Chennai

21st April 06 will have started by the time I finish this post & that makes me 8 months old in Chennai. He he he ..not that It's a landmark or something, but am in the retrospective mood again. I remember a joke about the slow nature of game of chess which shows a picture of a person watching two old fellows staring at the chess board and the person comments "I've not seen anybody so slow at doing-nothing ! ". I guess I'm beating those old fellows too :( just whiling away the lots n lots of free time I've got these days. I wonder whether I'll be able to get a such a time span again. On the positive side, I've been able to work on the things I've been obsessed with in last few years. The weirdest part is that I'm not fully enjoying it either. I keep cribbing about being in Chennai instead of Pune, but am not sure if that really is the problem. Though I've completed 8 months here, I have always been "here for 2-3 months" ! That is, it's not been clear that I'm gonna stay this longer in Chennai. So, every now and then there's this longing to get back to Pune - to enjoy "moong bhaji" at our fav spot at Lakshmi Road, to chat with friends sipping the famous cold coffee at ... (Gawd...I've started forgetting the names of restaurants now :( . Umm....it's Durga I guess) , to have special mango mastani at Sujata, to take a ride to Chandni Chawk in the night, to visit the Poona Hospital wala two wheelr bridge and the place which had become our Mini Hostel after we guys came to Pune in 2003. Hmm... "Pune tithe kaay une?" :)

I dunno, Chennai would not be that bad a place after all, but I find it weird. The people, the weather, food , language everything poses a problem. I keep facing the incidents like these which make me feel that this place is not for me :(

>> After a Michael Johnson like run to the bus stop I cramp my legs in the seat, barely managing my breathe and the bloody cacophony starts (It’s called some “Suryan FM radio” here), spoiling my day at the very beginning. I try to cajole the driver to reduce the volume. He, of course, doesn’t understand Hindi & English and instead increases it. Even after I communicate my message with broken tamil (kamii, kunjam ), he just doesn’t do me the favor.

>> It’s raining heavily and the auto-rickshaw breaks down in the middle of the road. The driver struggles hard doing something in back of the auto, pulling the handle again and again. Gets drenched in rain; Gupta (sitting with me) manages to make his voice reach him and offers him our umbrella. The driver still doesn’t want to put off the dhin-chak tamil song going on!

>> I really appreciate the services rendered at our company's adyar guest house. Everything is so neat and tip top. At dinner table, the attendant serves chutney in my plate & carefully picks up the dosa with the fork and just when I think he’ll carefully place it in the other part of the plate, he (careful still ;-) ) puts it right on the chutney. These guys just don’t have any aesthetic sense in these matters. At office canteen, the server at the counter just doesn’t know the funda of “thoda rice”, “less rice”, “kunjam saadam”. All he knows is take a BIG scoop of rice and throw it onto the plate :(

>> I need not talk about the buses and the hygiene of aam junta here I guess. In a city bus, we 5 are sitting on the last seat which is meant for 6. A girl (typical tambi….no where near the gorgeous Pune gals ;-) ) comes in and stands in front of us thinking that there is no space to sit. One of us adjusts to one side and offers her a seat. She gives a scornful look and prefers to stand. As if we were gonna do “##$$%^ $$^^ ” on here there.

>> Food habits of people & manners of waiters – Can talk a lot on this. You guys probably know it.

>> Language again. A cognizant employee, sitting besides me, asks me (in tamil) where the bus is going. I answer “Thiruvanmiyur”. Again he asks something in tamil. I pickup the word ECR and tell him that it goes via that route. Again he has something to ask in tamil. This time I give up and tell him “tamil teriyad” i.e. “I don’t know tamil”. Now, the guy being an IT pro like me, my expectation was that he will apologize and ask the previous question in English. What happened was, he simply turned away and asked the same question in tamil to other tambi guy!

>> Every now & then, I see photos of MLAs literally touching the feet of Jayalalita in The Hindu.

Untitled ;-)

Standing in the mart, I ask for riddance of all woe,
for I have neither friend nor foe

I went in search of evil, only to find none.
Looking into myself, realized there was more evil none.

None becomes great, just because of fame.
Thorn-apple is called gold, what's in a name!

Growing big is no growing, like a tree of date.
Neither shade nor fruit to the traveller, oh what a fate.

Ask not the caste of the great, only knowledge he gained hard.
Evaluate the sharpness of the sword, never the scabbard.

Having come, all have to leave, be it prince or pauper.
Lived as they did, one on throne and one in shackles deeper.

With the power of mind, everything shatters
All I got to say is "nothing else matters"

Came across this wonderful peice on a pal's Orkut profile :) BTW, Orkut is a nice place , isn't it? Everything that's backed by Google is a wonderful thing. Picture this : When I joined Orkut some 15 motnhs back, it had around 3 million users. The count now shows 16 million!! And when they launched Google Pages in beta, they had to close it down due to a deluge of people signing up!

Japali....

This was my third visit to Tirupati in last 8 months of stay in Chennai. Well, the motives have not entirely been religious :) I like it on the Tirumala hills; there’s something in the air which enchants me. I have been visiting it from childhood with family. The chanting of ‘Suprabhatam’ stotra, breathtaking views from the hills, huge crowd of pilgrims drawn from all parts of country, the exotic smell of laddus - everything is so special about the place ( Oh, my inclination towards food knows no boundaries J… and hence boundaries of my tummy have also started getting distorted :( )
The visit this time was special though. First of all, I went in for the early morning darshan (Archana Ananthara Darshanam). At 7 AM only, I took the darshan and was back to the room to compensate for the less-than-normal quota of sleep last night. Ah, just got reminded of the beautiful sentence displayed at the ‘Woodside’ – “It’s not the darshan you take; it’s the darshan he gives.” – couldn’t agree more with the author J. ‘Woodside’ is the only restaurant there which serves decent northy food and is near to the temple, so had lunch there.
The best part was the visit to Japali Teertham & Hanuman temple. Was happy to pay Rs. 150 to the Auto-Rickshaw wala old fellow for a 10 km trip & 1 hr waiting while round trip Chennai to Tirupati (by train) costs Rs 96! The Hanuman temple at Japali is one of the least known and most worthy places of visit in Tirumala. After a kilometre's trek into the woods, the darshan of lord Anjaneya is really a memorable experience. There’s a lake in thick of the woods and nothing like just sitting there listening to the chirping of birds and splashing of water. Those are the only sounds you can hear as people rarely visit this place. I was visiting it after exactly 10 years! Mar 96 was the time when I had been there earlier with all of my family. There are now well built steps leading to the place which were not there in 96. I have fond memories of that visit as it was the last trip with the whole family (3 elder sisters, younger brother, Mom and Dad; Quite a big family I’ve got :) ) The sisters then got married one by one and now even coming together twice a year seems to be difficult :( . Aso… the worst part this time was that I had only 30 minutes to spend there as I had a train to catch at 5.20. When I’ll visit next time, I will have whole day to spend and a novel to finish at this place. Trust me, no earthly pleasure (except THE one you-know-what ;-), which I haven’t experienced yet) could possibly match this one :).

iPod Video

Finally, I got my iPod video yesterday. One would never have to explain the meaning of KLPL after going thru' what I had to (Don't go asking for meaning if you don't know it laready ;-)). First of all, I had to wait for almost 1 month (which seemd like a year!) longer than other employees to get the annual gift as I had changed my location recently. So after going through hassles of mailing/calling the most busy persons in the organization (there are a lot of them, everybody in support functions like HR,NSS considers himself to be one), I went to TCO to collect my iPod. Finding the ERT (Employee Relationship Team, ahh...dont go by the words - relationship would be the last thing an employee will think of after meeting the snorty bi!@hes there!) desk was made easy with Bhau's help. The lady there, as if they were cutting the cost of iPod from her salary, started giving me glares. There I was, explaining her that the Pune HR gal had mailed her the day before and I was supposed to collect it today. After running a search in outlook with the gal's name and taking 5 long minutes, she declared victoriously that there was no such mail and she could not give me my gift! How I wish if people had Google Desktop on their systems. It gives the list of what you are looking for even before you finish typing! Okay...ye thoda jyada ho gaya...but fir bhi ;-).
Poor me :( , had to go back to my desk and confirm with the concerned person. So after making sure once again, I went to have a second encounter with the same lady. This time around she was able to find the mail & suddenly the glares turned into apologetic looks :). Then as I was signing on the paper, I could catch her throwing a 'glance of admiration' at my trendy wrist watch. (Thanks to my bro ;-) It's not that I have been target of such 'glances of admiration' very often in past....that too from such snorty bi!@hes! ) I came out truimphant...holding the iPod in my hands & shooting a sarcastical "Thanks" at her.
Of course, it goes without saying ;-), I left office by 3.30 PM shuttle thinking of loading loads of songs and.... well...videos ;-) in my iPod. So I reached home, carefully opened the box & connected it to the PC. It was then that I realized that the piece was faulty and woudn't charge or get listed on iTunes :(. After going throgh all the troublshoting steps on Apple's award winning support site & asking myself a tenth time "Why me of all ??", I'm ready to deal with the same lady a third time in two days for it's replacement. Pray! - may the force be with me ;-)