Shooting has Begun!

After years of appearing unfazed and quite happily shrugging it off as a nice family joke where everybody has fun asking questions like "when, why so long, shall we start searching now, people are asking etc." the time has now come to get to the reality. This has been a post in making for almost months together now but never materialized just because I never though I would go on bride-hunt and the whole process looked very cheesy to me. The time now has come to be part of it and its proving to be much more entertaining and adventurous than I thought. Before I proceed to it I just want to recap about how this renewed interest has first begun.

Around a month back I had almost 2 hour long discussion with Mote on Skype. This was our third skype conversation and the last one during my stay at Paris. He is one guy whom I have lot of faith in and look forward to his opinions and thinking. For this particular time I poured my heart out about my thoughts on marriage. Marriage for me has always been knowing someone through months or years, understanding their likes and dislikes, and then finally tying the knot. What I really want is to get married by falling in love. If every step of your life all you do is select, why is it that when it comes to marriage you go by the traditional way of hunting a bride purely based on looks, weight, height etc. I always stuck by this reasoning. On top of that how compatible am I to accept someone , a complete stranger into the life I have set for myself.

I have been leading wonderful life so far in the last 4 and a half years since my job has begun. I thoroughly enjoyed my bachelor's life hanging out with friends, roaming around, spending lot of empty time doing nothing, downloading movies, reading books endlessly on weekends, just sleeping, not tiding the room, having binge parties on the weekend so and so forth. As the last year started ending I realized much of fun has come down and quite frankly life started becoming boring as most of folks have spread out and it wasn't that great. I started going alone to movies, started spending time all alone by myself.

This was exactly what Mote had told me. Same life cannot come back and that one has to move on. This is what maturity is all about. It doesn't mean that marriage life cannot bring back the fun with friends, it is just that life has to go on. Moreover looking around be it Chitti, Niks, Nikmo, Venky all have some or the other criteria stopping them from taking the marriage step. I had nothing in the pipeline. So what was it holding me back?

I couldn't come up with proper answer except that by next year( which was how I had planned to start of my bride hunt) I wanted to reduce at least 5 kilos and make myself fit. I know it was foolish thing to keep but reality is easier said than done. So there was nothing really stopping me and I am not looking at Post Graduation anytime soon. He again advised me to think it over and start taking steps. Finding right person requires right amount of energy and time to be spent.

We then ended the call and all the remaining days marriage thoughts weren't on my mind. The topic again took a solid shape with my recent meeting with the other alter-ego Nikhil. Nikhil, Rajavardhan and me had a nice dinner at Cafe Bahar relishing on the mouth watering kebabs and chicken biryani. Just wanting to catch their opinion I brought the subject of marriage.

Deja vu, they exactly said what Nikmo, my mom, my dad, my uncle had said -"What exactly are you waiting for? you don't have any plans yet, why don't you at least start searching?". That is when I made my decision to start the hunt. What am I losing anyway but instead would be gaining much needed distraction and engagement from my current kind of stressful life.

I came back to home and told my mom that I was ready and that they can start putting the word out to people. As expected mom got all excited and went on telling about getting the gothram done, this done that done. Since there was a huge function gathering next day in order to avoid embarrassment of people checking me out and telling me "Finally we heard you are ready" 20-30 times, I told them to broach the subject up till September 1st.

Until then I have started my own bit. Read on to the sequel,

Random ramblings

First off, when I was talking to Srinu today, he casually asked me when I was planning to marry. I casually told him maybe next year or year after that.

"2 years aa..vaddu babu..chala late aipotundi"

Then there was this one from my mom "tvaraga pelli chesuko ra. andaru oka la vundaru. kondari age avute face mudaraipotundi. Pratap chudu ippatiki koncham young ga unnadu". Mom was so darn clever. She conveyed exactly what Srinu said albeit in a circuitous roundabout manner.

I strongly believe in the dictum "If I think it doesn't apply to me, I ignore it and laugh it off". This applies to any taunting, teasing, that my friends do. It really doesn't bother me as there are too many things in my life apart from these to bother with. Age is something that has stuck a little hard.

I can see whale of difference between mushy-me and no-mushy-me and thank god for the brave step I took to take it off. Maybe back then I realize now that everything was perfectly justified when they kept referring me as looking aged, looking old etc. But now with the new look I certainly don't feel old but why do people still referring to me as old. When it comes to age, they go ballistics on hearing I am still 25 (when i was 25). They always say I am somewhere around 28, 29.

I thought I had two solutions for it -

1. Reduce weight

2. Reduce Weight

and Reduce weight

As Balodi bhai puts it "If you are slim and fit, even if you are bald you will look like a hunk". That thought put me in high spirits for very long time until someone else told me "Bhai, i think its got something to do with your shoulder length. You look okay. "

And here is where I rest my case. I am happy the way I am and the way I look.

Unlawful law of Temptation and Control

I am so sick of writing all my weighing troubles now that I don't even feel an iota of guilt for the airy promises I have made such as the ones below -

Anu, if at all you really read this anytime, understand some day very soon without bloating about and keeping it under wraps, I would show you how disciplined I can really be and prove to me, myself and me alone that living healthy and fit is the best way to live.

I have been promising Anu that I will jog for the last three weeks and I haven't been able to fulfil the wish though.

I vow now to stop eating rice, oily foods and anything that got to do with fat inducing crap. And to Nikhil - "Dude, I definitely am going to keep track of number of days starting this vrath/fast". Watch out!

Those are the golden words going around ages and none of this I have kept up. Some thoughts that keep recurring in my mind are

"If there is one and only one thought that keeps recurring in my mind day and night, every single minute, every passing hour, every passing day that is of losing my weight and staying fit, how hard is it to control my mind and discipline my body? " (Apparently it is hard).

The other one is from one of my can-be-watched-100-times-without-getting-bored list of movies 'Sister Act I' - "If you wanna be somebody, if you wanna be somewhere you better wake up and pay attention". Actually this applies to two things one for writing, one for maintaining my body.

Both these dastardly thoughts too go pfff the minute the main topic of this post kicks in i.e. of Temptation. What happens is this, I start off my day with thought of not eating any rice, any oil, anything that is fat worthy. If anyone of these law is not abide, my mind automatically states that it is perfectly okay to restart the next day as I have already violated the rules.

"I ate pongal today that is made of rice and dal. So I can eat chicken biryani today."

"I worked so hard man. What am I working for if not for food? I can and should eat something substantial today to fill the hungry stomach- chicken noodles. Tadaaan"

"What are you having today? Noodles? Nahi yaar, you are tempting me too much. I will also eat noodles today"

"Choclates at the desk. Run..Run..Run."

"Second serving, third serving, gobble it up"

Temptation and control make your mind take crazy decisions. Even if I have successfully maintained my controlled diet for a single day, it is enough for my mind to tell my body that I am at liberty to celebrate and bombast about it to all the town with an excuse to eat as much as my heart desires. Amazingly, I was not alone in this as I discovered someone else telling me the same.

One great thing I have learnt is shopping is the best thing one can do to get back to reality check. Ill fitting clothes, lose shirts, really broad pants are enough to make you feel disgusted with your bulging stomach. Add to that the ridicule that friends bestow upon you and the ill reputation that one builds up around as with me -

"Karthik, kabhi bhi chicken se door nahi reh sakta hai yaar"

"arre bhai mein ek saal se dek raha hoon, he is not going to change"

"He is pathetic. Absolutely no control. Happily asking for one more cake. You should control dude"

Again an open question now, can I or can I not keep up my promise this time until the next post? Only Karthik can tell and he will.

P.S. Started this post 2 days back and feeling so relieved to complete it.

P.P.S Wanted to make this as short as possible but I realized I have absolutely no control on the length of the matter be it in official mails or the blog posts. Quite heavy on the head I must say.

Not so good feeling

I have done something today that I am not happy about and feeling terrible about it. After having collecting my bike insurance papers from the agent around 7'o clock, I had dropped Debasis (my team mate) at his place at Begumpet. We then sat together and had burgers chatting away for a while. I then started off back to my place. Just as I was about to increase my pace, I saw a small handicapped kid asking for lift.

I slowed down and he got on the bike. He said he had to go to Ameerpet. I told him since I was going to Jubilee Hills, I would be dropping him at the Panjugutta junction. The rain has started pouring heavily. As I kept on going forward, he was telling about the difficulties he was facing in finding a job. Knowing someone in Uppal he had come here from his village to find a job only to find that he had no way of contacting them. Having exhausted his money in searching for them, he wanted now to go to SR Nagar as someone had told him that there are some opportunities for work and that was where he was heading at 7:30 P.M. in the rainy night. He also told me that he had 500 when he had come to the city and now it was over.

That ticked me off on hearing it as I knew what was coming next was if I had any money to offer. Instead, he didn't do any such thing. He was just telling about his current situation. Since I did not how how far SR Nagar is from Panjagutta and vaguely remembering that SR Nagar is really from Ameerpet, I mentally decided to drop him off at the cross roads as expected.

That is what I did after 15 minutes. I dropped him off and it was still raining badly. He thanked me, looked around for a while and then started walking ahead with one leg limping. I moved a little and then gave him Rs. 200 and told him he can get catch any bus and that would take him to Ameerpet or SR Nagar.

In the next 5 minutes the rain stopped completely but by that time I felt terrible and really bad on not helping the chap. I could have easily dropped him and maybe come to Jubilee Hills via Krishna Nagar road, though I am not completely sure. Still, I had nothing to lose as this was a Friday and neither anyone was waiting nor I had any plan.

All the way back I was thinking about the same thing. I hope he does get some job and do well. From now on I would be more kind to people and not close off any affection.

Come on its not Common

Nothing much but exactly as the title says, ' come on' is not ' common'. Its a mistake I make and also by many I know of constantly using the latter for the former. The first time it came to my notice was when Anu brought it up on facebook when she replied back to something I said "What is common?".

From then on I have ben very conscious of my usage. To my utter horror I discovered that in my play such occurence had crept in several times.

Its really funny how people just accept it and move on. Have you also been doing it? Time to make it uncommon now. Come on, you can do it.

P.S This is my first ever post through mobile using swype and in 13 minutes tops with least amount of correction. Freaking awesome, ain't it! Now I no longer need to crib about holding back my thoughts to blog and forget about it.

Blogging anytime anywhere guaranteed! Take that Iidiots!

Laptop Blues..

I love my laptop and having been relentlessly using it for the last 3 and a half years, I can't see myself living without one. In fact my connection with cyber world dates back to pre-engineering days of downloading hundreds of softwares such as anti-virus, desktop gadgets, utilities, games, anything under the sun be it free or commercial. It then moved on to more suave pass times such as torrents and then I never looked back.

In my addiction to my passionate hobby of movie watching I sometimes overstep the boundaries and have resulted in abusing my laptop to no end. Within 2 years it lost all its cool and literally has become a oven of sorts. Within span of 20 minutes it goes uncontrollable heat levels and if you are new to using my lappie you would be shocked with the first taste of that emanating heat. I am used to the heat now. Changing the battery, motherboard at the cost of over 10,000 rupees didn't help my cause at all and the only respite I have is that I really don't use my laptop on the 'lap' but on the 'top' of the table. The freedom of working on my laptop without the power has been taken away permanently.

Making my life much more miserable is the fact that it cannot run without power. Power cut, you are cut is the mantra. All your information GONE, unsaved information GONE, movie download in the middle GONE, data transfer halfway completed GONE, GONE GONE GONE ...pfff...vanished in thin air. I have experienced each and every one of this and much more that I care not to remember. Since last year's July I had been seriously mulling over buying a new one for my own. For me its just pointless working with some piece of metal garbage that puts my heart and mind bitching constantly against each other. I just don't deserve this. It was driving me crazy.

I knew this was a highly sensitive topic that needed to be carefully handled before broaching it with my mom and dad. I was fully determined to get one during last year boxing day period of US. That dream was broken and shattered when I came to know about my Paris trip. Nothing much to complain and it gave me some consolation of avoiding any major fights with my folks at home and I totally forgot about it.

During my stay at Paris, around March I had come to know that all employees who were SSE and above (that's me) will be getting a compensation of 50,000. I was completely stunned and I could literally see some lappies with wings circling around head. For the first time I wanted to ask myself, and believing myself God indeed is a GOD! THUD! Stamped - Laptop this christmas - Guaranteed!

Chapter closed! Zipped! Boom! Hurrah! Party..party..party..

But, yes there is this ugly butt problem. Something unexpected had happened. This is usually not the way that can ever happen with Prat but it did. He had accidentally broke his laptop and the cost of repairing was almost as good as buying a new one there. So tadaan, smart that he is and also now living with his lovely intelligent wife, decision making wasn't hard. They needn't consult anyone. Two days later they had brand new kick ass laptop at their doorstep with over the top configuration and all the bells and whistles that comes along. Next logical and stupidest thing they did was to send it back to India into the safe custody of my parents during the last 5 months.

If you are a smart-ass, by now you might have figured out the dilemma I now face. Since you aren't, by looking at your dumb quizzical look, here is how it went.

1. Dad call tech
2. Tech come take laptop
3. Laptop fix, working,
4. Dad go tech, take laptop.
5. Dad go attic, put laptop

Around a week back, I accidentally slipped my thoughts to my mom that I am planning to buy a laptop this year. I have been doing a lot and I mean a lot of searching for the dream laptop that I needed with reasonable price and I was confident, totally 100% confident that I was completely in reach of getting it around 33K max during the sale period. The config, just to drool over it, was was Intel i5 Processor, 4 GB RAM, 640 Gig Harddisk, Dolby speakers and DELL. At least once in a day I keep checking if it has got cheaper, little cheaper at least.

From the wide range of history that I know of the folks who got their laptops I was 1000% confident that I can get the same damn thing around 29K too. Come on, the other icing on the cake being the US market is under going one of the worst sale crisis and discounts are the only way PC market can stay afloat. This christmas its gonna be like no other. Every dream that I have built around this beautiful desirable thing has now been rammed against the wall.

My dad truly is a genious. Even though I had told this to my mom more than a week back and we did have a minor tussle arguing about the use of buying it, I adamantly told my mom that this has been something I have been waiting for years and not a random decision. Also, I added that compensation can take care of all this. She agreed and I had won the battle only to realize it was to be fought again.

Last Sunday, as we were coming back from darshan at some point the topic of money had come.

"Nayana, ee vache year varuku dabbu jagrataga karchu pettukovali..pelli chesukundam anukunav kada. ala ani enjoy cheyyadam maneyaku, baaga tinu, bayataku po. ee time lo ne nuvvu baga enjoy cheyyalsindi."

"sure nanna..nenu konni office wear konevi unnai ante..prastutaniki peddavi emi konevi levu..flat gurinchi nenu kuda alochistunna"

"good..adi rami reddy to matladanu, kani kudar ledu ra. evi kaali levanta. Inkoti chuddam le."

"sure nanna.."

"adokati..nuvvu inko laptop kontannanavu anta amma cheptunde..."

Silence. I knew the first bomb had been silently dropped. I know where this was going and also knew where this will land. Sadness just enveloped within myself and I could feel that sorrow was beckoning me to lie in its cruel arms and padding me to sleep with it, making me silently cry and challenging me, in fact daring me to go ahead. So I went on...

"avunu nanna..naaku eppadnundo konalani vundi.."

"nee laptop vundi kada ra.."

"adi old aipoyindi nanna..chala heat kuda vastundi..power idi adi chala problems.."

"ok, mari anni di vundi kada DELL..manchi laptop, baga repair ayyindi, chala bagundi adi teesko.."

Another brief silence. I lost it. I do not know how or why but i knew there was no going ahead now. Life indeed is a cruel thing. Why am I getting this treatment? As my thoughts rattled on in my depressed brain, the rationalization went on..

"utta cinemala kosamaite nuvvu laptop teesukoni waste..ledu naaku project kosam kavali..naaku aa high end config daani kosam avasaramu..deento kaadu ani aite cheppu..ok..naaku no problem..teesuko kottadi..emi ok na?"

What am I to tell? It's precisely for that very reason I need the new laptop, enjoy the movies in better aspect ratio 16:9 widescreen, dolby. Ever since I saw it in Kalyan's laptop I couldn't come over that feeling. Also yes partly it would indeed help me with my work too, I can take it along anywhere I want, I don't need to be constantly plugged in, no longer heat and goddamit its Win 7 Home Premium with 640 Gig and 4 GB RAM! Isn't that reason enough? Isn't that joy enough? Why should some things in life always have to be a justifiable cause.

"pratap di chala old nanna.."

"old sare le..work cheyachu kada..adi kakunda nuvvu antunna DELL ee laptop kuda. anavsranga enduku waste cheyyadam. nuvvu daani kavalante higher configuraiton ki marchuko extra vi add chesi"

Another silence. On the contrary, trying to get back to my rational mind, maybe I can do some upgrades to the laptop much cheaper, more RAM, more Harddisk, better processor, just maybe, i don't need to spend that extra 50 grand. So the supposedly sensible, truthful, thoughtful, budgetful, rational mind of mine keeping in view of the PROS and CONS of the situtation has rationalized and made me say

"avunu le nanna..correct ee..chustanu..enta hard disk add chesaru nanna"

"emo ra..teledu..chudali..initiki vellaka nenu teesi chupistanu..chudu..nuvu actual ga teesukoni po..mememi vadatledu daani.."

Fast forwarding to the present day moment, yesterday I had mind boggling sound effect when I switched on the laptop to see the movie 'Shutter Island'. I was content and delirious at this unexpected outcome. Maybe somethings can be adjusted, maybe I didn't need the new laptop, maybe I can upgrade, just maybe..

I sealed my fate today just around 3 hours back when I told my dad that laptop indeed was great and I liked it. Dad kush and he also told that he felt he had forced upon his decision and was in fact planning to shell out all the money for the new one by himself. Hearing my verdict he pointed me rightfully about how good the money can be utilized for something else..True indeed or is it?

Have I shot myself in my arm again.. I think so. Pouring my heart out in this eloquent post, I indeed realized I speak too soon and I should have stuck to my stand. I just want my laptop. I just realized how much of turmoil I had gone through and the mountains that I built upon for the new one as I write this post. I even had checked out the local prices at the Dell center the very first week I came back from Paris.

Good lord! Why am I such a pain in the backside? Why do I chicken out? I guess the only way to find out is to first by figuring out the costs of upgrade. Maybe mentally it may give peace and the true joy is only in buying a new laptop.

Amen!

DTC Memoirs

Yet another farewell gives me a chance to refresh and go back to those wonderful peaceful moments of the past, when things were just settling down. I have so much to say that I thought I will have a post on this for my blog. Here it goes.

The Beginning-

On the first day of landing here at Hyderabad, during my orientation, it was a very unpleasant thing to hear that I was put on bench. It also had some weird bay name to it too. I had been promised skies (was told that I would be working for Microsoft you see, thank God that didn’t happen) but landed in gutter. How stupid can it get? Over the next few days my grumbling came down and I was enjoying my bench days bunking right after lunch/gym in the evenings. Even during those times I met up some wonderful people who were in the same soup. Human mind is really funny. The joy of finding someone who is undergoing the same emotions with the unexpected results ( be it bad marks, bad dress, wrong address or as in this case sitting on bench after moving from company). It was during the same time that Nikmo and I were on full on diet mode, eating minimum food, doing some small exercise in the morning and staying light. I had also joined the golfing sessions by my aunt at Boulder Hills. On one particular day I got a call from Pranav asking me to meet him the next day for a project assignment.

For some reason the next day I was running late to office as I had completely forgotten about the call. I was doing little extra golfing time, when it suddenly struck me that I had something important to do that day. Putting my helmet on, I zoomed like a maniac on a high snaking through the heavy traffic and landed HDC around 9 minutes flat. Still panting, I called up Pranav and got the room number. Went to washroom and cleaned up myself to make myself bit more presentable. I just stayed there for two more minutes silently thinking and telling to myself that no matter how the work is, I hope I have a good team to work with a nice lead. It is a statistically proven fact that 90% of the people quit because of the managers/leads and this being my first move, I was little apprehensive. Entering the room, the first relief I got was seeing the young, fresh smiling faces. That kind of did it for me, hate being with budde log. No offence to nobody. I settled down and Pranav rattled on about all the abc’s of the project. Sounded good, with a transporting background and my ears pricked a little higher on hearing that the project was being done in collaboration with Paris team. I had also joked to my mom that I may go to Paris on that day when I called her up to catch up with the new project. Just drifting off a little here, in one of my first ever play that I had written, one segment carried off a conversation between wife and husband arguing over the issue of ownership of T.V. as wife want wants to see Bigg Boss whereas the husband is all rooted for IPL Semis. There is a dialog where the wife chides her husband that he tells virtually everything to his mom, even being as stupid as telling about the bug status. A bit of confession, I may say, I am slightly like that in reality and maybe the inspiration was rooted in me. I really like telling my mom everything and sometimes I tell her unnecessary things about deliveries, deadlines etc. So that day it was all about what my project was, number of people in it etc.

Work initially wasn’t much as I was given the task of testing. It was around December I had joined and team at Paris were going on long leaves leaving behind substantial amount of work for offshore. I was introduced to Anuradha and was told to take the KT from her of how the Corporate Website and Back Office works. One of the legacies I carried forward from my Satyam Days was my ability to go to trance-like sleep state where I am half-awake twirling the mouse up and down and staring at the computer. I was notorious for this and I do this usually when I don't have much work and right after good lunch. Sushma, another team mate of mine, along with me were involved in taking the sessions. Much to their horror and my embarrassment, during the course of KT, having Anuradha in the middle and we both on the sides, I was literally drowsing through the session yawning sometimes, struggling to keep my open. Luckily, being the genteel lady they were, they never complained and in fact Anuradha used to continue the sessions with slight remarks of ‘Karthik, I think you can go have a face wash now’ with a huge smile on her face. It also happened that sometimes even that was not enough to keep me awake. The sessions have been the toughest to attend to. To justify my stance I would say it wasn’t their fault but it was the objective of the session that’s at fault. Imagine a person teaching about website navigation as simple as ‘Go to this Menu->Click on this sub-menu->Click on this item’ for every page there is that we maintain and then after reaching the page explaining about all the elements of the page – ‘here you give your first name, here last name’ for over 40 minutes in same monotonous tone without a break. Why couldn’t it be as simple as ‘This is the website, do whatever you want and discover it’. That’s how my second project induction was at my earlier company which again dealt with a website front. The next month the work was at bare minimum with one task of a package and some debugging of reports.

Recollecting my initial times, chatting with clients was a bit funny. Back at Satyam, we dealt all our communication through mails or meeting and never with office communicators/chat. I remember asking Mote about how I should reply for a smiley and when to put a smiley, which is appropriate etc.? There is always the line that we shouldn't cross and all that crap were there. As we moved through cycles, through weekly status meetings, through the bug fixes, life began to gain momentum and for one particular time it got pretty hot with 5 whole days of torture for fixing a peculiar bug. I also got one of the best compliments too by our then manager Benoit for value-addition for a job he had assigned to me in quick time. There is whole new back story to it which I definitely ought to blog sometime.

We as a team were enjoying the whole process before the honeymoon period ended as Benoit was taken over by another lead at Paris - Idriss. His way of dealing things had shook each and everyone out of their happy cozy lives and united in a way we never wanted - frustrated and angry. Nobody liked giving status updates every half an hour, nobody liked doing multitasking and yet maintaining all the deadlines, nobody liked multiple meetings, and most important of all nobody liked escalations. Too many problems but we had one cool head Babar for us, shouldering all our responsibilities and to see that we weren't under scanner all the time. In fact, we went one step ahead and were firmly in the director's seat dictating our terms. There are lot many more things that had happened after that and not everything was exciting in terms of the workload. I was working on DTC part time and Presto most of the times and was in this mode for quite long not really facing large brunt of the project.

Let me now just highlight the best times -

Coffee Breaks -

Babar spear heads this meetings with his amazing in-depth knowledge of Indian history, mythology, Real estate, police, love, kidnappings ..err.. almost everything under the sun aptly named by all as the 'walking wikipedia' a.k.a wikitalkie. Between 10 a.m. to 12:00 p.m and 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. on most of the days we gather as a team and go to our tea breaks. Once we settle down, we are transported into a whole new world and time cease to exist. We start with some topic as trivial as everyone's favorite food and then see the discussion going to abc's of lodging an FIR. Sometimes we stick to one and everybody has something or the other to say or add and it will be good 30-45 minutes before one of us realize that we had come to office cafeteria. This break up is done with huge reluctance. I can still savor those lovely moments. Happily enjoying the fantastic unexpected sojourn with your lead right their leading the party.

Meeting Minutes:

Meetings..hmm..meetings..just the word itself gives me that warm pleasurable feeling. Having worked in projects before that had not many meetings and little less people too, the meetings at DTC gave me ample scope to vent out my feelings and blabber rubbish continuously. For the first two months it was chaired by Pranav and it was like attending a convent congregation, performing the task of taking down the defects methodically and mechanically, planning for the upcoming weeks and ending the calls.

Enter Babar, exit Pranav, and voila it was just , AWESOME! We were no longer under the 'Eye' and free to do whatever we want. We enter the room and Babar starts off the calls. Meanwhile Joey, Sushma and I will be busying ourselves with games on my kick-ass phone only to lend support when its needed. Sometimes, we just go to the call fully knowing it was gonna be a 10 minute ritual but we utilize it to the full 1 hour booking doing nothing but good amount of idle chit-chat pulling each other's leg, discussing about vacation plans, thinking about a possible trip (it's still an open point, if you ask me), discussing about parties, or just idling away time. During the not so busy cycles of delivery this was quite common and we used to have ball of a time during the 'DTC- Meeting'.

I am attached to it so much so that, even though I was completely out of it, with a great reluctance and nostalgia, quite painfully I removed the 'DTC Weekly Meetings' from my Outlook calendar. I also took a screenshot but somehow I am not able to find it now.

Joe -

Am singling out Joe here because he is fit to be singled out like a Joker in the Pack. Mostly funny and mostly dumb (sarcasm). Joe is one of the best people I have met in my life and I admire his outlook towards life with clear focused intentions, his religious discipline, his conventional views on marriage, his affliction to food. Its precisely for these that he is gullible and easy to get started off on a conversation and bug him to no end. He just can't accept some things and I have never fought so furiously with anyone trying to rationalize certain arguments. It is so much fun poking fun at him. There was this one tiny little time when this went overboard (and I did behave like a jerk) which had a cold war feel to it. It just cooled off immediately the day after anyway.

His greatest weakness that I have observed is his inability to get along with Hyderabadi food and marriage views. Somehow we both as a pair are nicknamed 'tom and jerry'. Ironically I am supposed to be the Tom (the loser who gets hurt no matter what he does), when in fact I should be the Jerry (the clever, witty, innovative, creative mouse that gets away with Tom in whatever it does and in style). It was a open-and-shut-case, I win all the matches. Since its the majority that gets the say I let the case rest with all of them truly believing in the fact that Tom is the best in taunting and getting what he wants i.e. ultimately winning. On second thoughts I would rather be cat than a whining mouse. Howzzat!

Team

The team as a whole have been one of the best I have worked with. With absolute no egos and ever helpful to each other we have well supported our tasks and sharing our duties. In times of trouble, we huddle together, have a 10 minutes discussion, laugh about it and let it go.

Carole's visit

Another great highlight. When Carole, our onshore big shot manager, had come to Hyderabad for meeting sessions we were completely floored. That two hours meeting we had with her, we felt as if we were given free tickets to avant-garde theatrical performance I had ever witnessed. Mesmerizing to say the least. Tracing the history of e-Ticketing, DTC, talking about the government problems, project handicaps, challenges facing ahead, road maps and it went on. Never once was she off-the mark and it was completely impromptu performance. I was literally spell-bound. We also had a quite nice time with her during the AFMS bash with Joe, jumping like a kid, to get a solo pic with her. Such a sweet kid, ain't he?

Twists-

Around November last year, we were supposed to shut the shop. It was in news, it was in papers (Danish i mean), it was in their parliament, it was everywhere. The writing on the wall was clear. The landmark judgement was doomed to failure. We also had a farewell celebrations too. Personally though all of us were quite sad knowing it and were also little taken aback with calmness with which Babar had taken the news. Somehow miraculously 90% certainity became 0% and BAM we were back on track doing same things again. Only this time around my percentage of involvement receded gradually.

Well, that's all there is to it. I know I am missing something but it will be for later posts. Let me end it all with some personal notes -

Babar garu- For the life of me , I can't remember why the thought didn't strike me to bring more chocolates exclusive to team. I really feel bad about it. I am at loss of words right now to express my feelings except to say that you have been one of my greatest inspirations.

Narsingam - You have been the unseen glue sticking our spirits of undying passion to the cause by being there and helping the team all the time. You have excellent leadership qualities and though it may have felt like a joke when I kept mentioning you would be the next 'TL', I did mean it. With your soft entry to PNG, I hope we will get to work on some common tasks. Even otherwise I definitely would like to seek your counsel on movies, inner gossip, and life in general.

Joey- refer above

Sirisha - Silent and hard-working. Hope you have great time under Babar and reach fantastic levels. You are in one of the most enviable positions ever and am sure you will have great learning experiences of your life going ahead.

Cheers!

Money Matters a LOT now

Being away from home for 5 months at Paris, I have started to see things in India little more differently now. In particular, the money, paisa, dabbu.

Bapuji..bachao hume

Right on my first day at office, during lunch I got the first shock of the peaked prices. One Chicken Biryani - 175, 1 Drums of Heaven - 245. Actually this is little funnier. The menu was divided into two columns for Appetizers and this item was among the list of other non-veg items. A huge left hand flower bracket grouping all these were listed as the price quoted. "So all these put together would be 245 right? Like a platter I mean", I inquired with Sushma who was sitting beside me. "Come on yaar, its only one item. By the way, don't worry too much I am giving the party", she replied back with a smile. I smiled a weak response. Once the orders were placed, we were then continuing to discuss about other things like the bygone days of DTC, the new faces in AFMS, the new building.

Someone then had asked me how I came to office that day. "By auto, I had to pay 150 bucks!" I replied. By this time Sushma was exasperated with my over attention to money and declared to the bench "Guys, I think from now on we can expect that anything that Karthik is going to talk about will be followed by a price tag". Funnily, I never bothered so much on the money after the initial one week stay at Paris. Coming back, I feel all the prices have shot up and people were utterly apathetic about it. Maybe this being a party nobody was really paying much attention.

The following day I tried out the common cafeteria. Woof. Smoking! Chicken Noodles - 65! Wait. Look over there - 'Sub of the Day - 99 Only!' Since when did 99 become only? Is this a mock BATA rate? Of course I knew the prices here would be more compared to our usual cafeteria. What I wasn't prepared was to have a meal with a drink one would be shelling out at least 100 bucks.

The third day, Wednesday was when I felt I was back on the ground. Lunch this time I had at our cafeteria and just like 5 months back the prices were still intact at 18 bucks for 2 roti/ paratha. So things weren't as bad as I started imagining. I am definitely sure though that something is not right. Prices did skyrocket but I am yet to sink in that feeling.

The climax of the episode was when I was filling my petrol. 1 Ltr - 72 that's a 16% increase from 62 when I had left. Why is it that such inflation is being accepted without any major protests or for that matter by the blogosphere community. I admit I haven't been following national news but heck I have been on to the blogs as good as ever.

With such steep prices, and slow moving salaries, how are they expecting us to continue to live our lifestyle of binging out once in a while, movies, shopping and then the enoromous work that the job demands? With my now renewed focus on my health and diet, it is indeed giving me an incentive to watch how much I spend over eating, drinking and making sure I stay healthy without leaning towards extreme starvation.

Speaking of spending I have almost spent 3 grand buying clothes and books. Whoopsie, where is the monthly calculator!

Photos and Facebook

What is it with photos and facebook? Why do I have this great urge to keep looking back at Facebook to see if anyone has commented on anything. Wasn’t life better when you had only few people to share your things with? Sometimes I wonder if I am overdoing it with large number of photos. Facebook does crazy things to you. I want to move on focus on my travelogue blogging but I am just getting carried away with nothing special to write about. I am stuck at Spain and I wonder how I will do with the rest of the cities.

Anyways, coming back from the trip today and having a whole day off isn’t helping my cause either. I know in the next 4 days I need to get my things straightened up and leave to Berlin with a guilt free mind. For that I need to keep a check on all the issues that the team is facing and cleaning of the existing issues. On top of all this, I need to iron my clothes, segregate my belongings and get ready for tomorrow. Not big tasks, but tasks nonetheless.

So here it is, I have now decided to give FB a break and comment only when someone else comments on it.

Spain Travelogues - I

Talking to Devarsh on the phone and telling him about what to see, what to do, which hostel to book almost over 40 minutes I realized I am doing a grave mistake by not really penning down my thoughts. Memories of the trip are still fresh now. Give or take few days, I am sure I would forget all.

Photos no matter how many one takes, what stays with you forever are your experiences and thoughts. These need to be captured when they are in the reach as months or years from now I am sure I will come back to like it. Just as the way I enjoy reading about my trip to Warangal.

How it started -

As I look back, Spain has been an hasty decision and proved much costlier too. It all started with my late booking. A month before the trip I had applied for 4 leaves. Two leaves on first fortnight of May, and two more on Last fortnight spread over a weekend like an extended weekend. I had done this hoping to properly plan, chose places and then book the tickets. As the days passed by though I knew the days were getting nearer I had no clue how to go about it. Frankly I was little afraid to take the first step, as I was leaving all alone. I even wanted to cancel the leave.

Again, thanks to the exuberant and high spirited Nico who sat with me showed me the places and started the bookings. We wen to the site – www.momondo.com and checked out the cheapest fares and booked the flights. In a matter of 40 minutes my first ever cross-country tour was all set.

Run…Run…Run…

It was early in the morning, around 5’0 clock I had booked a cab. Unfortunately on the day of my travel, railways had raised a ruckus and were on strike. To top that the only free connectivity I had which was RER B train was supposed to be pathetically slow. So, I had chosen the only option I had which was the cab. As I was about to enter the cab I realized I forgot my wallet, ran back and started running down. Again  I realized I had forgotten my charger. So twice I ran up and down before finally settling into it.

The day of the journey I had hardly slept and my mind was so filled with the trip that I stayed myself awake by completing as much workload as a I can.

The feeling was excitement mixed with some fear especially when it came to my passport. I am a guy who loses things at the drop of a hat. Always thinking about something, concentrating on two things at a time, looking lost, tensed all around. With such well-known reputation and knowledge that I have about my ownself, forget the world, I was all the more nervous about carrying it off – the lone journey.

Anyways, the cab was around 60 Euros and  frigging expensive but was promptly on time.