Nagpur rising

For the people who do not know me but read my blog, I was born in Nagpur and lived there for the first 17 years of my life. So, my love for Nagpur is undying. Many acquaintances of mine still remember my famous quote when I was 5-8 -"I will bring Olympics to Nagpur". At late twenties, I have given up hopes on that as well as the Nobel Peace prize, but I still have hopes for a Padmashri (well that doesn't need hope as much as money these days)

Nagpur is a very strange city. In any kind of stats across India, Nagpur comes in top 10 (In population etc). However, thanks to Nagpur's excellent infrastructure, at any traffic light, even at peak hours you won't see more than 30 vehicles out of which 28 are two wheelers. Nagpur is never in regular news. You would probably even hear more about Allahabad than Nagpur though Nagpur features in all those top 10 lists and Allahabad not even in top 20. Nagpur is 9th or 10th in those lists followed by Jaipur, but just see the % of headlines that Jaipur has as compared to Nagpur. For years Nagpur people have talked about state of art industrial area called Buti Bori which till date hasn't come up with anything more than Vicco Vajradanti and the MIHAN project which is still going on.

To summarize the two paragraphs above, I love Nagpur but Nagpur is never in news. We crave for any kind of Nagpur news. I remember during my undergrad, when Dravid got married to a Nagpuri girl, we Nagpuris prided ourselves for a long time. Those pictures of Vijeeta getting up into Rajdhani Bangalore with her shades on is fresh in my memory.

Anyways, Nagpur is back again in news. The importance of these, I solely reserve for your discretion.

* Cricket Nagpur: VCA is now a day night stadium. It hold very important records for for team India including Sachin and the retirement venue of Saurav Ganguly.

* The director of the top grossing Hindi movie of all times,Raju Hirani 3 Idiots, guess were he hails from? --- Nagpur

* The national president of the opposition party, Nitin Gadkari is from Nagpur.

Over the past 2 months, whenever these news came, I always swelled with pride. Jai Bharat, Jai Nagpur, Kha Santra.

School bag memories

I just came back from work, dropped a bag on the couch and jumped off into the bed with the laptop. I open ToI and this is what I see: Kendriya Vidyalayas set weight limits on schoolbags. It says:

As per the new `loadshedding' policy laid down for the 981 Kendriya Vidyalayas across India, schoolbags for classes I and II should not weigh more than 2kg. For classes III and IV, the bag weight should be less than 3kg, and those studying in classes V to VIII shouldn't carry bags that are more than 4kg. The upper limit for senior classes — IX to XII — has been set at 6kg.

Immediately, all bag related thoughts came by. It is strange that my bags have just been in reverse order.

The bag I dropped just now at the couch has a checkbook, a muffler, a pair of gloves, ear phones and my lunch box.

Back in grad school, my bag had 1 binder notebook and a Laptop.

In undergrad, it was funnier. For the class, I went with 3-4 notebooks in hand but when I went for "studying" in the library at night, it was usually 3-4 notebooks, one big fat electrical book and a bunch of pens. Oh yes, it also had the GRE prep book and a bunch of flash cards all the time. Note that I gave GRE only after I graduated.

11th and 12th was fun. I would carry not the text books but the reference books to school, atleast 5 of them everyday along with the corresponding notebooks. And ofcourse, the big lunch box, to be emptied long before lunch time.

6th to 10th was pretty lame with textbooks and notebooks brought according to the day's time-table. An additional trividha, rapid reader always accompanied. This was the time when horizontal dimension of the bag was less than the vertical dimension. Before this, it was all reverse.

Pre 6th standard, with the H>V dimension bags, I could make two compartments in the bag. One was for notebooks, one was for textbooks. Also, no textbook was to be missed. The drawing book has to be there and then the sketchpen set. The compass box which was never used and the box of crayons. I would cram in everything I own in that bag. No wonder, the bags weer torn every year and that too the base fell off.

I don't know how much the bag weighed then, but it was a fashion to have heavy bags. May be that's what retarded my height. If I were to be a student of this time, may be I would have been 6'2''.....

Image Courtesy: MYSORE TARPAULINS

Sandipan Bollywood Awards 2009

The Sandipan Bollywood Awards (SBA) is in it's fourth year now. This highly biased award however changes its statuette this year for obvious reasons. Also, Bipasha Basu is conspicuous by her absence.

I will try my best to stick to the old list, but some would be staying undecided and some new ones will be introduced.

Best Story: The award goes to 2 movies. Incidentally, both the stories are supposedly written by 2 different famous authors in their own field. However, the directors interpretation of the story was what made it beautiful. Hence the best Story awards goes to Raju Hirani and Anurag Kashyap instead of Chetan Bhagat and Sarat Chandra Chattopaddhyay for 3 Idiots and DevD.

Best Song: For me, it is Masakkali

Best Music Director: Who else but --- A.R Rehman for Dilli 6. The only other movie with decent songs was Kaminey.

Best Singer(Male) : Mohit Chauhan for "Pehli Baar.. Mohabbai ki hai"

Best Singer (Female): This award has to wait. All the songs I remember are all male singers. Tentatively, the award goes to my favorite Alisha Chinoy for being the female voice in the duet "Teraa... hone laga hoon" from Ajab prem ki Gajab Kahani.

Best Lyrics : Gulzaar again for "Pehli Baar.. Mohabbai ki hai". Esp the lines

Tujhe gudgudana… satana yuhi sote hue,
Gaal pe teepna… meechna bewajah besabab.

These lines always gives me shivers.

Best television interview: There was a lot of potential this year with the Indian Elections and there have been so many interviews of Sachin when he completed 20 years in cricket. However, I probably missed most of those. For me, the best one was Sourav's interview in Farhan Akhtar's Oye It's friday.

Best Item Song: Hands down, Hrithik for Baawre in Luck by Chance.

Here is a new award:

Best reality show Contestant: Nominations: Natasha Sinha (Roadies 6), Joanna Magee (Splitsvilla 2), Mona Wasu (Iss jungle se Mujhe Bachao 1), Rupali Ganguly (Fear Factor 2) and Claudia Ciesla (Bigg Boss 3). And the award goes to.... Claudia for her sweet pronunciation of Kyunki as kuykin.

And now the main awards:

Best Comedian: Rather than giving it to some cliched comedian, it goes to the actor who made us laugh the most, even with the stale jokes: Aamir Khan for 3 Idiots.

Best Supporting Actor: R. Madhavan and Sherman Joshi for 3 Idiots

Best Supporting Actress: Giselle Monteiro as Harleen Kaur in Love Aaj kal

Best Villain: Amol Gupte as Bhope Bhau in Kaminey

Best Newcomer (male): No idea. No award this year.

Best Newcomer (Female) : Again tough choice. So no awards but a special mention to Sonam Kapoor who re-invented her this year.

Best Director: Vishal Bharadwaj for Kaminey.

Best Film: Though the biggest hit was 3 Idiots, my award goes with Kaminey. The movie had it all, good script, good acting, good songs as well as a fresh change. 3 idiots lacked in songs.

Best Actress: The nominations are: Sonam Kapoor (Dilli 6), Priyanka Chopra (Kaminey), Priyanka Chopra (What's your Rashee), Vidya Balan (Paa). And the award goes to.... Priyanka Chopra for What's Your Rashee. The the movie bombed, her performance was really commendable. It was historical.

Best Actor: The nominations are: John Abraham (New York), Shahid Kapoor (Kaminey), Ranbir Kapoor ( Wake up Sid and Rocket Singh: Salesman of the year), Aamir khan (3 Idiots). And the award goes to.... Shahid Kapoor for Kaminey (woh fa ko fa hi bolta hai)

And now, another new award just for this year:

Best Cameo: And the award goes to one and only Shahrukh Khan for his role in Billu Barber. Especially the end speech in the school was personally Shahrukh Khan at his best.

Deep down, I am a bong

I just realized how Bong I am when I was discussing with Nirmal about Racist attacks on Indians in Australia. We both agreed on this statement of Shobhaa De, found here:

Both the governments should work together more cohesively, and the Australians in particular must reassure the community that the safety of students is of paramount importance to them. Our student numbers contribute a sizeable chunk to the Aussie economy. Their lives must be protected and their status respected. On our part, desi students cannot treat the host country as their filthy backyard and abuse local customs.

What Nirmal said was if you are doing illegal work there, you should be ready to face the consequences like these attacks. In reply, I said that, how-much-ever illegal it is, physical violence is not the way to show your displeasure. You should do strikes, road blockades, marches, candle light vigils and what not.

It looks like the word fell off from some Trinamool Congress 101 course. But yes, I do think that is the way things should work, though in the reverse order of the actions stated above. Well, I think that is the attitude of all Bongs. We want a peaceful solution with no physical harm, however monetary/public annoyance it may create. First and foremost priority is to be physically safe. I think that is the key to Kolkata not being a place of any Violence inspite such a large ratio of muslims and hindus.

Take a few examples. What is MNS doing? It is beating up people and sending them home whoever it feels unfit. Though we all agree it is not right, we have different opinions on what is right. My view is that if I feel endangered by foreign entities in my state, I should take it to the law. I should file a case to the court that I feel threatened in my own land by outsiders and I am not feeling secure. As law takes its own course, the next most daring thing I can think of is a protest march. What will a typical bong do? He will probably think the same as me, but then as we all know how slow law is, it would just end up being a coffee table discussion that look how Marwaris have virtually taken up all our businesses. (Well that's what is happening, though I have heard slight dissatisfaction over Marwaris taking up local businesses, I have not seen any efforts from Bengalis to be entrepreneurs. Exceptions exist).

Jayalalitha does not like something and she sends troops inside Karunanidhi's house at the dead of the night who drag him to jail. What will Mamatadi do? She will stand in the middle of Esplanade, block two hours of traffic in the middle of the day and give speeches as to how bad Budhdhababu is.

Well, I think this is the way I am and all the Bongs are. I believe in a ideal society. In this society, a candle vigil will be taken as seriously as probably the Gujarat riots. There would be reason behind everything and everybody would be well educated. As all are educated, crimes would be momentary reactions and would be corrected by a term in jail. There would be no forced confessions by the police or no crime should result in capital punishments.

Don't all the Bongs think this way? Wasn't Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose a fluke case amongst Bengalis and Gandhiji more a symbol of Bong ideologies?

Bests of 2009

This is probably the last but one post for this year. For the annual Bollywood awards, you have to wait for the next year as I think it will be injustice to pass any verdict before watching 3 Idiots. Here are some random bests according to me:

Best blogger:
Shobhaa De

Best website:
www.bing.com (Strictly for homepage looks)

Best news website:
in.rediff.com (Content not layout)

Best looks amongst Indian movie leading actresses
Sonam Kapoor


Best Talk show:
Oye it's friday

Best Indian food place where I went:
Kabab factory

Best cloth shop for my budget:
Old Navy

Best Indian Sportsperson:
Saina Nehwal

Best news correspondent:
Shekhar Gupta

Best food place near Natick Framingham:
Minado

Best book I read:
Sea of Poppies (originally 2008)

Best food I cooked:
Palak Paneer in August


Best Indian Politician:
Shashi Tharoor

Best (non personal) day of the year:
15th July 2009 (Harry Potter and Half blood Prince movie release date)

I stop at that.

Feasts

How old are feasts? Probably as old as the oldest of the civilizations. We have proofs of feasts being held in Egyptian civilization. We all know about the lavish feasts in the roman empire and the famous last supper was also a feast.

I read through numerous definitions of feasts, banquets etc but for simplicity let’s call any elaborate food arrangement as feast. I will try to list down the famous “feasts” that sort of etched into my memory.

Let’s start with the recent one, the White House State dinner. The menu was hilarious and I am sure, if this menu was served in any Bengali wedding, even the poorest of the poor weddings, the results would have been even more catastrophic than Tata Nano going out of Singur. Potato and Eggplant Salad, Potato Dumplings, Lentil Soup, Chickpeas and Okra and Green Shrimp curry. Probably the food tasted exquisite, but the menu is so disturbing. I am sure the Indian delegate would have gone back and had some Tangdi kabab and palak paneer.

The menu at Windsor Castle Banquet for Pratibha Patil was much better which included halibut, salted saddle of lamb and stuffed courgettes with mango ice cream, washed down by Chateau Cos d'Estournel, St Estephe 1988.

Another one I remember was for its fantastic menu. It was the Global Bunts Convention held in Mangalore in 2002 or 2003. Aishwarya Rai was the chief guest and the menu was all possible seafood delicacies cooked in traditional Udupi Style. It involved Mackerel, pomfrets and Bangdas. I am not able to recollect the entire menu but it was available in the Hindu and Times of India of that day.

One more was Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s holiday in Goa in December 2002. Here is the link. The menu included: “Choice dishes were on offer for dinner: traditional Goan Hindu, Catholic and Portuguese specialities will be offered. The array of seafood includes lobster piri piri, mudoshi (a type of fish) fry, sungtyache kodi (prawn curry), kulliamchem mass (crab meat) in addition to popular preparations like balchao, xacutti, vindaloo and cafrael. Vegetables typical of the region — tambdi bhaji and ambadyache udda methi and nir phanas (bread fruit) — will be served. Chinese and Mediterranean cuisine will also be offered. “

These are the ones that I will remember for a long long time.

Kalkatta

This quote of Bachi Karkaria provoked me to write this blog:

"In different applications it is ‘o’ or ‘aw’. ‘Kolkata’ is subjected to such verbal mutilation that it should Black Hole those who ordered the change. Or perhaps the Brahmins of Writers Building did it deliberately so as to perpetuate the cultural caste system which separates those who can ‘o’ correctly, and those who can only gape in awe."

Full text here.

Well, there are people who liked the name Calcutta and it was always called "Kolkata" (pronounced as Coal-Kata) for the Bengalis just like Bombay was always Mumbai and Poona was Pune. But my favorite has been "Kalkatta" (pronounced as Kul-cutta)", the hindi version. It is so sweet, just like the staple food of the people of this city.

Every year, after summer vacation when I come back, teachers would ask, Kahan gaye the (Where did you go)? And I would reply "Kalkatta". One of the first hindi rhymes I learned was:

Aao Bhai Khele Khel, Chalti hai ab apni rail,
Hum Engine hai bhak bhak karte, hum dibbe hai chak chak karte...
.. and somewhere in the middle...
Jhatpat Kalkatta ho aaye.....

Imagining saying "Jhatpat Kolkata ho aaye" gives me shivers even now.
Another instance is the iconic song Chamma Chamma. Starring my one of the favorite Bollywood actresses, it has a stanza -

Hila doon UP, hila doon MP
Jo maaroon main thumka
Tere thumke pe haan Mumbai Patna
Main haaroon Kalkatta

Again replacing it with "Kolkata" will take the whole fun out of the song. It is like replacing Urmila with Raima Sen.

The word "Kalkatta" has this sweet raw crassness which is totally missing in Kolkata and especially the way rest of India attempts to say it : Call-katta. "Kalkatta" brings back the lost charm of the city. Kalkatta brings back the time when the Hindi Heartland (Delhi-UP-Bihar-MP-WB) was "The India" and this so called new IT cities like Bangalore, Hydra-bad, Pune though always good cities were never the talk of the country. Dilli - Lakhnau - Kanpur- Ilahabaad - Kalkatta were the the places where things of any consequence "happened".

The cosmopolitan Calcutta was never due to foreign countries or even southern/western India. It was always a place of confluence for the North, East and North-east India. For them it was always "Kalkatta". Making it Kolkata robs out the cosmopolitan part of the city.

For "probashi"'s like me, Kalkatta was the way we described the city to our friends all these years. Mentioning it as Kolkata or even worse, letting them pronounce it as "Call-Katta" is I believe a big Black Hole.

A "sort of" confession

I have a small confession to make here, though it will come with a lot of justification. First of all, I am very honored by my name appearing in my school website honor roll. Have a look here: http://kvambajhari.org/results.htm. Search for keyword “Mitra”.

My name appears in the list of toppers for 12th standard, though it appears as Saneepan with a missing D. The confession is, I was not the topper. It was my classmate Chandrashekhar Munjewar. But my confession ends here. As of my present mindset, I am not going to write to my school to change my name and the justification is as follows:

Though official records say that I did not get the highest marks, the thing that was always important in Maharashtra was the PCM or Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics marks. I did get the highest there. So there were a lot of people who consider me as the topper and I would like to believe the same too.

The other reason is: I believe the appearance of the name in the webpage is partly accounted for by my school teachers themselves who like me a lot. The reason for this belief is how my name is spelt. My dad, like most of the Bengalis, misspelled my name to Sandipan instead of Sandeepan. The teachers over the 10 years had themselves corrected the name only to change it back to Sandipan in 10th standard because they wanted it to be inline with what my dad wrote 10 years back. So when my name appears as Saneepan in the website, I feel it’s some teacher who said lets put Sandeepan’s name there and not some advanced database query to find out who was first.

The third reason is more selfish. I have been in the school for 12 years and had a consistent academic performance, a teachers pet etc etc. Not as an allrounder, but I was always regarded as the “smart” (the US smart, not the Indian smart) guy. So, I deserve my name there.

Bottom line is I wrote this blog as I feel I am cheating myself if I don’t let people know the truth and now that I have published it on my blog, I will feel less guilty conscious . Whoever is reading this please let me know if you think I did the right thing or not. I know I am not popular enough like Amitabh Bachchan to have a poll in my blog, but comments would be really helpful.

Diary Sept 19 09

Been long since I wrote anything random. It has always been issue based. Of course my life is not interesting as Amitabh Bachchan or Shilpa Shetty that I can simply blog about what I ate in the day or whom did I meet. Who will even remmotely find that interesting apart from who know me. Well, on the other hand it's only the people who know me generally read this blog.

After a long time I had a good Saturday. I neither worked nor go to any place and got myself unnecessarily tired. Most important thing for me on weekends is getting up early (but little later than regular days) to maximize the day. I am a person who gets lazy by night.

I finished my intersting pattern of browsing which starts with Gmail, then orkut, then rediff.com followed by ibnlive and timesofindia. At this point, fed up, I switch to news.google adn read up all the headlines of India, US, Boston and Indian Entertainment. I ofcourse get most interested in teh entertainment section. At this point, I will search Bipasha on google news. MOst of the time I am up to date and find the news being already late. Then if I will serach some other random names depending on mood which can vary from Aishwarya Rai to atal Behari Vajpayee. Some common search terms are Varun Gandhi, NITK, Surathkal, Kolkata etc.

After this I had to drop my friend to car mechanic shop and from there we went for a morning walk near a lake. It was hilarious to see an old couple paying 5$ parking fees inside the state park and simply parking their car next to the lake and reading newspaper inside.

Then we went to Starbucks or rather Starsucks (atleast in terms of regular coffee), barnes and nobles and back home by 9:30 am. at this point my calls started starting with bro and bhabhi and moving on to other friends from grad school etc.

Went to a nice place for lunch called Kabab Factory in Boston. Still in the "no meat" mode, I just ate grilled veggies, fruit chat and shrimp masala. Came back and saw Harry Potter and Goblet of Fire on DVD. I had just finished the book and though very different from the book, the movie was pretty engaging.

After this went to temple as navaratri starts today and came back, made a few more phone calls and little more Harry Potter revision. Now it's 10:42 and will go back to revising HP and sleeping off.

This blog can't be as boring as my attempt to fiction :P

Dilemmas regarding Baba Ramdev cleared

I have been wanting to write on this topic for a long time but many thoughts prevented me. I wanted to have a solid reasoning before I published my thoughts and finally I have found one.

So here is the dilemma. My mom wants me to do the yoga taught by Ramdev baba and frankly, my mom has been a direct beneficiary. But I always found the exercises too boring for my taste. Then comes Ramdev Baba with his statement that being gay is a disease which can be cured by yoga. Now this was a fact that like most of the "learned" people did not go well with me. So then I thought because I do not agree with his views, I am perfectly alright by not following his yoga techniques. But there was always this nagging thought which can infact broken down to three:

1) Ramdev baba did not invent yoga. So why stop something which is an established science just because of one person's personal views.
2) Every person has the right to have an opinion. What is wrong if Ramdev baba has one and he is voicing it.
3) What if being gay is really a disease and/or something which can be cured.

Finally I have found my answers to all these three nagging questions. Let me go bottom up.

Counterargument to point 3) Though studies prove it as well that it is not a disease, and it may very well be a habit which is cured, but who cares. According to Indian culture/ movies, we consider love as a disease (sardi, khasi na maleria hua, main gaya yaaron mujhko, love, love love loveria hua). Can love be cured? Probably yes, probably not but who cares. It has all the symptoms of a disease if taken in a different light. At young age, it may ruin your career. Loving a wrong person may ruin your finances, your trust, your very existence in this world. Being gay may have similar consequences. But as we do not mind love being a disease, this one should also not a big deal.

Counterargument to point 2) I have been reading a lot about this issue. A blog from my friend Lalit, Gay Ho, and subsequent comments on it helped me better regarding this. Finally I read an argument as a comment on this article which is as follows:

Ramdev baba has said that being gay is a disease and he has challenged Delhi high court's judgment which says that gay sex should be decriminalized. I add these two statements. What does this imply? That Baba Ramdev thinks that all diseased people should go to jail. Is it human to put say all AIDS patients, cancer patients and the numerous millions of people in the jail just because they have a disease? This is against humanity. You may find this argument ridiculous and may say that this is putting words in somebody's mouth but then a public person should think twice before what he speaks. Like in this case his own statements lead to the conclusion that he wants diseased people to be criminalized.

Counterargument to point 1) If not already, after reading this reasoning, you might think that Sandipan is losing it by putting baseless reasons but then counterargument to 1 is the one which really has motivated me the most. I will not follow Ramdev baba's yoga but Shilpa Shetty's yoga. Two main reasons for that. Firstly, biggest motivation to do yoga for me was to reduce tummy. Ramdev baba being such a proponent of yoga, still has a tinge of tummy which I see no chance of going. Shilpa on the other hand is on diametrically opposite side of the spectrum. She has got the best abs in India. I know, abs is probably the last thing that comes to somebody's mind when someone thinks of a beautiful girl, but I find Shilpa's abs to be her best asset. Second reason is that the most irritating part for me in Ramdev baba's yoga is Kapaalbhati. Apparently, you have to do minimum of 5 minutes (300 times) going up to 15 minutes. On the other hand Shilpa suggests begin with 1-5 with no more than 3x10. You should totally see Shilpa's yoga. Search these keywords "shilpa shetty yoga" on youtube and you will get many relevant results. Even the idea of breathing-in n Kerala and breathing-out in Himalayas as her videos suggest should be enough to motivate anyone.


So this is the final conclusion and end to my dilemmas. I will do yoga but not the Ramdev Baba way, but the Shilpa way.

[Picture courtesy Bollywoodnet.blogspot.com and Rediff]