Missing the Orkut days

One social networking website has taken over the other one. I still have my orkut account, but due to lack of response from other people, it has gradually faded away even from my daily routine. However, this weekend I became quite emotional after browsing the old things in Orkut for a bit.

I really missed my proud 12000 scraps on Orkut. Now it has started reducing because the site deletes all the scraps of people who have left Orkut and there are quite a few of them.

Also, suddenly I got reminded of what I used to call OFOD at that point (Orkut fortune of the day). It was plain fortunes, nothing too earth shattering, and most of the time just like fortune cookies, they were just statements and not really any predictions. There was also another funny aspect where I would exchange my OFOD’s with my friends. It so happened that Advay and I probably got assigned the same random number seed and hence our fortunes were always the same. This gave me a 11.5 hours head-start over my other US friends about my fortune. How I bragged over this little inconsequential thing.

For a while there was a limit of photos that you can upload on Orkut and it was generally a tricky thing to decide which 12 they should be. We were younger those days and the kind of photos we put was surely very suspect at times. While browsing through photos of my friends, I found one or two of my photos which I would have obviously objected to, if uploaded now.

Scraps were public and there was a lot of Jasoosi that could be done. I had spent hours doing Jasoosi with friends on other ones. This public scrapping was bad too and I realized it first time when CNN IBN actually went through all the scraps of the Indian girl dead in the Virginia Tech Shootout and passed judgments on her possible boyfriends based on scraps.

And of course there were the communities. We created the K.V. Ambajhari community and till the time Orkut was alive, we went up to 600+ members from a mere 10 of my own batchmates to start with. I had created only one community ever and that was of Shamu the Killer whale but it did not kick off. There were only 100 odd members worldwide.

Becoming a fan and counting number of fans was also a big deal. I learnt the trick of increasing fan count, which is by becoming fans of other people. Soon they introduced the concept of Cool and Handsome too. I remember how I had shamelessly requested people to rank me so that my rating bump up.

And finally, testimonials. How can I forget those? They are such big morale boosters. I love this one the most:

Sandipan stands true to the saying "Good Things Come in Small Packages". I would like to say that sometimes the best of things come in small packages.

Orkut is and was definitely more loaded than the Facebook. I guess simplicity is were Facebook wins over orkut and ofcourse I think the fact that Facebook is “American” while orkut was never also played a part in it's success. I still vote for Orkut anyday.

World peace, the necessity of the future

I was traveling to California last weekend. When I went for my security check at Boston Logan Airport, they had two kinds of detectors. One was the usual metal detector and there was another one which looked liked those x-ray machines. This was there for every conveyor belt checking your carry on bags. As luck would have it, I was to go through the x-ray kind of machine, hold my hands up above the head and pass through. As I did that, many thoughts breezed past. I was thinking if I should be offended. The next person to cross was also a foreigner, an Asian. My suspicions grew and I kept observing. An African American lady, I was at loss how to account for this that I saw two Caucasian Americans also went through the x-ray detector. Meanwhile, on the non x-ray side, I saw one Indian old couple and another Asian guy pass by amongst other people and finally that calmed me down.

Now there are other complications all over the world, the Florida pastor, the Kashmir destructions and the Deganga incident. They are all really unnecessary. For a moment let’s think about the alternative that there were no evil acts in the world. It would have been so different from what it is today! There could have been people escorting me all the way to plane door and as it was a fine weather, I could even have waved them from the tiny windows of the airport. And it was not even a long back that all this was possible. In the old Silsila movie there was a scene when Jaya Bhaduri comes all the way till the runway premises to receive Amitabh. The only reason she didn’t come to the runway seemed to be not because of permissions but that she was shocked at her husband’s death.

The US has such a high value of freedom of speech and being a first world nation, one can truly enjoy the freedom and human rights. But again, because of evil hatred, things have changed. The country can no longer stand by its name – Land of opportunities.

Kashmir would have been such a nice place to live if people had given up arms. Imagine such a cool place would have benefited the Indians and even say south Pakistanis so much during the hot summer days, would have been an ideal winter destination. Such a big hilly area wasted just for some stupid egos.

It’s not that I am some angel who does not know the meaning of anger and hatred. There are people I hate so badly that I really pray that some accident happens to them or I will go to a gaming parlor and play shooting games thinking my targets are those people. But I would never take up arms to destroy them.

The options of no evil are so good compared to the other way round that it makes perfect sense to even forgive and forget all the hated people.

One line from the famous poem “Where the mind is without fear” by Rabindranath Tagore comes to my mind:

…..Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; ….
…Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.

This is exactly what is needed in the world right now. Or for that matter ever. Read the whole poem here. I think it suits the scenario of yesterday today and tomorrow. No wonder people call him Kabiguru. In just 13 lines he has really found the root cause of all the evil in the world.

The ABCD of URL's

Here is an interesting exercise. I have for a past few months wondered on what basis the URL choices come up when I hit only 1 letter in the address bar. As my own blog is a pseudo personal place, I will jot it down here and compare sometime again in a few months (may be). It's an interesting exercise and I would ask you all to do the same to. If not on your own blog, if you wish to share, you can share the links in the comments section of this blog.

Datapoint:
My fun browser on home computer, Firefox which has not been cleared of cookies for over half a year. Chrome is the browser of choice for videos.

Note for work colleagues and recruiters: IE is the browser for work + tech reading.


Here are the results:
A: http://advay1983.blogspot.com/
B: http://twitter.com/bipsluvurself
C: http://www.cnn.com/
D: http://shobhaade.blogspot.com/ (De’s D is highlighted)
E: http://www.eshatrueself.blogspot.com/
F: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?
G: http://greatbong.net/
H: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ (Homepage H is highlighted)
I: http://twitter.com/iamsrk
J: http://www.telegraphindia.com/section/frontpage/index.jsp (The J of JSP)
K: http://twitter.com/kjohar25
L: http://www.weather.com/weather/today/Natick+MA+USMA0273 (Part of Local)
M: http://maheshsonawane.blogspot.com/
N: http://www.ndtv.com/news/index.php
O: http://www.orkut.com/Main#Home
P: http://twitter.com/priyankachopra
Q: Q gave links to private Google docs. First non private: http://www.google.com/search?q=nitin+gadkari&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
R: http://greatbong.net/ (2nd time, this time based n R of Random thoughts)
S: http://sandipanmitra.blogspot.com/
T: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/
U: http://www.cnn.com/ (U of U.S.)
V: http://twitter.com/vmavalankar
W: http://www.weather.com/weather/today/Natick+MA+USMA0273 (Local weather)
X: http://www.stanacard.com/en/home.aspx (x of aspx)
Y: http://www.youtube.com/
Z: http://twitter.com/realpreityzinta

Analysis of result:
1) 6 twitter links considering the fact that I do not have a twitter account.
2) 7 blogs out of which 4 are myself and friends, and two writers, one repeated.
3) There is certainly some recent effect as it has been only 1.5 months since Bipasha came on twitter and my browsing history is about 6 months.
4) I read in.rediff.com more often than cnn.com which features twice. I don't even think i visit iamsrk more often than in.rediff.
5) The q and x results as expected are most unexpected.

Bottomline: In the web world, I am a friend loving, celebrity worshiping, news reading, weather fearing person.

The Kashmir Dilemma

Kashmir is again in news. It is unfair to comment about Kashmir without being there. Other people’s opinions available now are simply not an indicator of the true feeling in the valley. We must remember that news channels/papers show what they want to show which is in turn what people want to see. So it is not a true indicator at all. To add to the confusion, let me add my two paise as well.

The BBC has an article of seven possible solutions. The solution that is most viable to me is solution 5 or 6 wherein there is an independent Kashmir. India controls Jammu and Ladakh region, Pakistan controls what it already has captured as Pakistan Administered Kashmir. (Why nobody bothers about the Chinese controlled Aksai Chin is as big a mystery for me as human rickshaw pullers in Kolkata).

Here’s how I think it will help India. I do not think that the tiny Kashmir valley which becomes independent Kashmir gives much tourism revenue. We can surely develop other tourism spots in the Ladakh, Kargil and Jammu regions which we retain. As for what the people really want, the people will be given a 2 months period in which they can migrate to any part of India they want (ofcourse after intense security checks). If they really love their place of birth like those die hard New Yorkers or Bostonites or even the Delhites or Mumbaites, my advice is grow up dude. Life is not so easy. Look at me; here I am, staying in 5 places in the last 10 years.

Now that the places and people taken care of, let’s look at the consequences. We deploy a good non porous border line with hopefully much less army investment. So we can save that money and probably invest that in buying cycles for the human rickshawpullers in Kolkata. Just kidding, but really there are zillions of ways in which the money that is unfairly spent in military can be spent. We can develop really safe and good tourist places in the rest of the region that India retains.

We can deploy our troops along the Chinese side. Thus Ladakh will be a peaceful place where we can bring more refugees from Tibet. The Tibetian people will feel more at home in Ladakh than in Dharmashala.

In all probability, the independent Kashmir will be a failed nation. If not, then excellent but even if it does, who cares. The people were given a choice to change their location. If they did not, they deserve it. As for the natural reserves, there is nothing as breathtaking which a world tourist will miss which cannot be found in rest of Himalayas or Alps. There are no endangered animals to take care of and neither is there any big industry which will go bust. It will be a small country of people who get what they want.

Another concern that India has is that in all probability, Pakistan will capture the country and then demands in Punjab and Kutch will start off as well. It will symbolize to the whole world that Indian is a weak country who gives up on demand. My answer to that is during the transition time between Kashmir as an independent nation and Pakistan capturing it, we can make a really strong protected border along the new lines. As far as world opinion is concerned, with good PR we can really tell the world that it is a step for greater good of humanity and it is the culture of India for centuries. (For this bit of PR, we may need the help of Karan Johar who can show us on how to brainwash the world and even make a crappy movie sell).

The phone blame game continues

My good friend Advay taught me to always put the blame about the telephone connection on the other person. Of course, do not do this to an unknown person, but say if the voice is unclear on the phone, even before the other person gets to say something, say something like, what’s wrong with your connection. It’s a very nice trick and always puts people on backfoot thinking what’s wrong with them.

A typical example is my conversation wit my mom. There are so many blame points when we can’t hear each other. Let me make a bulleted list:

Her end:

• Mom, I told you, the wretched place you stay, a total village. There is not even a good coverage there.
• Mom, change your service provider: BSNL, a total crappy service. Get into a private service, Airtel or Vodafone.
• Time to change your handset maa. It has been some 4-5 years now. How long will you use that same 3000 Rs handset?

Middle ground:
• Is anyone chewing the fiber optics cable?
• Is it raining in London?

My end:
• This stupid Reliance. Like all their crappy products, the relianceindiacall is also crappy quality but highly affordable making it hard to ignore.
• ATT service. The highest drop call rate service provider. Whats wrong wit them, can’t they do something
• And finally, soon there will be one more excuse. And that’s the purpose of writing the whole post. Mom will tell me, "What Tublu, you are a grownup now, do I still have to teach you how to hold the phone? Are you still covering the lower left corner?"

Pretty sure she will have the last laugh in the blame game :)

Proud of embarrassments

I am not sure if everybody has this dilemma, but I have it all the time: To be a part of the stereotype or not. Though, it sounds cool that you are not a stereotype and different from the rest, being a stereotype is so easy and convenient that it is hard to not get sucked into it. And of course, you do not have to be non-stereotype for everything because that is a class of stereotypes in itself. I think the right way to do go about is to do what you like. Here I list down few things I really like but is against what a stereotypical guy of 27 should like:

1) I love going to beaches. Of course, going with your girlfriend will be cool, or more fun, but I equally love to go on my own as well. It may be considered uncool but I love it so much that I do not care. Every summer, since the last 3 years, Cape Cod beaches call me. I just love the variety there. The big beaches, the small ones, the crowded ones, the lonely ones, the sandy ones, the grainy ones: they have it all there. I am so looking forward to this summer’s trip.

2) Pride and Prejudice is my favorite book of all times. This is funny because till like some 2 years back, I really thought that proves how classy and well read I am, but then somebody said it’s a girl book. I mean come on, who cannot fall in love with Elizabeth Bennet? The inconsequential storyline is what attracts me towards Jane Austen’s books. You do not read a Jane Austen’s book for the sake of story. On face value, it does look girly: Emma is a girl who thinks she is a matchmaker. Pride and Prejudice is a love story where girl meets guy, have some fights and live happily ever after. But if that is one really gets out of the books, it’s a pity. It’s the lazy pace, the nothing dramatic happening all the time is what gives you time to look into other aspects. I think nobody explains women better than Jane does.

3) Harry Potter is my second favorite book and Ron is my favorite character. Well, I guess I am not really isolated here because the world is almost divided into 50-50 on Harry Potter. What I do not like about the stereotypes is when they consider HP as a children’s book or a magic book. Magic is just a tool in the book, a rather inconsequential thing I must say. Ron is my favorite character because he lacks the obvious characters of a hero. It’s precisely the reason that he is neither famous/brave like Harry or intelligent as Hermione, or funny like Weasley twins, weirdo like Luna or know-all like Dumbledore that I like Ron. I feel it’s very difficult to really stay a good friend of successful and famous. I had great difficulties in showing my excitement even when my best friends beat me in something but Ron does it so effortlessly. Though he faltered once, his genuine honesty and love for his friends is something I value very highly.

4) I am really proud of my blood unrelated sisters/ Munhboli behenein (I hate the term Rakhi sister because it is so grossly misused). I have 5-6 of really good munhboli bahans. Rakhi for me is just an annual ritual that like any other celebration is an occasion for get together or exchange calls/gifts. I really do not think that every girl that ever tied me a rakhi is my sister. Attaching so much importance to a string seems foolish to me. Rakhi is a result of a mutual feeling of brotherhood and sisterhood and not the other way round. The worst case is when people become brothers and sisters when the love just didn’t take off. Why can they not leave it at that? What is the need to create another relationship thereby trivializing it?

10 years from high school

I want to write about so many current affairs, so many movies, but thanks to Vineesh’s orkut status message; I realize that it has been exact 10 years since I left my school, Kendriya Vidyalaya Ambajhari Nagpur. I think around 16th of June was the time that was mentioned in my 12th standard marksheet, so we officially passed on this date.

I think I have mentioned about my school and my childhood many times before and I respect and revere my teachers and love my seniors and juniors, but of course it was my batch mates who are the most memorable.

Most of us, at least more than 50% have been together for more than 14 years ( 2 more continued with me for another 4 years) and it was an amazing experience. I would like to believe that our batch was unique, and though I have hard proofs that it really was, it will be cliché to talk about them as every batch thinks so. I don’t want to disappoint others.

What surprised me most was that it has been 10 years! It just seems like yesterday. I still have dreams where I am sitting in the classroom (the people change though, they include my undergrad, grad and even work colleagues) and something horrible happens to me. However, in all of these dreams, my classmates always stay with me.

Now that I read about the La Martiniere’s incident, I was reminded of how many times I was beaten. It was quite a few times and the funniest part is, the very first one that comes to my mind was from our Principal when he beat all of us in the class on our palms (girls included) but was expelled from the college, though for different reasons. Truth always wins. :). Another one that I remember was the other extreme: One of our math teachers was leaving the school and the very last day he was slapping me on both cheeks only to reiterate the fact that he truly believes I can and I should score a 100/100 in Math (That did not happen though, thanks to stupid pipes filling swimming pool problems).

Though the present state of where I am is totally because of the events that succeeded 16th June 2000, it is the 14 years before that which make me who I am. The school gives us an identity. It gives us an ability to think independently, helps us decide what is right and wrong, what is good and bad. Glory to KV Ambajhari Nagpur.

Vacationing with parents

The vacation season is here. With the Memorial Day weekend coming up in less than 10 days time, the summer is finally here and the vacation/touring kicks off. I have a moderately decent lineup planned for this summer already but I am missing last summer when my parents were here.

The article is not about vacationing@parents’ and also not about parents vacationing at your place. Neither is it about those childhood days when you HAD TO travel with your parents and nor is it about visiting ancestral house every summer. This is plain “go to fun destination/ touristy places” with your parents, siblings do not matter, rather their absence may be more fun because you get full 100% of their affection.

Last year when mom n dad came here for summer, we went out on long weekends to many places: NYC, DC, Chicago, Niagara, nearby places like Cape Cod, Rhode Island etc. I had been to almost all of these places before and while I cannot comment on how these places would feel with a partner, it is certainly a very different but positive feeling with mom n dad.


First of all, I was organizing everything which never happened while I was in India or when I was younger. Second is mom n dad assisting me in every possible way they can. Whenever I travel with friends, “who wakes up first” is always an issue and mostly it had to be me. With maa and baba, I was the last. Long live that extra ½ hour sleep. Thirdly, they are happy with whatever you show them. For example, we went to this really crappy aquarium in DC thinking that like everything else in DC, this also would be the biggest aquarium in US. It so turned out that it was even worse than the aquariums they have in restaurants. But maa and baba never showed any dissatisfaction and enjoyed the sad looking piranhas.

Another thing is I think the blood relation part. They like what you like and vice versa. This does not happen with friends. You may not like beaches and your friends might not like mountains. But your and your parents’ choices are generally the same. My parents like the typical touristy thing of visiting more spots and do not care for spending a whole lot of quality time there. This totally agrees with me. For example, because of time crunch, we did not go on top of lady liberty. But they didn’t mind.

Parents are great moral boosters. I was so disheartened to see the mile long queue to go up Sears Towers (the tallest man made structure on western hemisphere). But they gave me the necessary moral boost to go ahead. And I suddenly realized that I have a special privilege day pass, and vroom, went up the tower in minutes.

There were two more occasions when I was sort of grown up but went around with parents and elder brother. One was a conducted tour to Ooty, Mysore and Bandipur forest when I was 17. I had just got reject from getting into IIT and the trip was a great soothing agent. And part of it was because of being with parents. The other one and it was a really memorable one was a family vacation at Puri. We knew everything in Puri, there was no touristy stuff, it was plain rest, swim in the beach, visit the temple and eat healthy veggie food. Very unlike our tour choices, but it was immensely enjoyable. It was also the last trip of just us 4.

So my advice to all my “still single” friends is that please go on a vacation with your parents asap. Going with your partner may be more fun, more active, more partying, more drinking but definitely not as satisfying as being kid yet again.

Indian waiters in the US

My data spectrum is probably skewed as my opinion is based on around 12-15 restaurants in greater Boston area and 10-12 in rest of USA. But many of my friends agree with me. Waiters in Indian restaurants are below par. I am not claiming that waiters in all other restaurants are good, but for Indian restaurants, they are all below par for the same reason.

Most of the Indian joints are a family business. The waiters there are either the owner himself/herself or their extended family. There is no way they have done a professional course in waiting. This reflects in their behavior. In India, nobody cares about the waiter except how quickly they bring the order. But here, most of the places, there is more to than just bringing food that is involved. The Indian restaurants here are lost between the two and fail on both respects.

Another thing that comes out often is what somebody told me as reverse racism. The waiters, especially when they are the owners have a general tendency to look down upon the Indian customers. Their behavior towards Indian customers is totally different from the rest. I cannot describe what they do differently but it can probably be explained by a theory: Back in India, waiters are not held in that high esteem. But here, the waiters in Indian restaurants are generally the owners and they think that by waiting they are degrading their position before fellow Indians. So to “claim” their superiority, they always appear to have a high nose.

Another difference between other restaurants and Indian ones are that in other restaurants, there is at least 50 if not more percent of women waiters. By nature they are more friendly and appealing. This is totally absent in any Indian restaurant where it will be usually a grumpy faced granpa who will take your orders.

However, I need to mention two exceptions. We all know that Indian food is really good. In some places, they hire local people for waiting and they do an excellent job. They try hard to get the names right and are generally qualified waiter/waitresses. The combo of good food and good waiting makes a deadly combo. In many cases there are ABCD girls too who chip in who in addition to good waiting skills also have a good accent with food names. Places to mention are Dosa in SFO and Kabab Factory in Boston.

The other one is a tiny restaurant Dosa temple near my place. These people are the India kinds. They do not try to copy, so they come forward as genuine and that’s what makes them special. They also do not have that attitude that seems apparent on the other desi waiters.

No wonder, Indian buffets are so popular. It’s difficult to screw up.

More on media

I think a few people have taken my previous article in the wrong sense. There are 2 things that the media does that people do not like:

1) Make news out of silly things; Eg the BBC story in my previous blog or the Sania-Shohaib hype.
2) Polarized view: Terming Varun Gandhi as a Hindutva poster boy (with Hindtva in a negative connotation) or making fun of Palin writing on her hand (I find this very practical).

I am perfectly fine with the first and I am totally against the second. It is not without reason that some of my friends tell me that I am stuck in the wrong job and I should be a page 3 writer instead. To my defense I will say that yes I openly admit that I do read gossip news, but then the fact that they appear in the front page and also are listed as the most read items prove that many people do the same but not accept it.

I do not see any reason why Sania Shohaib news should not grab all headlines. It has got so many angles to it. Love amongst warring countries, an immensely beautiful bride, a banned captain, even a fat ex-wife. Even that opens up new discussions, is man really a devotee of beauty? Why is fat ugly etc. At least the other woman was equally fair. It would have been even more dramatic if she was not. I totally gulped their latest walk-the-talk interview with Shekhar Gupta. They looked so human, totally in love not very different from the many newly wed friends of mine. I like it when I see celebrities behave like normal people. There was one part in the interview where Shekhar asks Shoaib if he is the quiet person and Sania is the talkative one. Sania immediately jumps in to say that spend some time with him, you will se how much he talks. I can so relate to these observations with people around me.

I do not even feel guilty of reading this article “Ash's secret weakness” first in the morning when the main news was probably some suicide blast somewhere. This headline was so mystic and could mean anything from the “good news” to the exes. But as it turned it, it was her craving for sweets. Even then I was not disappointed because I am a sweet tooth too. Also, putting a picture of Aishwarya Rai on front page should attract more hits. Sometimes I feel the whole controversy around Bachchans being angry over Ash's false pregnancy reports was just some irresponsible journalism by some writer who was asked to write a article around a picture and not put the picture for the article.

But then tell me, who would have read a killing of not very large number say 5-6 jawans/militants in Kashmir next to a headline like “Saurav slams Sachin” with the news being a terrific victory of KKR over MI in the last league match of IPL3 (unrealistic wishful thinking).

News channels will and should continue to give us what we/mass likes. The thing it should not do is bias the views. Give all news. We will read what is important for us, but why give your own angle. But then again, the final call lies with us; we should be smart enough to filter the actual news from the biased one.