More on smart people....

When a faaaaaamous Kannada super star was kidnapped by faaaamous forest brigand somewhere in South India(im not going to take any names...heheheh) there was a lot of turmoil in the city. Political parties siezed the initiative and started recruiting respectable citizens who have nothing to do all day(Read: jobless hooligans who dont like to see anything new and shiny). The new recruits were all given crowbars in one hand and a beer bottle in the other and were asked to do "their" stuff. Ofcourse, more beer was promised after the job well done! YAAKE COOL DRINK MAGAAA??!!??

So we had these semi drunk youths, not more than 16-18 years of age who I BET would not have seen even one movie of the above (very subtly) mentioned super star, going around bashing things up, throwing stones on glass, checking out boiling points of rubber by conducting heat experiments on tyres, and in general creating a lot of commotion in the city.
And since I live on the 4th floor of an apartment complex facing Airport road, I was able to get prime time entertainment by just opening a window(WINDOWS new version raaa!). On one of those days, there were these bunch of hooligans who were thrasing things outside our building. And a very hilarious thing happened....

This dude climbs a tree with a sickle in his hand... It wasnt a very tall tree - 6 to7 metres in height. Obviously our man must have had a little too much to drink because what seemed to be a fairly easy climb to the shortest branch took him some 4-5 attempts. Full marks for determination though..the country needs lads like these in the Army.
Annnnnyway....On reaching the branch, he made himself comfortable over there for a while as he saw his fellow revellers bring down flower pots, hoardings and anything that was standing. I guess he was feeling left out for not contributing to the noble cause so all of a sudden, with a rejevenated surge of enthusiasm, he sat up. He then changed his position by turning 180 degrees. So now he was sitting on the branch facing the trunk.
I suppose there arent many brighter souls around because what he did next, defied all laws of human common sense(If there are such laws ofcourse). He started hacking the branch with all this might - the portion in between him and the tree - with the sickle which he had hauled to the top. My brother, who was standing besides me, was already rolling about on the floor laughing and I was nearly there. My mother, who had given up hope on the city, was busy washing clothes. So when the branch came down, I was the only person in the family who had the honour of seeing the man land bang in the centre of his rear.
All good things come to an end they say...I dont think he ever went next to a tree after that!!!!

Ive done a LOT of gutsy things in my life...(Ahem....cant think of any now but thats irrelevant) but this is the first time I am actually checking mail/blogging/chatting while sitting in class!
These are the perks which come with VERY SHORT TEACHERS...She wont be able to see me even if she repeatedly jumps (after getting on top of her desk) and trains her eyes on me...Needless to say, Im sitting on the last bench!

In the 3 weeks that I have spent at a BEE SKOOL, I have learnt that they dont teach much here. 99.999% of the people have come here to get placed....Of that 99.999%, 80% have come from IT backgrounds, and like me, are looking to "append their profiles" with an extra degree.........Oh btw..thats what I told those dudes in my interview. Apparently they bought it and here I am.

Another very wierd thing about this School is the fact that we have classes on weekends as well... In fact, the best classes happen on Saturday and Sunday when you have REAL managers coming over and giving us dreary, dark lectures on how mean the big bad world is outside. To compensate the fact that we are working on Sundays, we get a day off on Monday(huh...big bloody deal!)...
The lectures during the week are torture... Here are some of the things I do in class to stay awake...

1) Read the days papers..(do the Sudoku and so on)
2) Use toothpicks as props(to keep the old Eyelids open)
3) Sleep at the back of the class when the projector is turned on(they generally turn off the lights then)
4) play cows and bulls with my classmates(no no...they dont allow animals into campus..its a highly intellectual game which keeps us from hurting ourselves..in the sense, if we werent playing it, we would be banging our heads on the tables in front of us to pass time)
5) play book cricket and give the impression to the teacher that we are listening intently(an intelligent face like mine will help here)
6) Think about lunch
...

The list is endless really...

And before I bore you people to DEATH, I shall stop here.

BUS KARO....

Its been ages since I boarded a local bus but whenever anyone mentions the word "bus" to me(even if they mean "ENOUGH!!!"), my thoughts go to some of my "cherished" moments spent on those 6 wheeled monsters.

The first of these incidents happened when I was much younger (when I was a "good" boy whose sole aim in life was NOT to learn all the bad words in different languages)... I boarded a bus from my stop on Airport Road and pushed my way to the middle. The bus was really crowded that day. The conductor came along and asked me where I wanted to go.

I have always been told that I should lower my voice as it is very loud. I have never paid heed to good advice. So when I replied as to where I want to go, my voice reverberated in the confines of the bus compartment....

"SOOLEY* CIRCLE", I boomed..... Though I didn’t think it was funny, most of the people there did... And for all those people who didn't hear me the first time (not many of those around thankfully), the "destination" was repeated for their benefit. I guess it was my innocent face (NO WISE REMARKS HERE PLEASE) that saved me that day!

The second incident happened during my stint (prison sentence?) in Madras. By now, I was a much older lad (And NOT very "good" anymore...). Since I hadn’t been in Chennai for long, I didn’t know the customs and practices of the place (and meanings of most bad words for that matter). Even bus-etiquette (if there exists such a phrase) was new to me. So I just entered an empty bus (a rarity in Chennai) from the back door, a custom followed in Bangalore buses**, and plonked my rear on the first seat I could set my beads on. Unfortunately*** for me, that seat happened to be the first one on the left side of the aisle. Since the bus had just entered the terminus, it started filling up slowly and as the people, women in particular, boarded the bus, the looks I got, became blacker by the minute. Oblivious to the surroundings, I put that familiar "innocent" look on my face and continued to remain seated.

Enter virago.....All of a sudden, this lady came up to me and started abusing me left-right-centre. (I must say that I appreciate her efforts because my bad language vocabulary in Tamil improved at a geometric rate as she continued on her verbal diarrhea)."RUTTA KUTTA SUTTA PUTTA LUTTA MUTTA RUTTA KUTTA PUTTA" ****...Oh she went on and on and on.

Initially I thought she was mad and was just venting her fury out on a foreigner.(Note: Non Tamilians are foreigners in Chennai). So I sat on, trying to enjoy the scenery around me. Then, for no sane reason whatsoever, she started tugging at my shirt. Decibel levels had reached an all time high and the "RUTTA"s and the "KUTTU"s were flying about like it was not funny. It is only then when I looked around. I noticed that everyone around me (Women, children, others) were ALL giving me dirty looks. At that moment, the conductor (who was sitting with a smirk on his face throughout) waddled into the scene and explained to me in flawless English that IN CHENNAI(he said that a bit too loudly...as if to tell me that in Chennai, you do as the Chennaites do.....), the seats on the left were all "reserved" for women an children. Another few minutes and the lady might have torn me apart.... I got up and hurriedly got out of the bus!!!

Ever since, I have not boarded a bus. Who knows what else is in store for me when I decide to use that form of public transport again??!!??

* Sooley, as was explained(not so nicely) by the conductor who was not amused, is a term in Kannada for prostitute..... Apparently, I should have said "SHOOLAY circle” which is a legitimate destination in Bangalore....So much for one little "H"......

** The Local buses in Bangalore have 2 doors, one being in the front next to the driver and the other at the back near the rear tyre. Ladies enter from the front door, everyone/thing else enters from the back door. Also, the first few rows in the front on either side of the central aisle is "reserved" for Women, children and handicapped people.(Gender equality? naaaaah)

*** Why unfortunate? Well....the "reservation" for women in Chennai buses is(unlike in their Bangalorean counterparts) all the seats on the left side of the central aisle

****Censored for the sake of my young readers!

My First Ambition in life and how it was accepted at home

Adult Male voice: “Hey there Johnny …what do you wanna be when you grow up?”
Childs voice: “I wanna be a HUSTLER”!!!!!

Relax folks….neither am I Little Johnny nor have I fancied a career in criminology….this is an excerpt from a song which NEVER fails to make me laugh as it makes me remember all the things I wanted to be as I “grew up”!
At no point of time in my life had I ever imagined myself to work for a software company. This little episode brings out my first “real” ambition in life, the first of a long string which continues to grow as I sit here.

The earliest recollection of my wanting to be ANYTHING would go back to when I was around 4 when I announced to everyone that I wanted to become an elephant. That was at a birthday party where all us “chutkoos” were shepherded around a table and asked to say something for 2 minutes each…something on what we wanted to be when we grew up…a more adult version of that activity would involve only the fairer sex and would fetch answers like “I want to be like Audrey Hepburn” or the more clichéd ones like “Mother Teresa has always been my driving force in life…”…
The only difference between the two situations would be that when I said that I wanted to be an elephant, I really wanted to be one… (Let’s not kid ourselves… Anyone who takes part in a pageant is not going to be playing Florence Nightingale to the poor for the rest of her life…). The fact is that I was really fascinated (to the extent of infatuation) by those big creatures (still am) especially by the way they flap their ears. I always wanted to do that. I guess it would be no surprise if I say that one of my favorite films is a Walt Disney creation called DUMBO.
Anyway, this little incident caused a little uproar at the gathering and fetched me an encore from all the aunties but by the time the cake was cut, everyone had forgotten about it. Everyone but me and my distraught mother (who wasn’t please at my ambitions…NO SIR she wasn’t!!)
I guess this was the ONLY exception…the ONLY TIME when my mother has ever interrupted my dreams… After the party, we had a little mother to son one on one in the car(I was 4 years old mind you) where she tried to change my mind. She was a terror on the road that day and was making BTS bus drivers cringe in fear…..Her son, the same bloke she had carried around for 9 months wanted to become an elephant…..boy was she mad!

It was a well-prepared extempore (oxymoron?) wherein I was given an extensive insight on how mundane the beast’s life was. (“They only eat and sleep all day” said she with a disgusted look on her face…it sounded perfect but I didn’t mention it as she was visibly flustered)…After the speech, she asked me to think of something interesting, something which I could become without going a few rungs lower in the mammalian hierarchy……so I racked my brains and pondered for a long time(in those days, that period would range between 1 and 4 minutes depending on the distractions around) and I told her(after that “long time”) that I wanted to become the Commissioner of Police….
I don’t know if you folks have even seen how puris are made in the kitchen, but on very similar lines my mother, all of a sudden, bloated up with pride (all that she has lost at the party due to my “ambitious plans” and more)… the same lady who was doing everything short of man handling auto drivers on the road was all smiles and in a “that’s my son” mood…
As for me, I had steered out of the soup. Not only had my statement made my mommy happy, it got her off my back for a while and I would learn later, that it had earned me my favorite dessert that evening…besides, I really thought those “mee maw” lights on the Commisioners Police Car were really cool(the REAL reason for my choice)!!!