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.

Biased/nonsense headlines

Came across a few headlines in the recent past. Of course IBNLIVE leads the chart with their pro-congress anti-BJP headlines.Here they follow:

1) 'Advani did nothing to save Babri'

Why cannot they change the headline to: "Attention seeker tries to defame Advani over Ayodhya.". Well I agree this is the other extreme. But a good headline could have been : "Person testifies against Advani, court verdict pending."

2) BSP shows Sonia's photo with money garland

Alternately, they could have just said : "After Maya, it's Sonia, age of woman's obsession with money". But instead they chse to put the blame on BSP. This is unfair reporting. And it is the same people who had such a headline about Advani.


3) A similar stance was taken on Modi: "Modi grilled for over 9 hours by SIT". It could as well have been " Modi patiently answers all questions for 9 hours to make sure all issues are addressed in 1 day"


Anyway, these were political. Here are some nonsense ones from ToI and BBC.

4) This one is mentioned by Amit Verma of Indiauncut as well. News by Times Of India's midday: "Oshiwara gay teen killed" Just read the article and see if it was really a gay issue.

But this last one justifies it all. A headline from king of news BBC itself. This news was most read on BBC for almost 24 hours and on 2nd for a long time too.

5) "Man used p**** to assault female police officer " If you read through, you will realize it's a classic case of getting super drunk and apologizing later. Imagine this being the most read when news like US Health care, global warming etc are doing rounds. I guess this proves why we get headlines like above 4.

Random thoughts on Indian Politics

Some thoughts on the current state of Indian politics and of course media interpretations:

• UPA 2: This UPA 2 has again brought out the commi out in me. When UPA came to power, one of my few friends who were unhappy over the results (only 3) commented, 'Now we have to stay "aam aadmi" for another 5 years', which is what Congress promised to do anyway. But things look very different now. Looks like UPA 2 is full of the Stephenites and the IITians and the actions they have taken is very pro genX. For example, look at the budget. The only good thing for common man was tax cuts. Apparently only 2% Indians pay taxes. But the price rise of petrol affects even the poorest of the people. I am not saying that price rise of petrol is bad, but then there were hardly any actions to control the food price rise. How can the government even think of anything else when prices are so high? Ofcourse it doesn't affect our class of people, the ones who mostly eat out or pay so much house loan/rent that food cost < 10% of their costs. These are the people like Shobhaa De who made the comment "And who eats toor daal anyway." These are the same people who are in media and share same ideas. I thought Sonia Gandhi was populist, and yes I do agree that these decisions like the ones made in budget now *may* have long term effect on the future of the country but ignoring price rise.
  
  
  
• IBN's obsession against Varun Gandhi. Has anyone paid them money to do it? All the headlines regarding Varun are so negative. In the latest news about Varun being oe amongst the tonnes of secretaries made a heading with the same alleged "hate speech" picture of his. Even NDTV while putting a nice picture of Hema Malini up there put in a rather angry picture of Varun out there. And then ofcourse there was the "Varun Hate Speech 2" headline where again allegedly Varun compared Sharad Pawar and Mayawati to Raavan and Shurpanakha. This can be funny, but no way hate speech.
  
  
• I am utterly confused about NaMo (Narendrabhai). I do not agree with media's constant basing of Narendra Modi but I also do not understand that how come, every article about Narendra Modi with negative shades have so many "For Modi" comments on it. Are Modi followers really so many that they can flood any negative Modi posts? There are two things I do not like about Modiji and they have nothing to do with religion:
  a) Its a historic precedence to resign when something that nasty happens. So many rail ministers had resigned after any train accident. Were they responsible? No, but they took the moral responsibility. Same with Vilasrao Deshmukh and Shivraj Patil. If everybody does, why not NaMo? Is he above all these people? OOP concepts say "God Objects" are a bad idea. It's true for Politics too, methinks...
  b) It's a good thing to have so many corporates coming to the state. But is the basic human rights being taken care of? Again, the little commie in me thinks not even one step extra should be taken unless we cannot assure the basic rights to all the citizens. Many of these dev plans in Gujarat look forced. I am not sure how many of them are with consent of the "ALL" the people.
  
  
• I am reading Ramachandra Guha's "India After Gandhi".
  It looks like Dr. Ambedkar was a really good man. He had a great vision. I specially loved his statement that- Gandhism (read non cooperation movements, strikes) are good only for a enslaved country. In a free democratic country, there are democratic ways to address this issue and these kinds of things are bad for democracy. I consider this a brave statement especially coming around 1949. Its just the present age politicians who are taking mileage out of his name and instead making people like us have a false prejudice against him.
  

Image Courtesy:
UPA: CNN-IBN
Varun: aurat.in

His name is Khan, and he is a torturer

Karan Johar has done a great job of bribing a lot of people. Barkha Dutt and Shahrukh may have an interview again that things were not a publicity stunt and it may or may not be true, but surely how can sane people say that this movie was good. Nikhat Kazmi, Jitesh Plllai and even Rajeev Masand. Especially Rajeev has disappointed me. I never like his reviews but that is because they are too negative. How can he give this movie 3.5 stars?

Karan Jhar even roped in celebrities like Priety Zinta, Hrithik Roshan to say that the movie was good. God forgive their lies.

Technically speaking most of the things about this movie were good (acting, situational songs, camera work, clothes) but the most crucial things were not even bad. They were worst: The story and the direction and the man responsible is noone other than Karan Johar.

There is a similarity between Karan Johar and Bipasha Basu. Off movies both are so good. Especially both are very good in TV interviews. But as soon as they get into movies, they totally suck big time. It's their TV presence that makes me watch their movies every time and needless to say, except Bipasha's beedi song and Karan Johar's KKHH, they have not only done anything good, but they have consistently done bad.

And what is with Karan Johar and those nationalist songs? In K3G, Kajol starts singing Janaganamana out of the blue and here the same with We Shall overcome at the Church. He should seriously switch his profession to Costume Design and Production. Tarun Mansukhani and Ayan Mukherjee had much better movies than his.

Indian news of the week, Shahrukh, Jaya, Varun and Bipasha

Another week comes to an end. It's 5:25 EST and in exactly one hour, I will try my first attempts at being the part of one of the greatest annual events in this country, The Superbowl. Let's see how it goes. My humble attempts at BEING a part of THE country.

But on the other hand, in the last 20 hours, (out of which 8 I slept and 4 I was connecting with friends and relatives) I spent 3 hours reading and watching videos of Shahrukh Khan. I read all his tweets on iamsrk. There was a comedy interview at IBN, there was a serious one with Barkha Dutt on ndtv and then there was a discussion about Shahrukh Khan by 8 other people on "We the People". I watched it all. All I expect of thsi whole fiasco is if not "3 Idiots", My Name is Khan should atleast beat Ghajini's record. That movie was the biggest piece of crap ever.

Anyway, let the rest of India discusses about Shahrukh and Shiv Sena. With hopes of MNIK beating Aamirs records and wishful thinking of Barack Obama really congratulating SRK on his part in the movie, I move to three more news items which disturb me.

The first one is the report that Jaya Bachchan is complaining that why did people not come out in support of her when she said something against Shiv Sena and why are people coming to support SRK now. Well, I think, even though she might be quoted of saying such, it was taken out of context and a vain attempt of media to gain air time.

The second one also is a media created news. This is how cnnibn puts a news "Hate speech II: Varun abuses Pawar, Mayawati". All Varun Gandhi said was ""The duo of brother and sister is responsible for the price rise in the country. The pair of Ravana and Shurpanakha are causing price rise in the country. One is ruling in Delhi and another in Lucknow."" I frankly think there is nothing wrong in what he is saying. And specially in a country where the biggest South Indian Superstar acts as Ravana in his next movie, this becomes even less relevant. I don't understand why the media is utterly biased against Varun Gandhi. He is a nice chap. He even comes from the Gandhi family minus the son of Italian's tag. Why is he still not able to cash in on it. Why is he not extra careful on his dialogs. With the present state of price rise and BJP being in the able hands of a Nagpuri, there is a high probability of the next government being a BJP one. To add to it, the party is yet to decide on its leaders. It is a high time for some smart moves. Wake up Varun.

The third one is most disturbing. This one is regarding some hotelier abusing Bipasha outside her room. Read it yourself. My question is why is it Bipasha all the time? The Jersey parade incident, the lewd comments in Srinagar shoot, the groping in Durga Puja and now this. Why is it always her. Madhuri Dixit in one interview suggested that these kinds of things might have happned to Indian heroines during her time. Then there might be one reasoning that other heroines keep quite when these happen to them and only the Brave Bipasha shouts out foul. That is so brave of her. The other reason is not that comforting thought though. She is at the borderline of the Class A and class B heroines, the class A being the blessed with Industry biggies like Aishwarya, Kareena etc and class B being Mallika, Mugdha etc. Bipasha is not famous enough to have the clout of A and not like B who cannot grab headlines. Poor her, my heart and soul goes out to her.. Especially is when she is doing the best thing one can do: Trying to make Indian girls look fit through her fitness DVD, more so at a time when "Mummy ne mujhe chai pe bulaya hai"

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