Drive Day!

Windows rolled up, A/C on, tune up the radio station, put the seat belt on or rather force the seat belt around a bulging waist line…say bye to a smiling wife…recheck whether the laptop is kept in the car, comb 4 or 5 strands of hair, 4 or 5 times so that they don’t reveal the shiny bald head, set the rear view mirror…the car has been obeying first part of Newton’s first law for more than a minute…waiting for an external stimulus. Knock knock at the window…the smile of wifes face has become inverted, time to stop whatever I was doing and set the car into motion. Just as I exit my street, the GOW(Garbage On Wheels) maatha has parked her push cart right in the middle of the road and wandered off to collect garbage. Typically at the beginning of the journey, I am at my patient best, so smiling at everyone around, wishing everyone a very good morning, I wait for the maatha to arrive. Its only when people behind me start honking thinking that I am not able to move my car out of first gear, the man ego is hurt and I am all ready to showcase my car squeezing talent. Only in such situations do people turn good Samaritans, guiding you up to the last degree of accuracy, that you don’t scrape the edge of car parked right next to your squeeze path way. When the big ass of the car is out of the squeeze zone, the GOW maatha walks in and pushes the cart aside, looking at me as if to say I have created the huge jam behind me. No expletives exchanged, just stern looks as I move on. Peace prevails and my attention is drawn towards the RJ who blurts out absolute non sense for 15 mins after a 3 and half min song, “En nim maneli thindi? Naanu beligge indha thindi ne thindilla gottha?… neevoo thindi thinnadhe office ge hogtha idre, elli hogi thindi thinbahudu antha break aadmele helthini….dont go anywhere!, kelthaane iri…”. “Big Jams ellidhe antha ee haadu kelkond banni amele helthini”. And that “amele helodhu” happens after the song, which itself appears a flurry of commercial breaks! Finally confused as to when this “amele helodhu” will happen and whether she told about the traffic jams or the songs and the picture of a jackass appears in my mind, I change channels and finally stop at vividhbharati, the no nonsense radio station. If they say they play 45 mins of good old kannada songs, they keep their promise. Just as I finish this daily chore I enter a hilly terrain, enroute to my office. 

I think my generation is the blessed one to bear the brunt of infrastructure development activities in Bangalore. All the metros, all the underpasses, all the BWSSB development activities have happened during the time my generation has started working, or in the middle of their career. Could you not shift it by couple of decades? Never mind, the male gender never complains. Hence, my journey into the tough terrains of  north west Bangalore begins as I enter the hilly terrain courtesy the main road being blocked for an under pass construction, and the BWSSB also deciding to showcase their plan execution skills in the by lanes of that crowded locality. 

Picture this, as I carefully take a turn keeping a hawk eye on the end of the busy hilly terrain road, a vegetable push cart vendor is busy negotiating with the lady in front of her house. A cute college going girl who has L board written all over her scooty, sparing only the helmet; barely able to touch the ground with her feet trying to balance the scooty in its static position, manages to stop her scooty right in front of my only available path way through the hilly terrain. And for all that disclaimer filled act of hers, her response was a smile (meaning to say…all the fault was yours moron, could you not wait until I completed my death defying act and crossed this road?) No romantic song playing in the background… Controlling my frustration, I try to smile and guide the girl out of my pathway, when a hardcore Shankar nag fan (nothing to demean the iconic actor) comes in at 45 degree angle and occupies the only 1 and half feet available between my car, the pushcart vendor and the cute scooty girl. A perfect situation for 4 of us to lay a charpoy and play rummy. Wonder whether the girl would know how to play? Never mind, Time for expletives. Except for the vegetable pushcart vendor, all the 3 of us could honk our hearts out. The only person who could move in the reverse direction with ease was the push cart vendor and he obliged. As the path got cleared the girl looked at me menacingly as though asking “If you don’t know how to drive then why did you take this route?”. I smiled back as if asking “Can you please lend me one of the many L board stickers you have put on your scooty?” This mute conversation through telepathy reached the ears of our Shankar Nag fan, and he zipped through the 2 feet gap that was now created. Path cleared, time for me to hit the accelerator as I have lost time. As I roll up windows, and tune back to Vividhbharathi, Yesudas sings “Idhu entha lokavayya…..”. 

Just when I start picking speed From terrain filled by lanes to parent vehicle filled school lanes....I slow down again as I watch these small kids wearing bags equal to their weight clinging on to their parents, sitting at awkward angles in the backseat of their scooters. The parents with the zeal to be on time to the school, oblivious to the way their kids are seated, drive at reckless speeds (by reckless I mean even speeds of 40kmph are dangerous when you have kids on board, especially on two wheelers). I get shit scared when I pass next to these two wheelers or when I overtake them, and thank almighty for passing through scot-free every time. 

Falling prey to competition even Vividhbharathi has resorted to 15 mins break with mindless recipe programs, which are neither here nor there in terms of content or presentation. So as I change the radio station, Indu Nagaraj sings “odu odu odu odu mundhe nuggi odu…”. What an inspirational song, I say(at least for that moment), I downshift and press the accelerator and make quick work of passing through another old Bangalore locality. Barely into the second para of the song, I join a serpentine queue along the Sankey bridge all the way to the Bhashyam circle. I play wicked here, just to get ahead of the queue. It’s easy to identify them, drive very close to an audi or a chauffeur driven car, they will give you way, or find a sedan or compact hatch driven by a lady (I mean no disrespect to them, they drive much safer than men), and just get close to them, they let you go. But as I do all this, I am never into the opposite lane, all this antics are done at the left edge of the road, where there is space slightly more than that available for our auto rajas :)

Weeding through the clutter as I go past the mekhri circle underpass I join the “u never know” traffic on the new airport road. Time to ease into cruise drive, (i.e reach the 4^th gear for the first in the travel distance of 10 kms from my house). I am just at the border of the speed limit on this road, and yet people honk me from behind. The reason being I am on the right most lane or the speed lane. As I am being pushed from right most lane to left most lane still maintaining my speed of 60 kmph, I keep wondering how these two wheelers manage to drive at such reckless speeds in all lanes. And then we have these messiahs of marauding in Volvo buses, who are ready to French kiss your cars ass if you don’t give them way. Jostling for space, bullying small cars and respecting hatchbacks, and staying away from Volvos and TTs I finally hit my lane to reach my office at Manyata Tech Park. Just as I park my car in the basement, the RJ blurts out “Adhe office canteen oota thindhu thindhu bore aagidre, ivath madhyana elli ootakke hogbeku antha helthini, keltha iri….:)”

Note: This is typically what I go through during my normal drive to office which is approximately around 14 kms from my house near Rajajinagar.

Bari B.E.

When a People’s Educational Society tries to produce “qualified engineers” through an Institute of Technology, what happens? For the frail boy, who was drilled with multiple choice questions for his preparation for CET, this descriptive question sent his mind orbiting into history, which was just 6 months back, yet, to him, that was history. He thought and thought and finally he could not think any further, he smiled back at a group of senior students, standing just outside the entrance of the college he had joined on that day. 

“It results in an oxymoron, you Moron!” shouted a senior looking student. When you don’t understand the question, it is understandable. But when you don’t understand even the answer, then you know that the situation is sticky. The only word that the boy understood in the whole answer was the word “result”. Fearing the “result” of this interaction with the seniors, he tried to sneak through. When a group of familiar faces are standing up against a new face, it could mean only one thing to the security guard who was standing at the gate. As he hastened the steps towards the group of boys, the bigger boys made a hasty retreat while the boy unable to decide whether to run or stand there, was looking around for cover, when another frail looking boy whizzed past him in his moped. Sensing that this boy should surely be a fresher, the boy followed this moped whizkid to the parking lot, where an elderly gentleman was ensuring that vehicles are parked in an order. “Boys, centre stand” he kept yelling repeatedly. In utter shock, the boy checked himself around his waist and below, to check if everything was in order. After an emotion of  shock, amusement, realization in that order,  the boy realized that the gentleman was referring to “vehicle’s centre stand” and nothing else. The elderly gentleman was insisting that the vehicles to be rested on their center stand so that more vehicles could be parked.  The boy completed the ACT, and quickly asked the whizkid, “1^st semester?”. The other boy enthusiastically said, “Yes, E&C”. The boy felt he was meeting his long lost brother, who had separated from him in the Lalbagh flower show. (Back then, flower show was the only place chaotic enough to get lost in namma Bengaluru. If it was a present day narration, Silk board traffic junction, would add more drama and trauma to the “bichade hue bhai” saga ) .

Quick introductions completed, both the boys stepped into the classroom of wannabe engineers who would be their classmates for a period of 4 years, if destiny smiled on them, or more if destiny frowned. Having studied in a college which was “socially networked” the boy found the camaraderie a bit pale in that class. Not that he had romance oozing out of his twig frame, but he was of the opinion that a congenial environment that provided an opportunity look for a soul mate in a bunch of classmates would do no harm for his engineering degree. Little did he know that even a completely congenial environment, only to study, would not suffice to earn an engineering degree. 

By the end of the first week the moped whizkid had made friends with students coming from his locality and the frail boy made friends with a soft spoken nerd, who smiled more than he talked. The boy quickly realized that the need of the hour was a bench mate, more than a soul mate, with whom he could talk and try to understand what was taught in the class. So the frail boy always ensured that he sat next to the soft spoken nerd. Although he couldn’t decipher what the nerd wrote because of his cryptic handwriting, the nerd was kind hearted to “teach” engineering concepts whenever asked for. Because the frail boy was a cricket fanatic, his adventures in the college cricket tournament, made him acquainted with other cricket fanatics of the class. One of the fanatics was a non-obvious nerd talking to whom the frail boy felt that the non-obvious nerd was really good at everything else other than studies, which the non obvious nerd comfortably proved wrong, throughout, with the results of 8 semesters of engineering exams. His little asterix friend who was his “sleeping partner” during their journey to college and back home, was also in the nerd category, did appear that he was indeed studious. (Before we conclude about their “partner preferences”, let me clarify that these two had the innate ability to doze off to slumber in any given physical position when they were traveling to college and back home. No amount of jostling in the bus would put them off their balance. This equanimity had its bad effects as well; they would invariably get down couple of stops ahead of their intended bus stops while traveling back home.) 

Few months into the first semester, the moped whizkid had got around him a group of boys, and had even managed to strike a deal with a bajaj scooter bairagi that they would commute together in each other’s vehicles on alternate days as they were from the same locality. After getting introduced to the bairagi, the frail boy learnt that the bairagi had made an unsuccessful attempt at the great escape from the college through a mutual exchange with any engineering seat in any college from his home town.  

Making friends is not only a matter of convenience but also a connect that you instantly feel when you meet the person. Being on the same side of the city also helps, but is not a demeaning factor. So this connect amongst this bunch of boys, had made a group out of it. The soft spoken nerd and the non-obvious nerd always were above the distinction margin by some distance. The whizkid and the sleeping partner were no pot heads either. That left the frail boy and the bairagi languishing in the bottom of the group with regard to the semester scores. However, one thing was common for the group; nobody was interested in the rat race for marks. Because few were clearly ahead in the rat race and few were never even in the list.  A couple of local trips later to far off dhabas; the group had started to crystallize into a fixed number and they had started moving around in unison. 

During the second year, Bairagi discovered a human sloth who was apathetic towards the general activities of the class, which was only when he was disturbed from his slumber during the long marathon sessions of electronics classes. Bairagi was generally interested in such new species, and with his networking skills got him introduced to the group. This human sloth was apparently a victim of a “lost and found” scenario. He was “lost” for options in the process of seat selection in CET counselling and “found” himself studying in the college that was supposed to be a school of engineering. For most of us, this was a “school” for engineers. When the sloth was not sleeping, he listened to rock music and occasionally used “agile” methods; of physical activity like playing cricket, trekking etc. 

The group was a mix of extremes; a human sloth and a pocket rocket co-existed with equal ease. Everything about the pocket rocket was fast……right from his furious running….. to his speech. It was only after lot of interactions with him, that the group realized that his mother tongue was Malayalam, but was talking to us in Kannada, our local dialect all the time when he was interacting with us. Pocket rocket could get away with the filthiest of expletives, because the edge his tongue fluttered at such speeds, that it went on to become the communication data transfer speed benchmark for Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution; aka EDGE!!

Travelling was indeed a common interest for the group and had testimonials to prove; a successful new year celebration at Yercaud, an “economy pleasure trip/pilgrimage” to Goa followed by kollur, hornadu and Udupi :) and an economy trek to Mutthatthi all during the third year of engineering. 

By the end of engineering, the bonding between each one of them in the group had become strong enough to last for a lifetime. And indeed it has; almost two decades of friendship and not even a slightest sense of disconnect. We may go months together without talking to each other, and every time even after a long gap, the conversation just flows as it was like we had spoken yesterday!

If not anything else, engineering has given each one of us the best bunch of buddies for a lifetime. Everytime I get a call from anyone from this bunch, I can hear Bryan Adams belt out, “You've Been A Friend To Me” in my ears, and my first word is always “Helo!” instead “Hello” :D

A[V]I

Note: I don’t intend to name the pseudo names I have given the characters in blog. I am sure, everyone who was a part of the bunch would identify the person……and to others….well, it doesn’t matter!

First Love, Second Tryst!

Having worked in a start-up firm for more than half a decade an important lesson I have learnt over the years, is whatever you do make it saleable! This lesson has become so-much second nature to me, that it inspired me to name this post such that it would lull some of the readers to click on this blog post, with the hope to read something spicy :) about my rendezvous with destiny!

Getting closer to mid-life brings forth a plethora of crisis scenarios which manifest itself in various forms. Bulging waist lines receding hair lines impossible deadlines lead to lot of horizontal lines on the fore head showing lot of evidence that age is catching up. Although these lines don’t cause havoc, before getting a horizontal line on the ECG machine, an urge to do lot of things just one more time pushes us back in age and makes us believe I am not that old to try this! Let me give this one a try and see how it goes. This “try” for me, has many activities in the bucket list like camping in a tropical rain forest, a wild river rafting, a tough trek (ok…not so tough may be…but a moderately tough trek), a “running all the way in a completed marathon”, experiencing paranormal activity, a competitive cricket match....to name a few. Being in an “organized industry” the managerial way to do this is to make a TODO list, put a deadline and knock off the easiest ones first! For a person who is neither organized nor has any managerial traits, destiny had to make the first move in presenting an opportunity to knock off these TODOs one by one :). So, it happened that a cricket tournament was announced in the organization I had recently joined, and somehow an invite to join the cricket practice popped up in the outlook e-mail. Teary eyed, when I was just about to think how pro-active the HR team was, in looking into the “hobbies” column of my employee record form to find out I play cricket and inform the concerned people in the business unit I work for, I remembered that I was constantly refreshing the cricbuzz app scorecard in my phone, during the very first project introduction meeting with the head of department. May be someone sitting next to me saw this endearing interest, and promptly updated the “concerned” about this concern of mine(about the cricket score) which I was more concerned about, rather than the project. I have to wait till my appraisal meeting to know the repercussions of this “concern”. Well that’s for an another day, but yes, coming back to the cricket practice invite, I was thrilled to know that I would be presented with another opportunity to knock off “the easiest “ item in my TODO list. How easy was this easiest…..? Read ON!

“Hi! Do you bat or bowl sir?”…. an easy full toss question probably 15 years back! But now? “I used to bat and bowl…”, I said hesitantly….not an encouraging answer from my end….so the captain popped the next question, “when did you last play, Sir?”…. when I looked skywards to come up with a number….the captain realized that I was probably going to say something in the range of multiple of decades, he blurted out “We need 11 guys Sir, and participation is important” :). That was more than encouragement. For a person who considered himself Wasim Akram of India, this was slap on the face. “I am a left arm bowler, fast J” I said. The captain smiled. “Every drunkard thinks he is rock steady after his drinking session” lines might have flashed in his mind. “OK sir, please bowl let us see!”. Time to mark the run up. I started walking with the ball in hand. “Sir where are you going?” shouted the guys from a distance. Oh no! everybody thought I was leaving the ground! Relax guys, that was my run up. Ok, people realized that this was in the Shoaib Akhtar range. Let me tailor it down a bit, I told myself. I don’t want to be panting even before reaching the bowling crease! The run up which ambitiously started off almost near the boundary line, ended up starting just behind the umpire. OK, Practice done, a left hand bowler is an automatic selection and since the pace was OKish, they thought I would be a good addition to the team. By the way, I batted much better than I bowled and they unearthed an unlikely pinch hitter in me. Opening the batting in never my cup of tea, I suggested. “Sir since you bat left handed, they will bowl wides to you and automatically it will be an advantage”. A right and left hand opening combination always works out great sir!” That worked out great only if the opening batsmen were ganguly and Tendulkar or jayasuriya and kaluvitharana. Except for the pruned moustache of ganguly and bald head of jayasuriya I had no semblance with either of them. I dint have enough logic to argue, and it was an opportunity for me..so I said OK and thought about crossing the bridge when it comes.

“You twisted your ankle?, oh no wait, I think you have a catch because you squealed while sitting….why you are not able to squat on the floor, standing up every minute as if you have cramps? You cant even lift your hands properly any problem with your shoulder? Why are you walking as if you are going to deliver a baby in the next half an hour? Whats the matter?” about half a dozen questions from my better half when I did the following actions: a. Remove my shoes b. Change to comfortable home dress.

“I got selected for cricket team and today was the first day of practice!”. Wife smiled. That night I smelt more like a bottle of amrutanjan, tiger balm and volini put in one. Alarm and wife snoozed at exactly the same time next morning and pushed me out to go for a jog. Felt better and this temporary morning ritual for the next few weeks converted me from a grounded lambretta to a “good to run for a day” old bajaj scooter :).

On the day of our first match, I was the first one to reach the ground. A center pitch with clearly marked inner ring and the boundary line….. a neatly watered pitch so that its not dusty, hmmm I was impressed. A 10 over a side match in a knock out tournament format. We lost the toss but were invited to bat first! The strategy for the first few overs was to keep out the good balls and score just ones and twos…..and if you are not panting for breath run the third as well… and punish the bad ones bowled at you. The emphasis was on quick singles which basically meant that you ensure you reach the other end. If your partner dint make it, bad luck. But don’t be so slow off your blocks that you would be shaking hands at the middle of the pitch giving the opportunity for the opponent team to “choose” whom to run out! So the partnership started very well…as per plan….we dint want to lose any wickets and we dint lose any in the first four overs. But one problem was the run rate was gavaskaresque. Few insects and flies had fallen prey to my tremendous bat swing, furious cover drives and wonderful pull shots, but the ball always landed in the wicket keepers hands. For a person who believed in hand eye co-ordination to send the ball to the orbit, the most important thing is that both the hands should have co-ordination first to make sure that the bat stays in the hand, because in my attempts to hit the ball out of the ground, the bat had left the hand thrice… narrowly missing the square leg umpire once, the wicket keeper once and bowler himself caught the bat once. To make the team members sitting in the stand feel that I failed to connect the ball, just that one time, I kicked the pitch, shouted expletives at myself and generally tried to look focussed and was worried about the test match like run rate. But when it became an every over ritual….the opponents found great benefit in having me at the crease than getting me out. When the first wicket did not fall even at the beginning of the 8th over, we decided we need go to into overdrive, which basically meant that even though we dint touch the ball, we just run, hoping that they run out either one of us. Now the immediate agenda for the both the teams changed completely. Ours was to get out and theirs was not to get us out. We achieved our agenda first J. In the remaining few deliveries, the other batsmen hit the ball with more frequency than we hit flies, so the result was a respectable target of 65 runs in 10 overs.

Defending this target is challenging enough for international bowlers, but not for non professional players like us, because the batsmen are also in the same league as the bowlers. Four of the opponents’ pot-bellied batsmen rolling like casks between the wickets were run out and few of their good batsmen hit the ball so accurately, that it landed right in the butterfingers of our fielders, who managed to latch onto the catches. So when an exciting finish was on the cards, their team discovered a Michael bevan in a broom stick wielding messiah whose main agenda was to make the pitch sparkling clean while batting. So he swept all the balls that were bowled at him so cleanly that the ground staff thought that he would cost them their jobs. As an addendum to his cleaning job, he ensured that he won the match for their team as well! Though a bit unhappy about the result of the match, I was mighty pleased that I got an opportunity to tick the easiest of the TODOs in my bucket list. For all my batting adventures, the captain who patted my back said, “Its ok sir, you stayed at the wicket throughout the innings, all that you needed was a bat with a wider blade. Do you play badminton as well :)???”

 
A[V]I