Adieu

You will be missed.

Random Midnight Thoughts - Episode 1 (?)

Random Midnight Thought (RMT) # 1: I get more SMSes from bots telling me about Minutes Of Usages (MOUs) clocked on my service than from friends telling me the latest gup-shup in their life.

RMT # 2: I'm listening to 'All Izz Well' from 3 Idiots in a desperate bid to induce myself into thinking that all is indeed well.

RMT # 3: I just realised why older people don't get drunk easily; the more the pain, the more alcohol necessary to heal the wounds... albeit temporarily

RMT # 4: When friends know your secrets better than your parents, it's easier to hide things from your parents than your friends

RMT # 5: "Agle mod pe, maut khadi hai.... marne ki bhi kya jaldi hai?"

RMT # 6: I wish I could just drive a car at full speed across a highway all through the night so that I could ultimately see the sun rising at dawn

Sleep with a smile

The long day has come to an end. Silence surrounds you. The gentle warmth of the blanket engulfs you.

Try smiling as you close your eyes and drift off to sleep. It is a happy feeling.

Remind yourself of whatever brings a smile:

Mom's cooking

A baby's laughter

A loved one's gentle touch

Pride on your father's face

A guitar strumming the first strands of your favorite song

Tiffin breaks in school

Bunking college classes

Steaming hot kulhars of chai in chilly winter nights

The first drops of monsoon

~ Dear Reader, add your own list here :) ~

Give Me Some Sunshine Redux

I guess one measure of how popular a Hindi film song is in public conscience is by the number of avatars the general public invent for it.

The earliest such song that comes to memory is "Tu tu tu...tu tu tara... todo na dil hamara". Apparently, roadside Romeos in Gujarat used to call out to girls by the opening words "Tu tu tu...tu tu tara..." to which the girls used to retort with a rhyming "Tara karta kutra sara" (dogs are better than you are).

Cut to present day, it is no secret that the song "Give Me Some Sunshine" from 3 Idiots is a rage, especially among the college and the young office-going crowd. Hence, I wasn't surprised when I found this version of the song in my inbox the other day:

Give Me Some Sunshine - The Office Crowd version

Saari umr hum
Office mein mar gaye
Ek pal to ab humein jeene do...jeene do.

Give me a flight
Give me a train
Give me another chance
I wanna go home once again

Kandhon ko laptop
Ke bojh ne jhukaya
Client se jhoot bolna tho khud
Manager ne sikhaya

4.5 ya 5 rating laaoge to chhuti, varna kismat futi
Kaam kar kar ke pada ungaliyon pe
REVIEW, SCREEN aur REWORK ka chaala

Is Project ne to sala poora..
Poora bheja pakka daala

Career to gaya
Girlfriend bhi gayi
Ek pal to ab humein
Jeene do jeene do

Career to gaya
Girlfriend bhi gayi
Ek pal to ab humein
Jeene do jeene do

Saari umr hum
Office main jee liye
Ek pal to ab humein jeene do...jeene do

Perhaps encouraged by this, the Drunkards Anonymous Association of India have started forwarding the following as a 3 part SMS:

Give Me Some Sunshine - The Drunkard's Version

Saari umra ham
Mar mar ke ji liye
Ek glass to ab hame
Pine do... pine do.

Saari umra ham
Mar mar ke ji liye
Ek glass to ab hame
Pine do... pine do.

Give me some white wine

Give me some red

Give me another chance

I wanna get drunk once again.

Kandhon ko kitabon ke bojh ne jhukaya

Daaru pina to khud doston ne sikhaya

99% laoge to whisky

Warna beta yeh le desi

Pi-pi kar bana hatheli par whisky, rum, vodka ka chaala

Cocktail-Mocktail ne pura bachpan jala daala

Bachpan to gaya,

Item bhi gayi

Ek pal to ab hame

Pine do.. pine do

Saari umra ham
Mar mar ke ji liye
Ek glass to ab hame
Pine do... pine do.

Give me some white wine

Give me some red

Give me another chance

I wanna get drunk once again.

The roar at Eden

It is a very tough climb to the top… it is even tougher to stay there.

Ask the Indian cricket team; they did exactly that today.

What’s more, they almost faltered owing to one bearded gentleman who played a defiantly heroic knock.

To think that this thrilling Test series almost never happened… ~phew~

I was in office and even caught a couple of deliveries of the match on a colleague’s laptop who was watching it thanks to the wonders of wireless broadband technology. “Only 9 more overs to go in the day and Morkel and Amla don’t seem to be budging,” I told myself. Resigned, I returned to my desk.

A couple of minutes later, a whoop of joy was let out by the group which had crowded around that laptop. Even as I rushed with a grin towards them, I knew that Eden had once again worked its special brand of magic.

The sight of Harbhajan charging towards the stands like a warrior who has just won a battle will stick in my mind forever. He knows this ground reserves special love for him: the Eden crowd ooh-ed and aah-ed with every delivery of his that went past the edge of the bat or dropped just short of the man at forward short leg, they celebrated with the turbanned warrior with every wicket that he took. Bhajji knows how big a factor the crowd is at Eden and this was his moment of acknowledging his most vociferous teammates who sat in the stands.

Not to be forgotten is Laxman, the VVS in whose name Chappel says must stand for Very Very Special. 1000+ runs on a particular ground is no mean feat, but then, Laxman is no ordinary batsman and Eden isn’t any other ground. Ever since that Test match in 2001, Laxman has taken on the mantle of making this his home away from home, much like his fellow Hyderabadi Azhar did before him.

All those who fore-casted the death of Test match cricket... beware!! Test Matches have shown the sheer nail-biting excitement it is capable of delivering: first there was the England vs. South Africa series, then the Pakistan tour of Australia, and now, the roar at Eden Gardens.

What kind of a kid are you?

Rahat Fateh Ali Khan was crooning “Dil To Bachcha Hai Jee” on my laptop while I was speaking to Motee on the phone.

“How much of a kid am I?” I asked.

“Umm…”, followed by a slight pause. “You are a spoilt, tantrum throwing, nerdy, geeky kid !!”

:D

Strangely, I LOVE that description.

My blind date on Valentine's Day

I thought I'd quickly write about what has been happening in my life lately.

Well, not much has been happening in my life lately.

~ducks~ (Pardon the silly attempt at humour, but I'm really spaced out here.)

Oh !! Except for the fact that I happened to have an impromptu blind date with a charming lady on Valentine's Day (now that I'm sure has gotten the audience attention).

Before you fall off your chairs of surprise, let me tell you that the lady in question happens to be my 87 year old, 4 feet 5 inches tall neighbour who I happened to meet on Sunday evening. From the manner in which she spoke to me, it was pretty evident that she is pretty lonely and doesn't get much to speak in front of her children who, she tells me, consider her a pest. And so, when she realized she had in me a guy who patiently kept standing at his front door listening to her stories of how Calcutta was in 1941, she decided to make the most of it.

The old lady spoke non-stop for almost 20-25 minutes and she covered a range of topics and a timeline which was mind-boggling. Knowing that I was from Calcutta, she started by telling me that she too had spent her initial years in Cal.

She narrated stories of the terrible riots that blazed through the city soon after the partition of the country in 1947 as if it were just yesterday. Later, her family set up an achaar-chutney-paapad manufacturing unit in the city. Business prospered and she settled down into the regular Indian middle-class housewife routine of caring for her family.

A couple of decades down the line, one of her sons moved to Mumbai and she came along with his family. Some years later, this old lady travelled to America to assist one of her daughters who had married and settled there and was pregnant. The old lady told me how thankful she was for having been educated by her family in an era when education for the girl-child was more the exception than the norm (is it a norm today yet or am I just looking at my country through metropolitan-tinted-glasses?). This education came in handy when she went abroad and had to communicate with citizens of a country she had never ever met earlier.

She told me she had studied Sanskrit and literature when in college around the year 1941. She said she loves learning new things and given an opportunity would love to learn German and Spanish even today. Here, the conversation (I smiled and nodded politely right throughout) took a different turn and she started discussing Hindu mythology. And no, not Ramayan or Mahabharat, which I'm so fond of. She began at the beginning of time!! She started quoting from the Vishnu Purana about how the creation of the world came about and the significance of the Holy trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh.

On my part, it began simply as an exercise in being polite. To be honest, at the start I was only wondering when she would cease so that I could go back to the Domino's which I'd ordered and was getting colder by the minute lying on the dinner table. But then, something struck. I got completely engrossed in the old lady's life-story... it was like watching a small history of India unfolding right in front of my eyes.

Anyway, so much for a Valentine's Day blind date. ~grins~

The fun vids

A quick post on a couple of fundoo videos I stumbled across.

First of all, this really fun way to make more people take the stairs instead of an escalator. Watch as people hop, skip and jump (literally) over the stairs as it makes those piano sounds. Courtesy: Sayesha's blog.

Next, this awesome wedding dance tribute to Michael Jackson's Thriller. Loved the spontaneous and unannounced way in which the dancers begin.



The wedding dance obviously reminded me of this (don't remember having put this up over here). Like I commented on this video some time ago, if ever you decide to make a grand entrance to your own wedding, let it be an inspiration from this.