And the Music Plays!

An inspiring Speech By Subroto Bagchi, Chief Operating Officer, MindTree Consulting

“I  was  the  last child of a small-time government servant, in a family of Five  brothers.  My  earliest  memory of my father is as that of a District Employment Officer in Koraput, Orissa.

It  was  and  remains  as  back of Beyond as you can imagine. There was no electricity;  no primary school nearby and water did not flow out of a tap. As  a  result,  I  did  not  go  to  school  until  the age of eight; I was home-schooled.

My  father  used  to  get transferred every year. The family belongings fit into  the  back  of  a  jeep – so the family moved from place to place and, without  any  trouble,  my Mother would set up an establishment and get us going.  Raised by a widow who had come as a refugee from the then East Bengal, she was a matriculate when she married my Father.

My  parents set the foundation of my life and the value system which makes me what I am today and largely defines what success means to me today.

As  District  Employment  Officer,  my  father  was  given  a  jeep  by the government.  There  was  no garage in the Office, so the jeep was parked in our house. My father refused to use it to commute to the office. He told us that  the  jeep  is  an  expensive  resource  given  by the government – he reiterated  to  us  that  it  was not ‘his jeep’ but the government’s jeep. Insisting that he would use it only to tour the interiors, he would walk to his  office  on  normal  days.  He  also made sure that we never sat in the government jeep -we could sit in it only when it was stationary.

That was our early childhood lesson in governance – a lesson that corporate Managers learn the hard way, some never do.

The  driver of the jeep was treated with respect due to any other member of my  Father’s  office.  As small children, we were taught not to call him by his  name. We had to use the suffix ‘dada’ whenever we were to refer to him in  public or private. When I grew up to own a car and a driver by the name of  Raju  was  appointed – I repeated the lesson to my two small daughters. They  have,  as  a  result,  grown  up  to  call  Raju, ‘Raju Uncle’ very different  from  many of their friends who refer to their family drivers as ‘my  driver’. When I hear that term from a school- or college-going person, I cringe.

To  me,  the  lesson  was  significant  -  you treat small people with more respect than how you treat big people. It is more important to respect your subordinates than your superiors.

Our  day used to start with the family huddling around my Mother’s chulha – an earthen fire place she would build at each place of posting where she would  cook  for  the  family. There was no gas, nor electrical stoves. The morning  routine started with tea. As the brew was served, Father would askus to read aloud the editorial page of The Statesman’s ‘muffosil’ edition – delivered one day late. We did not understand much of what we were reading.

But  the  ritual  was  meant  for us to know that the world was larger than Koraput  district and the English I speak today, despite having studied in an Oriya  medium  school,  has  to  do  with  that  routine. After reading the newspaper aloud, we were told to fold it neatly.

Father  taught  us a simple lesson. He used to say, “You should leave your newspaper and your toilet, the way you expect to find it”.

That  lesson was about showing consideration to others. Business begins and ends with that simple precept.

Being  small  children, we were always enamoured with advertisements in the newspaper for transistor radios – we did not have one. We saw other people having  radios  in  their homes and each time there was an advertisement of Philips, Murphy or Bush radios, we would ask Father when we could get one.

Each  time,  my  Father  would  reply  that  we did not need one because he already had five radios – alluding to his five sons. We also did not have a house Of  our  own  and would occasionally ask Father as to when, like others, we would live in our own house. He would give a similar reply, “We do not need a house  of  our own. I already own five houses”. His replies did not gladden our hearts in that instant.

Nonetheless, we learnt that it is important not to measure personal success and sense of well being through material possessions.

Government houses seldom came with fences. Mother and I collected twigs and built a small fence. After lunch, my Mother would never sleep. She would take  her  kitchen  utensils  and with those she and I would dig the rocky, white ant infested surrounding. We planted flowering bushes. The white ants  destroyed them. My mother brought ash from her chulha and mixed it in the  earth  and  we  planted  the seedlings all over again. This time, they bloomed.

At  that  time,  my  father’s  transfer order came. A few neighbors told my mother why she was taking so much pain to beautify a government house, why she was planting seeds that would only benefit the next occupant. My mother replied that it did not matter to her that she would not see the flowers in full bloom.

She  said,  “I have to create a bloom in a desert and whenever I am given a new place, I must leave it more beautiful than what I had
inherited”.

That  was  my  first lesson in success. It is not about what you create for yourself, it is what you leave behind that defines success.

My mother began developing a cataract in her eyes when I was very small. At that time, the eldest among my brothers got a teaching job at the University  in  Bhubaneswar  and  had  to  prepare  for  the civil services examination.  So,  it was decided that my Mother would move to cook for him and, as her appendage,  I  had  to  move  too.  For  the  first  time in my life, I saw electricity  in Homes and water coming out of a tap. It was around 1965 and the  country  was going to war with Pakistan. My mother was having problems reading and in any case, being Bengali, she did not know the Oriya script.

So,  in  addition  to  my  daily  chores,  my job was to read her the local newspaper – end to end. That created in me a sense of connectedness with a larger  world.  I  began  taking  interest  in many different things. While reading  out news about the war, I felt that I was fighting the war myself. She  and  I  discussed  the  daily  news  and  built a bond with the larger universe.

In  it, we became part of a larger reality. Till date, I measure my success in terms of that sense of larger connectedness.

Meanwhile, the war raged and India was fighting on both fronts. Lal Bahadur Shastri,  the  then  Prime Minster, coined the term “Jai Jawan, Jai Kishan” and  galvanized  the  nation in to patriotic fervor. Other than reading out the  newspaper to my mother, I had no clue about how I could be part of the action. So, after reading her the newspaper, every day I would land up near the  University’s  water  tank,  which  served the community. I would spend hours  under  it,  imagining  that  there  could be spies who would come to poison  the  water  and  I  had  to  watch for them. I would daydream about catching  one  and  how the next day, I would be featured in the newspaper. Unfortunately  for  me,  the  spies  at  war  ignored  the  sleepy  town of Bhubaneswar  and I never got a chance to catch one in action. Yet, that act unlocked my imagination.

Imagination is everything. If we can imagine a future, we can create it, if we  can  create that future, others will live in it. That is the essence of success.

Over  the next few years, my mother’s eyesight dimmed but in me she created a larger vision, a vision with which I continue to see the world and, I sense, through my eyes, she was seeing too. As the next few years unfolded, her vision deteriorated and she was operated for cataract. I remember, when she  returned after her operation and she saw my face clearly for the first time, she was astonished. She said, “Oh my God, I did not know you were so fair”. I remain mighty pleased with that adulation even till date.

Within  weeks of getting her sight back, she developed a corneal ulcer and, overnight,  became  blind in both eyes. That was 1969. She died in 2002. In all those 32 years of living with blindness, she never complained about her fate  even  once. Curious to know what she saw with blind eyes, I asked her once  if she sees darkness. She replied, “No, I do not see darkness. I only see light even with my eyes closed”. Until she was eighty years of age, she did  her  morning  yoga  everyday,  swept  her  own room and washed her own clothes.

To  me,  success is about the sense of independence; it is about not seeing the world but seeing the light.

Over  the  many  intervening years, I grew up, studied, joined the industry and  began  to carve my life’s own journey. I began my life as a clerk in a government  office,  went  on  to  become a Management Trainee with the DCM group  and  eventually  found  my  life’s calling with the IT industry when fourth  generation computers came to India in 1981. Life took me places – I worked  with  outstanding  people, challenging assignments and traveled all over the, world.

In  1992,  while  I was posted in the US, I learnt that my father, living a retired  life  with  my  eldest  brother,  had suffered a third degree burn injury  and was admitted in the Safderjung Hospital in Delhi. I flewback to attend to him – he remained for a few days in critical stage, bandaged from neck to toe. The Safderjung Hospital is a cockroac infested, dirty, inhuman place.  The  overworked,  under-resourced sisters in the burn ward are both victims and perpetrators of dehumanized life at its worst.

One morning, while attending to my Father, I realized that the blood bottle was  empty and fearing that air would go into his vein, I asked the tending nurse  to  change it. She bluntly told me to do it myself. In that horrible theater of death, I was in pain and frustration and anger. Finally when she relented and came, my Father opened his eyes and murmured to her, “Why have you  not  gone home yet?” Here was a man on his deathbed but more concerned about  the  overworked nurse than his own state. I was stunned at his stoic self.

There  I  learnt  that  there  is  no limit to how concerned you can be for another human being and what is the limit of inclusion you can create.

My father died the next day.

He  was  a  man whose success was defined by his principles, his frugality, his  universalism  and his sense of inclusion. Above all, he taught me that success is your ability to rise above your discomfort, whatever may be your current  state.  You  can, if you want, raise your consciousness above your immediate  surroundings.  Success is not about building material comforts – the  transistor  that  he never could buy or the house that he never owned. His  success  was  about  the legacy he left, the memetic continuity of his ideals   that  grew  beyond  the  smallness  of  a  ill-paid,  unrecognized government servant’s world.

My  father  was a fervent believer in the British Raj. He sincerely doubted the  capability of the post-independence Indian political parties to govern the  country.  To  him,  the lowering of the Union Jack was a sad event. My Mother  was  the exact opposite. When Subhash Bose quit the Indian National Congress  and  came  to Dacca, my mother, then a schoolgirl, garlanded him. She  learnt  to  spin khadi and joined an underground movement that trained her  in using daggers and swords. Consequently, our household saw diversity in  the political outlook of the two. On major issues concerning the world, the Old Man and the Old Lady had differing opinions.

In  them, we learnt the power of disagreements, of dialogue and the essence of  living  with diversity in thinking. Success is not about the ability to create  a  definitive  dogmatic  end  state;  it  is about the unfolding of thought processes, of dialogue and continuum.

Two years back, at the age of eighty-two, Mother had a paralytic stroke and was lying in a government hospital in Bhubaneswar. I flew down from the US where I was serving my second stint, to see her. I spent two weeks with her in  the  hospital  as  she  remained  in a paralytic state. She was neither getting  better  nor  moving  on. Eventually I had to return to work. While leaving  her  behind,  I  kissed  her  face.  In that paralytic state and a garbled  voice,  she said, “Why are you kissing me, go kiss the world.” Her river  was  nearing  its journey, at the confluence of life and death, this woman  who  came to India as a refugee, raised by a widowed Mother, no more educated than high school, married to an anonymous government servant whose last  salary  was  Rupees Three Hundred, robbed of her eyesight by fate and crowned by adversity – was telling me to go and kiss the world!

Success  to  me  is  about  Vision.  It  is  the  ability to rise above the immediacy  of  pain.  It  is  about imagination. It is about sensitivity to
small  people. It is about building inclusion. It is about connectedness to a larger world existence. It is about personal tenacity. It is about giving back  more  to  life  than  you  take  out  of  it.  It  is  about creating extra-ordinary success with ordinary lives.

Thank you very much; I wish you good luck and Godspeed. Go, kiss the world.”

This is for all those numerous desperate souls who search for fancy adjectives to aid in testimonial writing. I wonder why am I doing this post in the first place. Nevertheless I had this list lying in my Inbox for ages. I just arranged it in alphabetical order for the benefit of whoever wants it…

Adorable
Alluring
Amazing
ambitious
Appealing
Attention-grabbing
Attractive
Beautiful
Beautiful Eyes
Benevolent
Bubbly
Caring
catching
charming
Chic
Congenial
Credible
Cute
Dashing
Dazzling
dedicated
Dependable
Elegant
Energetic
Enjoyable
Excellent
Excellent Listener
Exceptional
Exciting to be Around
Exquisite
Extraordinary
Eye-catching
Fabulous
faithful
Fantastic
Fascinating
Fashionable
Friendly
Friendly Personality
full of good qualities
Full of life
Funny
Glamorous
Glittering
Good-looking
Good-natured
grabbing
Graceful
Great
Happy face
Head-turner
Humorous
ideal
Impressive
Influential
Intelligent
Likeable
loves to sleep
Lovely
Lovely Attitude
Loving
Marvelous
Naughty
Neat
Nice
Nice Always
Optimistic
Outstanding
Persuasive
Pleasing
Pleasing to Eye
Prominent
Really Great Memories
Remarkable
Responsible
Seductive
sensitive
Shining
silent
Smart
Smiles a Lot
Sparkling
Striking
Stunning
Stylish
Superb
Sweet
Tempting
Terrific
Thoughtful
Tremendous
Ubiquitous
Unique
Very good in hiding emotions
Very Kind
Very-Cool
Vivacious
Well-groomed
Witty
Wonderful

PS – And when you don’t know what more to say, just write ‘What more to say about you!’

PS1- People looking out for shayari or some cartoons, please excuse

PS2 – Just a piece of free advice – do not use all the above at one go – have mercy on the testimonial receiver!

Song in the background *Yeh Dosti Hum Nahin Todenge* Have Fun!

More on Big Boss – Continued from here

Sambhavna Seth – The item ‘gurl’: The perennial gyaan-mata - she keeps giving advice to everyone for free! Every time she starts this so called session with ‘I’ll tell you where you are going wrong… one… two… three…’ She either cries or keeps giving free advice.

Elina – The ‘commoner’: Chances are that bachi bigad jayegi! She seems to be getting attached to whoever talks sweetly to her (read – Rakhi… more to follow)

Monica Bedi – The world knows about her: She seems to be a nice girl so far – doesn’t bitch as much… The only thing that comes to my mind when I see her – forget movies in those skimpy outfits that she wears at times; given her sweet and pativrata types seedha saadha looks if she tries for Indian roles in television or films – She will make a good name for her.

Payal Rohatgi – The Cry Baby: Apparently Rahul Mahajan’s Ex Girlfriend and the supposed reason behind his divorce, the girl and the boy pretended that they don’t even know each other for the first one week! She keeps crying crying crying for him for all silly things. She cries at least once in each episode… or is it more than once??

Ketki Dave – A ra ra ra ra: The lady doesn’t need any introduction. Absolutely non-fussy, doesn’t bitch, gets ups early – doesn’t even need an alarm. Advices people only when they ask for it. I quite like her

Ehsaan Qureshi – Who doesn’t know him: The male version of Ketki Dave. I like him too

Debojit – The Singer: Again non-fussy so far. Keeps doing Riyaaz.

Raja Chowdhary – Shweta Tiwari’s Ex Husband: Apparently the wife beater. Every time one sees him, he gives the impression that any moment he’ll get up and bash the person talking to him! Oh he’s not the only wife beater on the show – Rahul Mahajan was also one during his short lived marriage to his childhood friend.

Zulfi Syed – The Model: The Boy from Coorg, successful model, wannabe actor (some flop movies behind him), Yukta Mookhey’s ex-boyfriend – doesn’t talk much, minds his own business, talks sense whenever he opens his mouth, has a cute south indian accent, seems like a pretty chilled out guy. You can catch him in this movie by the name ‘Chupke Se’ – nice movie even though it didn’t do well because of less publicity.

Ashutosh – Ex MTV Roadie: I still can’t stop laughing at his MTV Roadie audition ROFL. The ‘Lath Maar’ apparently runs a Dhaba in his home town, is searching for work and in the mean while ‘just’ took up Big Boss. Watch out for his one liners and even funnier style of dancing ROFL.

Jade Goody – Shilpa Shetty fame: She came, she cried (because of language gap and then because of her illness), she went away.

I think I have covered every one… Hmmm or have I left someone out unknowingly…

PS – If you don’t like watching it – Chill Madi… watch something else

A spunky number: Counting Crows – Big Yellow Taxi

They paved paradise and put up a parkin’ lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swingin’ hot spot
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you got till it’s gone
They paved paradise and put up a parkin’ lot

They took all the trees, and put em in a tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them
No, no, no, don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone
They paved paradise, and put up a parkin’ lot

Hey farmer, farmer, put away your DDT
I don’t care about spots on my apples,
Leave me the birds and the bees – please
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you got till it’s gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
Hey now, they’ve paved paradise to put up a parking lot
Why not?

Listen, late last night, I heard the screen door swing,
And a big yellow taxi took my girl away
Now don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you got till it’s gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
Hey now now, don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you got till it’s gone
They paved paradise to put up a parking lot
Why not, they paved paradise
They put up a parking lot
Hey hey hey, paved paradise and put up a parking lot

I don’t wanna give it
Why you wanna give it
Why you wanna givin it all away
Hey, hey, hey
Now you wanna give it
I should wanna give it
Cuz you’re givin it all away, no no

I don’t wanna give it
Why you wanna give it
Why you wanna givin it all away
Cuz you’re givin it all givin it all away yeah yeah
Cuz You’re givin it all away hey, hey, hey

Hey, paved paradise, to put up a parking lot
Paved paradise, and put up a parking lot

As I look back at my life
I remember all the people who have left footprints
In my heart
I remember all the people who have left footprints
In my mind
Some gone away in a far away land
Having served the purpose
That they came here for…
Some still going strong
Holding my hand
Making this journey worth taking…

© All rights reserved with Priti Ahuja. To re-print or re-use, prior permission is required from the author.

I have been avidly watching Big Boss since the last couple of days. Half the people I know cringe at the fact that I like watching it in the first place. But let the world cringe, make faces and say things but I love watching it

My first impression when I saw the current cocktail of inmates was – Couldn’t they find someone better?

But nevertheless these people are fun to watch…

The People:

Sanjay Nirupam – The Politician: I mention him first because he was the first one to get evicted. He had the expressions of a misfit. He appeared lost and whenever he opened his mouth he fell into trouble. He got nominated by the other inmates even before they could get to know him. Was it his politician background or was it his age difference or was it the combination of both? Or was it his ability to say the wrong things at the wrong time?
But nevertheless, the Mr. Estate Agent did manage to get noticed. Tons of people who didn’t know about his existence now know quite a lot about him. But he does deserve a clap – the man has guts; a-not-so-happening political career; pitied against people from the glamour world and in his words ‘with some item girl’.

Rakhi Vijan – Sweety fame: Raveena Tandon’s ex-sister-in-law, the once-upon-a-time queen of Indian Blonde jokes was the next one to be evicted. Within a span of some two weeks, we saw her change from the quiet observer to a cook, match-maker, campaigner, rule-breaker, gossiper and what not. Was she back-biting? Was she playing games to make herself safe? Was it that she was pitied against Rahul in the nominations – the main cause of her ouster? Her games apparently back-fired and everyone knows what happened thereafter – she ended up digging her own grave super-fast!

Rahul Mahajan – Krishna Kanhaiya: His famous politician father gets shot, he gets involved in drugs apparently, marries childhood friend, gets divorced soon after, makes regular rounds of the Big Boss people to get him in, gets declined but ultimately we find him there! He was the ever eager inmate to get into the house. He saw him spending more time in the pink room than in the blue room, we saw him spending more time with the women than with the men… The gossip king – he can give women a run for their money when it comes to gossiping!

Wo Raaste Series consist of weird words and phrases people use as a search engine term and reach this blog. I am amused by what goes on in people’s mind when they type such things

• write testimonials in orkut for boss (You want someone to write testimonials on your behalf for your boss, is it? Trying to impress boss, is it?? )
• typed testimonial for friends on orkut (ready made stuff wah wah )
• testimonial for a good peerson (You mean ‘person’ na… anyways I didn’t know that there are 2 types of testimonials – for good peerson person and for bad person but nevertheless both look the same )
• write beautiful testimonials to friends (beautiful!!!)
• now that i am a man (I am speechless… lol)
• what is orkut testimonials i wrote (arre how will google know what testimonials you wrote?!)
• testimonial for the person i love (I suppose Google doesn’t love that person as much as you do, so how will someone else write for you in that case)
• something just like orkut (Lol… people actually search for something like this!)
• always on my mind hamesha mere dil mein (How will google know that first in english then in hindi… lol)
• when the spark isn’t there (…then google helps…)
• make of over song of orkut (make of over???)
• how to send testimonial in orkut (just courier it man!)
• how to make a testimonials in orkut (Simple! If you want to ‘Make A Testimonials’, microwave might just help, wat say?)
• witty opening lines for friends testimon (Readymade witty opening lines…. wah wah)
• good testimonials to send to good friend (Good! This is a rhyming search engine term… do we also get bad testimonial to send to bad friend)
• good thing to be added for orkut (Ans: Testimonial Baker )
• phone health tips (Keep your phone healthy – make less calls )
• songs for when batsman get out in cricke (Out hua out hua… gaana gao gaana gao )
• funny wife in charge (You want one or are you searching how to get rid of one)
• what u get when we smile (Ans: Nothing!)

PS. The series are meant to be harmless. The series does not intend to make fun of any living being either dead or alive in particular.

It is a tedious task sometimes
To decide what to wear in the morning

It is a tedious task sometimes
To choose the accessories that needs to go with the dress

It is fun when time is on my hand
Sometimes it burns a hole in the pocket of time

Sometimes I thrive on mix and match
And sometimes on those that are already mixed and matched

Done with the dress and the accessories
I now ponder on which footwear to wear

The Mom says it’s an earthquake that descends every morning
As I juggle with what to wear and what not to wear

Leaving just one-tenth of the time to have breakfast
I rush to the door as I don’t like getting late

Then there are days when I just let go
It’s my denim and me that I love the most

Life is fun with these cyclic phases
Of being all dressed up and sometimes letting go

© All rights reserved with Priti Ahuja. To re-print or re-use, prior permission is required from the author.

Often Indians going abroad, specially to the US, face very silly and annoying questions about India! Next time you get asked an annoying question on India, answer it like this…

Q. What does that red dot on women’s forehead mean?
A. Well, in ancient times, Indian men used to practice archery skills by target practicing by aiming at their wife’s red dot. In fact, that is one of the reasons why they had many wives. You see, once they mastered the art of archery and hit the target….

Q. You’re from India, aren’t you? I have read so much about the country. All the wonderful places, the forests, the snake charmers, the elephants. Do you still use elephants for transportation?
[note: This one we were actually asked in August '93 by a real estate agent when house-hunting in Boston.]
A. Absolutely. In fact we used to have our own elephant in our house. But later, we started elephant-pooling with our neighbors, to save the air. You see elephants have an “emissions” problem…..

Q. Does India have cars?
A. No. We ride elephants to work. The government is trying to encourage ride-sharing schemes.

Q. Does India have TV?
A. No. We only have cable.

Q. Are all Indians vegetarian?
A. Yes. Even tigers are vegetarian in India.

Q. How come you speak English so well?
A. You see when the British were ruling India, they employed Indians as servants. It took too long for the Indians to learn English. So the British isolated an “English-language” gene and infused their servants’ babies with it and since then all babies born are born speaking English.

A variation to the above is a compliment —
“You speak very good English.” Response: Thanks. So do you.

Q. Are you a Hindi?
A. Yes. I am spoken everyday in Northern India.

Q. Do you speak Hindu?
A. Yes, I also speak Jewish, Islam and Christianity.

Q. Is it true that everyone there is very corrupt?
A. Yes, in fact, I had to bribe my parents so that they would let me go to school.

Q. India is very hot, isn’t it?
A. It is so hot there that all the water boils spontaneously. That is why tea is such a popular drink in India.

Q. Are there any business companies in India?
A. No. All Indians live on the Gandhian prinicples of self-sufficiency. We all make our own clothes and grow our own food. That is why you see all these thin skinny Indians – it is a lot of hard work.

Q. Indians cannot eat beef, huh?
A. Cows provide milk which is a very essential part of Indian diet. So eating cows is forbidden. However in order to decrease the population of the country, the government is trying to encourage everyone to eat human meat.

Q. India is such a religious place. Do you meditate regularly?
A. Yes, sometimes I meditate for weeks without food and drink. But it is difficult to keep my job, because I have to miss work when I meditate like that. But the bosses there do the same thing. That is why things are so inefficient there.

Q. I saw on TV that people there walk on burning coals. Why do they do that?
A. We don’t have shoes. So we burn the bottom of our feet to make it hard so that we can walk.

Q. Why do you sometimes wear Indian clothes to work?
A. I prefer it to coming naked.

PS. Oh BTW AGCD means America Gone Confused Desi!

Came across this piece recently. Enjoy!

Men vs. Women

Handwriting:
Men: To their credit, men do not decorate their penmanship. They just chicken-scratch.
Women: Women use scented, colored stationery and they dot the “i” with circles or hearts. Women use ridiculously large loops in the “b” and “g”. It is a pain to read a note from a woman. Even when she’s dumping you, she will put a smiley face at the end of the note.

Groceries:
Women: A woman makes a list of things she needs, then goes out to the store and buys those things.
Men: A man waits till the only items left in his fridge are half a lime and a beer. Then he goes grocery shopping. He buys everything that looks good. By the time a man reaches the checkout counter, his cart is packed tighter than the Clampett’s car on Beverly Hillbillies. Of course, this will not stop him from going to the express lane.

Relationships:
Women: When a relationship ends, a woman will cry and pour her heart out to her girlfriends, and she will write a poem titled “All Men Are Idiots”. Then she will get on with her life.
Men: A man has a little more trouble letting go. Six months after the break-up, at 3:00 a.m. on a Saturday night, he will call and say, “I just wanted to let you know you ruined my life, and I’ll never forgive you, and I hate you, and you’re a total floozy. But I want you to know that there’s always a chance for us.” This is known as the “I Hate You / I Love You” drunken phone call, that 99% of all men have made at least once. There are community colleges that offer courses to help men get over this need.

Maturity:
Women: They mature much faster than men. Most 17-year old females can function as adults.
Men: Most 17-year old males are still trading baseball cards and giving each other wedgies after gym class. This is why high school romances rarely work out.

Bathrooms:
Men: A man has six items in his bathroom — a toothbrush, shaving cream, razor, a bar of Dial soap, and a towel from the Holiday Inn.
Women: The average number of items in the typical woman’s bathroom is 437. A man cannot identify most of these items.

Shoes:
Women: When preparing for work, a woman will put on a wool suit, then slip on Reebok sneakers. She will carry her dress shoes in a plastic bag from Saks. When a woman gets to work, she will put on her dress shoes. Five minutes later, she will kick them off because her feet are under the desk.
Men: A man will wear the same pair of shoes all day. Let’s not talk about how many days he’ll wear the same socks.

Children:
Women: A woman knows all about her children. She knows about dentist appointments and soccer games and romances and best friends and favorite foods and secret fears and hopes and dreams.
Men: A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in the house.

Dressing Up:
Women: A woman will dress up to: go shopping, water the plants, empty the garbage, answer the phone, read a book, get the mail.
Men: A man will dress up for: weddings, funerals.

Laundry:
Women: Women do laundry every couple of days.
Men: A man will wear every article of clothing he owns, including his surgical pants (the ones that were hip about eight years ago) before he will do his laundry. When he is finally out of clothes, he will wear a dirty sweatshirt inside out, rent a U-Haul and take his mountain of clothes to the Laundromat. Men always expect to meet beautiful women at the Laundromat. This is a myth perpetuated by reruns of old episodes of “Love American Style.”

Eating Out:
Men: When the check comes, each man will each throw in $20 bills, even though it’s only for $22.50. None of them will have anything smaller, and none will actually admit they want change back.
Women: When the girls get their check, out come the pocket calculators.

Mirrors:
Men: Men are vain and will check themselves out in a mirror.
Women: They are ridiculous; they will check out their reflections in any shiny surface: mirrors, spoons, store windows, bald guys’ heads.

Menopause:
Women: When a woman reaches menopause, she goes through a variety of complicated emotional, psychological, and biological changes. The nature and degree of these changes varies with the individual.
Men: Menopause in a man provokes a uniform reaction – he buys aviator glasses, a snazzy French cap and leather driving gloves, and goes shopping for a Porsche.

The Phone:
Men: Men see the telephone as a communication tool. They use the telephone to send short messages to other people.
Women: A woman can visit her girlfriend for two weeks, and upon returning home, she will call the same friend and they will talk for three hours.

Richard Gere:
Women: Women like Richard Gere because he is sexy in a dangerous way.
Men: Men hate Richard Gere because he reminds them of that slick guy who works at the health club and dates only married women.

Madonna:
Same as above, but reversed. Same reason.

Toys:
Women: Little girls love to play with toys. Then when they reach the age of 11 or 12, they lose interest.
Men: Men never grow out of their toy obsession. As they get older, their toys simply become more expensive, silly and impractical. Examples of men’s toys: little miniature TVs. Car phones. Complicated juicers and blenders. Graphic equalizers. Small robots that serve cocktails on command. Video games.

Cameras:
Men: Men take photography very seriously. They’ll shell out $4000 for state of the art equipment, and build dark rooms and take photography classes.
Women: Women purchase Kodak Instamatics. Of course, women always end up taking better pictures.

Locker Rooms:
Men: In the locker room men talk about three things: money, football, and women. They exaggerate about money, they don’t know football nearly as well as they think they do, and they fabricate stories about women.
Women: They talk about one thing in the locker room – love. And not in abstract terms, either. They are extremely graphic and technical, and they never lie.

Jewelry:
Women: Women look nice when they wear jewelry.
Men: A man can get away with wearing one ring and that’s it. Any more than that and he will look like a lounge singer named Vic.

Conversation:
Men: Men need a good disagreement to get talking. For instance, “Wow, great movie.” or “What are you, nuts?”
Women: Women, not having this problem, try to initiate conversations with men by saying something agreeable: “That garden by the roadside looks lovely.” “Mm hmm.” Pause. “That was a good restaurant last night, wasn’t it?” “Yeah.” Pause. And so on.

Leg Warmers:
Women: Leg warmers are sexy. A woman, even if she’s walking the dog or doing the dishes, is allowed to wear leg warmers. She can wear them any time she wants.
Men: A man can only wear leg warmers if he is auditioning for the “Gimme the Ball” number in “A Chorus Line.”

Friends:
Women: Women on a girls’ night out talk the whole time.
Men: Men on a boy’s night out say about twenty words all night, most of which are “got any more beer?”

Restrooms:
Women: Women use restrooms as social lounges. Women who’ve never met will leave a restroom giggling together like old friends. Women also go to the restroom in packs, at least two women at a time excuse themselves to use the restroom.
Men: Men use restrooms for purely biological reasons. Men in a restrooms will never speak a word to each other. And never in the history of the world has a man excused himself from a restaurant table by saying, “Hey, Tom, I was just about to take a leak. Do you want to join me?”

Came across this website by the name of ‘Forgotten Books’ courtesy Mumbai Mirror. They have a collection of books on varied topics ranging from Folklore to Fairy Tales, religion, science, philosophy, fiction, non-fiction, mythology, etc. Many of these are long lost books which were first published ages ago. You get to read these online plus you get the option to buy them if you want to.

Randomly browsed through the list and picked up a book on Cartomancy and another one on Indian Folk Tales.

The pros – Good collection on a variety of topics, hassle free navigation, clutter free page.

The cons – Didn’t find any option to save a copy of the book. So every time I have to read it, I have to log on to the net and many a times the book takes quite a while to load.

Overall a site worth bookmarking. Check it out…

• Heard this super-sad song recently – Hai hai hai hai hai, tujhe aksa beach ghuma du, chalti kya… After listening to it all I could say for the makers of this song was – Hai hai hai hai hai, tujhe aksa beach mein duba dun, chalti kya…
• Had been to a Gurudwara for the first time in my life. Was initially thinking of doing a quick round of matha-tekna and returning back. But Waheguruji had other plans… I was there for almost three hours. There was a round of paath followed by deliciously delicious prasad and langar. This was the first time I was having langar and I must tell you that it is extremely tasty and the best part is that it is served with such love and care to everyone. I felt so much at peace after being there…

People use weird words and phrases as a search engine term and reach this blog

Sample this:

• funny writings for orkut (funny writings??)
• baatein notes (Yeh kya hota hai bhai?)
• idea for writing testimonials in orkut (Should I send a copywriter)
• the best way to kill an idea (Maar Daalo!)
• nice praises for writing testimonial (Why you searching for something like this?)
• 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1(Yes I know that you know how to count backwards!)
• sing to orkut (Gao gao gaana gao…)
• how to say sky in punjabi (Hai rabba)

Phir Dekhiye

Movie: Rock On; Lyrics: Javed Akhtar; Music: Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy;

Voice: Caralisa Monteiro

Aankhon Mein Jiske
Koi Toh Khwaab Hai
Khush Hai Wahi Jo
Thoda Betaab Hai

Zindagi Mein Koi
Aarzoo Kijiye
Phir Dekhiye…

Honton Pe Jiske
Koi Toh Geet Hai
Woh Haare Bhi Toh
Uski Hi Jeet Hai

Dil Mein Jo Geet Hai
Gungunaa Lijiye,
Phir Dekhiye…

Yaadon Mein Jiske
Kisika Naam Hai
Sapno Ke Jaise
Uski Har Shaam Hai

Koi Toh Ho Jise
Apna Dil Dijiye,
Phir Dekhiye…

Khwaab Buniye Zara,
Geet Suniye Jara
Phool Chuniye Jara,
Phir Dekhiye…

Apni Marzi Se Kahan

Voice: Jagjit Singh

Apni marzi se kahan apni safar ke hum hain,
rukh hawaaon ka jidhar ka hai udhar ke hum hain;
pehle har cheez thi apni magar ab lagta hai,
apne hi ghar mein kisi doosre ghar ke hum hain;
waqt ke saath mitti ka safar sadiyon se,
kisko maaloom kahan ke hain kidhar ke hum hain;
chalte rehte hain ke chalnaa hai musaafir ka naseeb,
sochte rehte hain kis raah guzar ke hum hain.