Shifting

Hello !! I have shifted my blogging activity to LiveJournal. You can access my blog at sujeetjoshi.livejournal.com.

Looking forward to seeing you there!!

Cramps.....Excitement... Fun... Anxiety... Joy... and Cramps!!

Well, the title of the post paraphrases my physical and mental state over the last weekend. I had been to Bangalore to participate in a quiz contest. Driving down from Chennai was an experience in itself. Petrol and Toll consumed our wallets! Not Teja's, he did not have any money to begin with! We hit Bangalore late into Thursday night. The cramps caused by the travel in the back seat of a tiny "zeny" car did not help matters the next morning, when I had to stand in the queue at the registration desk at IIMB for a full one hour!

The prelims came, and then the nail biting wait for the results and then the news of qualification. Amidst all this, I had an awesome time with friends. Life seemed so beautiful, all of a sudden!

The quiz finals were great - made all the more special by Chaitra's and Supreet's presence in the audience! It was so long since they saw me quizzing!! Thanks yet again, to Supreet and Chaitra for sponsoring those coffees and dinner and the movie and for the MacDee.

To top it all, on Sunday there was some major relocation activity to be undertaken by Supreet. Shifting his luggage took the cake for being the most demanding activity of the weekend. Well, now you know why the cramps revisited me!

Some self realizations/belief reinforcements post Bangalore trip:

1. I still tend to make wrong decisions when it rains!!
2. Some people dont realise that in absence of sound logic, intuition seems a good alternative (related to quizzing!)

Rewind

I was invigorated to write some more on the topic that I posted 5 months ago. The latest in the series of insightful comments - some approving, some not so much of my opinion- was written by Skanda. He raised the issue of Kannada having lost its rightful place because the Kannadigas do not "come-out" with their linguistic identity as much as Tamils do.

Frankly speaking, the issue gets complicated because of the underlying demographics prevalent in the state or the city. I am sure 10 years ago, when none of this IT boom was heard of, Bangalore was as awash with Kannada speaking people as Tamils are in Chennai even today. If you visit North India, vast areas have Hindi as the local language. So, anybody who does not know the language feels left out and unable to communicate. The fact that Hindi is the national language needs no reinforcing here, because even if it were not, the local language would still be prevalent (which of course is Hindi).

As far as Bangalore is concerned, the mix of the people in the city landscape has gone more skewed towards non-Kannada speaking people over a period of the last decade. Consequently, Hindi has become a de facto language for many. I have personally experienced this many times in Bangalore where the rickshaw drivers speak in Hindi which is actually unheard of in Chennai. It has to be admitted that Chennai still lacks the cosmopolitan colors that is present in Bangalore. Once the city of Chennai gets more people from across the country for economic reasons, then the shifting linguistic profile of the population will force a change in the way locals see a foreign (read non - Tamil and Indian) language. I have noticed this in cities such as Madurai where a large tourist population floats in annually. So, for the locals - the businessmen, auto-drivers, shop keepers etc. - Hindi is definitely workable! Even Pondicherry exhibits similar properties.

I feel that when push comes to a shove, everyone, irrespective of their linguistic preferences, will settle for the language spoken by the majority in any given instance. Bangalore, presents a paradox in this respect. You move towards places like Rajaji Nagar and Malleswaram and you find the Kannada influence stronger than in areas like Koramangala.

All said and done, patience and tolerance for something that is foreign or unknown to you is important. This holds for both the native speakers and the "otherwise" population. Assimilation becomes a lot easier. Mumbai is a shining example!

Back Again...yet again!

Its time to blog again after a brief hiatus perpetuated by sloth and behavioral malignancy caused by being stuck in an inertial frame with respect to penning down my thoughts for public consumption.

To begin with, I have hit the second year of my Masters programme in Business Administration. Being half an MBA gives you jitters!!

Economics seems to be the new buzzword around! Well, the credit must go to Freakonomics for getting people to ask questions about things we thought were obvious, but were not. A couple of days ago, I finished reading The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford. (Very many thanks to Chaitra for gifting me that book). Its not as suited for a layman as Freakonomics, but is definitely insightful. During the period of my internship, I have read a lot more books. Shashi Deshpande's short stories were written in a very down to earth manner, but there are lots of references to the female perspectives on life which I guess, women will associate better with than me. Sudha Murty's book, The Old Man and His God, and her writing was a serious letdown!! I advise people to read that book, so that one day when they think of writing they can always benchmark their worst performance on her writing.

Chennai seems to having the most fickle of the weathers. The afternoons are so stifling, that its hard to breathe, the evenings are washed out by rain, the nights are breezy and chilled and the next morning, the sun is out in full force that makes you take a cold water shower!

Snoopers!

There are two very prolific snoopers on a very popular social network site (run by the same people as is this blog site) on the Internet. Their souls were lost along the Silk Route eons ago. This is supported by their personal nomenclature, namely, Cat-Hair and Kick-Hu. They seemingly possess extreme mental capabilties in tracking homo-sapiens in the virtual world. Intelligence reports point to the usage of a long drawls for verbs such as "laughing" and short bursts of adrenaline induced action in words such as "cook" (it sounds like "cuck").

Some wandering journeyman happened to pop into their conversation and heard the following:

Cat-Hair : Man, look at this girl, **h* *a*, she looks so much like a man! I guess thats because she has got her upper lip threaded and the distance between the nostrils and the upper lip is so un-feminine.

Kick-Hu : Previous recce missions on the same personality revealed the girl's (??) propensity to indulge in hyper-threading experiences!

( The names are getting unwieldy for regular use now. So, Cat-Hair shall be called C1 and Kick-Hu, C2, from here on)

C1: The snap was taken on a nature trail. May be thats the reason for such repulsive make-up.
C2: Quite possible. Civilized world never gave her a second look.


C1: This lady has gone nuts. She has even got her mom into O**u*.
C2: Not just that, mummy and the daughter have testified publicly for each other.

C1: Which caste does this chap A****h belong to?
C2: How does it matter? I know you saw the family function snap.

C1: How can this fellow already have a cabin for himself at work?
C2: He does not. Thats his room in Frankfurt. By the way, talking about Frankfurt, did you know **i*a is there? Where was she working?
C1: Archives point to *er** S**e**. Not sure though. Hey, have you heard that this girl called (name goes unheard) has got married? She does not deserve an uncle-like husband !
C2: Yep. Thats what even I am seeing. She is in Flow(rid)a now.

C1: This crackpot's profile has a community listed, Eavesdroppers!
C2: I am a step ahead of you. I already know we are being overheard.

(hi-fives!!!!)

Milking the Cow

My daily dose of news and latest happenings around the globe comes from newspaper and the Internet. But, of late I have been watching the news channels too. Quite frankly, they were totally unimpressive. Just for the sake of living up to the tag of a 24-hr news channel and for justifying the advertisers' money, crap is dished out. Even the news that makes sense is packaged "differently". The idea of product/service differentiation is turned into a joke.

Every damn thing is sensationalized. Every story is shredded apart from all illogical angles. Worse still, in many of the news shows the "expert" opinion itself appears so shady, largely because of the doubtful credentials of the speaker. The very art of wrapping the content in the colorful paper of mod-looking newsreaders with gelled hair and wide-as-a-wall flat screens in the background, takes the focus away from the news and "pushes" the prejudicial conclusions and opinions upon the viewers.

Being brought up on the staple diet of gossip-free, content-thick newspaper, The Hindu, I am beginning to find the transition that some of the newspapers have undergone, in the name of "marketing" the news, very cosmetic. For example, one of the leading economic dailies of the country, basked so much in the glory of Arcelor-Mittal deal, spent bales of newsprint tracking his speeches and appearances for the past one year, that for a second, even the most discerning reader on the Dalal Street would mistake it for a LN Mittal newsletter, meant for internal circulation only!

But, try and crib as much we may, the fact remains that "packaged" news sells. The concept of breaking news is hogwashed day in and day out, but still, we lap it all up. We want, they make. They sell, we buy. The audiences are cows. Media has to milk them for the milk AND the cream.

Q: Whats the best way to prevent the milk from turning sour?
A: Keep it in the cow!

Picture Perfect

Last weekend, I "managed" a trip to Bangalore. It had been a long time since I had met up my college buddies.

Dear Chaitra treated us all (Anu, Nitin, Vidya, herself and myself) to a posh lunch (as is her wont) at Sahib Sindh Sultan. We had great fun and food there, especially the gulab jamoon with brandy! Nitin, you owe one to me for the choice!!

You can see the gulab jamoon, it was on fire a few seconds ago, burning with brandy! Look at Anu (in the denim jacket), she is trying to hypnotize the waiter who took the snap!

The same evening I met up with my college buddies at Mojo's. It was great talking to them!

L to R: Jaan, Nitin, me, Pomchi, Leelu and Andu!
Had awesome discussions on company appraisals to the MBA hype to Cristiano Ronaldo's penalty to IIT campus life. Now, this was one hell of two hours we spent together! All the uncleanliness seen on the table is due to Jaan and Andu.

The unanimous comment on me was that I had grown thin. Well, no way better to say it than through this picture ( thanks to Chaitra).

I could freeze all the three days in memory, for life. For Ever. It was picture perfect. Well, almost.

Footer:

1. Nitin has developed this Paris Hilton - like plastic smile. Its the same in every snap!
2. Chaitra put a lot of pressure on me not to put the first snap. She looks "ugly, fat, stressed out in lyfe!" in her own words.
3. Pomchi still writhes when smoking, in spite of beginning to look stouter than a cigarette. Look at this snap below!