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