3 cheers to the 5 quarters

Mood today is cranky, not-so-good and close to sober. The reason being this; Yes the colleague who makes the workplace come alive just by his presence has decided to move on. It’s his last working day at office.

The person who filled the next empty cubicle and who has been by my side (literally too, he is my cubicle neighbor) when I was committed and contended, broken and single, engaged and excited finally married and not yet matured.

For all these 21 months the person has helped each in the team in a way or the other. There were serious plans to open a “For ANY help Contact Harish” counter at the reception; from assisting someone to get a laptop, to aiding the other in getting his bike/car repaired, to dealing with buying new/old cars, facilitating many, I repeat many (close to 5 may be) in approving their loans from various banks, he has done it all. Al though when it comes to me and my work he has always taken a back seat. I still have that complaint.

I shall miss the 21 months spent within ODC and lunches/dinners/coffee/tea outside, the shuttle games played together and against, the n-number tantrums I made and the way he ignored them, the birthday parties organized together, the gupshap done everyday at the bay, the greetings mail he scripted and I read before he sent them, his various posed photos that flooded my inbox especially the cross arm one, the mutual flipping of the Acc Cards, the list he never bought from the monthly santhe, the small chit of paper with all the transaction numbers and I guess I’ll go on so here'z a full stop [.]

& I shall cherish the lovely mail he sent me yesterday.

P.S: I have finally written about you and also taken your name in the blog and made you famous in the World Wide Web.

P.P.S: Posting the world famous cross arm pic as well.

GOTIT GYAAN #5

It’s a bad feeling having that special person’s number and still not being able to chat up simply coz she doesn’t know you or you haven’t been introduced to her as yet.

So you have, with very much difficulty found the cell-phone number of your latest crush bribing the person who got it for ya. For all the effort you have made, take the courage of messaging her something like alerting types. Say “Call me immediately. In trouble” or “Save me, I am being targeted”. The warning will obviously arouse some sense of curiosity and your crush will call back or reply back to the message. Then you can either act as if your friend gave a wrong number or you saved it wrong and you’re sorry. At the day end send a good night message and if you are lucky things shall move on.

This GOTIT GYAAN is brought to you by ‘the romance that blossomed the way mentioned above and now the couple are married, happily living ever after’

Clap Clap…. Autoooooo

All characters in tthe post are real and not at all imaginary. The incidents have actually taken place to the author and to people around the author.

Auto Drivers: AD
Needy Passengers: NP

Incident 1:

NP (shouting): Autooooo
Vroommmm zooms the auto just in front of the NP
AD: Yellige (Where?)
NP: Devaraja Urs road.
AD: 50 aguthe (It will cost you 50 bucks)
NP: Meter Hakappa (Why don’t you turn on the meter)
AD: Ket hogidhe (It’s not working)

Incident 2:

NP (shouting): Autooooo
Vroommmm zooms the auto just in front of the NP
AD: Yellige (Where?)
NP: Devaraja Urs road.
AD: hathi (Get on)
NP: Meter Hakappa (Why don’t you turn on the meter)
AD: Hosa charges ge change madsilla so hakalla (New rates have not been upgraded so won’t turn the meter on)

Incident 3:

NP (shouting): Autooooo
Vroommmm zooms the auto just in front of the NP
AD: Yellige (Where?)
NP: Devaraja Urs road.
AD: Baralla (I can’t take you there)
NP: Yaake? (Why)
AD: Documents illa saar adakke city kade barolla (I don’t have proper documents hence won’t step inside city)

Incident 4:

NP (shouting): Autooooo
Vroommmm zooms the auto just in front of the NP
AD: Yellige (Where?)
NP: Devaraja Urs road.
AD: Hathi (turns on the meter)
NP: (surprised)
NP: ille nilsappa (Stop here)
The meter reads 30 and NP gives 30
AD: Sir 35 kodi (Give me 35)
NP: Yaake (Why)
AD: Illindha khali hogbeku (I won’t get any passengers from here)

Incident 5:

AD: (zooms before NP reaches the stand) Yellige (Where?)
NP: Stand nalli hathuthini (I will take an auto from the stand)
AD: alli jasti aguthe sir ille hathi (It will cost you more there so hop in here)

In the act of preventing above incidents and more such harassments the Mysore city police have started a little program.

More news here and DAD, I am proud of you for all the initiatives you have taken

Meetings Mania

Meetings: the very word makes people turn their grin upside down.


Those Outlook calendars packed to the gills with meetings for most of us. Nearly two of every five days workers spend on the job is wasted on pointless meetings, bad communication and unclear objectives says a survey.

Tougher still is keeping track of the meetings; MOM. Here in my team we have a rule that each day one person (in alphabetical order) should take up the task of penning down the talks. Apparently the lovely members make all sorts of excuses, some don’t turn up when it’s their turn, some say they haven’t got a pen and so on and so forth.

I choose to differ from these folks; Taking MOM has many advantages & few listed below

• You don’t get bored the whole time because you are penning down talks.

• You know the issues faced, clarifications given, solutions made and so you will understand what to do when it strikes you.

• Your mobile bill will not rise up due to those messages you type & shoot during the meetings.

• Your handwriting improves each time you take the minutes.

• Your typing speed improves while converting the text on book to text on system.

• Your language improves in great deal; the past/present/future plus more such tenses, active/passive voices et el.

• You get to tell/command members about the action items post meeting.

Got the point? No? I prefer having a one on one meeting to explain more on this agenda and this time for a change you can take the MOM.

The pluses, the minuses and the things in between!

This Post is for a contest running in pluGGd.in


One does not have to be an M.B.A from a top management schools to start/sustain/make profit/market in business. If that was the case Manjunath Tea Stall in Chikpet would not be able to take 2000 orders for tea and coffee each day with a simple concept of asking his customers to give his cell phone a missed call to get the coffee/tea delivered. If there is an urge to succeed, then with plain observation products from any arena can be promoted.


The Pluses in Names:

Faith plays a vital role in the medicine field. None would want to take a risk in health and matters associated with it. There is a doctor I know who specialized in Obstetrics and Gynecology. She used to see people in a private nursing home as a start-up. Gradually she became the name in the city with folks wanting to get the apple of their eyes to be delivered only by her.

Further she updated her qualification by doing a research program on “Reproductive Medicine”. For obvious reasons few years later she decided to have a hospital of her own which would specialize in complicated cases and cases where in chances of conceiving was negative. Set-ups were done and then it came to naming the firm. Most of the friends and well wishers suggested it to be in her own name so that people would come by without much hassles.

She went against all and named it as “Nagu” [meaning “Smile” in Kannada], specialist in infertility disorders. The patients actually did not turn up to this new set-up. People who are happy would never go to a clinic and who are not would not want to go to a clinic which has a humor related name. It was not a matter to laugh about. So finally she had to change the name to “Santhathi” [meaning “one’s kid” in Kannada].

& then there was no looking back.

The Minuses in Games:

The latest product of cricket, IPL was a commercial hit. The sponsors, the cricketers, the venues, the owners, the media, the airlines and all the people associated with it all made easy & fast money. There was a group of ‘not-so-young-creative’ crazy cricket fans from Bengaluru.

They came up with some whacky lyrics, composed music to it, added a little rap, made few talented singers sing it, recorded it and launched as “Thakath Song” for the Royal Challengers Bangalore Team. The song had all the elements of youth and josh in it. It was on the mirchi station every hour. The world space too played it too many time. But an IIMB guy in the group did not know the way to market the song to ‘King of Good Times’.

To add some tadka to the failure, the boys did not perform well in the first season. Hence the effort, the money all went for a toss. Just a good strategy could have resulted in selling the song to ‘Indiatimes’, the global ring tone provider. Or may be playing the song in the stadium while the match was on to instill some josh to the players, market the song to the team, put the song along with the official song in the CD and collect the stake out of the sales.

So it’s just an unheard song now.

The initiatives in between:

Software Paradigms Infotech is an industry-leading IT and BPO provider that drives low costs and system performance through its world-class, enterprise solutions. A touch of humbleness along with business can make a whole lot of difference to any organization. Sponsoring kids in schools, providing basic needs for an orphanage are common practices in IT world.

But as a part of its Corporate Social Responsibility, SPI opened its doors for visually challenged. Eleven visually challenged trainees have joined SPI’s Medical Transcription business as MT trainees. Medical Transcription is considered to be an ideal career for the visually challenged as they can opt for home transcription and work from home. The trainees will use JAWS, screen reader which provides the user with access to the information displayed on the screen via text-to-speech.

This value addition promoted SPI in acquiring projects from J.S.S, Polytechnic for Physically Handicapped which is the only polytechnic in the country to offer Medical Transcription training course to visually challenged.

It takes lot of efforts to make those visually challenged eyes sparkle & SPI did it.

GOTIT GYAAN #4

It’s a painful sight of all the burnt up crackers, related messy papers lying front of your home sweet home on a post Diwali morning.

Solution is simple. Talk to those neighbor kids about how important it is to have those papers scattering in front of their respective houses. Explain them how much pride they can hold to portray that they were the ones who burst most number of crackers in the whole colony. & for that they can have the papers from your home as well; all they have to do is pick up the broom and brush the papers towards their home. This will double the amount of junk and make them popular among the other kids.

This gyaan is brought to you by the ‘pain caused while clearing the piled up house chores as the maid went on leave for 2 days due to the terrible back-ache she got after sweeping the litter of the crackers' this Diwali.

Film: Blue

The Dull Blue
Whoever spent 120 Cr. just on the story of the movie “Blue” should be seriously thrown into the same deep blue sea that is shown in the movie and the person who wrote the story should be kept underwater until he drowns himself to death.

In the 2 hour movie, an hour and half is spent convincing Sanju Baba about putting the hands on the treasure; next 10 minutes Sanju Baba reveals the so called secret of why he does not want to lay his hands back on the hidden treasure. Final 20 minutes they show how they have maps of treasure underwater, the three diving into the water, finding the wrecked ship, the jewels, some dishum dishum, Akki jumping into the sea in his motor-cycle and finally the greatest truth is revealed that Katrina, for whom Zayed did all the circus is Akki’s wife.

Someone tell me how

• Akki has his goatie in a scene and not in the next scene.

• Lara calls the coastal guards of Bahamas “Hame Bachao. Hum dub rahe hai” and they understand her.

• The jewels are sparkling and still intact after being in the marine for almost 50 years.

& for god sake, director of the movie and rest all, when there are 10 men following the hero, all shoot, none hit the “man” and when he does, every single bullet hits the villains is utter crap.

If you still venture out to watch this movie even after reading this post, at least take my advice, take along a flask full of coffee. Serves you at right when the headache strikes. 

P.S: Only poor comedy out of it is when some one asks you “Blue film hegithu?”!!!

Bachpan K Din #3

It’s enough of CCC for a while and time to discuss stuff about me. It was the Pataki season then and I was pursuing my 1st STD (I don’t pursue anything these days so please bear with the usage of the word pursue. It happens to be my favorite word).

That was when I was given heads up to burst crackers from pa. He was/is always over protective when things involved rather revolved around me. I wonder why; & That will be another post. Anyways serious things aside, so it was Diwali time.

I would never wait till the lights got dim and the night prevailed; which would mean that the diyas are lit and then we would start the cracker business. Once the crackers were home I had to burn each piece out of every box to test that all were fine. Even when it was daylight; so after checking the “susurbathis”, “match boxes”, “Snakes” the last one on the block was the gun.

Mama specially bought one for me along with loads of gun shot tapes (the ones in maroon). I felt like those heroes in the action movies holding the gun, firing and killing the villains. I forced mama to load the gun so that I can start shooting.

He asked me whether I need any trial display; I replied in negative. I had obviously seen in the movies. My first victim was ma. I yelled at her that I shall shoot her.

She said that I can, knowing that it would do nothing but just create blast. I kept the gun close to my eye, aimed at her and pressed the trigger.

“Dammmmmmm”

The blast was just near my eyes. Little did I know that this is not the gun filled with bullets; I had watched on the TV that aiming was essential else the villain would escape. Thankfully no harm was done.

So that was the last time I touched the gun and my dream of being one of the Charlie’s angels faded even before it blossomed.

Grandma though did not lose hope on me. She wanted me to be like the bond girl if not the angels. So she taught me how the maroon strip can be fired just using the feet and the gun was not at all needed. She made me wear the famous rubber those times, “Paragon” and place the tape with the white side facing up flat on the ground. Drag the tape with the help of the feet so that with the friction the gunpowder blasted.

I was so proud of myself; thought I was very special until even CCC started doing it. I ventured out to try the gun again & this time not keeping it near the eye but far away from my body. But the sparks hit the area below the thumb and that was it.

I was in 5th & that was when grandma invented her special agarbathis. She made a long one with the help of 3 agarbathis; she joined them together so that I would not bend to light the “aane” Pataki. There I was bursting lakshmi, aane, lars and atom bombs.

But gun is something that I still can’t withstand even now. I still have that gun; as an exhibit. After all it was the one that gave me an experience of lifetime. “The Blast near the Eyes”

GOTIT GYAAN #3

It’s a day wreck when you accidentally see people on the way who don’t let you proceed with your work until they suck every drop of blood out of you.


Hmmm so before approaching them, take your cell phone and call the ‘toll free’ customer care; talk like you are speaking to a client (or someone equivalently important). When you go near and meet them, close the mouthpiece and take an excuse for not staying by to yap in a humble way. This way you will avoid the sissy people, not empty your pockets on phone bill and have a great day ahead.

This GOTIT GYAAN is brought to you by ‘the embarrassment caused in front of sissy people due to the phone ring when no call was made and just the drama of talking was on’

Bachpan K Din #2

This is not at all a nostalgia post. Out of somewhere it just flashed to me that how CCC was honest back in 90s.


Is he not honest now you may ask; certainly not is my answer. He is such a partner in crime (to me) that family including hubby, makes sure that we both are in different teams when it is regular team oriented games. While playing housie or cards we are made to sit at distance but never next to each other. I was always a cheater; now or back in 90s.

So lets just rewind at this moment; CCC was in UKG. It so happened that his teacher shouted at him for some random reason at school & he came home crying. He was the first grandson and hence his grandma cajoled him way too much.

She was told by CCC that so and so teacher yelled at him. The next thing grandma did was to go to school and yell back at the teacher. Adding masala to the scene, she even told the maam that the grandson is down with high fever being scared and all. She also made CCC not to go to school for a day or two just to add on to the ‘fever effect’.

Our very own CCC did not know the actual reason behind the ‘don’t go to school for 2 days’ but when he went he had a shock. The teacher enquired CCC about his fever for which he replied that he had no clue. The teacher again yelled at him and the entire class according to him giggled.

Coming back from school he took grandma for a toss. He cried, complained, and ate nothing until grandma agreed. She had to do the below the next day;

• Go to his class and meet the teacher.

• Then apologize to the madam in front of the entire class.

• Also inform the class that CCC was innocent.

• & owe not to lie again.

Pour soul did everything; all for the ‘honest’ grandson!!!

But “Honesty is History” now; and these days we find him adding cleared pawn of the opponents back into carom board when no one’s looking, without the organizer’s knowledge flicking an extra housie card, hiding that joker in the rummy game and more such.

Oh I forgot to mention, he flicked another cousin’s glares when he was in 6th std. Poor cousin still thinks that the kaamwaali stole that one.

GOTIT GYAAN #2

Even though one has way too many outfits, most of the times it happens that they get worn twice within the same week.


Hmmm so follow the LORI principle; Left Out Right In. Means pull the left-most outfit hung in the wardrobe for today and hang the yesterday worn outfit to the right most corner of the wardrobe; assuming that you have at least 10 garments. This way you don’t have to remember when was the last time you wore the dress that you are pulling out. It also avoids the perplexity of whether the gear is getting repeated and makes you stylish at workplace.

This GOTIT GYAAN is brought to you by ‘the awesome wear that tore due to excessive usage and hence excessive washing’

The prejudiced Magician!

A journalist reported to the editor “The stretch of Narayan Shashtry Road starting from Devaraj Urs Road till Dhanvantri Road i.e. just in front of More Mega Store was declared one way yesterday. & by the sunset the political drama followed and the police personal was given an order to open the road both ways. This one way would have lessened the jam packed traffic in this stretch and also decrease the parking chaos.”

Editor read the news analyzed the political connections and said abracadabra and the report vanished in thin air. It was never printed.

A journalist reported to the editor “The stretch of Malai Madeshwara Road starting from Nazarbad Police station till Sandesh the Prince Hotel was declared one way yesterday. & by the sunset the political drama followed and the police personal was given an order to open the road both ways. This one way would have lessened the jam packed traffic in this stretch and also decrease the parking chaos.”

Editor read the news analyzed the political connections and said abracadabra and the report vanished in thin air. It was never printed.

A journalist reported to the editor “The stretch just next to the Nalapatna Police Station is flooded by the ‘paanipuri’ gaadis in the evenings. There is no such thing called as road here; the customers park their vehicles causing disturbance to the flow of traffic in this road. Last night all of them were lifted from the footpath and the road was clear. But by the sun rise the political drama followed and the police personal was given an order to allow the vendors to do their daily living.”

Editor read the news analyzed the political connections and said abracadabra and the report vanished in thin air. It was never printed.

On October 4th 2009 the editor saw a broken bus near the Nazarbad Police station. It caused problems for 45 minutes and the same was printed in style.

It’s a shame that the only star in Mysore is biased; that too politically. It’s high time the media reports the ‘good’ deeds instead of always pointing the other way.

By the way the Mysore Exhibition has a stall depicting the works of the ‘Traffic’ police. In case the star did not report, I am doing it!

Kanoon Ka Haath & Being Saath Saath

Typical bolly/kolly/tolly/sandal wood movie:

A couple is dressed like ‘bride’ and ‘groom’, few friends hold two garlands, a registrar enters, asks them to exchange garlands, requests them to sign on the register, friends follow the same.

And then lots of laughter, congratulations and couple leave for their honeymoon. They are now ‘happily married’.

Damn it; this only happens in ‘reel’ life mind you. In real, I’ll tell you what happened on Saturday.

A couple is asked to submit the following credentials.

• ID proof for both bride and groom.

• Age proof (SSLC marks card) for bride and groom.

• Form 1A and 2B.

• Six 2B size photos.

• Receipt of the wedding hall that the marriage happened on such date.

• Copy of the Marriage Invite.

• 3 witnesses.

• Nominal fee of 205 (white is the color)

So the couple went to the studio and got the pic clicked, filled all the forms, signed, Xeroxed all the related proofs, got the letter from the wedding hall authority and went to the ‘Sub-Registrar’ office at 9:30am.

Now it’s a Saturday and the day before that was a government holiday due to this. The next day is Sunday which is also an off day. So the registrar seems to have escaped. Later it is known that the guy visits the office only by 10:30am.

The witnesses are from the police department so they somehow process the papers soon. But the registrar was in no mood they said. The couple is asked to come by 2:30pm.

At 1:30pm the couple gets a call asking for 2 more photographs. The couple had to rush to the photo studio, search for the pic taken the day before, and had to request them to reprint 6 more within short duration; that takes almost close to 2:30pm.

The witnesses start calling the couple one after the other stating that the registrar is in full mood & if delayed the couple may have to postpone the appointment to the next week. This is thoroughly not possible as the couple work (read as slog) in the weekdays and are free only on Saturdays and Sundays.

The couple reaches the location by 3pm; huffing and puffing they climb the second floor. The sticking of the photos to the documents is done, all the information is fed to the system, verified thrice, names are checked, and initials verified, the witnesses and their addresses are checked, DOB is confirmed and the print button is clicked.

The groom signs on 8 papers 17 times and so does the bride. The Registrar in a ‘ok-mood’ signs on the papers, the government seal is hit on the sheets.

& the already happily married couple is tired at 4pm but finally registered under the ‘Hindu Marriage Act 1955'.

Now go on and congratulate them by sending gifts!

Where there is Gandhi, there is Money!!!

Mahatma Gandhi’s memorabilia recently went under the hammer at the Antiquorum Auctioneers in New York after hours of high drama.

Vijay Mallya got home Lot 364, featuring effects of Mahatma Gandhi, after frenzied bidding. He made a bid of $ 1.8 million, for a total cost of $2.1 million including the buyer's premium.

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The limited-edition pen, priced at £14,400, has an 18-carat solid gold, rhodium-plated nib and “a saffron-colored mandarin garnet” on the clip. The pen is also engraved with Gandhi’s image.

Dilip R. Doshi, chairman of Entrack, Montblanc’s distributor in India, has an opinion that they are creating a thing of simplicity and beauty that will last for centuries.

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A man has not only collected stamps of 130 countries bearing Gandhiji’s image on them, but also many other interesting tokens which have connections with the father of the nation. As a philatelist, he has an eye for detail; has postage stamp cancellations which bear the post office seal.

Retired botany prof Venkatesh S Yalvigi has 40 files of memorabilia on the father of the nation.

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Visuals of Gandhi kept appearing to this not-so-innocent man. All the questions that were unanswered in his brains were answered by the great man himself.

Sanjay Dutt aka MunnaBhai was terribly obsessed and hence started having ‘chemical-locha’ as termed by him in the movie ‘Lagey Raho Munnabhai’

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I am no ‘King-of-good-times’ Vijay Mallya or ‘Gujarat born’ Dilip Doshi, not even ‘Museum/Publicity Aspirant’ Yalvigi or ‘TADA culprit’ Dutt but a common girl who knows a little too much about the great man.

Like......

• Full name ‘Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’.

• Born in ‘Porbandar Gujarat’.

• Parents ‘Karamchand’ and ‘Putlibai’.

• He married 14 year ‘Kasturbai’ when he was 13.

• He quoted "As we didn't know much about marriage, for us it meant only wearing new clothes, eating sweets and playing with relatives." Although unaware of what marriage was he became father at the age of 15.

• His home was called ‘Sabarmati Aashram’.

• He went to London to study ‘Law’.

• He was thrown away from train in ‘South Africa’.

• He preached ‘Non-Cooperation’.

• He started ‘Salt Satyagraha’ and marched till ‘Dandi’.

• He cleaned his ‘toilet’ on his own.

• He began the ‘Quit India Movement’.

• He practiced ‘Ahimsa’.

• He was assassinated by ‘Nathuram Godse’.

• He is ‘Father of our Nation’.



Not just me but every kid in India will know 50% of the above listed information. How you may ask?

Simple its courtesy:

Lessons in Language textbooks (Kannada, English, Hindi and Sanskrit) from 3rd to 2nd PUC.

History chapters.

Some say that Oct 2nd is just an observed holiday where people garland his photo, enjoy the day off and not remember him for the next 364 days. But I guess that’s better than commercialism in the name of ‘M.K. Gandhi’.

I have done my part this day; scripted my views on ‘Gandhian Era’, listed all the ‘to-do’ plans for the long weekend and started executing them one by one, boycotted non-vegetarian for a day and vowed not to utter a lie (ahem) at least on this day.

Before I am off to enjoy the holiday, let me tell you that I stay in ‘Ahimsa Marga’; not just for a day but all throughout.