small things that make us happy

Today, while I was listening to one of my most favorite songs – EK LAU IS TARAH (from the movie Aamir), I thought of all those people, rather victims of bomb blasts, accidents, etc. who didn’t do anything bad to deserve such a harsh punishment in life. I mean, you are dining in five star hotel, enjoying the meal with the people you like and then suddenly a bomb explodes and your life changes for the worse…. Or you are travelling in the first class bogie, enjoying cool breeze sitting on the window sit and suddenly a bomb planted in some bag kept on the shelf explodes!... all you can say is “what was my fault????...”…

Then I thought of small small things that make us happy …. This is what I could think..:

1) Sleeping in your own home, with all your family members around you… I mean, I have this kind of a feeling every night when I am home. With my mom on the bed next to mine, I feel that “abhi kuch bhi ho to chalega.. meri mummy ke baaju mein hun mai… bas…”…

2) You want to catch the 10.16 CST slow local. You leave the home at 10.00. You get the rickshaw as soon as you reach the main road. All the while, you keep praying to god that train be late. You reach the station at 10.13. you see the train approaching the station. You take the foot-over-bridge and run as fast you can and just as the train reaches the station, you too are on the station. And you jump into the train to get your favorite window seat!

3) Sitting on marine drive with the person you like… you look into her face and keep staring at her for the way she smiles or giggles… you keep blabbering some pakau Jokes so as to keep her smiling… you make up things and say it in such a way that makes her giggle continuously… needless to say, the smile that suffuses your faces is enough to keep you happy for the rest of the week!...

4) You are standing in a long queue for A/C bus. You let 2 A/C busses pass because you want that most favorite seat on the last 4^th row!... I have done that twice because I wanted to sit on my most fav seat!

5) You are travelling in train and are sitting on the window seat.. you are listening to FM Radio. You like some recent song and are praying that the Radio jockey plays you favorite song. You stick on the one FM station to hear that most recent song. You are just about to change the FM station and just then, your favorite song is played!... the kind of happiness that you get is just immeasurable!... only hard core music lovers would understand my point…

6) You talk to your GF/BF during the day. Then at night, before going to sleep, you check your mobile to see if there is any message from her/him. You don’t see any. You are disappointed. But, just as you are about to keep your mobile aside, you see a message “Gn Tc “ from her/him… I am sure that the whole night you will keep smiling!

7) you have some 5000 to 6000 songs on your IPOD (not knowing which all songs are there in your IPOD). One fine day, while you are travelling in KingLong Bus,you hear a song that start liking instantly. You become crazy for that song. You SMS all your friends asking them if they have the song. You spend the whole day waiting for someone to mail you that song. Just before going to sleep you happen to search for that song on your IPOD. You thought that you didn’t have that song. But just as a try, you search. And whooaaaa! You find that song right on your IPOD! Needless to say, you will hear that song atleast 10-20 times before you go to sleep!... this happened to me few days ago…so I can vouch for that fact that such a incident can happen!

8) You regularly get SMSes from a friend of yours whom you like very much. Suddenly he/she stops SMSing you. You get disappointed, but don’t call him/her. Suddenly, one fine morning you wake up to see a ‘Good Morning’ message from him/her. That would surely make you smile. And that day you will realize how much you missed not getting SMS from him/her…. Its never too late to acknowledge the love or liking for someone who is special to you (not necessarily GF/BF)…

9) You wake up in the morning, get ready for office. Mom makes tiffin for you. you are bored of the roj ka bhaaji-chapati. You reach office. Work for some time and go to have lunch. You open your tiffin to find the most favorite dish of yours (Undhyoo in my case). Your friends will easily gauge the happiness suffusing your face… and you SMS you mom for making such a lovely tiffin. Now your mom would be happy!

10) It’s a rainy morning. Heavy rains had lashed the city throughout the night. You look through the window and pray to god to disrupt the railways… you get up and switch on the TV . you hear the reporters say “itni bhaari baarish ke kaaran sabhi trains radd kar di gayi hai… stithi aur 12 ghanto tak sudharneki koi aashankaa nahi hai…”. You smile and your belief in god strengthens!

Autobiography of a Tantrik….

In last 4 hours I had 6 clients visiting me. One had a problem related to stomach. Three were suffering from marital problems and the rest two were having problems with their boss.

I cannot stop laughing when educated people come to me to get their problems solved. Of course I don’t laugh in front of them. but mun hi mun main bahut hasta hun…Whenever I ‘cure’ an educated person of his problems, I get a kind of wicked satisfaction. I mean, I am just a 5th grade student. And when I cure an educated person of his illness using my Mantras, I wonder what is the use of education that doesn’t teach you to be practical. Like, last week, I got this ‘patient’ who had lot of issues with his wife. He doubted his wife having an affair. This is how our conversation went :

Patient : Charansparsh Maharaj.

I just gestured. I didn’t greet him back. See, it’s a normal human psychology that if I don’t greet him back and instead I just gesture that I accepted his greetings, then I would have an upper hand in the meeting. As simple as that. He continued.

Patient: Maharaj, mai bahut chintit hun. Meri Biwi….

I stopped him just when he was about to complete his dialogue. I took his hand in my hand, closed my eyes said “wo tumse bewafaai kar rahi hai. Aur kisi ke saath uska chakkar hai uska”.

Hahahahahhaha.. you should have seen his face!

Patient: Baba aap mahaan ho. Aap kripaya meri samsya ko solve Karen…

Being a sadistic and anti-educated person, I asked him his age and qualification.

Patient: Baba, mai ek MBA hun… meri umra 30 saal.

If you had the ability to peep into my mind, you could easily sense that I was rolling with laughter. i enjoyed every bit of his superstition that an uneducated baba like me would cure his problem!

I continued “Baccha, tumhari naadi dekhke pata chalta hai ki tum bahut acche insaan ho. Tum bahut mehnati ho.” He nodded in agreement. I have developed a knack of understanding people. See, when he said that he is an MBA, that DOES mean that he must have worked hard for exam preparation and then during his MBA education. So, what I said was just based on his words. I didn’t use any extra-terrestrial power to judge that small a thing!..hahahahahah….. finally, I took a locket out of my pocket. I kept that locket is the ash-bowl in front of me. I closed my eyes for 5 minutes. And then gave him that locket dipped in ash.

Patient: Dhanyawaad baba. Muje aap pe poora vishwaas hai. Bas meri duvidha door kar dijiye….”

I didn’t say anything. I just responded by saying “tathastu” and smiled at him so that he would feel that his work will get done. The moment he left, I started laughing like crazy. I mean, what can my locket dipped in some bloody ash do good to him? How on earth do you educated people believe in me? Hehehhe… seriously, I am sure that I am not going to let my child spend waste his precious years in getting a graduate degree. I will teach him all the tricks of fooling people and he will be well off financially.

Every day I get some 20 patients. I charge them somewhere around rs.500 to rs. 2000 – depending upon the problem and the financial status of the ‘patient’. Like, if a rich ‘patient’ comes to get his problems solved, I charge him more. And you know what, the best part is that these rich ‘patients’ are like golden goose for me. I cut them very slowly. Usually, I start with a packet of ash. Then following week, I give them a locket, then a mantra, then something , then something! Hahahahahahhaha… I love these rich ‘patients’. Thank god for giving me such fat-wallet patients!

Today let me share a few things that I do to fool my ‘patients’….

What I do	Why I do that
1) taking the hand of the patient in my hand and acting as if I am try to doing a diagnosis by feeling the vein of the patient	This basically instills a good faith in the patient. He/she feels that what I am doing is absolutely right. He/she feels that I am trying to get to the root of the problem. hehehehhe…
2) Telling the patient to take a look at his watch and then waking me up after 7 minutes 40 seconds.	Sometimes, being precise helps. See, when I tell the patient that I am going to close my eyes to talk to the evil and the god for 7 minutes and 40 seconds, the ‘patient’ first wonders why “7 minutes and 40 seconds?” then I smile at him as if I know everything about his problem. He better shut up and let me do my work. This instills a deep faith of the ‘patient’ on me.
3) putting the hand of the patient in the ash-bowl and then keeping it on the crystal ball	These kinds of weird actions makes the ‘patient’ believe that the money that they are spending is worth.
4) while point number 3 is being done, I tell the patient to chant a mantra	For Instilling more faith on me! hahahahhahaha…
5) Giving a small packet of ash and asking the patient to dip it in a well or a river which is not at polluted.	The patient starts believing that my powers have really to do something with the PURITY of the water!....

Seriously, it’s very easy to fool people. The basic reason being the frustration of the people with the illness which has been tormenting them for days or months! See, suppose you have SOME illness. You try Allopathy, homeopathy, Ayurveda, etc… even if things don’t turn out to be positive, then naturally you will do that the world finds STUPID! And that is coming to a tantrik like me! The willingness to be up and ready is stronger than the normal logic of not trusting a tantrik. Sometimes, Superstition defies science and logic! And that’s when I make money!

If you see the things from my angle, you would realize that what I am doing is not wrong or illegal. People trust me. I give them SOME medicine or ash or something. Most of the times, the patients recover soon because of the faith than what I give. Psychological help or advantage is what I indirectly give my patients. For that they pay rs.500 to rs.2000! fair deal naa?... I heal you (however it maybe) and you pay me! Simple business!

Most of the people of my fraternity are not god-fearing people. At the end of the day, I do and pooja and ask God to forgive me for sins that I did throughout the day. Sins of looting people of hundreds of people. But then, I am going to continue to do this work till the time educated people like you keep coming to me! Hahahahhaa….

Use some common sense, scientific knowledge and logic and you will realize that my tricks don’t work! These “anti-superstition” NGOs are trying to spread so much knowledge. Don’t you listen to them?

Till the day your heart rules your brain to make a decision, I am surely going to enjoy my life…!hahahhahahahaha….

Tathastu!!!

A and D of being fat….

Last month while I was alighting from the rickshaw, I gave the driver a rs. 10 ka note. Abruptly he said “uncle, chutta do naa”. I got angry and asked him if looked like uncle. He apologized and said “sorry dost, raat hai na abhi… to andhere mein samjaa nahi”…I blamed the lack of light on this fiasco.

Last month, I was talking to an old classmate(female) of mine. We were standing near the bus-stop. A small urchin came by and started begging. She looked at me and said “uncle, kuch khaane ko do…ek do rupyaa do…”. I took out the wallet from my pocket and was about to give her a 2 rupee coin. Just then she looked at my friend and said “didi, kuch khane ko”…. This was the height! My friend- my classmate was called “didi” and I was addressed as “uncle”. I got furious and kept the 2 rupee coin back in my wallet.

(The above 2 situations are imaginary. They have been added just to give a context to my article :D)

Advantages of being fat :

1) You never have to sit beside the rickshaw driver. Like, suppose that the back seats have already been occupied and then you(a fat person) approach the rickshaw. The rickshawwala will give you a wild look. You would wonder what evil you have to done to deserve such a dreaded glance. Then he will request one the guys sitting in the back seat to sit beside him and you can easily enjoy the ride to home in a FULL seat!
2) Similarly, when you travel in train, when you sitting on the 3^rd seat, no one tell you “bhaisaab, thoda andar ho jao”; because he knows that even if u move a little bit, the newly created space wouldn’t be sufficient even to keep a quarter of his butt!
3) As children, when you are fat and chubby, you grab a lot of eyeballs. The thin ones keep being jealous of you. The thin ones will complain to their moms about being neglected. Their moms tell them to read point number 3 of the “Disadvantages of being fat” section!
4) You should feel happy that you represent the KHAATAA-PEETAA family! You are symbolic of the wealth that a family possesses. Be happy!
5) You have higher chances of getting a lead role in diaper commercials where sweet chubby-chubby kids are required. Not the bichara-lukdu-sukdu ones!
6) You don’t need to learn karate or any other fight art because ur sheer size would be sufficient to terrorize anyone!
7) As children, you get to go into the hands of lot many beautiful girls than do the lukdu-sukdu ones! Needless to say, beautiful girls would like to play with someone who is chubby-chubby, with cute-cute cheeks, with sweet smile, whom they can keep saying “allle…gulllu….maaru cutu cutu….alle alle….cho chweet…” Needless to say, your moms would be proud of you. Unfortunately, the lukdu-sukdu ones don’t have these pleasures!
8) Being huge or fat, you can easily bully others and try to create a macho-impression on the beautiful girls of your class.

Disadvantages of being fat:

1) Agreed, that you never have to sit beside the rickshaw driver; but suppose amongst the 3 passengers sitting in the back seats, there are 2 beautiful girls and 1 OK types lukdu-sukdu boy. When that bichara thin guy is made to sit on the front and you-the huge beast- are made to sit beside the beautiful girls, then I am sure they might start to think – “kitnaa motaa hai be...acche se baithe they hum log…ayaa gaya…bachpan mein aunty ne bhookha rakhna chaiye tha mote ko… to aaj acchese baithneko hota tha….!” I am sure that their hidden disgruntlement would surface on their faces. Needless to say, you will keep feeling guilty of upsetting beautiful girls (if the girls were shantaa-kantaa types, then it is OK…give a damn!)
2) Agreed that when you travel in train, when you are sitting on the 3^rd seat, no one tell you “bhaisaab, thoda andar ho jao”. But can you imagine the amount of HAAY you must be getting because you are occupying the seats of the 2 ordinary people. You pay the same fare and still you don’t get a place to sit because of your big butt! You would be a lucky to not know Marathi if you are travelling in Mumbai! You would easily hear words like “jaadyaa kuthlaa..baslaay aaraamat…nusti charbi bharli aahe ye maansaat….aaine khup ghatlay shariraat… chyaa aila hyachyaaa…!!”
3) Agreed that as children, when you are fat and chubby, you grab a lot of eyeballs. But the same eyeballs will start avoiding you once you are young. Beautiful girls want handsome, slim and fit guys! Not diaper-heroes or farex-babies!
4) Practically if you see, being KHATAA-PEETAA is a bane these days. I mean, being obese is the last thing you would ask for from God.
5) Diaper commercials form the least part of all the advertisements on TV. Rest of the Ads have smart, fit, thin boys as their stars!
6) Even though you think you can bully others by your sheer size, the lukdu-sukdu ones can surely make u run like hell and take all the energy out of you!
7) The moments spent as a small child are not registered that prominently in the brains. So when you are handsome and fit in your youth, you will many more chances to impress babes than will fat, chubby guys get!
8) Sometimes, girls like well-mannered boys and not bullies who keep showing their power. So in such cases, being a fat kid would surely be of no help!

All in all, the best fit for a human being is to be chubby in childhood and fit and thin in youth and later on!... this is what I feel !!.... :-D

WTF

Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you are gonna get… – Tom Hanks in FORREST GUMP.


Life, many a time, gives us instances to be happy and the rest of the times, it makes us say ”W T F!”…

So I was thinking about the instances that screw our brains… this is not an exhaustive list… I have tried my best to jot down what the moments when our brains get screwed…

You might want to shout out loud “WTF” when….:

1) You spend the whole day with your girlfriend/boyfriend and after an almost sleepless night you wake up with a Beep of your mobile. You smile and take the mobile in your hand and expect a sweet SMS from her/him and find out the SMS – VX-CITIBANK-Your credit card bill worth 15,835 has been dispatched to your address!

2) The recession is over, the company profits are amazing, the number of the projects coming into company is increasing and still the CEO of your company announces “There will be no increments this year. We are doing this so that if we get hit by a recession next year, we should be able to sustain ourselves”.

3) You are standing on the railway platform waiting for a train. You let 5 trains go hoping that the 6th train would be empty enough to let you in. But then you meet the same fate for the 6th train as you met for the earlier 5!

4) You spend 3 years in a company. You had worked really hard. You expected a promotion, increment and an Onsite opportunity. But then, your company gets bankrupt because of recession and leave aside promotion, increment and Onsite opportunity, you reach a stage when you forward your resume to all your friends and still end up not changing the company for 6 months! Extra 6 months of frustrations!

5) Election day arrives. One set of Politicians tries it best to convince why they are lesser evil than the other parties. You think twice before voting. Finally you choose to give vote to a very educated, promising and honest independent candidate. You go the voting booth, stand in the queue for 2 hrs under the sun and then when the elections are declared you find your candidate being bought by the party you hated the most …

6) It is a stormy night. The lightning keeps scaring you. Your desktop does not have a UPS. You are supposed to give a PPT to your CEO the next day. A very big day for you. You work on the PPT for the whole night. You save your PPT but then unfortunately, a surge of lightning crashes the mother board of your desktop. You end up SMSing your boss – I am suffering from typhoid. Won’t be able to come to office. … And then the colleague you hate the most ends up giving an amazing PPT to the CEO!

7) Your locality never faces a water cut. So you never care to store water. You go to have a bath. You turn on the shower and lather your body with soap. Suddenly, the shower betrays you. No water to wash even your eyes. You take the towel and rub your eyes and come out and end up using the only source of water that was available in the house – drinking water in the Matkaa!

8) You shift to a new company hoping that you would encounters babes or beautiful girls. You start imagining scenes were you are the Krishna of all the babes in the new company. Finally, you end up being a part of a 40 member team which has only 8 girls and out of those 8 girls 7 are married and the rest 1 girl has recently got engaged to someone!

9) Your BF/GF had told you to come ONLINE at 4.00 in the evening to chat. There is a blast in your nearby electric-house. You are not able to access your PC. You rush to a nearby cyber café to find out that you have to wait for at least 40 minutes to log on and chat with you GF/BF. At 5.00 PM, the BF/GF gets frustrated of waiting for you and assumes that you are no more interested in the relationship!

10) You are given an Onsite opportunity to USA. You are damn happy. You give your friends a lavish party because you know that you will now earn in dollars. You do a lot of shopping. You pack your bags and take blessings from elders. Your neighbours come and greet you and tell you that they are very proud of you. The next day just as you are about to leave for the airport, you get a call from your boss – “hi XYZ, I am sorry to tell you that the project has been scrapped. Sorry”… next day, you become the talk of the building! (this is a true incident. It happened to one of my friends!!)

11) You to a fancy restaurant with your GF. You both eat happily. The bill comes to around rs. 2000. You pull out your wallet from your pocket. You try to search for the credit card, only to find out that your mom had taken the credit card from your wallet the previous day because she doesn’t believe in living on credit. You try to search for any cash. Later on you come to know that your dear sister was in dire need of money, so she had taken the cash from your wallet. Now you just smile at your GF and ask her if she can loan you rs.2000!!!!

12) You buy a DVD from a CD-DVD wala on the footpath near station. You were told that the DVD had latest hindi movies. You go home and your mom and dad tell you that they would like to see the new hindi movies with you. You gladly put the DVD in the DVD player. All of a sudden, something-which you never want to see in front of your parents – pops up! Your parents stare at you. you try your best to explain them that goof-up happened not your end. You trusted the DVDwala. You would wish Dharti maataa tumhe nigal le…!!!

13) You are sitting with your Girlfriend in a park. there is no noise pollution. because of some pulses or Chana that you had for lunch, gases start getting generated in your digestive system. Needless to say there is only one outlet for those gases twirling in your stomach. Tactfully you try to give those gases a passage..so that there is minimum noise. But, unfortunately, you happen to sneeze and you fart out loud!!!!!.... you can't do anything except wish that your GF were deaf!!!

Because Dipen Eats Chicken…..

This April I turned 26. Being a gujju, I had already passed the expiry date of being suitable for marriage. I mean, by 26, a gujju needs to have at least one bakuli or a baku at home, he needs to be worried about which pre-school to choose for bakuli or baku. To add to these worries, you have Stock markets falling, government banning gutkhas, etc..!!..

I personally feel that I am a nice person. I work one of the best software companies in the world – HP. I have a good package. I, being an engineer from a very good college in Mumbai, thought that I would get any beautiful girl that I like to be my life partner! Only to realize that there are many more things to get an approval from WOULD-BE-FATHER-IN-LAW than just being engineer or working in HP or having a good salary..!!

For some reason I don’t prefer gujju girls. But still, because my mom is a very pro-gujju-bahu types, I thought ‘let me c how gujju girls are …’. Ekdum happy happy, I told my mama that I want to get married. Needless to say, my mama was damn happy. Since last 2-3 years I had been followed up for marriage. I was told that because of my resistance to marriage, I had lost 3 extremely good proposals. The girls were beautiful, were B.Com, were slim, could play Dandiyaa very well, were all-time Navraatri winners in their respective districts, knew how to cook Undhyoo, could talk in English, knew how to send an SMS and make and receive phone calls, could read bus-boards written in English, knew how to change password of their email ids, knew how to operate a computer, knew how to transfer money online, knew how to get new pass-books from banks, etc… I sighed because I missed the 3 best COULD-HAVE-BEEN-LIFE-PARTNERs!

I gave my details to mama. I was very happy because my credentials were very good. I was expecting a very good and well-educated girl to be my life-partner. 3-4 days later I got a phone call from my mama. He told me to take a pen in my hand and write down the details of the girl... u shld have seen the smile on my face… it was as if I was about to write the details of some gujurati-aishwarya rai!...

Height: 5 feet 3 inches

Colour : wheatish

Education : B.com, thinking of doing M.com.

Name : xyz (withheld for security reasons! J)

With a pen in my right hand and mobile in my left hand, the line went dead for some 5-6 seconds. I said “hello mama...u there?” Mama said “yes, beta. I am done with the details. This is all the info that I have”. Being a normal human being, you must have imagined the shock on my face...Right???? I mean, I was supposed to imagine a girl based on 4 attributes – height, colour, education and name!... I guess cracking CAT and getting into IIM Ahmadabad would be simpler than imagining the life partner using just 4 parameters!

My mama continued “but, beta, the girl is very sweet and beautiful. I have seen her. When she smiles, dimples appear in cheeks. She makes very nice tea.” I interrupted mama “but, mama, how about a photo? I mean, how can I judge whether I should go to Rajkot-720 kms from Mumbai, just on the basis of 4 parameters?... at least they should send the photo of hers so that I can decide whether she matches the diabetes-inducing fairy ingrained in my mind!”. Mama sighed. He had not encountered such a questioning-nephew before. He said “beta Dipen, they won’t give her photo. Even though the girl knows internet, she would not be allowed to send her photo”. Now I sighed. See, if the WOULD-BE-FATHER-IN-LAW is not willing to share her beautiful daughter’s photo, then there is nothing I can do from my side. Except for booking 2 tickets to Rajkot and meeting the girl in person! I was highly skeptical about meeting the girl because in all my visits to my home town I had rarely seen a beautiful girl as per my standards. I surrendered to my mama’s assurance that the girl was indeed like I had always imagined.

After a week, I booked two 3 tier A/C tickets to Rajkot. Man, was I excited to meet future Mrs. XYZ Dipen Ambalia! I even started imagining scenes where I introduce her to my boss as “hi Varun, meet xyz, my wife. Ane xyz, aa che Varun, maaraa boss”. Pheww!! Needless to say, I was jittery because I was going to meet a probable life partner!

I started discussing hows and whats of choosing a life partner. I mean, what to ask, what not to ask, how to behave in front of the WOULD-BE-FATHER-IN-LAW, what to look out for in the would-be-life-partner, how much to eat when the girl brings snacks and tea, how to end the whole meeting if I liked the girl, what to say if I don’t like the girl, how to evaluate the reponses, etc… My SETTLED friends guided me a lot. 4 days before the D-day, I thought of clarifying one thing that had been unsettling my mind since a long time. That was – whether the WBFIL (now I wont keep writing WOULD-BE-FATHER-IN-LAW, I tired.) would accept the fact that I eat CHICKEN!... WBFILs in gujurat are highly bent on having a son-in-law who is pure VEG! even if the son-in-law eats Gutkha, Tobacco, maavaa, etc – that doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter whether the son-in-law is an engineer or works in an MNC or has clean character! The most important thing is HE SHOULD BE A VEGGIE!...

I knew that my being a non-veggie would be a problem. So I called up m mama and told him to tell the WBFIL that I won’t give up chicken and fish for anyone on earth. Not even for Preity Zinta. You won’t be surprised to hear that my mama rebuked me a lot for eating chicken and more than that he scolded me for being so bold to ask him to convey this SHOCKING news to the WBFIL. He then asked me to talk to my mom about my stubborness of being a non-veggie. I didn’t budge. More than a liking for non-veg, it was now more of a “why can’t they accept this” kind-of an issue. I mean, I wasn’t going to stuff fish or chicken in the girl’s mouth! Usko nahi khana to na khaye... why should I give up non-veg for her!...simple..! After a lot of deliberation, I told my mama to tell the WBFIL that I won’t give up chicken. My mama did as I requested him to do.

The WOULD-BE-IN-FATHER-IN-LAW turned into a COULD-HAVE-BEEN-A-FATHER-IN-LAW. I was straight away rejected for eating chicken. He was not ready to have a son-in-law who eats chicken. My good credentials couldn’t compensate my being a non-veggie! I didn’t lose heart. Because I couldn’t have tolerated having such people around me. Mama told me “ beta, Dipen, they rejected you because you eat chicken!”…. What on earth would happen if I ate chicken??????

Now she is married to a crorepati in Ahmadabad. Lucky she was! Sukarm kiya hoga XYZ ne! Otherwise she would have to live in a rented 1 BHK in Kalyan and travel in jam-packed trains in Mumbai and then crib about what Kukarm she must have done to deserve me as a life partner!!! “Jo hota hai acche ke liye hota hai” proved to be right for her!

All in all, I am sure that I am no WOULD-BE-FATHER-IN-LAW from Gujarat would allow her daughter to spend her life with me…and now you know why….because Dipen eats chicken!!!!!!!!

So now, my only option is some beautiful non-gujju girl.!!..... I hope my target audience is reading this blog…:-)

Those 3 alphabets….!!!

7.10 am, 12 April 1983 was the time and day when god thought of blessing this world by making me a part of it! :-D…

Just before dispatching me to earth, God gave His aide the surname, address of the family I was supposed to be a part of. That aide, I suppose, was a very careless person.

God had suggested the surname as ambaNI. But that stupid fellow messed up the last 3 alphabets! That’s how I ended up being an ambaLIA!!...

Not that I m not happy about being an AMBALIA. It’s just that life would have been very different if I were an AMBANI!....so, I thought of jotting down what difference my life would have experienced if I were an ambaNI instead of an ambaLIA!!!

 

Being an ambaNI	Being an ambaLIA
1) I don’t have to mention the floor number of the building where I stay (because the whole ANTILLA would be mine)	1) I specifically have to mention which floor I stay on.
2) I can go to Australia in a christmas holidays, to US in Summer Holidays and to brazil if I want to enjoy a safari. It would be a thrilling experience to see animals living in the wild and enjoying nature.	2) I go to Rajkot on Diwalis and to Jijabai Udyaan if I want to enjoy a safari! Needless to say, it would be saddening to see animals cry in the 5 walled cages in the zoo.
3) I face a problem of plenty as far as cars is concerned. I would be in a dilemma as to whether I should take Bentely or a BMW or a Porshe while going to a nearby restaurant.	3) I face a problem of scarcity as far as means of reaching station is concerned. I don’t get rickshaws to reach station. Half the distance, I have to share a seat beside the rickshaw driver. The rest of the distance I crib about the traffic.
4) I can gift a plane to my wife	4) the maximum I can think of gifting my wife is a Honda Activa!
5) I would have a confusion as to which bathroom I have to use to enjoy my morning showers…	5) I don’t have any confusion as far as having a shower is concerned!... there is just one bathroom. Problem solved!
6) I don’t have to worry about train derailment, trains halting at signals, odour-testing in trains, etc.	6)the moment I leave kalyan station, I start thinking whether the train will reach dadar at the right time so that I don’t miss the connecting MALAD fast local to reach Goregaon!
7) I don’t have to worry about appraisals, increments, rebuke by bosses for coming late to office.	7) in times of recession, I better reach office on time, I better complete work before time, I better outperform others so that I good appraisals and hence good increments…
8) I can’t sleep well in the night fearing how the markets will perform the next day	8) once I leave office, I give a damn about the office!... I should get my salary on time.! That’s it!...
9) I always have a threat from my business opponents who might want to kill me.	9) the only living things that I fear are the dogs outside our compound! Let aside any human being as an opponent!
10) I get to live with the pretentious world of the riches	10) I got to live with all my dear NRCites!... that means a lot lot lot to me!... the old days spent in NRC are more valuable to me than the riches one would get in ANTILLA. I am very happy with a simple, middle-class childhood that I have had!

And so and so forth…. After having lived the life of an ambaLIA, I want to see how life would be being born as a ambaNI… God, are you listening???!!..

WHAT TO DO IN SOMEONE ELSE’S PRESENTATION…

These are a few things that you can do in someone else’s presentation:

1) Without looking at the bottom of the slide, try to guess the total number of slides.

2) Try praying to god to create hindrances in the ongoing presentation. This will prove to you whether god loves to listen to your prayers or not. If the presentation encounters a problem, you can smirk and wink looking at the ceiling to thank god for listening to your prayers. Now that you know that God is in a good mood to listen to your prayers, make sure that ask for more favors from God. Ask for a better job, salary, onsite opportunity, good raise, promotion, no work, a beautiful girl/handsome guy in your team…etc…

3) Be a critic. In real life you won’t get many chances to criticize someone else or someone else’s work product. Presentations are a great place to realize your wish of becoming a critic. Try to find out flaws with the content or logic in the slides.

4) Show off. PPTs are a great place to show off your knowledge, creativity and innovativeness. Whenever you get a chance to point out an alternate way to reach a solution, do so. Managers normally don’t attend the Presentations to learn the domain or to understand a problem. Presentations are a great platform for the managers to know who in the team is contributing how much! So, make sure that you do come up with alternate solutions; in short Showoff!

5) Take revenge. Normally, in office, you would meet people who you hate and whose names figure in your “I am gonna screw (not literally) him/her” list. So make sure that you go through the PPT before your opponent’s actual presentation. This will help you in coming up with unanswerable questions which will surely stump the presenter and then you can smirk at his/her helplessness! In short outsmart your presenter.

6) Appreciate the PPT. A normal human being that you are, you would have a heart. Right?.... Someday even you could give a good PPT. There is an old saying “Give X to get X”. So make sure that you appreciate good PPTs.

7) Blame the boring PPT for world recession. Think of adequate reasons.

8) Act as if you are taking notes and then keep enhancing your sketching skills. Try towards fulfillment of your childhood dream of becoming a good sketch-artist.

9) Try learning Short-Hand…Imagine how difficult it must be for newspaper reporters to note what top-officials have to say in press conferences!

10) Try switching off your ears and then lip-read the presenter.

11) Now close your eyes and try imagining the contents of the PPT and the body language of the presenter.

12) Try to read and understand the body language of others who are attending the PPT and gauge if others and you are on the same level of boredom. Think of some test that you could make other attendees take to determine who topped the ‘boredom’ table!

13) Look at your manager. Learn how he suppresses his urge to dash away from the room because of the bland PPT.

14) Scribble enough on your notepad to show that you were very much interested in the PPT and then keep that page open when you get back to your desk. Bosses love employees with scribbled notes!

15) Jot down points that you like to copy from the on-going presentation to your presentation(if you happen to give someday)

16) Imagine that you are BILL GATES and imagine dressing down the presenter for disrespecting MICROSOFT-PPT by making such a worthless PPT.

17) Send some SMSes to your colleagues in the meeting room.

18) Come out with fake laughs which you can use when the presenter is trying to crack some apparently witty jokes.

19) Try some neck exercises. That will make the presenter feel that you are concurring with his points.

20) If you are bored with the PPT, take your mobile close to your ears and so “hello…hello…1 min…” and then go out of the room. Make sure your mobile is on SILENT mode to avoid any humiliation out of any chance of your mobile ringing when you are faking your monologue “hello…hello…1 min…”!

21) Try doing a [1]SHAVAASAN* if you are really bored with the PPT. you can’t help if the PPT is realllllllllly bad. God save your soul!

22) Keep OBSERVING the people around you to see if there is anyone else who shares the same feeling as you do.

23) Unnecessarily smile at some colleague of yours. This will create a mystery in his/her mind and also a mystery in the minds of others who were busy OBSERVING you. This will give rise to the energy level in the room.

24) Look at your watch 2- 3 times in 1 minute. This will make the presenter realize that you are getting bored and maybe he will try to cut down a few slides from the PPT.

25) Try verifying whether the speed with which you can count 60 seconds in a minute is the same as the actual time your watch takes.

26) Roll your tongue on your teeth and count the number of teeth. If you make even a small mistake, re-do the counting!

27) Get up and go to the pantry to have a cup of coffee.

28) Try to recollect who invented the projector. If you are not able to recollect the name, SMS your friends. Whoever replies back with the right answers wins the farthest seat in the next presentation!

29) If you get really bored, start coughing loudly. That will make others look at you as if you were doing a Salsa on a funeral! A gentleman/lady that you are, your will leave the room so that you don’t disturb others. And you can then heave a sigh of relief! Sit on your desk. Check mails. Play games for 15 minutes and then again join the group of morons attending the utterly disgusting PPT.

30) If the presenter is pissed off on you, then say words like “oh…yes..” or “ yes..right..ok..” or “oho… understood”…or “ok…got it”… This will surely make him believe that you are trying to pay attention; whereas actually speaking, you were thinking about point number 36!

31) In case your boss notices that you were not paying attention to the PPT, be sure that you ask the presenter question like “ok…I understood what you said…but how will that work in our system?.. I mean we have X and you are suggesting Y… so I am a LITTLE confused… could you please elaborate?”

32) Try to recollect phone numbers of your dear friends. If you are not able to recollect, check the address-book in your phone and then try to memorize…even then if you are not able to keep the phone number in your mind, then don’t try any further …just give up...! You must surely be one of those who had read only the MOST EXPECTED QUESTIONS TO BE ASKED IN AN INTERVIEW!

33) Stare at your palm and then see what evil deed did you do to deserve such a boring PPT!

34) Think of changing the company

35) Play old games like FLAME, X and O, etc.

36) Play games on your mobile

37) Try to recollect the headlines of that day’s newspaper.

38) Try to visualize the PPT in a slow-motion.

39) There’s a popular saying – “bad things happen to bad people”. Try to analyze whether you are a bad person and if YES, then to what extent so as to deserve such a criminal waste of your precious time (which otherwise you could have used to play TT, play computer games, sleep…etc)?

40) Think like an interior designer and think of changes that you could have brought to the room where the PPT is going on.

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[1] Shavaasan is a form of YOGA wherein you just try to lose track of the things going around and just relax your brain, if you have one!

My Theory Of Origin Of Presentations….

The first PPT that I attended was one that I sat through 5.5 years ago. After the PPT was over, I had done a google on “how did PPTs originate?” and sorry to say that Google, for the first time, didn’t come up with expected results! Then, on my route to home, I kept thinking why some highly intellectual moron (probably some B.Tech +M.Tech+Ph.D) must have come up with PPTs. And here is my theory of how PPTs originated.

The earliest form of PPT dates back to the Primitive-age! In those days of primates, meetings and presentations used to be held inside the caves to avoid being eaten by tigers, bears, leopards if meetings and PPTs were held in the open.

It all began with the love blooming in the hearts of a caveman of one tribe and the princess of the other tribe. There was a fierce battle between the 2 tribes –one of the ordinary-in-love-caveman and the one of the princess. A lot of blood, time, stones, spears and food was spent in those wars and then someone put forward a suggestion that the ordinary-in-love-caveman go to the king of the other tribe and convince him as to why the beautiful princess belonged to the ordinary-in-love-caveman.

Our hero - ordinary-in-love-caveman- then spent one full night to think of reasons as to why he was the best of all cavemen. He thought of some 5-6 reasons and gathered ample number of convincing statistics to prove his point. He gave a mock rehearsal in front of his cavemen and then next day he went to the King of the other tribe and said -

“ohhh…laalaa..zoozozozo…. okkoook….aaa..eee..uuuu….. …….. “.
He gestured a lot.

He rambled a lot.

He threw a lot of facts about his achievements and what he will do for the princess.

He used a lot of words related to “progress”, “satisfaction”, “eternal benefits”, “overall growth”, etc.

He proved other cavemen to be [1]hubaalloolaaboo*.

He went on relentlessly for 30 minutes.

The king got confused. Later on he got convinced.
The king had never encountered such a good convincing-session! He became very happy and gave her daughter’s hand as a present to the ordinary-in-love-caveman. That day on, the convincing-sessions began to be known as Presentations. (Using one word is better than using the combination of convincing-sessions. This was a more prominent reason than the caveman-story described above.)

Let me put a chart of comparison to show that the contemporary PPTs are a derivative of the primitive cave discussions.

Primitive days	Contemporary PPTs
1) Pointed stones	1) Lasers or remotes or sketch pens
2) Whitest portion in the cave	2) A whiteboard with sketch pens hanging on the side of the whiteboard
3) A few pictures, symbols, lines, etc.	3) Microsoft PPTs with boxes, diamonds, lines, pictures lifted from the net, content copied from the net, PPT format copied from some already existing PPT, etc
4) Futile attempt to prove that your point is definitely right.	4) Convincing all the attendees that the point put forward is a ‘never-thought-before’ idea and that could change the way your company works, increase the revenue of the company, increase the sales of the company and ultimately lead to a rise in salary of the people. The attendees will then better listen to the ‘salary-increment-inducing’ PPT of yours.
5) Throwing pointed stones at the sleeping attendees of the PPT.	5) Taking names of the sleeping attendees and asking them “X, do you have anything to add here?”
6) Crazy amount of swearing to wake up the sleepy cavemen attending your PPT	6) Repeatedly asking questions like “does anyone have any doubt?” Louder each time!
7) Moving on to the adjoining wall to make your next point.	7) Moving on to the next slide.
8) Wrapping up your Presentation by saying “hee..aaa..zoolllooooo…eee..aaa… akkaaaa…oooo….zoolllooooo.”.	8) Wrapping up your PPT by saying “I hope there are no questions. If there are any, please mail me.” and then swearing to god to take revenge in other’s presentations for the all the humiliations that others must have caused to you in your presentation.

In today’s world, Presentations are used to merely to impress bosses. The higher number of PPTs you give in a financial year, the better are your chances of getting a better rating than other hubaalloolaaboo* in your team.

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[1] hubaalloolaaboo is an imaginary creature with sleepy eyes, a highly retarded brain, spiky hair, round nose, flared nostrils, eyebrows like the dense bushes of the forest and bodies of 90 year-old bears.

Marriages….

Marriage, according to me, is the most complex relation to get into! You would agree too!
Now that I have reached the age where I need to get into this ‘complex relationship’, I thought of analyzing it further. On my travel to office, sometimes when I am not reading a book or writing an article for my blog, I do try to think ki meri life partner kaun hogi, kaisi hogi, kahaan ki hog, gujju hogi, Marathi hogi, B.E. hogi, MBA hogi, sweet hogi, beautiful hogi, soft-spoken hogi, gussewaali hogi etc.??? (Empty mind is devil’s workshop!)
Types of marriage: broadly 2 types : Arranged and Love !

Arranged Marriages :  The one in which you are given a photo of a girl or a boy living some 100s of kms from your home, someone whom you must never have met or imagined, someone whom you must have pictured at all (the assumption here is that one normally does try to create a default image of a life-partner, because not everyone can get an aishwarya or a shahrukh!). in this type of marriage, normally the boy’s parents and the boy go the girl’s house and try to figure out whether the “other side” is apt for their status. The girl then comes out of the kitchen and brings chai, kahdapohaa, samosa, etc. made “exclusively by her” (it’s only later on that you come to know that the samosas made by her and the ones made in a nearby snacks-corner taste the same!). The boy shyly asks the girl about her name, qualification, house-handling skills, etc. The would-be-mother-in-laws interrupt to add on to the existing qualities of the boy or girl. Like for eg, even if the girl has never ever tried making “undhyoo” in her life, the would-be-mother-in-law states with full confidence that NO ONE in the whole of gujurat can make “undhyoo” like her daughter makes. That makes the boy’s side very happy. Because, knowing how to make “undhyoo” is more important that knowing basic mathematics like “3 + 2 = 5”! And yes, the would-be-mother-in-law can confidently state the expertise of her daughter’s because she knows that there is lot of time between that day and the day her daughter gets married.
The girl then asks the boy questions like “what is your favorite dish?”, “which school did you study in” , “etc. (it’s later on girl gathers courage to ask why the boy chose her, what his expectations are, whether she would be allowed to carry on with her job, etc..). The girl’s and boy’s side then sign the MoU (memorandum of understanding) that they have liked each other’s kids and would like the carry the process further.
The date is then finalized. The boy and girl start getting nervous because since the day they talked to each other for the first time and the ‘doom’s day’, they have hardly talked to each other for some 10-15 times. Both of them pray to god to assure them that the decision that they have taken is a right decision!...

Advantages of arranged marriage:
1) The level of understanding or adjustment is higher than in other types of marriages because you know that in just 10- 15 times of ‘phone conversation’, its not possible for one to know the other fully! So its implicit that there are going to be a few things that might come up as “surprise” and the other half has to take that “surprise” as if it were as simple as “sun rises in the east”.
2) You can easily blame your parents or relatives in case the marriage goes haywire!... you can keep making others feel guilty for the rest of their lives, (of course you would be the most torn-apart..)
3) there won’t be those “you have changed a lot, you were not like this before” types of fights!

Disadvantages of arranged marriage :
1) I feel that it is very important that the boy and girl know each other before spending the second half of their lives! Without proper understanding, it would be very difficult to lead a happy life…
2) knowing each other’s moods, nature is more important than knowing whether she knows how to use computer, whether she can do an online money transfer, whether she can cook “undhyoo”, whether she can speak English well….etc
3) when a boy goes to meet a girl for the first time, it obvious that the boy is going to act as if he is some saint and has never had an affair and the girl is going to act as if she were “tulsi” of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (those who have not heard abt this serial, pls use google!). So, the point is that the NATURAL YOU is not exposed in such short-time meetings…. This dreads me a lot!

Love Marriages : The boy is sitting on his motorcycle and chatting with his friends. The girl is going to college with her friends. Suddenly a light whiff of wind makes the girl’s hair brush against her sweet face. The boy’s eyes are about to pop out like you see in cartoons! The boy follows the girl. The girl thinks that the boy is some pervert. The boy tries to convince her a lot. They talk to each other in the class. They talk to each other in the canteen. They talk to each other in the theater. Finally either of them proposes (normally the boy does). The either one agrees. They forget that are other human beings on this planet who might oppose them. But love is undefeatable, they think. They share this “breaking news” with parents. The parents are stunned to the core. Normally the father has his dreams of marrying his daughter in a Dhoom Dhaam manner (I wonder why he won’t do so in case it is a love marriage!). a lot of drama happens in both the houses. Finally love triumphs. The boy and girl get married.

Advantages of love marriage:
1) You know each other very well and so you know what act of ours will irk the other half. You would try to avoid doing what the other half doesn’t like…
2) You have the satisfaction that you are spending the life with the person that you wanted to be with!
3) You are happy that you took the most important decision of your life by yourself!
(I personally would prefer marrying a non-gujju because – see, I have spent 26 years following gujju culture, now i want some change in life. I want some deviation from normal. So suppose if my wife is southie or a Marathi then definitely there is going to be a vast difference in culture, food, style of living, etc. I would love to break the monotony in life by marrying a non-gujju! Non-gujju girls, are you reading this blog?? :-))

Disadvantages of love marriage:
1) Chances are high that one might take the other for granted. (a lot of my “love married” frnds have told me this)
2) With all the good points like “sweet smile, sugar-coated giggling” might also come “hot-temper” which you would know earlier also and there is no going back!
3) “why should I adjust?. You knew me well before marriage…that time you were OK and now….” These words might resound many times in the house. Arranged marriages won’t have such excuses, I feel.
All in all, each type has its pitfalls and advantages. Its upto one to figure out what is expected in a life partner….. at least, I am trying to figure out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :-)….

All in all, I would say that Respect in the relationship matters the most... Respect for what you are, respect for your thoughts and beliefs, respect for your past  is what should be the base for any relation. Then it doesnt matter whether your life partner is a mallu, marathi, punjabi, etc...!

9.42 CST Slow – 5th bogie.

(This article is a fiction)

There are 2 dates that I can never ever forget in my life. The first one is 19th dec 2005. That was the day when I lost my vision. I lost the chance to see the beauty of this world because of one mistake of Dr.Sharma. He is one the most trusted eye-surgeons of this city. But still, God had something planned for me. HE was envious of my happiness and threw me in the pit of darkness.


The second date that I can never forget is 10th November 2007. That was the day when I proposed her and had our engagement ceremony in the 5th bogie of 9.42 Kalyan Slow. 5th bogie in a 9-rake train is normally reserved for the visually- handicapped, mentally- handicapped and cancer patients.


It all started with my visits to the teaching sessions at Rajawadi school- a school for the mentally handicapped kids.


I, Vikram Jadhav, aged 23 years, hold a BA in arts and have learned sign language and also have undergone a correspondence course for psychology. Since childhood I have had a soft corner ‘Special people’. Till date I don’t understand why God makes someone one handicapped – whether it is physically, mentally, visually,etc. That is the primary reason why I am an atheist.


She-I mean vidya-, aged 20 years, studies in Rajawadi school for mentally handicapped people. She is one of the toppers of her class. Out of the class of 28 students, I find her the cutest, most innocent and the most intelligent. The 2 qualities of hers that I like the most is her compassion towards others and her concern for everyone. I have never seen a day when Vidya had not completed her home-work. But when it comes to class-work, she scores very low. The main reason here is that she spends a lot of time in helping all her friends and she forgets that she has to complete her work too. This quality of hers is what every human being on this earth should learn. I have high respect for Vidya for these 2 qualities.


By the way, because of my compassion towards the ‘special kids’, I had taken a part-time job of teaching at the Rajawadi school for mentally challenged kids. From May 2003 upto May 2005, I taught those ‘special kids’.The school used to start at 11.30 AM. So, i used to board the 9.42 CST slow from Kalyan station. i never travelled except for the first class bogie. Vidya, the brightest of all those kids, was my most favorite student. Once, I had given a sum for all the students to solve.


Q: A tree has 30 birds perched on it. A hunter comes and shoots 10 birds. How many birds are left on the tree?


Out of 28 students, only she had the courage to go forward and solve the question on the board. She came to the board, took the chalk in her hand and took just 2 minutes to solve the question. I was so happy that she solved that question in 2 minutes. I always kept dairy milk chocolate in my pocket. I don’t why I had the conviction that she would be the one who come forward to face any challenge that I gave to the whole class. I was not sure that whether I had started liking her. On one hand I felt that it had started loving her. On the other hand my mind kept telling me “She is a mentally challenged girl. Your parents won’t accept that. And even the society wouldn’t accept that. What your relatives say when they come to know that I am marrying a mentally challenged girl?...”. But love is blind.


For 2 years i.e. during my stint at Rajawadi municipal school, I met Vidya’s mother every day. Vidya and Aunty used to board the 9.42 CST slow from Kalyan. They used to sit in the 5th bogie which is a special bogie. Aunty used to come to the school to drop her and then take her in the afternoon at 3.00 PM. Whenever I used to narrate any incident of Vidya being the best in the class, aunty used to start crying. I could understand what she must be feeling. In 2 years time, even aunty had started liking me as her son. Neither she nor I knew that I would turn out to be her son-in-law. I used to try my best to teach the kids how to behave in public, how to speak clearly, how to talk to elders, etc. But, one thing that I never had to teach them was to be creative; because I felt that they are creative people. It’s just that their creativity is different from our creativity. We all judge others as per standards fixed by society. But, people like Vidya are happy in their own world. And I strongly feel that they don’t need to be what the whole world thinks. For them, the world is how they perceive it. And perspectives are never right or wrong. Judgments are never right or wrong. What is wrong is taking a side and judging the other person as different.


One thing I hate about life is the unpredictability. I sometimes feel that God must give us a blueprint of what our whole life-span so that we can make the most out of it. And I am saying this because I wanted to do so many things before the unfortunate incident of losing my vision happened. It so happened that once, around mid 2005, I had some pain in my left eye. I went to the most famous surgeon in my area- Dr.Sharma. He had the cleanest track record until I became his patient. He suggested some eye drops. But, unfortunately those eye drops had adverse reaction on my eyes and 18th dec 2005 was the last day I saw my parents and the beautiful world around. And Vidya too. For 3 months, I couldn’t control my frustration. Was I being punished for being an atheist? I was ready to say “sorry” to God any number of times as HE wanted me to. But then I guess the blueprint of my life had such an unfortunate incident etched in it. I had to face it. Needless to say, I hadn’t been to the Rajawadi school since I had lost my vision.


4 months passed by. I was sleeping in my bedroom. Phone rang. I answered the call. On the other side of the line was Vidya’s mother. She was shocked to hear about the saddest incident in my life. I couldn’t hold my tears. Neither could she. After all I was her daughter’s favorite sir. Vidya greeted me “good afternoon sir”. Vidya’s face flashed in front of my eyes. I could easily visualize her greeting me with her innocent smile and brightly lit eyes. “good afternoon dear vidya”, I greeted back. She said “Mumma told me that now u are blind?”. The word “blind” hurt me really bad. But it was OK because Vidya said that. Silence ensued her question. Then I heard voices of her sobbing. I couldn’t control myself. I cried too.


I don’t know why, but my liking for Vidya had turned more into Love. I mean, when my vision was proper, I had never thought of Vidya as a person whom I would love and would want as a life partner. But now, with my vision lost, I was dying to see her. I was dying to take her hand in my hand and ask her whether she would like to spend the rest of her life with me! I know that my mother would have resented earlier. But now, even my mother wouldn’t say NO to my decision of spending life with Vidya. Circumstances make you change your decisions.


The next day I went to Vidya’s place and talked about my willingness to marry Vidya. Aunty couldn’t hold her tears. Both families agreed. Vidya too. I know that Vidya won’t be able to understand the true meaning of love, marriage and husband. But still, I am there to care for her and she is there to care for me. And there was one more thing that was common between us - the 9.42 CST Slow from kalyan.


Finally, on 10th Nov 2007, in the 9.42 CST slow, 5th bogie, Vidya and I exchanged rings. Now, she had one more family member to care for her life. And same was applicable for me. 9.42 CST slow, 5th bogie will always be special for me. 2 hearts melted to become one. 2 lives joined to become one.

Documentaries....

this is the first documentary in the series of documentaries on some random topics related to social topics and more....

1) this one is on ill-effects of alcoholism:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD4upGcvp1U

NRC Colony Diwali Days…..

One of the best vacations of our school days used to be the Diwali vacation.

Diwali holidays, though short, used to awaited like an Olympic gold medal that india had been waiting for many years… I distinctly remember those childhood days when we used to build Killa in my garden. Making a Killa used to be a collaborative effort. We – Sangeeta, Saaru, Chirag, snehal, avinash, parulben and myself used to make sure that our Killa was the strongest.

Killa making used to start with first getting the bricks from somewhere. That ‘somewhere’ could be other’s garden, kachrapatti, etc. That was followed by thinking about the spacing inside the Killa. Undar kitna sipaahi rakhna ye socho. Bahar se kaisa dikhna chaiye ye socho. Mixing the appropriate amount of “matti” and “paani” used to be a decider in the strength of the Killa. Then came the decision as to kitna sipaahi laana hai, kaunsa colour ka laana hai, kidhar kidhar khada rakhana hai sipaahi ko… adjoining a Killa used to be a small pond …

The joy that used to surface on our faces was incomparable. I guess making a Killa as per your expectations used to be a big thing! Now I wonder what small small things used to make us proud of ourselves! Another memorable thing was to go around the colony to see how good and attractive others’ Killas were!

Those were days when I, in my gallery and Saaru and Sangi, in their gallery, used to keep chitchatting while exploding laxmi bomb, lavangi, etc. Anaar, chakri, rocket, sound-bomb, sootli bomb fodne mein bahut maja aata tha..! igniting a rocket at early age used to be a sign of bravery! Kids used to like hearing statements like “ baccha hai , fir bhi darta nahi ..mann naa padega”..!! and the same was applicable to sootli bombs. Igniting Sootli bombs used to be another testimony to the fact that you were brave!

Playing dabba-ice-pice used to be a pleasure. And not to forget chor police. Wo roll ka chota chota dabba jeb mein rakhna… wo actual lagnewale pistol lena,….!

How can I forget the “Sursuri”! The best thing I liked in diwali fataka celebration used to be making the tree in my garden sparkle with a number of lit “Sursuris”. Jagmagaataa hua tree!!

Another thing that is worth recollecting is eating diwali sweets and chivdaa and poori… not to forget the exchanging of ‘Thaali’ with all the people you liked very much. My mom used to warn me every time I went to give a Thaali to others -“ aamaa thi khaato nahi”.. . :)…I was a foodie! So such instructions were necessary. Chori tab pakdi jaati jab White steps pe ‘Karanji’ ka discussion ho aur koi mummy ko pooche “kya manisha, ye time karanji nahi banaya tune?” And then mummy used to realize that those transmission losses were caused by me!!! :)…

Baaki sab aunties ne kya banaya hai wo khaane mein bahut majaa aata tha. Dear Vatsala aunty ki ”chawal ki kheer” mein kuch alag hi maja tha! Yesterday I had been to Saaru and Sangi’s home and it was so sweet of aunty to make “chawal ki kheer’ for me  :)…

NRC colony – Navraatri and Dusshera

I left colony somewhere in 2001… and 8 years have passed by since I have last played Garbaa or Dandiyaa or Heench in Navratri. The simple reason for this is that I have spent atleast 15 Navratris on the CN Garbaa Ground and I could FEEL the vibes coming out of that ground… be it those days when we, as kids, use to just run around playing Chor Police around the CN 6, Parking Lot, other CN buildings and the Substation and so on and so forth…

I used to love Navratri for a few reasons. Being a gujurati, it had to be my default MOST Favorite festivalJ. A more powerful reason than this was the variety of PRASAD that we used to have in those 9 days. I loved the CRUSHED GROUNDNUT + SUGAR wala Prasad. I used to be crazyyyyyyy for that Prasad. Suppose Bhatt uncle gave this Prasad to the people standing near the Main road, I used to make sure that I also sneak into the crowd over there…then I used to sense ki Bhatt Uncle kahan jayenge.. the most of the times I used to make out ki uncle kaunse group of people ki taraf jayenge, I used to run to that group of people to get Prasad once more!!!.. I guess AMBA mata didn’t like my greediness and cursed me that I will never lose weight, however hard I try to lose weight!!!

I enjoyed playing Garbaa and all.. Ritesh Upadhyay was a pleasure to be watched. He and Tappaj used to play like crazy. The extra gravitational force on my body prevented me from hopping like grasshoppers… (while playing Heench, it pays to be hopping like a Grasshopper..!). The last reason was the party that we used to have on the last day of Navratri. We have used to have Pav Bhaaji or Paani poori, or Bhel or some delicious thing on the last day in the CN 6 ka Mahaila Mandal Room.!!! (Tikku miss ke baaju wala room.)

Another sweet thing that I can recollect is the visit to company in Dusshera. I guess it was only this day that the Gates of NRC were open to anyone who was interested in having a tour of the NRC Company. In 26 years of existence on this planet, I happened to visit the company just once. I went with my father. Ritesh Upadhyay accompanied me. Actually speaking, I didn’t understand much about the machines or anything in those days. It was just that I was proud of the fact that my dad knew so much about machines. He was in Nylon Plant then. Other co-workers used to look at me when I accompanied my dad and I used to strut while touring the whole company. Even though my dad wasn’t among the top bosses of the company I used to feel proud when someone referred to me as “Ambalia ka Beta”. I am sure that, up there in Heaven, my dad must be missing these wonderful days in colony, as much as we miss him today.

Golden days in VJTI

“Hi. I am Dipen Ambalia from VJTI.”

9 years have passed by since the time I first spoke this sentence. Till today I feel proud of the fact that I am a VJTI alumnus… and will be proud of that fact for years to come.

I am sure that there would be hundreds of VJTIans who would echo my feelings…

My stint with VJTI started in September 2000, when FE Electrical began. Kaustabh Chakraborthy was my first friend in VJTI.

I was a bit nervous on the first day because I knew that VJTI was known as a abode of scholars. We were made to sit in the ELR2(the ELR nearest to the Quad) on the very first day.The first day passed by just taking look at other classmates and trying to figure out whom to approach for friendship. Slowly and steadily I started interacting with classmates other than Kaustabh.

The whole FE was spent in the walls of MLRs. I guess it was MLR5….

We were lucky to have had great professors like Bhatt sir(for BEE), Mokashi sir (for Mechanics), Chaudhari sir( electrical networks) , etc…

We had some 8 subjects in the FE…Amongst all the subjects in the FE, Mechanics terrorized me the most… even after joining a crash-course for Mechanics, I crawled to getting pass-marks in mechanics… I had got 43 and 44 in mech 1 and mech 2 respectively….

The thing that bugged me the most in the FE was the submissions..i still wonder why does the system have submissions as an integral part of the system even when they know that the submissions are merely a copy of an original one!!..like in our class, Kaustabh, Prashant pande, Aniket mahulikar, shruti rangarajan were the OCOS (Original-Creators-Of-Submissions). If these OCOS made any mistakes, the same mistakes percolated through the submissions of the rest of the class.!!! So, while KC, Pande, aniket and Shruti created the original copies of submissions, the rest of the class prayed to God that the OCOS didn’t make any mistakes!

Otherwise it would be a re-work for all…!! By the way, no one ever copied my submissions. The simple reason being – I used to eat away many lines, paragraphs, formulas while writing the submissions, assignments, etc… I was an ultra-lazy person… and I knew no one ever cared about the content of the assignments, submissions, etc…

Quad was my most favorite place in the whole of VJTI campus. The simple reason being – it was an airy place..mast HAWA aati thi…and you could see a few beautiful faces…

Another place was the Canteen. I distinctly remember the times in FE (2000) when the canteenwala, used to give away snacks for free after 5 PM… Bala, Madhav, I and many others used to take advantage of this ThanksGiving offer!! The samosas were really good…

One more unforgettable place was Mhatre’s. hundreds of students must have bought sheets, floppies, pens, pencils, etc from shops adjoining Mhatre’s. Mhatre ka Samosa sahi tha…!!

I still remember the time when the results of FE were displayed on the near the entrance of the college. There was this huge rush to see kaun pass aur kaun fail aur kaun topper!!!

I was just praying to God to just help me get pass-marks in mechanics. And I did pass. That day I strongly believed that God did exist!.. I was more anxious about the results of FE than I was about the results of 12^th std., because in 12^th I had worked and I knew what kind of questions would asked (thanks to hundreds of questions papers that we solve in 12^th) . under normal scenario, I should have been devastated on the realization that I had scored just 59 %...but there was this big relief that I didn’t get any KT… from that day on, as far as engineering exams were concerned, I knew that my target was first to get 40 marks..then then upar se jo mile wo BONUS!!! J…

I can never forget the electrical lab. To be very frank, I m lucky that I didn’t get selected in any Core-company while campus selection. Because, my electrical-ka-knowledge was so poor that I would have surely been fired..!.. Luckily I got placed in Polaris Software… living in the software world is very easy. Believe me.,. I have completed 5 years in IT now!!! It rarely understood ki current kidhar se flow ho raha hai aur kidahr jaa raha hai!!... I felt on the electrons!... MAN, don’t they get confused ki kidhar flow hona hai!!!

And I was not the only one… there were others too… and to my shock, those have survived 5 years in Core-Companies..!!.. I feel that they must have mastered the art of fooling clients and bosses.!!... I have thoroughly mastered the art of fooling bosses. In IT, I feel, its easy to get away by giving flimsy excuses like – “actually, I going through the whole code so that I come to know how much will my change affect the whole system “ or “ I am thinking of a better flow, I am sure I will come out with something which requires less time and effort and gives better results”…etc..

For more of perfecting the art of fooling bosses, you can visit my blog

http://dipenambalia.blogspot.com/2009/09/perfecting-art-of-fooling-bosses.html

I hope you liked my blog. It’s just that in every recounting of tales, we relate to those tales and feel “are ye to mere saath bhi hua hai”..!!!... I would urge every VJTIan to mail me his/her such sweet memories so that I can compile them in the “Memoirs of VJTIans”. As per my calculation, out of the 6000 people that I have reached through orkut at least 200 should care to mail me their tales and assuming that their tales are at least 5 pages each, we should have a PDF of 1000 pages by the mid-december. Believe me, reading others’ tales is as much satisfying as recounting yours.

this is the sample of "Memoirs of VJTIans"...

http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B1jyiNagGvmDNDNiODU4ZTktMGJmYi00NGI4LTgxYzgtY2QyYjA3NDVlZjVk&hl=en

If you are convinced about the idea of having a compilation like “Memoirs of VJTIans”, then please help me in spreading the word about this compilation that I am trying to create. If you have any doubt or queries, you can contact me on 9975420605. Or mail me at dipenambalia@gmail.com

Please take out time to recall those good old VJTI days and mail me your sweet moments. Every moment shared is like a moment lived again.. And I am sure that even you must have felt “Are ye to maine bhi kiya tha… mai bhi aisaa hi karti thi….maie bhi lecure mein sota ha.. Etc…!!

Recall a moment, recount a moment….relive those moments…!!!

Perfecting the art of fooling bosses

Yesterday while I was introspecting about my 5 years in the software industry, I thought of a few things….
The first thing that came to my mind was "During office hours how do I get time to enjoy life...?"..Does that mean that i don't have work ....?Or is it that i am too efficient?.. Neither of the options seems to be correct to me... Its just that i seem to have (nearly) perfected the art of fooling people ...!!..(touchwood!! :-))
At a macro level, I feel that we spend every single day fooling others...be it our Superiors or be it Subordinates...
Being a Software developer this is what I could think of....
As far as Fooling Superiors is concerned -- Being normal human beings as we are, we have a tendency of shirking work and taking out time to relax. From that angle if you see, you just need to act well. And I mean ‘Acting’ for real. Just act as if the work given to you is actually difficult and will take lot of time. And if you ever feel the need to communicate with your superiors, use the expressions such as:
"Ya sure definitely..."
"No Issues"…
"Ya sure I will get it done by Tomorrow EOD". (Tomorrow never comesJ)
"Actually I am checking out the impact that this small change will have on all the code..."
and the last but not the least
"Ya, I am going through the whole code so that in future if there are some changes then I should be able to handle them well. So it will take some time..."

Believe me, these Excuses do work. These are tried and tested formulae...!!
As far as Fooling Subordinates is concerned:  I can't give many tips because I haven't got any Subordinates. I am at the lowest level of the hierarchy. I am a software engineer.L. No one listens to me. Only the Office boys and the Canteenwallas listen to me. So if I am in a bad mood, I go straight to the canteen and order something and try finding faults in it; faults such as "Namak jyaadaa hai..."(this is so damn salty!!),”teekha kum bola tha” (I had told you not to make it so spicy!) or "Kadak Dosa bola tha , ye itna naram kyun hai..."(I had specifically mentioned that I wanted a thoroughly baked Dosa. Why is it so soft?) And the Canteenwalla meekly listens to me. It makes me relieved. haaaaaaaah!. kisiki kaa gussa kisipe! L (How does it matter!!) J People at the lowest level are normally dressed down. Like if my Project Director gets grilled by the Top Management then we software engineers get grilled the next day! Its what I call Propagation of the negative energies in the Top-Down order...don't I sound like some BABA (on some ASTHA or SANSKAR channel) guiding his disciples? J
In general , if you want to survive in the software industry then try the following 12 commandments.!!

The 12 commandments of working…rather acting are:

1) PIXEL COUNTING: Just keep staring at the Monitor as if you are trying to fixate your mind on something and are thinking hard about some issue related to your office work. I know that it might sound like a dumb suggestion because the other person (probably your project manager) would feel that you are counting the pixels on the screen. Be sure that you don’t overact because you will be highly embarrassed if he comes near you and asks for a small piece of paper and then writes a number like 860x680 pixels….and then he leaves, smiling at you…I am sure you would wish that the water bottle on your desk had a circumference of 40 inches(this is waist size of a normal software engineer!!) so that you could jump into it and end your life to get out of the embarrassing situation …and don’t worry , no one would care even if you disappeared into the bottle because anyways you were not working…right?

2) SCRAMBLING: Whenever your Project manager comes to your desk, get up instantly and start scrambling as if you were trying to fix something wrong with the PC. Stretch yourself a bit and try touching the cord connecting the Monitor and the Mains supply and then shake your Monitor a bit and then show a bit of frustration on your face as if your monitor does this kind of treachery everyday. If this is not enough then lift your keyboard and then check its connection with CPU. If you still find that your project manager has not left then take the ball out the Mouse and then try to clean it, until the project manager feels guilty of wasting you time and leaves your desk so that your may continue your work peacefully.

This is basically an acid test to know whether your project manager wants to let you work or not. Because the more time he spends around your desk, the more time he would be wasting of his useful resources. I am assuming that at least your Project Manager assumes that you are a useful resource for the project. But yes, one thing’s for sure that he will always call you a USEFUL resource in front of the Client (however stupid you may be!!!)

And anyways if your PM has a heart of a normal human being then he will realize that this all stupid acting is what he might have done few years ago, when he himself was a software engineer. So this type of acting will surely help in shooing away your Project Manager away from your desk.

3) READING NEWS ON INTERNET: For those who can’t do without the daily peek at the news on the news sites, for them there is a very simple idea. Copy the contents of the page that you were reading on the internet and the paste it on the text pad/notepad. Act as if you were checking out some logs to find out the error that occurred in your code. Project managers love employees who try to find out the problems by knowing in and out of the logs generated by the application. Normally Project managers would tend to move away from your desk if you have opened some logs. Because no sensible boss would like to disturb his subordinates who are supposedly working. ”Why waste their time by asking them something irrelevant” -- is what your boss would think and then he would move away. And then you can again do a “alt+tab” and keep enjoying the interesting content on the net…! (Anyway, anything on the internet would be better than the ‘copy-pasted variables and functions’ in your code…isn’t it?)

4) HAVE SOME APPLICATION-RELATED WINDOWS OPENED: The ones like Eclipse (for java developers), Visual Studio (for DotNet Developers), Google with some search related to some very obscure word...Preferably of some exception like null pointer exception/ some other runtime exception…(I would not write much about exceptions, because even I am not sure exceptions and how they are used!!! I am a very bad programmer. Thanks to Google, I have survived my time in this industry.)

5) SCRIBBLING: Whenever you see your project manager approaching your workstation, get a pencil and a paper (preferably one that has something scribbled on it because otherwise that would mean that you have started thinking just now) and start drawing some circles with something written on them and then connect those circles by unidirectional and bidirectional arrows meaning that you are trying to create some kind of innovative solution for a common repetitive problem occurring in the application. Beware about the fact that overdoing of drawing circles can also be harmful incase your project manager asks you about the circles that you just made. And yes, don’t draw too many circles, because that may make your Project Manager believe that you want to change your profile from being a “software engineer’ to a ‘Cartoonist’. Remember one thing- Excess of anything is bad.

6) LOOK OUT OF THE WINDOW: One of the best ways to avoid your project manager is to look outside of the window (You will be lucky to have been sitting near a window). Lower your shoulders and then have some worn-out look on your face as if you have had spent sleepless nights thinking about some really out-of-the-world bug. It should never have crept in your code at least (because the same code worked for your team mate…anyways you didn’t make any logical changes. You just changed the variables from x to a , i to k , and j to m…etc..You start wondering whether changing the variables changes the logic of the code!) Assume such an expression on your face till the time your Project Manager feels that you really have been bugged by the Alien-bug. Just don’t turn around to see if he is there. Just check in the reflection in the glass walls…(I am assuming that your office at least has some glass construction near the boundaries of the office which does make your office an OFFICE and not a JAIL…anyway, cubicles are enough to make the software engineers feel that they are trapped in a jail…!!)

7) HAVING A BAD DRESS SENSE: One of the best ways to avoid your Project Manager is to have a really bad dress sense. Normal people don’t like people who have a bad dress sense. This is just one more test to see if your Project Manager is normal .Suppose that you have a very bad dress sense. Then even if your boss wants to talk to you or insists on your presence in every meeting then be sure that either he/ she is not normal or he/she likes you… (This can be a problem if there is a male-male or female-female combination...!)

So wear something like red jeans with yellow shirt. Odd enough to have the top-most tapori (of your area) feel ashamed of his dressing sense. And as an icing on the cake, you can wear Kolhapoori Chappal that will complement your Tapori look. I can bet my whole career on the fact that your boss won’t ever think of hanging around your desk.

8) WEAR THE SAME SOCKS EVERYDAY: This is one of the tried and tested formulae to keep everyone at bay…There is a saying - ”An apple a day keeps doctor away” On the same lines, I have made a saying- “ The same socks everyday keeps everyone away”…even your colleagues will dare not come near you.. The smell should be so awful that even the strongest and the wildest bison* should drop dead by your presence for 5 seconds in his vicinity.

(*---If you are unable to imagine a strong and wild bison then you can have your Project Manager in place of the “the strongest and wildest bison on earth”…This substitution sounds good enough… isn’t it? J)

9) ALWAYS KEEP YOUR WATER BOTTLE HALF FILLED:

Don’t worry I am not going to talk about the “half water beaker filled-optimism or the half water beaker empty pessimism”. Whenever your project manager is at a distance of 15 to 20 meters from your desk, you get up to fill up your usually half-filled water bottle. And when he is just 2 meters away from me, you tilt my head up to drink the remaining water in the bottle. So by the time you finish the 100 ml or 200 ml water that you had purposely kept in the bottle, you (my project manager and you) have finished crossing each other on your way. And then you are safe…and some other Cubicle-king or queen gets screwed up. Who cares as long as you are safe? J.

Spend around 5 mins near the water cooler and by mistake if you see your boss again coming to the water cooler then immediately start shouting at the nearby standing office boy for some imaginary negligence of his. Your boss will see that you are really very angry at something and so, I am sure, he won’t dare to play around with a wounded lion/lioness (Again, my assumption is that your boss is a normal human being. I keep on mentioning such assumptions because “BOSSES” and “NORMAL HUMAN BEINGS” have very little common in them…as little a similarity as there is between a wild African rat and a cute pacific dolphin….!!Don’t shrink your eyes…I know that there is not much common thing in between in them except that they belong to a class called as “living things”.. J)

10) GO AND TALK TO A COLLEAGUE ABOUT SOME CODE:

This type of acting hinges on the premise that “No one on this planet called earth knows everything.” So it means that you being a normal software engineer, you would not necessarily know why a null-pointer/memory-low error occurred; which will lead you to take your colleague’s help. So when you are at your colleague’s desk, it shows that you are not a very adamant and egoistic worker who does not talk to his team mate even though he doesn’t know a thing or two. Even though your boss is talking to your team mate, chances are good  that he is simultaneously analyzing whether you are actually coordinating with your colleague to get some software-bug killed ruthlessly….So use proper hand gestures to show you are really frustrated with that software-bug and are seeking a full-n-final solution to get that software-bug removed. But, one word of caution, don’t overact. If you say something like “Oh...yes that is why there is a null-pointer exception” and give a gesture as if the work is going to get completed in half an hour then be sure that following things will happen once the Project Manager moves away from your place:

a) You will get a mail asking you to take the next task in one hour or so because your Project Manager interpreted your reaction as though you will finish the work in half an hour and that you could start your new task in some time…!

b) You have created a bad impression on your Project Manager. Because when you were at your desk you didn’t know how to get that software-bug killed. But only when you consulted your colleague did your query get solved. So it was your colleague who has lots and lots of knowledge to solve queries from stupid co-workers like you. So it was your colleague who did the bug fixing and not YOU..! So…ultimately be ready for a bad appraisal, my friend!!!!...

11) TALKING TO A TELEMARKETER:

Once you see your boss coming, the easiest and the fastest thing that you can do is picking up the phone on your desk and then uttering the words like “Which credit card? What’s extra in your credit card? No thank you I don’t want the card..”…and then finally bang the phone and turn to a colleague and say “ ye credit card waale bhi naa…!!! ” indicating that if anyone disturbs you in the midst of something very urgent then you get annoyed and then can surely not care to start a fight in the spur of the moment…your boss will quietly move away from your desk and will come to your place once you cool down.

Be sure that you try this trick on a phone at your desk and not on your mobile. Imagine a scene when you got up from your place and then were talking on your cell phone to some telemarketer and then suddenly your mobile starts ringing…your colleagues and your boss start looking at you (as if you were some exotic extinct 3 legged dinosaur* suddenly appearing in front of them). I am sure that will be the most embarrassing moment in your life. And you would go to your desk and wish your tea cup were big enough to let you drown in harness…

[*--- If you have any problem imagining a 3 legged dinosaur then imagine a 4 or a 6  legged dinosaur …I don’t mind… J]

12) RESTARTING THE SERVER: Once your boss comes to your desk , before he could ask you anything throw at him the question “boss, can I restart the server?...actually I feel that I have solved the bug that you had assigned to me yesterday.(Note the use of the word “feel”...because if you have actually solved the bug in less time then it wasn’t really a big fat bug which needed your attention and which could have been solved by any moron. Needless to say that you will immediately get a new bug assigned.) “So should I put a mail to all users of this server that I am about to restart it?”---this question will make your boss feel good about you because normal morons work on local machines and not on SERVERS…You are one of the few softies who work on servers. Be proud about it. Though you know what the truth is! Anyways what is more is important is what your boss feels about you than what you feel about yourself!