quit!

I quit my office recently. The last day, I finish the formalities and all that. As I return the ID card, I feel this sence of almost something saying in me, you are no more welcome here, you will be treated as an outsider, for one second I almost panic! It’s almost time for me to leave and I clear my desk. Almost everyone is gone out to play or watch cricket. As I leave, my closest colleagues come with me till the bus stop. As I am coming back in the bus, it’s a strange feeling… I am not associated with anything! I am kind of scared… I miss my friends at office… It’s gonna be a nice new experience at the new company but then, I shall still miss the intimacy I had developed with my colleagues. Hope they keep in touch…and we get to meet up soon…

A show on NDTV 24x7

I saw a program on NDTV 24x7. Topic of Discussion: Should Gays and Lesbians be given rights or should they continue to be treated like criminals? On the same not, article 377 – does it need correcting? The following are a few of the points that came up:

1. Its unnatural, so no rights

What nature are they talking about? Oral sex is natural? But heterosexuals are allowed to do it. How about sex for pleasure, no other animal except humans do it. Is that not un-natural? Using contraceptives – really don’t think there is nothing in nature that uses contraceptives. Is that not unnatural – how come church does not oppose that?
Human intelligence, that itself is unnatural, for that matter there are a lot of things that humans do which is unnatural! Ban all of that! Homosexuality is unnatural, my foot!

Ok we will narrow down to humans, are homosexuals not born naturally? Are we not humans? Therefore, we being gay, is that not natural? Why do they want to point at us and say we are unnatural? They don’t have any right to say that! Every being with all the characteristics they are born with are natural!

2. Its bad to the society

Is smocking not bad? People die of smoking! But that’s accepted! Is alcohol not bad? What about guy and girl holding hands being romantic, kissing is public, wearing skimpy clothes, is all of this ok? Then, even we should be! Is it not bad to cause trauma to millions of homosexual kids by this stereo type of the society?

Being open and accepting, now that’s what I would say is good. Not vulgarity but living like decent citizens, either gay or otherwise, that should be accepted. Do not accept vulgar and indecent straight lifestyle. Proper sex education to kids, not gay or straight but “PROPER” sex education, that’s what we need to give our kids!

3. Guy kisses girl is ok, mom kissing daughter is ok, father kissing son is ok, and all this is with love. But when a guy kisses guy then there can never be love! Hello…father and son are guys and still there is love between them. Love sees no gender! Love was never gender biased! Wake up and grow up!

4. Homosexuals spread diseases! Please, there are equal numbers of heteros if not more who are cause of diseases! Give us rights to be together and share our life with our lover. Then the sleeping around and all that will automatically stop! We will then have a choice to lead a life not just think of sex! Simple nice solution, but NO! Straight people are jealous and afraid that we may begin to lead a better life than you with your families with only greed and no love…Fine if your definition of marriage is not to be changed, call our relation lovage, +some thing to mean guy and guy or girl and girl living together with love. That way your technical definition remains intact. Of coarse you should not use lovage to mean straight relations as well.

We are not handicapped in anyway for you to help us become proper! You don’t go around correcting people with fantastic looks, great brains or melodious voice just because they are not like “normal” people. Its similar with us, we are just too good for you to “correct” us. Please don’t give such lame excuses.

People talk of accepting mistakes and correcting it. Prove it that you are capable of it! Accept that you made a mistake saying gays are criminals! Correct it! Give us basic HUMAN RIGHTS to live with and share our lives with the PERSON WE LOVE. As humans, we don’t ask you of that right, we demand it! It’s a very good example to set our children (your born children and our adopted children that you gave birth to but didn’t have the capacity to raise); and example of living with love and peace. If you are responsible parents as you claim to be then correct your mistake, not only for your gay child but for the millions of other gay children, give them a life to live without guilt but with peace of mind and love of a lover. It’s a matter of guts, something homophobic heterosexuals’ lack!

T-shirts...

Tirupur! I had plans of buying lots of good quality T-shirts at real cheap rates. I didn’t get the chance to! We were there on a Sunday and still people are working like crazy! Workaholic place it is! It was marvelous to see how the T’s are made. And the management, typical Indian style bosses, no MBAs here who isolate themselves with all sort of jargons and stuff. Hardcore bosses who mix with the team and work to making both a good life for themselves as well as their employees. Simple plain human bosses… we had coffee at each manufacturer and by the end of the day I felt like I had had enough coffee to last a month. The three things I shall always remember from her – hardworking people, good old Indian bosses and conversations with my friend’s dad. One dynamic and interesting father I have come across till now. My friend…you are so lucky…

On the train! finally!

For a long time I have been wanting to go on a ride in the train from Ooty to Metupalyam. Finally my best friend form high school and me decide to do it! It’s off season now and not many tourists. Its too cold in Ooty and we both have cough! Still, we decide to go ahead. We take a late night bus from Bengalooru to Ooty. The road is bad and we were very lucky to have got the last (read most bumpy) seats in the bus. After nice good tossing about we reach Bandipur at the foot of the hills of Ooty at 3 in the morning. From then on I was awake with my eyes glued to the window (I wish I could open these sealed windows for better clarity) looking out and hoping to catch a glimpse of a wild tiger… and I got to see only Deer! Still, it was good fun, catching glimpses of these in the little light that the bus cast on the road, almost a silhouette. By 5 we were on the peaks. The mist was so thick that visibility was just a few feet. Finally as we reached Ooty the lakes and mountains were smoking, the mist rising as the early morning bright sun kissed it. Beautiful…

We took a room, cleaned and changed and set out on a walking trip round Ooty. We sat at a roadside tea stall and sipped some very beautifully colored but quite bland Ooty tea and walked toward the botanical garden. It was not the flowering season and so we just go an eyeful of green green mountainside. After a few hours of walking in the gardens we headed for lunch. On the way we bought tones of home made chocolates, flowers, yummy green Ooty apples and a pair of Caps – really cheap there ;). After lunch at a nice Bengalooru based restaurant we strolled back hand in hand to the hotel, checked out and headed to the railway station.

The train arrived and thanks to good crowd handling skills, managed to get window seats! The really really slow journey downhill began. Midway, the engines were changed and we were then tugging along with old old steam engine! Super cool! For the next 2 hours or so we were among lush greenery misty mountains, clouds, beautiful tea estates, lovely old railways stations, flowers along the tracks, black tunnels, bridges over deep gorges, tiny waterfalls, some almost next to the tracks and lots of coal dust and smoke! I am so glad we don’t have steam engines any more, they are so polluting! If this tiny engine generates so much smoke, I cannot imagine the big bad ones. Every time we go through a tunnel, I feel like an insect being fumigated! Over all, the ride was amazing! It ended at Metupalyam were we went on to Tirupur to meet my friend’s dad…

Inspiration...

Is it Murphy’s Law of lack of inspiration? I watched this Olympic swimming on TV the other day. My God – they have divine bodies. I decided then and there that I would get a runner’s body and work towards it! I also started running the next day onwards. A coincidence, my other better half also had started going out for walks. 3 days later, I am back to square one, late rising and rushing to office. Running forgotten, o rather cast away… God Help me!!! Give me back by healthy athletic energetic body…

Re-Discovering!

I walk into office on a Monday and find a mail from my better half. It’s a lovely pamphlet of a 12-day event near my place – Mahabharatha rediscovered. Me and one of my good friend and colleague decide to attend that evening’s program. We plan to leave office by 5 and, surprisingly we beat Murphy’s Law and actually leave by 5. Of coarse the traffic delayed us and we got there a good half hour late.

The place was a huge open ground covered in a really nice pendal and good seating arrangements also! We buy a pack of steamed ground nuts (some thing I have not eaten for some time now) and settle down. My companion was good and got an extra cover to put the peels and keep the place litter free. I am very pleased with her for that.

There was an initial Rajasthani dance sequence. Frankly, didn’t really understand much of it. However the last part was really nice watching all the women folk in their beautiful dress, mirror work and nice folk art prints on it. Then the governor of Bihar - a north Indian state – Rama Jois, was called upon the stage to give a speech. My colleague and me were thinking what he would understand the Kannada invitation – lo and behold. He delivers a crisp, super charged, beautiful masterpiece in the most eloquent Kannada that I have heard. This was on of the best speeches I have heard – that too from a politician. It was only later the next day that we realized that governors are chosen from a different state and Mr. Rama Jois is actually from Karnataka.

The final event that night was a fantastic puppet show. It was in the lovely Yakshagana style. It was nice, really really nice. I can only say, see it to feel it… I can still recall the resonant voice of the narrator every time I think of the show.

I return home having decided to attend all the events. Murphy obviously caught up with me the next day and stayed till the end of the events…

trip to ooty

Recently I went to ooty. Some of the snaps are here. I shall do a write up soon. :)

Saw Chennai finally

After having planned and planned the chennai trip I finally actually executed the plan this weekend! This had a lot of first time events.This was my longest day train journey to start with. The first time I went in and electric engine train too. The first time I saw a double track and the feeling when another train zooms past you in the opposite direction. The first time I did not have to wait at a station for another train to pass by in the opposite direction, which was a big relief that made the travel so much better, so different from Bangalore Mysore travel. The things I notice when I reach the Chennai outskirts...lots of electric local trains, and the terrible heat and humidity and ofcorse the really bad stink. As I get off I meet my friend and we walk out of the really ancient looking train station. There was thankfully no climbing of stairs as I was carrying this really heavy backpack. As I walk out I turn back to look at the 100 year old station and the railways office and love the way it’s been preserved. Wish Bangalore had so many old buildings showing off to add grace to the city.

Went home changed into something comfy and went to the Besantnagar beach. Whoa, there is nothing as pleasing as the sound of the wave’s splash. We go to a road side restaurant and sitting on the footpath have food on the street, literally! It was also the first time I was on a beach in the middle of the night!

Saturday morning, post the washing up in the scarce water we leave to see the famous Spenser plaza. I was there all noon hiding from the heat of the day and was surprised that there was so much less crowd on a Saturday, so different from my own city which despite so many malls is still overflowing with the populace. Later I went to the Parthasarathy (Krishna) temple and found the entire crowd there! Well at least there are some places which are crowded in Chennai... Next we were off to the Ashtalakshmi temple close to the beach. It is a fab temple, very different style of architecture, it houses the eight forms of lakshmi in 3 levels of temple complex…and we squeezed past tiny staircase to reach the top of the temple for a magnificent view of the sea. It was one of the most intriguing temples I went to. Next stop, you guessed it! The beach! In the light of the “ringed” full moon, I build my first sand castle, not much of a castle but still it was fun, the kid in me was fully happy. After some Singapore noodles at a near by restaurant we headed back home. What happened back at home that night, well…can’t write it here…

Sunday, last day at this city, decided to go to mahabalipuram, reached there in the heat of the day. There were some very nice rock carvings but then, not much to see really. Got totally exhausted by the end of the tour and was desperate to go back! There were a lot of stone sculptures for sale, but it was simply overpriced. Got myself a nice small elephant and a shell necklace (very G! I’ll wear it to the next party). Back home totally exhausted, went off for a rejuvenating siesta. Evening wanted to watch some snakes but the snake park was closed by the time we reached there! We hit a coffee day and yapped away to glory. Went back home, packed, had a very nice dinner cooked by my friend’s roomy and went to the bus stand. The bus stand is really really far! I got on the Volvo, my first ride in a Volvo…it was a comfy ride…got a window seat this time too as I had in the train! I really could not sleep as I watched the sky and the beautiful moon, I felt I was sleeping in the open…wish I had my lover next to me to share this beautiful moment…

Black Beauty

I read this lovely novel this week, many of us have read it as children but something in me prompted me to pick it up in the library last week. May be it was a distant memory of having loved reading the chapter in my schoolbook ‘The Black Beauty’.

If I could, I would have suggested it to both the ‘great’ management people as well as to philosophers as well as to any man who is in the notion of ‘my life’, ‘my business’ and pretty much ‘my anything’.

It has been some time now that I have read a novel which after a few ‘large print’ pages of reading makes me want to close the book, contemplate, apply the meaning to my life, discuss it with friends and understand it in as many ways as possible.

There was this particular piece were, the young horses which are of high spirits (not alcohol!) if not well exercised in the day are taken out for a run by the grooms later in the day. This would cool its spirits and keeps it energetic and active. I was applying this to the current life of mine, where a load of boring work is dumped on a young fresh man like me, which neither exercises my brain nor cools my spirits. It is like making a horse stand tying it to the stable, night and day and saying it is being exercised strenuously. Yes, it is a strain, but some thing that will cause stiff legs and a lazy horse(read lazy brain) that can neither run nor pull a load. This way our brains are left to rot and become lazy and then we are expected to have future vision! If we are no allowed to think of the present what future do we create or imagine? Give us good work and often a good word; and watch attrition drop. What we need is a place where our skill is of value than just our adaptability, a place where we can be master of one or two than jack of all and master of none, and most importantly a place where my driver (read boss) would appreciate me for having worked as hard as possible than for only extraordinary work. A kind poor master is better than a rich/famous and arrogant/ignorant master.

There was this other piece where, a good groom is important to the well being of a horse; similarly a good mechanic is important to the well being of a vehicle. I feel this every time I give my bike for servicing; they are bothered only about fast delivery and processing of more requests than a good work on the bike. Equally important is the owner, who can pick a good groom or a good mechanic as the case may be. I need to find a good mechanic for my black beauty…

These are some of the thoughts that flow as I read on the book. Read it and try and understand it… it’s a lovely journey of a wonderful horse…

dance rythm 2005

Yesterday we had a nice dance program at office...here are some of the snaps.

Voila!

Bonjour! cava? Je vais bien, mercie!
wondering what all this french doing out here on my blog! I got through my french test!

BMW

Today morning comming to office as usual I passed by BMW office...admiring the BMW that has been there for the past 8 months thanks to it price tag...and voila...lo and behold...there is a potential buyer with his valets...some saffron clothed saint with his students (the valets) ! Whao! I am thinking...of changing profession...:) what say you?

Tanjavour..

This last weekend had been to tanjavour and trichy for a nice 3 day weekend...it was a pleasent experience, the best thing was we spent so little on room-rent that we were happy spending on fantastic pieces of brass ware...my favourite is an over priced (now u know why its my fav) deepa (lamp) with a chain having a dancing ganesha on it...

Here are the personal pictures and general pictures.

Rain again...this time in full force...

This sunday and saturday it poured like crazy. Hail storms and all...but then not a single stuppid hail stone near my place. I wanted to eat one but I couldn't!!! :(. The next day half of the streets have uprooted trees...expected I guess..and ofcorse I god drenched...It was fun but then I wish I was on a holiday and was wearing these really sexy clothes and then getting drenched...cuddling with some one...eating hot pokodas and hot tea...anyways...someday, somewhere, with someone i'll do it! (sing this last phrase please)

Shopping! after a long time....

Yesterday I decided to buy a Kurta Pyjama no matter how expensive it would turn out to be. I dreaded I would have to shell out a few thousands on it...although I totally love it, I do not see any justification of the high prices...but when it turned out to be 990 bucks, I felt good. and thanks to my mom who bargained and got the price to as low as 900! With the happy feeling of having brought some thing you wanted to by for a long time...I headed back home.

Then I rushed to meet a close friend at forum, a shopping mall in banglore and had a lovely time there. The best part of it was when we both were sitting outside and letching at some cute people and talking some pleasent stuff. It was such a relaxing thing after the hectic day at office...wish I could do it every day...
I would be a lot more efficient then...

My cycle trip!

Last week I was out on my cycle riding around Jayanagar. In the middle of a traffic signal My mom called me on my cell. I pick it up and half of the people are watching me with the expression of what is this cyclist with a mobile! anyways...it was fun :)

what an amazingly lovely morning....

Today I started off from home early. The weather was so pleasent after yesterday's showers. The cloudy sky with its tinge of blue over the gray, so pleasing to the eye that you can keep looking at the sky for ever and not feel a weeebit bored of the emptyness, the misty air that leaves a tingling sensation in the nose and simply does not satisify the greed to fill you lungs despite how much ever deep we inhale, the cold crispness with which the wind arouses the body as it strokes it, and the millions of sensations that is caused in the brain and the heart that cannnot be described...how I long for this to just last forever....

April showers start....

April showers are here!!! I got wet yesterday after a long time and the best thing was that I was on my cycle! It had been ages since I got wet riding around in my Cycle....nostalgic memories... Today morning was very pleasent too...it was one of those refreshingly beautiful days when you feel like getting away form the city life, settle down in a distant place with a lot of trees and cool fresh air and you lover....absolutely nothing to distract the peace and feelings....

He is here!!!! My Bike ofcorse :)

Finally after a lot of struggling, I got my bike home yesetday! I was quite afraid to ride it but some how managed to get it home. And then after the initial boost of confidence, I took it to the temple, then a spin with mom and aunty and my bike goes and sits inside house. well, today I am sitting at office late so will not get to ride him. Tomorrow may be...I can't believe I missed salsa class for two weeks!!!

Weekend was good. French class went on well but then I missed the Salsa class to go to a friend's place...I got a nice gift. A very pretty Glass painting!!

I am looking at some glass paintings right now!!! lets see what I shall paint...

...financing my second love...

The second day of bike purchasing was hectic again. I was in short of cheques and the banker refused to give me more cheque leaves as I did not have required balance. But, I knew this sweet lady at the bank and I managed to get it. Then I was practicing my signature! I guess I signed some 50 places today at the financer's! Well....left with the hope of getting hold of "HIM" (my bike is definitly male...and soon I'll be riding a male ;) ) tommorrow....and came to office and my manager noticed my absence/late comming and made a suttle comment towards it. I hope he understands my fix. Above that I am plannning to leave early also to attend my salsa class...humm...I think I am becoming a little careless...

getting my second love...

Yesterday was a very running around day...I went to he hero honda showroom and had made up my mind to by passion plus. I saw the seat and ran out (literally) from there to the bajaj show room and booked a pulsar :). Then I had to rush to office after that...came at 2.30! what a time to reach office!! Went back a little late. (8.00). After a long discussion with mom and a few frineds I have finally got the most expensive (my standards) bike!

sleepy day!

Today was also a boring day and incidentally I attended another VoIP session and slept off!!! Anyway nothing much today happened exept that there was no work! And now I am off to my salsa classes.

Day one!!

The day started of well...not much work and I decided to explore blogging finally! All went well till afternoon and then I attent a nice session on VoIP. I come back at 5 and wanted to leave and then arrives the work load! I donno what i am gonna do. I am fleeing by 6 I hope!