds on the terrace ..rather reminiscent of my I-block days it was...with one BIG difference...the view...ensconced on three sides by mountains bathed in moonlight, the fourth side facing the palace gates which themselves lead to the cobbled path right down to the entrance to this fortressed hamlet...and the sky, an absolute delight( so so many more stars than I've ever seen..anywhere!!!)...There really wasn't much to it, Avya, Pintya, Das, Parbat ( savvy's younger bro, who is, I'd venture even more of a handful than his significantly pahucha hua elder sibling) and Self resigned ourselves to the only activity that justified such a magnificent seting... serious boozing and intensely heated Daru debates!!!

Ironic that you never have a camera when you really want one!!..:'(

At somewhere past three we instructed the attendant( who stayed patiently awake, waiting on us and even fixing our pegs) that 10 a.m. would be the right time to breakfast...then turned in...

Next morning , Das and me, who were the last to go to sleep were gently woken up at ten...a quick shower and then we joined the rest of the gang at the palace dining room for breakfast and an audience with the Raja...

Breakfast done, we spent the rest of the morning lazing around and smoking Four squares ( which despite being one of the foulest poison sticks available in the country is for some reason the only brand in Rajasthean)...also explored the palace and generally had a nice time...

In the afternoon we piled into the car and headed to Sawai's where, surprise !!
We were greeted by Subbu, which was a true delight, coz none of us conceived he'd come all the way from Dubai to attend the wedding..but when Savvy gets married public G maraa ke aata hai ( aana hi padhta hai..pyaar hai pagle!!:)..).....and Santy Singh Bappara was there too ...they'd tootled down from Delhi

So from there we headed full filmi style dancing and all towards Parakhiya...

Reached there in the evening , had dinner and dozed off..(the wedding was late at night ..remember)...all this while from about 7 p.m. in the evening till really late in the night sawai had to sit seriously (which is SERIOUSLY difficult for Sawai) all decked up in an extremely becoming ( and, I'm sure, uncomfortable beyond human tollerance levels in Rajasthan's broiling heat) full length suit , while we ayeeshed!!

Late at night we sort of arm twisted Sasur ji into letting us be there at the pheras( not that it helped,coz, we still could'nt see the bride)...and then went straight to bed as soon as the pheras were done..the ceremony continued for a couple of more hours I believe....

[aside2]
Having seen two indian weddings( my sister's wedding) at close quarters, I've come to rest on the conviction that traditional weddings are a real pain in the private-parts-that-hurt-the-worst atleast for the marrying couple...bengali weddings by this count are even worse..oh yes, our muhurats are really late at night as well
[/aside2]

Next morning Subbu had to scram in order to reach Jaipur in time for a flight, and we had to scram if we wanted to stop over at Mt.Abu on the way back...so the plan we hatched late at night was we'd get up nice and early and leave for our respective destinations....

On the way back, we stopped at Mt.Abu, a short detour through the ghats and we were there... beautiful!!...

We:
>Skipped Lunch
>Saw the Dilwara:.. amazing artistry, unbelievable craftmanship, definitely one of the wonders of the world...we also saw the awe inspiring statue of rishabh dev which weighs in at a staggerring 4250 Kgs...of pure gold...
>hired a camera {mercy!}
>bought some (lots actually:)..) beer
>drank all of it
> drove to the higest point there called Guru Shikhar
> climbed it...( Das was pretty Okkay by this stage..if you know what I mean..and so when our guide said that here is a not so easy trek to the top..Das quickly told him off in no uncertain terms," Boss!..mai teen beer ke baad na , tu mujhe abhi Everest chadne bol mai chad loonga..samjha??"...after some time...{near the top}...Das:" Boss, Everest kal chadoonga to theek hai, kya?"...
> rang the bell there( which is what you're expected to do by way of entertainment once you reach the top, and ate diced/slice/spiced raw Mangas..yum)
> climbed down
>drove to random rock structure with the Mt.Abu Observatory in the background
> danced in the middle of the road, blaring "Kajra re" at full volume from Bunty aur Bali
>bought some more beer & drank it as well
> drove to the lake there
>did some boating
>returned hired camera
>skipped town

We drank all the way back to Bombay...In short trip me full INNjoy maara...

{Sone Pe Suhaaga} As we enter bombay , on the 20th, we are greeted by fulll blown monsooons...happy-happy!..joy!joy!

June 29, 2005

Monsoons

Mumbai in the monsoons...heaven!!.....
Unless , that is you have a thing against getting drenched right down to your undies...

Been raining mercilessly for the last 2 days here in Vashi...weather forecast is for 3 more days of rain...

Break out:
The garam samosas & pakodas;
Chilled beer ..plenty of it;
Raincoats, Gumboots & Umbrellas ( windcheaters?..pfhaaah!!!);
hot chai and ciggies (every 20 mins or so);
Big smiles....

Sawai's wedding

Sawai's wedding happened very traditionally in Rajasthan...

June 22, 2005

Sawai Singh Rajpurohit's Wedding.....

Most everyone has seen a Punjabi wedding or a Bengali wedding (atleast in extended 3 hr long technicolor tearjerker/romantic comedies)...but not a Rajasthani wedding, and definitely not a traditional Rajasthani wedding(====>>reasons to follow). Therefore, when rumour was that a certain Mr. Sawai Singh Rajpurohit is going to get wed in aamchi Rajasthan,I for one made up my mind not to miss such a chance. But the first thought in my mind however, was ,"Here's old Savvy up to his evergreen pranks". Nor was I alone, several other Iconoclasts( COEPians miight just recognise us from a wierd ,but loveable, orange T-shirt with a hood..;)..) were more forthright with Sawai and told him pretty pointedly that until we had an actual invite in hand none of us were going to even believe him, coming to his wedding was several stages apres that...Anyways, to cut a long story short, Sawai handed us (Mumbai branch of Iconoclasts) our invites in person, and nebulous plans were fixed, holidays applied for, and the date in the calendar marked for Sawai's wedding...

The shaadi was to happen on the 19th of June( initially , we thought it would be on the 18th ,but with Sawai, such things are not to be grudged...especially if you consider that the wedding was actually at 2:00 a.m. in the morning) and since the venue was the quaint and suitably remote interior village of Kunwarda , we ( Das,Roshan(Dorli),Kunal(K.T),Avinash(Avya),Pintya, Sachin(Kesri) and self) were all set to leave on the 16th by a hired car...So we finally piled into our hired Chevrolet Tavera and headed Rajasthan-ward at about 11:30 p.m. on 16th evening(?)... After a long and memorable drive punctuated by stops at local dhabas for food and booze (except in Modi-land which is DRY..:(..) we finally arrived at Kunwarda on the 17th evening at about 10 p.m...after a quick word with Savvy at his home we shot off to where we were being put up for the night, The Royal Rajwada at Bhadrajun (pretty fancy it was , I might add), a quick wash-up to get rid of 24 hours of continuous driving, and then back to Savvy's for dinner...

[aside]
Now, a traditional Rajasthani wedding proceeds as follows:
First, the prospective In-laws meet the son/daughter-in-law. At this stage,the bride and the groom make do with photographs. Then, they(the parents) consent to the wedding and the time and date. Once fixed the marriage preparations run parallelly and separately at each end , until finally, the Groom and his baaraat party reach the village of the girl, and the actual marriage ceremony with complete pheras and everything is performed. Now, the baaraat party does not include any of the Groom's lady relatives therefore even your Mom and your Sister aren't present at the actual shaadi ceremony (assuming that you are a traditional Rajasthani groom). Not only that even though your Dad accompanies you on the trip to the girl's village, at the time of the marriage even he is not supposed to be present there. Given that Rajasthani weddings usually have their shubh-muhurats late in the night/earrrly in the morning (2:30ish (a.m.) in this case)...and, that we had to rather inconvenience the Bride's parents and hassle them into allowing us to be present at the time of the pheras...also, factoring in that the bride was veiled completely even at the time of the ceremonies(I believe even Savvy only really saw/met his bride after the ceremonies)... you get a flavour of how traditional the wedding was , and how unlikely it is that such events will be part of the next Mira Nair Bollywood tearjerker entitled "Desert wedding".....
[/aside]

Once at Savvy's we were treated to a traditional Rajsthani dance by the lady members of Sawai's family which is all part of the marriage ceremony. We also sampled some staple rajasthani fare esp the "Dal vaati"(?)..which is a ball shaped roti like fare rather reminiscent of the Bihari "littha". At the end of which, someone insisted that we shake our leg to the music as well and, well, we did!!...

Ceremony over, we tootled back to the Royal Rajwada to spend the night. But my description of my trip would be sorely disappointing if I did'nt spend some time describing the fascinating history, the amazing beauty and the colourful characters we met at the Rajwada...


The rest of the story...

June 14, 2005

BOOK TAG

Total Number of Books I Own:
Plenty. Atleast close to a hundred books strewn casually about my flat, and growing at the rate of approx. 3-4 books a week.


Last (3) Book(s) I Read:....
Since I tend to read 3-4 books parallelly.....they would be... Celebrating Silence (excerpts from the weekly messages of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar), Global Dominion or Global leadership by..let me get this right... Zbiegniew Brzezezinski, and The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra (rereading this one)

Five Authors who Mean a Lot to Me:
Since its hardly likely that I can pick just 5 books as my faves , I'll go with 5 of my fave authors. These would include(among others who would however count as lesser equals):
Isaac Asimov, R.K.Narayan,P.G.Wodehouse, Nirad C.Chaudhuri, Swami Vivekananda

Tag five people and have them do this on their blogs:
Since this blog-meme has been going round for a while, I'd like to tag these people who (hopefully) haven't been book-tagged yet,and whose reading habits should be really interesting:

Maniche

Prabhu

Rahul

Vinayak

Sumedha

June 09, 2005

One Point Fivesome

A blog in five parts:

1.1--- Ram Gopal Verma rocks as a director. I've enjoyed all his movies and respect his quest to break out of the "same old, same old" grind. However, even RGV has sort of got stuck into two genres viz. the Supernatural and the Underworld. Nothing against that, in fact I saw his latest offering, "D", yesterday...one thing about RGV's movies that always seems to stand out is that a completely fascinating first half is sacrificed at the altar of an extremely pedestrian second half resulting in a movie that is on the whole, at best,above average(there are exceptions like Sathya which keep the plot tight till the end, but then they are just that:exceptions)...but with "D" Ramu has scored a winner...the movie is short, but the story is crisp from beginning to the very end.If you haven't seen "D" yet, do....it's worth a dekho!!

1.2--- Still on movies, it seems to me that the truly great movies make it there not on the strength of merely good story lines, crisp dialogues or exceptional performances but also good editing.Expertly wielded scissors can make an ordinary story come alive. Sadly, with people like Karan Johar around ,bollywood has a Loooooong way to go....

1.3--- Read THIS post on Gaurav's blog, and was reminded of an earlier post of mine

1.4--- I feel a gentle glow as understanding dawns and I am enveloped by a strange aura of peace, within me is voiced a revelation which I gladly share with you: "Swimming has to be the single most relaxing thing to do in the world"

1.5--- My next blog will a BOOK TAG blog..so bear with me..

April 08, 2005

I'm still alive

Goood News!!!...Fans of my blog can ditch that length of rope/ tik-22/Mauser 9.62 bore semi-automatic /prozac overdose/ other suicide methods. This blog lives on and my self imposed exile from Blogistan is over.