Patience pays.. Yes it does

Why me? Have you ever wondered …why me? When things go wrong, rather when things don't go the way you want them to go, we invariably begin to ask this -  why me? Why does God/ parents/ friends/office has to do this to me?

Of course it hurts when your loved ones put you in mess, when they behave the way you never imagine them to, when they mess your relationships with others. What does one do in this situation – cry loud or just keep mum and say BRING ON, I’m STRONG, I can take more of this crap.

No sermons and no moral fables. I caught on this sentiment from an old acquaintance. I met him late in 2003, during my stint with The Indian Express. We were a bubbly group of interns working with the Delhi edition. Two of us (Me and Suren Da) were from HPU wheile the other six of them were from IMC. Suren Da worked with Express for two weeks after which he followed his interests else where. I continued with Express for a while. During this stint, I got along with people from IIMC. We all got along well. Among them was this quiet, shy and introvert lad from the nort-east. Let’s call him ‘L’ for reference.

He belonged to this beautiful state and was living in the IIMC hostel. His poise, his calm and humble demeanor was prominent part of his personality. Aspiring journos are usually a very aggressive breed. They have fire in their belly and literally so, because they think that they can chage everything under the sun, or may be they will replace Barkha Dutt and Prannoy Roy one day. This wasn’t the case with L. And then this chap was physically challenged as well. His left hand was numb!!! It didn’t move at all. He was in an alien land where people understand Hindi, more specifically Punjabi and the great Jat language. I gathered from other people that he belonged to a simple family and may be his family even sold their belongings for his education. He was certainly bright. I mean you can’t get into IIMC for nothing. 

All of us were sent on different assignments/press confrence everyday. By the end of the day, we had to come back and file the stories and chase senior editors to get them edited. That was quite a task, since ‘editing’ here means getting by-lines and Express has a strict policy of giving by-lines to worthy stories only. While we all chased stories, gathered by-lines and secretly looked for jobs outside; L was very calm. He went to cover stories everyday and even filed them in the CMS but never really bothered to hound the editors. His response was simple, “If my story is good then the editor will notice it himself and call me. Else, let it be.” He continued to attend press conferences, file stories with one hand and still kept quiet about his work. Having said that, I must mention that he got two or three by-lines and his stories were actually good. They were real meritorious stuff. While we loved the 20-30 by lines for any fashion show we attended, he was happy with those two-three bylines. 

We were initially shocked about this attitude. I mean we all were slogging to make name for ourselves. We traveled in buses, haggled with autowallahs to travel from one place to another while covering stories. We got into unfamiliar zones, met new people just for the heck of tracking some stories that would materialize into by-lines. Initially we were irritated with L's attitude (for the fact that he was so uncaring) and later we let him be. Counseling didn’t help. L continued with this attitude. He left Express after his internship was over. He didn’t want to stay there for more experience/exposure. Later it seems he complete the course and went back to his native place. We all thought that was the end of L, his life and career and the sacrifices that his parents made to get him to Delhi. 

And now the story goes that he is working for UN. The God damn United Nations!!!! He’s heading communications department for some North-East based programme. He is based there and needless to say that he’s doing very well for himself. :)

Good for him and may his tribe of people continue to grow.

When ever you feel left and out do spare thoughts for so may L’s around. There are so many silent workers who slog as much as we do. It’s just that they don’t make hue and cry about it. And they still create a longing impression. What say?

It’s good to be infamous

The verdict is out. It’s good to be bad and it’s bad to be good. No tongue in cheek intended here. All I’m trying to say is that naughty is in and nice is out. Look at Himesh Reshammiya, Mallika Sehrawat, Rakhi Sawant, Rahul Mahajan, Payal Rohatgi, Monika Bedi and the likes. All these people have made news for all the wrong reasons. Himesh Reshammiya’s nasal tones were mocked at while Rakhi and Mallika were despised for their bold clothing. Rahul Mahajan has had a tryst with drugs and Payal Rohatgi is infamous for her cheeky dance numbers. But what is astonishing is that each one of them have converted their negative strides into their publicity vehicles and marched towards success!

You can’t deny Reshammiya’s act in Karzz and Aap Ka Surroorrrrrr. And well… we can’t event stop ranting about Big Boss 2 and the gossips there in.

Some of the global stars follow the same league. Look at Britney Spears, Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love, Kate Moss. Who remembers their jigs and jives? All we remember is that they were in news for doping, drug abuse, marrying out of turn etc etc.

The moral of the story is – It’s good to be infamous than be famous.

There’s a website dedicated to infamous people. It’s called - http://www.hallofinfamy.com/. This is a treatise to all these so called ‘infamous’ personalities from world over.

My questions still is – Is it good to be infamous? Share your answers in the ‘comments’ section.

Google Chrome feels much better

The verdict is out. Google’s new browser – christened Google Chrome - is a good experience. It is certainly a respite from the traditional IE which hangs very often and asks you foolishly to send an error report to Microsoft. If one guy has lost his broadband windows to some inactive page, I presume he’ll be frustrated. There is not much point in asking him to send an error report to Microsoft. All that guy needs is a new broadband window where his pages are retrieved. This happens in Mozilla and Google Chrome is one step ahead. It can import all the active broadband pages from the browser on to itself to prevent data loss.

Google Chrome was out on September 2. I, much like many other geeks downloaded it the same day, and made it the default browser. It was a good experience to open web pages in Chrome. The name is chick and so is its presentation. The tabs are rich blue in colour and the sites open faster without break. The logo is vibrant has a mix of daring red, green and yellow in it. The browser can –

• Predicts the possible urls while user is typing it on the browser. This makes it easier for user to hit at the right address
• Save all the pages and present it as the frequent pages visited by the user
• Store the last page (and even the sub-page) visited by the user for quick recall and reference. Of course one can change the setting and can get rid of this feature, but it will be useful when one needs to go to sub-links again and again say share brokerage sites, news sites etc
• Has a ‘+’ icon to add a tab instantly to the active window
• Downloading (documents/excels/presentations) happens in just seconds. The downloaded documents appears as an icon on the left-bottom corner of computer for easy recall and access

Over all there are mixed reviews about the product. People have liked its easy loading and recall but have mooted down its FAQs.

What’s your take about it? Have you downloaded or tried the Chrome? Are you excited about a new browser service?

Do post your opinions and reviews in the comments section.

Back to blogging

Am writing after a long-long hiatus. Six months to be precise. Have been working round the clock, finishing the assignments and then running home more often to catch up with parents. The last bit is very unusual for me as I am perceived as somebody who is happy go lucky and visits home once in six months. Actually somewhere I also agree with this perception. I was happy with mom-dad and bro coming down to Delhi often and me visiting them once in three or four months.

However, things have changed now. Something in me urges me to be home more often, to cook for mom more often, to drive down dad to his office more often. Have been going home every months for the last four months and still I don’t seem to have enough of that pace and mom-dad.

During this transformation I thought I would delete this blog. I have always guarded my privacy and don’t want people to peep in my life. Then wise notes said why delete the damn blog? Why not rejuvenate it. Give is a classy look and feel and update it more often with things that happen around me. So, this bog will now have less personal musings and more of my observational notes. So here goes the blog again.

And yes life certainly could not be better than this… :)

Seafood extravaganza

I'd had enough of this emotional crap from people around and wanted a change. And guess where I headed to? Holiday.... Himalayas....Home..... ???

Nah. It had to be food.... silly.

A dear friend has an exclusive membership with the Taj, which allows him a fancy discount on the buffet there. He invited all of us (4 devils) to the Taj (the one near Dhaula Kuan) for a lavish lunch. Without sparing a thought, me and J picked our best summer T-shirts and slim fit jeans and headed on for the culinary fair. Other two chaps were to join us at the venue itself.

Me and J believe that we have tasted most of the non-veg delicacies and well... we were in for some shock. We met up with the other two chaps in the hotel lobby and were pretty pleased by the ambience. That place had more foreigners than our desi crowd. And somewhere the moronic Indian in me swelled with pride. We chose a cushy corner near the swimming pool.

We headed for the starters. Other two chaps wasted their time in trying the soups, while me and J picked up the delicious tikkas. After all, chicken is more healthy than the vegetable stock... ain’t it? :-P

After gulping down at east 5-6 pieces of chicken and fish tikkas, we headed to the main course. Any satiated person would have not touched the main course .... but me and J are exceptions.
We walked around the buffet table to have a look at the offerings. They were serving chicken curry, smoked salmon, amritsari fish, squids and prawns. Hang on… did I say squids. Now that was one creature I hadn’t chewed. Me and J looked at each other and picked up four pieces of squids each. We weren’t too sure if we would like it, so we filled our plates with some portions of chicken stuff also.

One back to the table, we were wondering as to how to go about with this squidy thing. I had seen a squid earlier also in college. But, that time I was dissecting formalin soaked squid. This time I was chewing a baked squid.

For those who are not sure what a squid looks likes, let me explain about it. A squid is a quiet sea creature, white, of the size of a human fist, has a cylindrical body and has tentacles for its head.

I picked up the fork and knife and tried to cut into the squid. I tried gently, but it didn’t work. Then I was rather too hard with the culinary utensils and lo… the squid got dissected in to two. I picked up the first piece, it was hard to chew, rather very difficult to chew. It was tasteless, except the juicy sea weeds that had been baked in it and was is seemed like a plastic inside my mouth. Even after baking, the squid’s skin had not become soft. It was rather too tough to chew. I munched it for next five minutes but still couldn’t get to chew it probably. It seemed as if the squid was swimming in my mouth. I gulped it down my throat and drained it with a glass of water. I got to understand, seafood is not for me. I should rather stick to the red and white meat but not sea food. No more seafood adventures.

boulevard of broken dreams

Many a dreams shattered,
Many misconceptions cleared,
What remains is silence,
--- complete silene---
And aloofness,
For what we thought belonged to us,
Was a mirage of someboy's aspirations,
And now we stand alone,
Deserted, shunned and stunned...