As you’ve all probably noticed, I’ve not been blogging regularly these days. That’s because we’ve been moving our house, and getting settled into a new place.

Settling in a new apartment is a very complicated process. There is so much to do and so much to buy. One of the things we’ve been looking to buying is a Dining Table. I
But I can already hear all you skeptics say “How hard can that be?”

That’s exactly what I said when the wife told me that we needed to buy a new Dining Table. I used to think that buying a Dining Table would be as simple as:

Step 1. Go to shop
Step 2. Tell shopkeeper “I want to buy one Dining Table. How much?”
Step 3. Take Dining Table home and eat (Eat on the table, not the table itself)

Oh, but no! It turns out buying dining tables is much much more complicated than that! Firstly, I was shocked to find out that there are different types of dining tables - Wood, Wrought Iron, Metallic and what not. Then there are more permutations with Wood top, Glass Top, Granite top and some 45,356 other different types of tops. That leads to billions of combinations that no possible human can comprehend, for some definition of “human”. Secondly, Dining Tables, I’m told, have attributes that I’d never had guessed an inanimate piece of furniture can posses - Dining Tables can be short, tall, square, polished, high-back, elegant and curvy. I could confuse Dining Tables with hindi-movie heroines with that list of attributes.

The wife has very good aesthetic sense, she knows what looks good and what doesn’t, but I only like to see the end result of it. Being a part of the selection process is quite a torture.

At the furniture store:

Wife: “Do you have one with a glass top?”
Salesman (showing us Dining Table #1): “…Yes! This table here has a glass-top…”
Wife: “Do you have one with a metallic frame?”
Salesman (showing us Dining Table #2): “Of Course… This table here has a beautiful metallic frame…”
Wife: “Do you have this in Black?”
Salesman (showing us Dining Table #3): “Certainly… This table has a black frame…”
Wife: “Do you have one with a glass top?”
Salesman takes us back to Dining Table #1.

And round and round we go. When this happens in a computer program, it’s called an infinite loop and the program crashes. When it happens in a furniture store, it’s called “looking at the variety available”. After several hours of this round-and-round, the wife has finally selected one that she likes.

Wife: “I like this one. What do you think?”
Me: “It is spectacular! A work of art! Michelangelo would be put to shame. Can we buy it and get out of here?”
Salesman: “It’s only Rs. 54,514/- after 25% discount!”
Wife: “WHAT? That’s too expensive. No Way!”

And so we leave the place and go to another store, where the entire process repeats, right from step 1. After literally several days of table-hunting, the only thing I’d gained was respect for Dining Table salesmen. Truly enlightened souls. It seemed to me that buying a Dining Table is a bit like crossing a desert with no food or water. You have to perspire all day, and chase what only turn out to be mirages, living solely on the hope that one day the true Dining Table will show up just beyond the horizon and the journey will be over. The Wife, however, thinks that finding a good Dining Table is like finding a soul-mate. There is that one special Dining Table made for each person somewhere on this earth. You just have to find it, that’s all. I find it a little disturbing that she’s taking more time to choose the right Dining Table than she took to say yes to me. But such is life.

But my luck turned good finally, when all the zillions of parameters of one particular Dining Table matched the Wife’s expectations. I breathed a sigh of relief when we finally bought it. It was over at long last!

Wife: “We finally got the Dining Table”
Me: “Finally!”
Wife: “Good. Next on the list is a Sofa!”
Me: ” …. ” <collapses on the floor>

• 20 Comments

[This is part 2 of a series. Part 1 is here]

The next day, Drinivas is looking a little drowsy. It seems he’s been up all night trying to come up with a strategy that will work with the Russian exchange student. Yesterday, he made a big fuss about not listening to my advice and how he was going to come up with a killer strategy.

Now don’t get me wrong, Drinivas is a really smart guy. He may be able well versed with the unintelligible language of 3-dimensional vector mathematics, but when it comes to talking to hot russian exchange students, his mathematics is of no use. But his ego doesn’t allow him to admit it, and so he’s going to try to do it, in his own nerdy manner anyway.

We’re standing outside the class, waiting for it the Prof to show up. Drinivas walks up to me.

Drinivas: “I worked all night to create a master plan.”
Me: “To take over the world?”
Drinivas: “No, to talk to the Russian exchange student.”
Me: “Aaah! So, let’s hear it! Does it involve you doing a wheelie on big motorbike? You might need to learn how to ride a bicycle first.”
Drinivas: “No, no. Look, I’ve drawn a map of all the places she visits on campus and her approximate schedule. Here’s my window of opportunity: After class, at 13:05 hours, she exits block ‘A’ and proceeds along “walkway 34″ towards the Cafeteria, presumably, to consume her lunch.”
Me: “Presumably.”
Drinivas: “Right. She’s about 5′8″, so she’ll walk at the rate of 3.45 kmph, which means she’ll be in front of the cafeteria at 13:06:23. Now, calculating backwards, I need to leave my class at exactly 13:04 and walk in the north-westerly direction. If I walk exactly at 3 kmph, I’ll meet her right in front of the cafeteria.”
Me: “Very clever man! But dude… Do you think this is really going to work?”
Drinivas: “Of course. I’ve calculated it precisely. Here: See my step-by-step calculations. What could possibly go wrong?”
Me: “Wow. Well, best of luck to you.”
Drinivas: “Ha! I don’t need luck, I have this all figured out!”
Me: “Excellent! So, what are you going to say to her when you meet her in front of the cafeteria at 13:06:23?”

Drinivas looks a little perplexed. Then a little surprised. Then a little annoyed. It looks like he spent all night evaluating and calculating velocities, but didn’t think what he was going to say to her once he met her.

Drinivas: “I’ll see you later.”

Drinivas gets up and rushes away. I’ll bet he’s going to the library to study this problem even more.

As the first class finishes, Drinivas comes back into the class and sits down next to me. He’s just bunked a class for the first time ever. He’s taking this thing seriously.

Drinivas: “I just went and learnt some Russian”
Me: “WHAT?!?”
Drinivas: “Yes. Listen to this: r he ctyn, r ckamakennke”
Me: “Wow. What does it mean?”
Drinivas: “I am not a chair, I am a bench”
Me: “Eh?”
Drinivas: “It was the first sentence in the “Learn Russian in 5 days” book.
Me: “Well done! Use that on her. It will definitely work!”
Drinivas: “I know!”

And so, Drinivas anxiously waits for the appointed time when he is supposed to head out in a “north-westerly direction”. He looks nervous, but is trying very hard to not show it.

Finally, 13:04 comes, and Drinivas jumps out and heads out. A bunch of friends and I also follow him out, just to see how this scene pans out. Not going to miss this for anything.

We stand outside at a safe distance from the Cafeteria. We’re far enough to be not noticed, but close enough that we can overhear what’s happening. I must say Drinivas’s calculations are perfect, and, right on time, the Russian girl is walking towards the cafeteria. Drinivas is also heading in the same direction. The girl is walking casually, but Drinivas is walking awkwardly. Suddenly speeding up and suddenly slowing down. I think he’s trying to time it perfectly, but it’s starting to look a little weird. Unfortunately for Drinivas, he reaches the cafeteria’s entrance a few seconds early, despite trying to walk half-a-step at a time. Not he’s faced with a weird choice. Should he walk in, and miss the encounter with the girl, or just stay there waiting for her to come, and look real weird when she walks up to him?

Just when I thought that Drinivas’s plan had blown up, Drinivas makes a surprising move. He suddenly changes course, and is now heading straight for the girl, who’s walking straight towards him. Why Drinivas made this move, I don’t understand, but now they’re on a collision course. Oh, Man! Drinivas better have a good opening line.

Five seconds before impact: Time has slowed down for Drinivas. His mind is racing at light speed and preparing for an encounter. I hope he remembers his line properly.

Two seconds before impact: Drinivas suddenly slows down. The russian girl has noticed him, and walks slightly towards the left to avoid a collision.

One second before impact: Drinivas changes his course to intercept her again. He clears his throat and is preparing to say something. The Russian chic now looks up at Drinivas.

IMPACT!!!

Drinivas: “r he ctyn, r ckamakennke”
Russian girl looks perplexed. She takes a while to figure out he’s speaking Russian in a really bad accent.

Russian Girl: “You’ll get me a table and chair?”

Drinivas doesn’t know what’s happening. So many things have gone wrong simultaneously. Firstly, how is she speaking english?!? That’s not supposed to happen. Then, he doesn’t even know what he’s said to her, and even worse, she seems to have understood something he didn’t even mean to say”

Russian Girl: “I didn’t know we had service in the Cafeteria. Good. You can show us to our table.”

Drinivas is totally shocked and doesn’t know what to do. He just walks behind the Russian girl and her friends, because, well, what else can he do?

The russian girl and her friends sit down at a table. Drinivas is standing awkwardly in front of them, not knowing just what the hell is happening.

Russian girl: “I’ll have one Chineese Chopsuey please…”

And, this is how, unfortunately, our story ends. What happened next is rather inconsequential. Drinivas had to order Chineese Chopsuey and bring it to their table, but, on the bright side, he got his first tip! In the following days, Drinivas had to avoid the russian girl, least she ask him to bring coffee. To this day, Drinivas is going over his calculations over and over again, trying to figure out what mistake he made.

• 15 Comments

It is the 5th Semester of College, and I’m late for class as usual. I’ve just managed to slip past the watchman as he was about to close the gates to the College. I run up the stairs into the classroom, but the class has already started. The lecturer gives me a cold stare as I walk into the room. The stare I can live with, but I’m worried that the most important part of the class - the attendance call - might be over, and my coming into the class might have become a complete waste.

I sit down at an empty place. Drinivas is sitting next to me.

Me: “Has he taken the attendance yet?”
Drinivas: “No…”
Me: “Oh, thank god! Phew. That was close… I almost missed it.”
Drinivas: “…but you missed the explanation of the third-order-beta-function. If you don’t understand beta-functions, you’re not going to understand gamma-functions.”
Me: “I’m not going to understand gamma-functions no matter what!”

Drinivas looks at me weirdly. Why some people place attendance over learning and knowledge is something he hasn’t understood at all. I once tried to explain to him that Attendance is very important to some people just like attending church is important to some people - It is just a cultural difference. But somehow, Drinivas was never convinced of it. He’s naive that way. But he’ll learn the truth soon enough.

But there is something different about him today. He’s in a chatty mood.

Drinivas: “I saw a person near my house today.”
Me: “Yeah? And I saw a Buffallo on my way today. What are the odds?!?”

Drinivas is not in a mood for my PJs today. He ignores my comment.

Drinivas: “It’s an exchange student. From Russia.”
Me: “Oh really? And how can you tell he’s Russian? Running around with a T-shirt saying ‘Vodka: Antifreeze for the Soul‘, was he?”
Drinivas: “It’s a she.”

Oohh Hoo. This girl seems to have caught Drinivas’s attention. Now the picture’s become a little clearer.

Me: “Aaaaah… Nice…. So how’s she?”
Drinivas: “She’s has certain qualities that draw one’s interest. From a visual perspective, she presents an interesting profile, and one can safely say that she has several strong attention grabbing characteristics that are well represented.”
Me: “Is that nerd talk for “She’s Hot” ?”
Drinivas: “To put it bluntly, yes”
Me: “All right! Way to go, man. Did you talk to her?”
Drinivas: “I haven’t had the opportunity, but I’m optimistic one will present itself this evening.”

Drinivas spends the rest of the day seemingly pre-occupied with thoughts about how he was going to exploit this ‘opportunity’ of his. I’m just happy he doesn’t interrupt our impromptu tic-tac-toe tournament that has broken out among the neighboring benches. At the end of the day, Drinivas rushes off. Good luck to him!

But when I see him the next day, Drinivas is looking rather glum.

Me: “Hey, how did it go yesterday with the Russian exchange student?”
Drinivas: “Not too good. There was an unforeseen glitch…”
Me: “What happened?”
Drinivas: “Apparently, she doesn’t speak any English. And worse - She’s studying Media and Communication, and that means we have absolutely nothing in common!”
Me: “Is that it?”
Drinivas: “What are you implying?”
Me: “Come on man, what’s a language barrier? You’ve got to take this opportunity by the throat and strangle it, dude!”
Drinivas: “Strangle who?”
Me: “Seize the day! Grab the apples! Jump the cliff! A mere language difference didn’t stop Romeo and Juliet!”
Drinivas: “Romeo and Juliet spoke the same language.”
Me: “OK, but for the sake of the argument, let’s say they didn’t.”
Drinivas: “What? That’s impossible. Your a-priori assumptions are wrong, so your conclusions are invariably….”
Me: “Look, who’s telling the story? Let’s just say they didn’t, OK? Now. Where were we? Yeah. They couldn’t speak the same language. But that didn’t stop them from becoming history’s heroes!”
Drinivas: “You’re not making any sense!”
Me: “I’M NOT MAKING SENSE?!? Look who’s talking!”
Drinivas: “That does it. Enough advice from you. I’m going to approach this issue in my own strategic way.”
Me: “Oh, really? And what’s your plan?”
Drinivas: “You’ll see my friend, you’ll see!”

[Update Part 2 is here]

• 10 Comments

Driving in Bangalore is an art that requires great skill and lots of preparation. There are basically three things that you need: (1) good brakes (2) A good, loud, screeching horn and (3) Good luck. You need (3) in especially large quantities, but if your good luck is particularly bad, don’t worry, I have some tips for you to make your driving experience in Bangalore a particularly pleasurable one. There are 3 phases to driving: Preparation, Driving and Inspection.

Preparation
Driving in Bangalore is the closest that you’ll get to a ZEN experience. In fact, it has been rumoured that ZEN masters of the old times are re-incarnated as cows and buffaloes and now live on the roads of Bangalore for this very reason. Before you can get into the ZEN state, you’ll need to make the following preparations:

Make sure that you have a list of expletives and swear words taped to your dashboard - They can be used in cases of emergencies - i.e., when no good swear word comes to your mind when you’re in the middle of a street argument. Also, make sure that you know how to use each of those words properly in a sentence. In fact, practice it right now on all the people around you.

The next step is the car inspection and preparation. Make sure that the side mirrors are opened. Side mirrors can be used as weapons to attack pedestrians that venture too close to your vehicle. Bonus points if you hit a pedestrian with the side mirror, and the mirror neatly folds inside. The pedestrian will then get confused as to what hit him, because it certainly wasn’t your mirror, since it’s folded inside.

Another thing to make sure is to see that all the stickers on the side and back of the car are intact. You need to have stickers like ‘GReddy’, ‘Ultimate Racing’, ‘NOX’ and ‘Ferrari’ pasted on the side and back of the car. Having these stickers gives you super powers - like the ability to ignore common sense and drive recklessly - that are very powerful and undoubtedly useful.

Driving
Once you are sitting behind the wheel, you have to approach driving like a video game - The goal is not to get to your destination safely, but to see how many people you can overtake on the roads. You get 10 points for every car you overtake, 20 for every 2-wheeler and auto rickshaw, and 50 points for every bus and truck. Bonus points if you continuously honk while overtaking.

I can already hear the skeptics asking “What is the point of overtaking if you are just going to reach the next signal and wait there anyway?”. Good question, I say, but logic and reason have no place in the art of driving. It’s like asking “Why does Rakhi Sawant wear short clothes?”. To ask such a question is to miss the point entirely.

Sooner or later, you are going to hit other vehicles, pedestrians and/or cows while you are driving. When this happens, you have to use the vocabulary that you have taped to your dashboard. You get extra combo points if you stop your car in the middle of the road and argue. Also, style points for use of multiple expletives in the same sentence.

But there is a caveat here. Make sure your list of expletives is up-to-date. There’s nothing embarrassing as using an out-dated or out-of-fashion swear word. For example, it used to be fashionable to use the word “Hajam” on Bangalore’s roads a while ago, but not anymore. As a side note, ‘hajam’ means ‘barber’ in the native tongue, which makes you wonder where these so-called explicitves come from. I have a very interesting theory about this, but I’ll save that for some other time. Anyway, the standard rule is to fight the verbal duel for about 15 minutes, and then continue on your journey. Of course, arguing with strangers on the street is absolutely pointless because it doesn’t reverse the damage caused by the impact, but this argument is going into the domain of logic and reason - something we don’t like.

Inspection
Once you have successfully completed your journey and arrived at your destination, it is time to do the post-drive inspection. Make sure all the tyres are still on, because pedestrians and sometimes cows have the habit of stealing these when you are engrossed in arguing with strangers. Also check to see if all your passengers have arrived with you - They have a tendency to get lost. And last, but not the least, inspect your rear and front bumpers to see if there are any cats/street dogs/pedestrians you might have accidentally dragged with you. If there are, place them outside on the road again, so they may catch the next bumper to their destination.

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The Times of India is reporting today that Shatrugan Sinha is saying that Rakhi Sawant, my favorite actress of all time, deserves the Bharat Ratna. Not kidding. Check this out!

Let me be the first to congratulate The Times of India and Shatrughan Sinha on this brilliant insight! If there was a true candidate that truely deserved the Bharat Ratna, it is Rakhi Sawant!

Rakhi Sawant deserves this award for several reasons. Firstly, Rakhi Sawant has fought crime in epic proportions. Allow me to explain:
Rakhi Sawant’s sizzling hot dance numbers are a strong attraction to vast young crowds. So, young crowds are sitting in theaters, watching Rakhi Sawant do her item numbers. And this means that they are not out on the streets causing trouble and committing crimes. Not only that, by keeping people in the theaters, she has also helped reduce incidences of domestic violence because, as we already saw, most drunk people that would otherwise cause violence at homes are sitting in the theatre. Not many people can claim to have such a dramatic impact on society. But for Rakhi Sawant, this is just another day at work!

Also, it is a very little known fact that Rakhi Sawant has fought valiantly against Global Warming. That’s right, Ladies and Gentlemen! Rakhi Sawant has taken the lead in reducing Global Warming by shedding off most of her clothes. Instead of wearing those head-to-toe garments that absorb all the sun’s rays heating up the planet, Rakhi Sawant has courageously chosen to wear less of these high-carbon-footprint and global-warming-creating clothes. This means that she has an increased surface area of skin exposed to the sun, and, as we all know, the skin reflects most of the heat from the sun back into space. And so, Rakhi Sawant has set a brilliant example for all of us to follow to help save our Planet. Scientists estimate* that Rakhi Sawant alone has managed to reduce Global Temperatures by 1-2 degrees by exposing! Even Al Gore has not done so much for Our Mother Earth!

And lastly, but most importantly, the award, by it’s very name, suggests automatically the name of Rakhi Sawant. The “Bharat Ratna” can be roughly translated into “Indian Jewel”, and a Jewel is really any precious stone, or, more generally a precious “item” .
Therefore, Ratna = Item …..Equation (1)
Bharat means India, and India is really famous for Bollywood.
Therefore, Bharat = Bollywood …………. Equation (2)

Combining Equations (1) and (2), we get Bharat Ratna = Bollywood Item Girl, which as we all know, the the one-and-only Rakhi Sawant. Therefore, Rakhi Sawant deserves the Bharat Ratna.

Hence Proved.

*I totally made that up. But you’re probably not going to read this fine print and buy the argument. But seeing as you’re reading this, I have some advice for you: Stop being so skeptical, and start believing in scientific-sounding statistics, for gods sake. It makes everyone’s life that much easier!

• 14 Comments