Hot and Loving It!

Ever tried jogging at 2PM in the afternoon with the temperature at 45 degree Celsius?

I do exactly that sometimes and trust me it's fun. Makes you enjoy the heat. The hotter the better!

An Interesting Theory

If you took snapshots of the world as it is. Every trillionth of a second. And suppose you had sufficient computing power to obtain 100 such snapshots.

According to a theory, you would then be able to calculate the 101st snapshot and then the 102nd and so on. In other words predict the future.

Sounds good, I wonder if it could work.

I got this from an interesting site. Click here. For science-fiction fans.

I hate using this term (science fiction) because technology is one thing I am really passionate about and the stuff we consider to be 'fictional' as of now, I'd like to call it reality. Someday within my lifetime. And I do have a feeling that someday we will travel at speeds greater or atleast equal to the speed of light, meet intelligent beings from other planets, explore the universe and so on.

As always, there would be skeptics. To them all I'd say is that 500 years back, no human could have even dreamt of flying in air.

Now we have these

Birds of steel, weighing hundreds of tons, transporting thousands of humans across the planet. Sounds like a miracle, doesn't it?

All I want to say is - Never dismiss an idea!

Bengali: The Economist

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Here is Kingshuk Das a.k.a. Bengali. He was called so because he was the only bengali fellow in the hostel. Add to that, he looks like a typical bengali too.

In our hostel, we had something called a 'night canteen'. It was an arrangement in the mess where we could get eats like maggie, biscuits, milk, tea etc. at night after dinner. It started around 10-30 PM till around 12 AM. That was the time most people got hungry and most of the time, like always, no one had anything to eat.

A typical scene at night.

In my room-
Bengali: chal, contri(contribution) mei maggie khaa ke aate hain!
Me (happy that bengali is actually talking about spending his money): chal!

Maggie costed 15 bucks in the night canteen.

After this

Me: paise nikaal...

Bengali gives me a two rupee coin, saying: ye meri contri!

Me---> standing their bewildered! Deciding whether to kick his ass or simply laugh.

And yes, I almost always had to pay the rest of the 13 bucks.

Bengali is now doing an MBA in HR from TISS, Mumbai and having the time of his life. Miss you bro!

Weekends at Hostel A - Part 1

I was just reading Jitin's blog on his Sunday ritual and I was reminded of my weekends in the hostel at TIET(Thapar Institute, my alma mater...feels weird saying that!). So I thought of writing a post on it.

Since I didn't have a girlfriend in there, which in retrospect seems to have been a good thing, I had more or less nothing substantial to do on weekends. Needless to say, we slept really late on Friday nights. Even if we didn't, waking up before 11 AM on Saturday was a crime for me. By the time I woke up around this time, breakfast had ended in the mess. Not that I really looked forward to it, but compared to the other meals, it was quite tolerable. So on most, rather, every morning including weekdays, I missed breakfast as waking up in time is something I can just dream of. Its become a habit now, not having breakfast, much to my mom's chagrin!

That's my bed in the hostel. With lots of other stuff also on it usually. It was quite a task to actually make space for myself and sleep on it. I guess that's what hostel life is about...adjusting...lol






Anyways, with breakfast over and with nothing else to fill my stomach with, I went back to sleep or go to other people's rooms to scrounge up something to eat. Mostly with little success. And neither did I have the energy to bathe or even brush my teeth. So there was no way I could go out too, looking the way I did, not that I had the energy for that either. So, lounging around in the hostel, passing time in the cyber-room, playing cricket in the corridors maybe or go back to sleep was what I did to pass my time till evening, when someone would go out and get me something to eat because dinner was still too far away.

That's Rajgariah posing for the camera. He doesn't play that well actually.

And that's the great man himself - Pappu. Playing the shot from behind the wickets. Ishneet and Sahil standing in silent applause.

Lunch was something I deliberately missed on weekends. Most times, I'd go to the mess, have a look at the food and come back. The way I am, I'd rather not eat food than eat bad food. So, I had to remain hungry.

That was the story till 5 PM, when someone would go out and hopefully remember to buy what I asked him to, for me to finally eat. And then, if there was a plan, then we would go out to eat, which was most of the times, as the mess food was intolerable. By final year though, if nothing else, we would simply crash weddings. That was fun.


Later on in the night, there was Rahul Sareen's room to watch movies. Almost miraculously, the haraami had a new movie almost every night. He was also the TV Room secretary. A post he had been born for, I guess.

If not Sareen then you had to look for someone whose a friend and planning to watch a movie. Because unfortunately, yours truly did not have a computer...:( But watching movies was important. At times, almost the whole weekend was spent watching movies except when it became really important to sleep or when you had to go for other really important stuff...;) A few times, there was this 'Hostel Film Festival' (which I am sure every hostel has had) where anyone you saw had a film DVD in his hands and was running excitedly towards a computer, followed by a few more equally excited morons.

After the movie, it was back to sleeping or bakchodi sessions. Those are what I really miss now. Films, cricket, gossip, politics (both hostel and the real world), current affairs, philosophy, who was a loser and who was not, bitching, making plans to play pranks, scheming up of ways to make Jagga throw parties, Jagga sessions where anyone and everyone ganged up on Jagga, serious and important issues and loads of things I don't even remember now were what we talked about.

That's Jagga, by the way. I love the look on his face. Like a lamb before its slaughter...:p

Since most of the C block had gone home, it was mostly me, thudda and bengali for the weekend.


That's us, starting from left, me, thudda (Harsh) and bengali(Kingshuk) at Red Dragon in Patiala. A frequent haunt, thanks to cheap prices, decent food and bengali's undying loyalty and insistence to eat at RD.

Sunday morning, again I woke up at 11-12 in the afternoon, with the rest of the day much the same as Saturday, except this time we would go to a cheaper restaurant like the one below.

Bengali Hotel, cheap and very good food. It was quite far from the college, so we went by rickshaw and came back walking all the way to the hostel. Keeping healthy and saving on money.

By the time we came back, it was another movie or going to sleep thinking about the rigmarole of studies in the coming week.

Weekends at Hostel A - Part 2 coming up soon. On C-block.

Me: Boring but Intelligent

This is the conclusion I have reached.

Either I am too boring or the world is too loud. Either I have a high IQ and the world in general is dumb or I think a lot or maybe too less

Based on my experiences in the recent past.

"BREAKING NEWS - Shilpa Shetty broke a toenail"

That's what I expect to see on the Hindi news channels soon, with their quality of journalistic aspirations.

Just the other day, I saw an interview on Aaj-tak or some other hindi news channel. Any guesses on who was being interviewed?

The 'mehendi vyavasthi' (the person in-charge of henna/mehendi) for the abhi-ash (corniest phrase I have ever heard) wedding. I mean is this the level of journalism we'll have to now put up with? And not just him. Everyone from the tent-house guy to the saree seller to the jewellery guy got his/her 15 seconds of fame.

Another time I saw the demented Zee people showing a very angry sadhu predicting people's future. Viewers had to call up and tell him their problems and this smart-ass would tell them some weird solution. All on live air. Forget about covering serious issues. The least these so called news channels can do is not to promote superstition. The rot seems to be mostly in the Hindi news - channels, the english ones are doing relatively better and I hope people like Prannoy Roy and others of his clan look at things from the right perspective.

I understand that for Hindi news channels, their core audience would be from north India and the UP-Bihar belt. But instead of pandering to their superstitious beliefs etc., to just increase their TRP ratings, I wish to see a slightly more responsible brand of journalism.

I mean there have to be slightly more important issues than the examples I just gave. And mind you, these are just examples, from a library of such cases. In the name of Breaking News, news channels cover anything, from what Shilpa Shetty's maid thinks about Big Brother to what the pandit for the abhi-ash wedding has to say about their wedding dates. Now that's important isn't it? so all those losers who watch these news can fit in The Wedding into their schedules.

Frustrating and disgusting.

4 Years

When I was in 1st year, in the 1st semester when I had just started out in Patiala, I didn't unpack my clothes from my suitcase, I hadn't set my almirah and more or less still 'lived out of a suitcase'. Why I did that was because I wanted to pretend to myself that I was in Patiala on a very short and temporary basis. Such was my homesickness. The fact that I was going to be there for 4 more years still hadn't registered.

And at the end of those 4 years, I felt the same way. Except that I didn't want to leave college and come back home.

Now, at times I even watch Etc Punjabi on TV.

As I wrote the last line, I almost died of laughter!...the way things change.

Anyhow, one thing I understood after meeting up with old college buddies, after college got over was that things will never be the way they were in college. As someone rightly said - times change, people change. It was a different time then.

And I for sure miss it.

Bored in office

Well, so here I am sitting in my office, no work to do so I thought I'd update my blog. It's been a long time since I last wrote something.

The IIMA interview wasn't all that great, case study was good I think, but not too happy with the interview, so didn't really feel like writing about it. Life goes on though and I have prepared myself mentally for spending another year working. And I've found ways to keep myself busy and another year of work-ex would only add to my profile so no harm in going for an MBA next year I guess.

Why is it that as soon as you sit down to write, the mental notes you had made about the things you would write, simply vanish?

I guess I'll come back later.