Resolution revolution

More than five decades of freedom, and the future of our country looks bright. India is all set to become the next superpower. There are worrying concerns too, but when you look close enough, everything augurs well for us. For example, recently, there was a hype over the insane amount of public money that our president had spent on foreign tours, during her reign for the last four and a half years. But, I am sure she was trying to convey the precious message, ‘Use your opportunities to the fullest’ to the underachieving common citizens of our country, by doing so. That is what inspiring leadership is.

But more than that, the biggest asset that we have, is the vibrant and ubiquitous youth, which, unlike before, is highly aware, concerned and involved in the intricate matters which help us to build a better India. In the current times, as you can see, the whole of our youth, is focused on a matter of utmost national importance, that is, Indian premier league, with special attention paid towards the cheerleaders, along with a couple of team owners. I am sure, something good, will turn out, from this.

When we refer to youth, as a whole, each and every individual, including me, is a part of it. When we make a remark on the youth, ultimately, it boils down, to each and every individual. The evolution of youth, or even the society as a whole, starts with the evolution of each of us.

How does an individual evolve? Sometimes, we evolve unconsciously. Some other times, it’s our deliberate decisions which change ourselves. The persistence of an individual, to such decisions, is what makes the difference. After my first semester in college, I decided to change myself, and study properly, from the next. As a result of my exemplary persistence, I ended up making the same decision at the end of each semester, till there were no semesters left. When do people, most commonly, take such decisions?

Yes!

New year resolutions. More than a quarter into this year, let us give it some thought. What came out of those over promising things? Did they actually revolutionize our lives as we had expected? Do you even remember yours?

According to Wikipedia, a study suggests that 80% of the New year resolutions fail and we have seen it happening also. But what if we were all able to stick to our resolutions? Our lives would have changed, at least in small magnitudes. This is where some expert advice comes in handy. Let me explain to you, how I managed an amazing success rate of 100%, in my resolutions. The most important thing is not to be stubborn, and to take pragmatic workarounds, when the going gets tough.

My first and most important resolution was to start saving some money for the future, rather than spending it all on movies and hanging out with friends. And I did save some money in the first month. It surely was an achievement, and I had to celebrate my achievements, with my friends. I did, and eventually ended up spending more money than what I had saved. In our country, we get to know the fiscal planning through a budget, but do we have a clue how it all gets spent, or to which all pockets a share goes? So, I set apart some money as savings, which was good enough, and didn’t really have to care where it went after that.    

My second resolution was not to drink and smoke anymore. That was a tough one, but I found a way around. When we say ‘Don’t drink and drive’, does that mean you should never drink and you should never drive? No. It just means you should not do both at the same time. So, now, I don’t drink and smoke together, I just do them separately, at separate times. So, I don’t drink and smoke, anymore. That is somewhat the 

deceptive way a political rhetoric works, but it serves the purpose.

As you can see, a successful New year resolution is something, as rare as our prime minister opening his mouth. But when you have the right approach, and well thought our strategies, it doesn’t look as difficult as it is. Hope you all have learned the piece of wisdom that I shared. Now, I should get back to work, so that I can contribute in my own way, for the nation’s future.

What is the IPL score, man? Did I miss anything? 

Review the reviews

Recently, two of my movie reviews got published in Hindu NXG. So the purpose of this post is, to share the links of those reviews, and also, to bore you to death, by praising myself, and by describing the appreciations  that I received from a large number of people. These people, even include, Aravind Adiga’s watchman’s uncle and one guy who has seen, Jaideep Sahni , once, from a distance of hundred meters. But besides all that, I also received an overwhelming lack of response from the mass readers, which was very encouraging. 

Find the links below.

Puss in Boots

Sherlock Homes : A Game of shadows

Moneyball

Due to the huge volume of appreciations, I am not able to share all of those here. Will just share two, in the form of conversations.  

Conversation #1

The following exchange of words took place between myself and my Dad. I would refuse to disclose what percentage of the following is truth, and what all things, I made up. 

D : What is that paper that you were showing to your Mom?

Me : Er.. I got a movie review published in ‘The Hindu’

D : Oh really? Good. Which movie did you review?

Me : ‘Puss in Boots’ and, um,..

D :  What? ‘Puss in Boots’? Is that the movie name?

Me :  Yea, It’s an animation movie, actually. A prequel to the ‘Shrek’ series.

D : You wrote the review for a cartoon movie? You still watch cartoon movies?

Me : Er.. not exactly a cartoon movie. This movie isn’t for kids.

I tried to explain how good a movie series Shrek was, how Puss accompanied Shrek in all the adventures, how Shrek could kill fishes with his fart and all that. But he didn’t seem very impressed.

D : Okay. Whatever. Did you get paid for it?

Me : Um, not exactly. But yea, I got this coupon to go to this Spa and salon.

D : Spa? Wow. Doesn’t that sound awesome! Don’t talk about this to anyone and embarrass yourself.

Me : Ugh. Umm.

Conversation #2

I decided get the response from one of my friends, and mailed him the link. I was sure that he wouldn’t have seen it, because him, reading a newspaper, was as rare as a sensible ShahRukh Khan movie.

Me : Dude, did you check that link?

Him : The one you had mailed? Yea, I did.

Me : yea, exactly. What do you say?

I held my breath and prepared myself to bask in the incessant flow of appreciations.

Him : The Chick isn’t so good, man. Why did you send that link?

Me : What? What the #@*% are you talking about?

In the Puss in Boots review page, there was an advertisement (which has changed now) which featured a good looking female model. And he thought that I sent the link for that. 

 I replied, in a calm voice. My reply, mostly, involved his ancestors.

There are some other, exciting reader responses as well. Can’t post them here, since blogger 
hasn’t got an option to upload physical objects, hurled with fairly good power.

That’s all, for now. Ciao!

The Broken Window

 The following is my mediocre attempt to write a short story. This was published in a fellow blogger's flash fiction website, some time back. Re posting it here, now.

 We must retaliate.

That’s what they thought. And I had no choice but to agree.

We were sitting on the cement floor, in John’s room, the place where we met, every night. Prakash had a shrewd smile on his face, and I knew that he had thought of an evil plan.

“Explosions!”

Prakash spoke with his patented grim and sly expression.

“What the hell? Are you nuts? I am going back to my room’’

I shouted. John gestured me to lower my voice. It was study time. We were supposed to be in our own rooms and study. Our hostel warden, Mr. Binny Thomas, whom we called as Bean, was a haughty and ruthless guy, and he, indisputably, was our biggest enemy. Bean, finding us in the same room was the last thing that we ever wanted. That would give him a good enough reason to dismiss all the three of us. He already had plenty of them, mostly attributed to the plans by Prakash. But somehow, we hung in. One more, and we were out. I was sure of that.

The three of us, and the hostel management were in a constant war. They imparted rules, which smothered us all the way. We were plus two students, not the inmates of a jail. Just because our parents put us in this boarding school, we couldn’t have died, trying to mug up stuff.

“Just shut up and listen to the plan. We’ll buy some good crackers, the loudest ones possible. We hide them somewhere in the hostel, attaching them to the rear end of a mosquito coil, say by 9 o clock or so. As the coil finishes, the cracker goes off, that’s probably by 2 or 3 at night. Everyone including Bean will go crazy. No one would even be able to find out what happened. What do you say?”

Prakash looked at us.

I was surprised. How the hell does this guy come up with such nefarious ideas all the time?

It was his idea to break the window glass in John’s room and use it to go for late night movies. We used to get out through the window, jump over the compound wall, and after the movie, come back the same way. Nobody ever knew.

We were trying to avenge Bean’s decision to reduce the Sports and Games time from one hour to half, and nobody could have suggested a better plan than this. I was not very much good in any of the games, but I loved the fact that nobody expected you to study during that one hour. Both Prakash and John could play football well, and I spent my time, watching them play. Once I tried playing with them, and managed to come out, without the ball touching my feet even once. But it wasn’t that bad. I did a decent header, even though the ball hit my face and not my forehead, leaving me staggering, for a few moments. Snake and ladder was the only game which I could play well. But it was not included in sports. I didn’t know why .

"Awesome plan man. Time to kick Bean's ass. He'll have a tough time in finding out what happened. I'm in. We'll proceed."

John announced his support. It was my turn after that.

"Um, well sounds like a good plan to me, but… er… what if he finds out? He will definitely throw us out. And my Dad will slaughter me. Mom will cry non-stop. I can't take all that. Last time Bean called and complained to them, my whole Christmas vacation got spoiled over that."

I let my concerns out. I was afraid.

Both of them didn’t like it.

“Why are you being paranoid? How the hell will he find out? We'll hide the crackers properly. Even if he finds that out, he will never know it's us."

John tried to convince. Prakash just had his trademark, disdainful smile on his face. I hated it. He was cool. Fearless. I always wondered how he could be that way. I secretly admired his guts, but, I hated him for deriding at my fear and making me feel embarrassed.

“Ok, I’m also in. We’ll pull this off. No matter what happens”

I said, trying to sound confident.

Prakash said he would buy the crackers. Mosquito coils were my responsibility. We dispersed, after planning to meet the next day evening.

***

I bought mosquito coils while I was on the way back from school. I never thought they would be of any use, even though mosquitoes were plenty in our rooms. After flying around for some time, mosquitoes would go sit on the coil, and chill out, using it as a couch. Mosquitoes got adapted, was what Prakash said. Bugger knew all that. He could grasp things very quickly, unlike me. He said it came under the theory of evolution, discovered by Isaac Newton or something. I didn’t know for sure. I always flunked in Physics. Or was that from Biology? Anyways, I flunked in both,just like I did in Math. And yeah, the other subjects, too.

But just because of that bastard discovered it, mosquito coils didn’t work anymore. I hated him for that. He should have discovered something useful.

***

Everything went as planned. On the first day, we hid the cracker at one corner of the corridor, behind the dustbin. It went off at 3.30 in the night. Everybody got scared. Bean ran around, trying to figure out what happened, as if his bottom was on fire. His first conclusion was that the cooking gas cylinder in the kitchen, exploded. We laughed our asses out.

We did that a couple of times more in the next week, hiding the cracker at different places. It was just too much fun. But very soon, Bean got the hint. He knew someone was playing a prank. He called a meeting and threatened that he would get hold of the culprits one day, and will dismiss them straightaway. I shuddered, but never showed that. Prakash and John were unmoved, as usual.

***

Fourth time. The inevitable happened. We overdid it, was what I thought. Bean was supposed to be having dinner. And John saw the watchman going to the ground floor. No one was out there, since it was study time. But when we were about to hide it inside one of the toilets, Bean popped up, out of nowhere. Disaster.

Dismissals were written and handed over to us within half an hour, at the warden’s office. I burst into tears.

“Be a man, loser. Don’t cry like a child”

Prakash whispered in my ear. But I didn’t care anymore. Dad was going to kill me.

***

We sat on the floor in John’s room, for the last time. Both John and Prakash were silent.

“I don’t even know what to do. I can’t go home. Dad will feed me to the dogs.”

I was struggling to control my tears.

“Will you please stop whining? We are all facing the same situation here”

John was really angry.

“Oh yea, but you don’t know how it feels for me to go home. How my parents are going to make me regret for this”

I said, with my voice breaking in between.

“You have your parents to go back to. And you have a home which you can call yours. I don’t have both of those”

Prakash said, in a calm voice, with a melancholy smile on his face, which I had never seen on him before. I was dumbfounded. Tears stopped flowing, from my eyes. No matter however imperfect and insipid I considered myself to be, I still had countless blessings in my life. That thought struck me like a meteor.

All of us were silent for some time. I looked towards the broken window.

“How about a movie, pals?”

I looked at both John and Prakash, wiping my tears.

Both of them looked at each other and smiled. A few moments, and we jumped over the compound wall. After all, it was our last adventure together.

Life lessons

I have been away from this space for quite some time now. Different reasons. I hate to be. 

The regular readers of this blog (me, myself, and my cousin’s pet dog) are eagerly waiting for the second part of the previous post. I know. But as the title suggests, this is something different.

Here, I am going to share a couple of highly informative and insightful conversations with you. I won’t be explaining the underlying message of each conversation, because of three reasons.

1.   I am yet to find it, will update the post, once I do. 
2.    Losers! Why do you want me to explain everything to you?
3.    Same as first reason.

 

But before that, I want to clarify a few things. 

1. The following post is not meant to offend any group of people. It is meant to offend a couple of people in particular. 
2. Not all girls are technically incompetent. I have one friend, who is a champion techie. Let’s say her name is Rachel McAdams (Not the real name). She goes on talking about the hardware configurations of electronic gadgets, and I just sit there, with my jaw dropped, and my mouth wide open, as much as the French open.
3. All the names used are fake.

Conversation #1

This took place between myself and a colleague, Yasoda Harishankar. 

Me : Wow, isn’t that a third generation iPod shuffle?

YH : Yes. (Smiles)

Me : Can I have a look at it?

YH : Oh yea, sure.

Me : What size, is this?

YH : It must be the small size, you know. As you can see, it is around three centimeters long and, um,..

Me : No, no. I mean, the storage space. 2 Gb?

Here, I was asking if it was 2 Gb, while, YH took it as I was telling her that it’s 2 Gb. She was very much impressed with my ability to assess the storage space, just by looking at it.

YH : Can you tell me how to do that?

Me : Do what?

YH : How you found out that it’s 2Gb?

Me : I was asking if it was 2 Gb. There are no ways to find out by looking at it, unless it’s written on it.

YH : Oh okay. I don’t know the size, then.

Me : What is your computer Hard disk size?

YH :  Now that I don’t know this, you assumed that I wouldn’t know that also. How mean!

Conversation #2

Ambuja Balaraman is a close friend of mine. And Bindya is her best friend, whom, I don’t know personally.

AB : Bindya’s uncle gave her an iPad.

Me : WTH! iPad? Uncle! Awesome! (My uncles. Big time losers, you all are.)

AB : Yea

Me : (Thinks for a while) Um, is she, like, committed?

AB : What!!? None of your business.

Me : No, I mean, I could marry her, if she has an iPad.

AB : What the hell? You would marry someone for a thing?

Me : No, I would never marry someone for a thing.

AB : But you just said you would marry someone for an iPad.

Me : Yea I did. But.. What? You just referred to the iPad as a thing? IS IT A THING?? IS IT??! HOW DARE YOU REFER TO IT AS A THING?? 

AB : What is it then? It is a thing. And you should never marry someone for a thing.

Me : Then what should I marry someone for?

AB : You should marry someone for the heart.

Me : Sigh. Okay. Heart. But isn’t an iPad as good as the heart?

AB : Go hang yourself, okay? Go hang.

The conversation concludes with that highly pragmatic suggestion from her. But I did brood over it for some time, and started off from where we left, the next day.

Me : I thought about whatever you said yesterday. You were right.

AB : See, so you are not as dumb as I thought.

Me : I can never marry someone for an iPad. Not really worth it.

AB : Ah! There you are!

Me : I can marry someone only if they offer me a BMW or something. Then, it will be really worth the struggle.

AB : *^@#!@*&(!@%&)(#&

Conversation #3

I am regarded as a person with no dressing sense and ridiculously bad sense of beauty, among all of my female friends. The following conversation took place between me and a colleague Archana Gunasekhar, when we met for a function. I was very keen to change the above impression by giving away compliments about dressing and makeup, and was trying the same with her.

Me : Hey! Nice dress.

AG : Thanks.

Me : And also, the make up. Especially the whitewash that you have done on your face.

AG : That’s not a whitewash, you Idiot. How dare you be so rude?

Me : Err.. I mean.. I was trying to say, the white paint that you have applied on your face looks so good 

and also, it suits you so well.

AG : ^&$!#@%^$

Converstaion #4

Between myself and Ajay (real name), who is my room mate, and also whom, I know, for the last six years. 

Time is 11 ‘o’ clock at night.

A : Dey machaa, movie? There's one show at 11.30

Me : Yea. 

Bike starts in less than a minute. 

Me : By the way,we are going for which movie?

I hope you all get the life lessons, hiding in each of these.

P.S :-

I haven’t ever met Rachel McAdams in my life. I hope I meet her very soon. If  you know what I mean. *wink* *runs*

The ultimate weekend bash

 Stop that. Don’t tell me. I have least interest in knowing how you spent your weekend. The movies that you watched, the delicious food that you had, the pubs where you spent your nights at, whatever it may be. I spent the whole weekend in my room, sulky and disheveled. I cooked, ate, and slept the rest of the time. I know you had a better time than me, but still, that wouldn’t give me the slightest temptation to go out, on weekends. All because of the one weekend celebration that me and my roomies had, couple of months back. 

It was during March, I think. Our training was still on. I stayed near to the training centre, with two roomies, S and V. A close friend of mine, A, who has already been mentioned in this blog before, would drop in, on all weekends. It was a time when all of us felt enticed with the mischievous and fun filled weekends that our friends used to have. So we too, planned one. We made a ‘to do’ list first, in which we listed out the different activities that we wanted to do during the coming weekend.

The list was very intelligently designed. We had plans A, B and C. And the first entry in the list was ‘Please remember that there is a ‘to-do’ list in place’ and that it is being kept between the 36^th  and 37^th pages of the playboy frontline magazine’. More entries resulted from our brain storming sessions together, and each entry was assigned a priority level.

And it was Friday. I went to office very early, so that I could finish my work and leave early, in a mood to enjoy the weekend. It was part of the plan.

I started my computer, and dug into work. Very few people were there on the floor, scattered here and there. After a few minutes, I heard an alarm sort of a sound. A beep sound, in high volume. I kept working, and just didn’t take my eyes off the monitor. After a while, when I looked around, nobody was there on the floor. Suddenly I started to panic and think that any hot female colleague in some other  floor might have come to office wearing a mini skirt. I got up and rushed to the elevator, and then, a watchman came running in, and started scolding me in Tamil. ‘Fire alarm’ was the only thing that I understood. 

Fire. God damn it. 

A thousand questions started to flood my mind. Why did I come to office early? Why the hell did I ignore the alarm? Will India ever win a cricket match against England? 

The last one being a deja vu for me now. 

What if I die now? I haven’t even married. Both are practically the same, but still I could have a life till that.

 

He pointed towards the fire exit and screamed something.  I galloped downstairs, in Usain Bolt-ish speed. And then, everything started to be in slow motion. Past moments of my life started to flash in my mind. In ultra slow motion. Perfect camera angles. Just like the scenes from Guy Ritchie movies. 

Hah! Not really. I ran and came out of the ground floor. A huge crowd was there. I stopped just when I was near to the compound wall, and looked back, at the building. I had already commenced to fantasize about the whole building collapsing under fire and the office being closed for an indefinite number of days, during which, all the employees get paid, as usual, and the Sodexho vouchers get couriered to the respective house addresses. 

I waited impatiently. But nothing happened. Couldn’t even see a wee bit of smoke.  Besides, none of the people gathered looked happy worried. All were relaxed, and talking to each other, as if nothing happened. Just then I overheard someone saying, fire exercise.

THIS WAS A DAMN FIRE EXERCISE!

And everybody except me seemed to know about it. And it happened right on that day when I went early to office. I walked back, with a depressed mind. 

A usual day at office passed by. I reached room late. And we had our weekend plans, waiting to be executed, the next day. 

Hopefully, this will continue in the next post.