Confessions on The Blog Floor...

“Job Insecurity…” said Mrs. Talkative. Quite right. That’s what it is then. If not why is it that the first feeling I get after scanning through the question paper is RELIEF that I am going to pass. Have I become so bad that I can’t look beyond 75% marks? Is it because of the way I have been performing the last two semesters averaging 70%, I feel that’s how I am and nothing I am going to do is going to change my vulnerability to fail, or is it?

“What do you want to achieve getting marks? you have a goal, the marks follow you,” reasons Adi. It is very hard to digest it but it is true. Whenever I sit up to study right from my first year it was only for few hours with as many breaks as the number of speed breakers on O.U. Road. I regret, feel bad, feel guilty, determine to change the sem that follows. The pattern repeats. There is no denying the fact that I haven’t put all my efforts and loafed around.

Of late it is these two things running in my mind. One thing I have come to realize is that consistency is vital in no matter what you do, till you see the end of whatever you want to do. Sounds little gibberish but I will clear with what I have gone through. The last three sems my preparation was in the drawing room of my house late in the night with T.V. running in the mute mode. I make sure I know all the topics on the syllabus book for a given subject. The day before the exam is when I cover all the topics of all five units. But it is that late night t.v. viewing and the complacency that sets in because I covered the topics and lack of revision that has gotten me those miserable marks. Supposing there were five holidays for the exam, I do my prep for the last two days. This must have been the trend among many of you out there.

To overcome this I decide to stop seeing television. I had successful continuous 30 non-television days before my resolve goes pfffff. Those 30 days I had wonderful time reading books, magazines, surfing the net, etc. How did I revert back? It started as a slow poison. One day I was dead tired after coming from college. I thought ten minutes of t.v. does no harm and then it goes on to an hour. The next day another hour gets added because of the “Passion of the Christ”. The next next day one more hour this time due to the excellent coverage of some amazing underwater species in Discovery. All this sound unadulterated fun. Flip- Channel [V] , another flip – Zoom t.v. – little more pleasure than what had been two days before. I become so relieved now as I come to understand what the hell were Chitti and Laddoo referring to when talking about so-and-so song and so-and-so movie trailers. I ain’t a outcast anymore. This is my number ONE Inconsistency.

Anybody who knows me little more than hi-bye would know that my memory is as good as writings on the sand (Confirmation: just pm Shadow…). I enroll to a yoga teaching center that runs the classes early in the morning. Religiously I did what ever asana they said without missing a class. I felt so happy doing whatever was asked and did as much publicity as possible to let all others follow my suit and realize the power of yoga. It makes you more agile, more fit, more alert and most important of all improves your concentration and memory power. As the days passed on this came to an end too and my chances of improving my memory power goes kaput.

Now that you read till now I ain’t need to tell you what to do. Trust me guys, you wouldn’t know about the guilt that is written all over me because I can’t stick on to anything new I take up and now I feel really intimidated thinking about the future challenges that I have to take up. They say whatever difficulties you have faced till now are just tip of the iceberg.

Knowledge is power they say and to get that you need to discipline yourself and that’s all I have to say about that.

Fair & Lovely – at last it is so lovely…

This is about the latest Fair & Lovely ad. Finally the morons realized it is not about getting people look like sh** before and demi-god after using their product makes not a sense.

Let’s look at what happened so far:

• A lady keeps lip-synching the cricket match telecasted sitting on the couch. She is dark. Mother steps in, gives her daughter F&L. Oh..la..la she is in the commentary box alongside Srikanth and we see press photographers taking autograph!!!! Heights I tell you. Fans for a female Commentator???
• Father takes her daughter to get her joined in some academy for Air-hostess. The people there throw a sarcastic remark about the way every tom, dick and harry wants to become air hostess indirectly pointing to the people that have come. In a fit of rage and shame they return. We see old man rummaging through the chest and taking out F & L. Oh..la..la the next shot we see her completely transformed and into the office.
• Rakesh Roshan, the idiot who gave us Hrithik Roshan, bumps into a lady who, if the viewers haven’t understood by now with that nonsensical background music which neither emotes nor feels anything special, uses the product F & L. Oh..la..la we see this bald guy getting mightily impressed and asking her for her approval in casting for heroine. There, There, it’s okay the price isn’t that bad. Go get one. Rakesh Roshan is waiting for you.
• This is most ridiculous of all. We see a lanky, pimply fellow running around in girls hostel for borrowing a cream. (Hello!! No, I am not mistaken. He goes into the girls dormintory in the early wee hours. Wonder which idiotic hostel was that allowing boys to enter their premises.) The girls chase him and he somehow escapes with a person next to him who ridicules for trying to steal girls products. Oh..la..la then we see the same girls who chased going ga-ga over our guy who takes on F & H. Fair and Handsome – an absolute filth on this planet.
• Girl comes in for a job at customer care. She goes through humiliation as she comes to realize first requirement for the job would be beauty and nothing but the beauty. You guys understood!!! First thing for customer care would be beauty. She cries, goes in to the house furiously. Oh..la..la Next day she is at the same counter talking to the same person who ridiculed her and DING!!!!!! She is in. No other requirements, mind you. All thanks to --- F & L.

In all of the ads I have quoted so far and some I can’t remember the first thing you notice is the girl is very dark. So dark that you can easily find out with her face contrast to the skin. After 10 or 15 seconds depending on the ad duration we see she getting completely transformed to a white angel with no marks at all. Another common theme running would be the lady whoever she is first has to face humiliation.

It is now the ad comes with a breather as for once the lady ain’t dark and there ain’t any humiliation. I have become so disgusted with this ad that I couldn’t wait to observe this change and blog it. Now that I have done it, I would be happy if people too notice the change.

( If there was ad missing that I couldn’t recollect please do let me know through your comments…)

Nostalgia Calling - 2

Day 1: Ground Realities

Finally they woke up around 7:30 dumbstruck to find me clad in formal dress as if I was going to attend an important interview that very moment. I try as hard as possible to refrain from blowing my trumpet. But when friends break promises they need to be reminded. Early morning suprabatham was inevitable. Not arguing much things went on till Men in Black or rather Man in Black (you see they had a black T-shirt with a hand print on back, five fingers representing five people…similar to that ‘Identity’ movie.) knocked on our room giving breakfast coupons to each.

Tiniest details like breakfast, lunch, dinner looks odd but this was quite special one. Hyderabadi’s are not called Latelatief without any reason. We proved that by going late again. Bread – the breakfast with some special conditions. You chose either butter or jam. Not both at a time. If you are one of those who care a damn about anything as long as there is something to eat then only bread was welcome. First I thought these guys were joking. But then seeing it that they meant every word they said, we were not able to hide our what-the-heck-is-this kind of faces. Moving on to the real purpose behind our visit we went into the hall allocated for the poster presentations. The entire event was split up into three sessions with 23 contestants in each session. Our program was scheduled for the coming day. So we were all eagerly watching the arrangements going on with the participants dutifully doing their work. It’s amazing how everyone has his own idea of displaying things. While majority were systematically placed with four spread out sheets in three rows, there were few who did amazing jobs like cutting and pasting only the matter in variety of shapes, some with photographic bases giving life-like quality, and there was this particular one who has put up his poster on a single sheet with myriad of colors occupying his center stage.

Time passed by and the judges arrived. Heat was all around us and with rapt attention we followed the proceedings. The judges literally tore apart our hopes of survival with their way of questioning. These were people who hated niceties. For them it was like a world of Matrix with no rules. They were not allowing the three-minute initial briefing time. If a particular participant was found hesitating in explaining they moved onto the next. Sometimes it was even simpler. Start with a question itself and make a move depending on the response. Three to four participants judging were enough for our fears to surface. We didn’t wait till the curtains dawned. The knowledge we had with our topics was enough to impress a first-time listener but this was unprecedented. By evening time all six of us were in the room weighing our options.

Dinner that day tasted like glass of water I mean we hardly cared what we eat. Like drunkards out of a bar laughing and jeering at each other we began our walk from mess to the rooms. Here we were displaying sadistic qualities in enjoying the other’s miseries. Oh! I forgot it takes fifteen minutes to walk the distance. That also didn’t matter much so intoxicated we were. Sanjay Dutt came to the rescue. Munnabhai was being screened and we reached the spot just waiting along with others to see who makes the first move to sit on the ground. Life me ek bakra hona hi tha . With that bakra everyone followed. Good thing that the movie drags after an hour or so, that’s when reality sunk in.
We came back to our rooms and decided to give our best shot and also prepared for the best excuse of our lack of knowledge. There were only few 2nd year participants there. So we were bound to look for one.

Nostalgia Calling - 1

There are few moments in your life which you cannot imagine what could have filled them had they not happened. The first time it happens to you stays longer than any. Every year from the day I joined I have been outgrowing the experience but this one is yet to receive a beating.

It was all thanks to Acumen, I came to know that there are some things that differentiate us from Intermediate to Engineering. I was especially thrilled by the kinds of topics that were spoken of. That’s it then I made up mind to do something about it. Not going into much of detail let me fast forward it to the day when we (my friend Rajesh and me) came to the college flushing red with pride and sense of achievement of having been selected in NIT Warangal’s Technical Symposium (Sounds big right…). Everybody had their share of thanks and that day if I remember well I didn’t have much lunch either. Apart from that there were two other teams that got through, from our own class (little discomfort there).


Funny thing is we (I mean all of the three teams…) applied for paper presentation and got selected for poster presentation. But hey, when you are talking about biggies like NIT you don’t stand a chance. The trip was for three days; I thought it would be worthwhile if I give it in parts.

Day 0: Land, Eat And Sleep

Take off didn’t go as planned. Raju (a.k.a Rajesh) made some scene there by not coming on time and Srinu and I had to catch the train running at the last moment leaving him with his own destiny. Two and a half hours later we were in the campus waiting in queue to get our rooms. The situation was something like a railway station. People in all sorts of attire, some in their T-shirts, some wearing formals, some with large suitcases and so on. Commotion prevailed all throughout. Rooms were allotted and we dispersed. Nikhil Mohan (Nikhil), Venkat (Venky) and me in one room and the other two guys Srinivas and Pradeep (they play very important role on/before day 2) in another room, another block (you will know why I had to mention that additional block…). The sixth one Raju again, was a Warangalian, so don’t bother.

Three is a crowd they say. But with two heavyweights and one bony guy (that’s me) on one bed is tough decision to be made. There was another burning issue the dinner to be sorted out first. It was already late for the mess so we had to go somewhere else looking for dinner. One good thing about Warangal is no matter how far you want to travel, say from north to south or east to west of the town it costs the same- five bucks. With Nikhil acting as our tour guide we began the search. First a phone, the hotel name. Open get in, not open phone again. Finally after the fourth call got the right one. Time was 11’O clock. We were hungry like hell. You can’t call that a hotel actually. Down in the basement, makes you feel as if you are entering a dungeon. It took sometime to get used to that odd smell of liquor and the servicing there. There was no selection, salad, and stuff. Chicken Biryani was on the menu and that’s it. Eat it or leave it situation. There was no turning back; talking as little as possible we finished our ‘dinner’. With a little heavy stomach and droopy eyes we started back to the campus. They somehow convinced me to adjust in the room and I graciously obliged. Not everything goes as planned anywhere in the world. It’s easy to tackle anything but mosquitoes and one of the stupidest things I have done is forgot to pack my blanket. The day was totally ruined I say for I couldn’t sleep at all, pulling Venky’s first then failing to hold it longer I would go to Nikhil’s. There was this patience in me running out. I could do that for two hours and then it was time for me to relive the BACARADI experience (calling all creatures of the night..).

Well that ends my day 0, not the usual happy ending story but wait to know till the other three days (hey read between the lines guys, I said day 0).

The Day We Didn't Want - III

And the Disco Begins....

!!!! A Bit of Samba to start With !!!!

!!!! Getting some Dance Steps Cleared !!!!

!!!! Girls Just got to have Fun !!!!

!!!! Some Rocking Duets !!!!

!!!! Three Tiny Muskeeteers !!!!

!!!! Reaching the Limits !!!!