Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Illusions

Bangalore has a lot of people who have illusions about what they are. Take for instance, the auto drivers, who, think they are pilots flying the Eurofighter Typhoon at Aero India or in a dogfight(which is more likely given the number of stray dogs). The Typhoon has this awesome ability to level out, and then kind of free fall slowly while turning at the same time. The trick that the pilots usually do is go into a steep climb, level out at the top, almost stop moving forward, float down gently turning left and then all of a sudden turn right and blast off at breakneck speed. The auto-driver does this on all the steep roads while looking for savari or trying to escape a mama's maamool-hungry sights.

And then there are the bus drivers who, almost fanatically, believe that buses are in reality intergalactic transporters that have the ability to pass through any solid object. This, of course, gets turned on by incessantly honking. They subscribe to the theory that JK Rowling's Knight Bus from the Harry Potter, with it's fantastic power to make whole buildings and lamposts jump out of it's way, was infact inspired when she visited Bangalore and took the 201 from HAL airport to Banashankari. The beds and the chocolate were nothing but frivolous additions to a perfectly practical way of transportation.

Have you ever wondered why the white Sumos and the Indicas honk constantly even on an empty road, overtake other drivers on the left and jump signals? If you have, then very obviously you haven't ever undertaken the task of ferrying people while suffering from a constant case of dysentery. And most definitely, you have not done it while wearing a white (well...once-upon-a-time white) uniform.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Two idiots, a consultant and a B-School

For all those of you(if any) who have me on your RSS feed, "Hello!!!Again!!!".

I haven't posted in a long time. So long, that the last two comments on my last post are random bot comments that are absolutely junk.

So, yes, it's been a really long while and surprisingly enough much has really changed, except that the economy has apparently gone down and the my annual ransom payment to the IT department has gone up terribly.

I still get a kick out of writing code, I am as lazy as ever, I get depressed over my lousy job post AeroIndia, I fantasize about my almost family-pack ab being six-pack instead and getting into this habit of spending Valentine's washing the car - alone.

All that apart, the whole point of this blog is something that happened a couple of weeks ago. Now my friend sheep who is a consultant in Gurgaon and an alumnus of IIM-B was here in town a couple of weeks ago. So Mr.Sheep is this tallish thin lanky nerdy looking guy who would probably fly away if you sneezed hard enough in a 1-metre radius around him. He was back at his alma-mater looking for potential consults[sic!] and I went over to meet him and down a couple of cold ones. Which by the way did not really happen. But what happened was this.

I happened to be loitering around near the mess talking to batchmates from my year when I spotted the actors R.Madhavan and Sharman Joshi walk in. My sister has been after me to get auto-graphs from one or more of the Idiots in the '3 Idiots' currently being shot at IIM-B. So I went up, talked like a total philistine in an attempt to make them feel good so I could get the autographs without sounding like I wanted a free lunch off them. Reel life is not real life and interviews on Aaj Tak, etc. are scripted.

And, then with my brownie points with sis safely in butt-pocket, I walked off, opened a can and observed the following.

Two fairly-big, popular Bollywood stars who earn shitloads and have hajaar-screen presence (though they have apparently been doing this nightly walk shit for about a month or so now and people generally ignore them) drew a crowd of five people with three of the said five being females of the cute-cuppax-philistinemax types.

Mr.Sheep in a weirdly purple shirt who has probably had few mentions in news papers, one 2x1.5 inch photo in Page 1 of Times of India Bangalore edition ( and he was the only one who was not looking at the camera when the photo was taken) and is from NITK, Surathkal had a long line of 30 wannabe-consults and wannabe-fin-people waiting for him to proof-read and spout tips for improving their one-page resumes.

Talk about popularity!!! Bah...!


Me: "Macha...check it out da. Some five people are talking to those two 'Idiots' there, and here some n-hajaar junta have put line to meet you"

Sheep: "They are not doling out jobs, da!"

Touche!

P.S: Mr. Madhavan I thought 'Kannathil Muthamittal' and 'Alaipayude' were really nice movies. Mr. Joshi you are a funny guy. Both of you, I guess acting is a difficult job and all that, but with all due respect ( I have nothing against you guys) you got your keesters kicked that night.