Beep – a story – part I

“BEEP!”

HE heard a sound from his pocket when he was chit-chatting with his friends in the evening. Mobile is a new gadget for this guy, studying in 7th sem of BE. And he feels very happy whenever he gets a call or sms. And with the usual enthusiasm he opens the sms he just received, which says, “hi, wat are you doin?” but it doesn’t show any name as its a new contact for him.

Wow! New number. Hmmm, this must be one of my friends trying to fool me.
“whos this?” HE replied.

“I am your friend only yar. Anyway, hows your project work going on”

“Its goin on fine. But I know its one from my friends circle itself, I can find it out within no time.”

“Ok, use your brain, if you have one. ”

“Hey guys listen. I am getting messages from some unknown number, saying he is my friend. I am sure this is someone we all know.” HE announced.

“Wow! One more fan of yours?” one of this friends started teasing HIM.

“Hey, no fan nothing, I told no this is just a prank. What shall I do now”

“Just call up directly” said the other.

“Hmmm, that’s a better Idea”

“Hey, use my cell. She may not answer if your call from your cell” a genius handed over his mobile to HIM. See, how confident he is that its a Girl.

“Yeah. Let me try.”

He dialed the number ‘xxxxx xxxxx’.

Tring tring!

“Hello” a voice from the other side.

Wow! It’s a gal.

“Who’s this?”

“What? Oh! You called me from some other number, isn’t it?”

“Yeah! Who are you? What’s your name?”

“Well, I think just before couple of mins somebody was telling that he is genius and can find out what he wants.”

“Aa hmmm, oh yes. So you are not goin to tell your name now?”

“How can I dear?”

“Fine. Bye.” Ufff! He got pissed-off.

“What happened dude? Is it he or she?” his friends started to enquire.

“She is not telling her name. Instead she is challenging me to find out for myself!”

“Ohoho! It’s a Girl…? Hmmm. Guys, sooner or later, you will witness  a new name added to HIS fan’s list. Hahaha..” the same genius started laughing, and other also along with him.

- End of Day one -

Let me give you some background about HE.

Anyways, coming to the point, HE is an average looking boy from a middle class family. He is even average in looks but he has maintained a good physic. He is already having an offer from some IT firm which hired him from a campus interview and thats the reason he got to have a mobile phone in his hand. Even then, he is very down to earth and innocent boy, at least this is what his friends say. And because of his good nature, some girls are having good, but friendly, relation with him. And as usual, his friends pull his legs always in case of girls. Oh! did I forget to tell his name? Well, I too donnno. You want me to give him a name? Hmmm, lets call him Rahul. But promise me that you’ll not think that its “Kuch Kuch Hota Hai” story. Even you think, it doesn’t make any difference to me.

And keep looking for next part of the story. But remember what happened till now.

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TED – Ideas Worth Spreading

Fire the Shoe, Get Famous!

In Dec 2008, an Iraqi journalist threw not one but both his loafers at George W Bush. I am not sure how much fame that journalist got there in Iraq, but yes, by following the same strategy, one of our journalists, Jarnail Singh has got enough fame to lead rest of his life with much more ease with so many offers coming his way.

To give a brief background, Jarnail Singh (a correspondent with the Hindi newspaper “Dainik Jagran”) threw one of his shoes at Mr. Chidambaram in protest against the Congress party’s decision to field Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar - accused in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots case – for the Lok Sabha elections. All this happened during a press conference at the Congress headquarters when the Minister refused to discuss on the Sikhs being denied justice by the party.

Jarnail Singh throws Shoe at Chidambaram

You know what perks he got for this gesture of firing shoe at our Home Minister P. Chidambaram? Check out:
* The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) announced a case reward of Rs. 2,00,000 for his “courage & bravery”.
* Akali Dal (Amritsar) leader Simranjit Singh Mann has offered a Lok Sabha Ticket.
* The Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee has offered to give a job if his current employer fires him.

Wow! That’s so cool. Well, I too am thinking of firing a shoe at my ___ ?
Never mind.

Anyways, coming to the point, just look at the offers he is getting for what he did, money, Lok Sabha ticket, job and what not. Well, I am not against his protest, but my question is does he really worth the things he is offered now? Lets evaluate one bye one.
* Cash prize: Why? You think its a great achievement to throw shoe at people? Or you think its like winning the world cup of which the whole country would be proud of?
* Lok Sabha Ticket: Aha! This makes some sense to me as the young fellow looks to be having enough courage and what we call in hindi, the junoon, to fight against unjust and evil. So, he can become a good politician, and of course, this opinion is just based on his first impression.
* Job: Well, on what bases? Just because he took his shoe in his hand? or just to put themselves in the state of showing pity when he is fired? or just for show-off? But its always welcome to hire him following the usual recruitment process.

After all this, coming to main the question, whatever he did is right? I completely condemn such behaviors as it sends bad signals to the outside world. What the Iraqi journalist did is against Bush, who is not from Iraq. But here its a different ball game together. Chidambaram is our man, our own country-man. If there is some misunderstanding between ourselves then we have to solve it by ourselves, but should not make is a matte rof joke for outsiders by doing such thing. Such act against our own leader is strictly not acceptable, it sends wrong signals to the rest of the world and to our next generation as well [coz of the perks ]. One has to protest against unjust, that is fine but not in this way though. We believe in “Sathyagraha” where peace does all for us, where non-violence is the only armor. Shoe firing is not our style, never ever. But yes, it may be Iraqi style.

Go Green – Stop Global Warming

An old proverb – A picture is worth Thousand words!

And here a picture which will educate us to at least minimize, if not stop, Global Warming problem. Please share this peace of pictorial info with as many as possible.

Go Green - Stop Global Warming

Google Street View

“Cheating husband caught on Google Street View? – Wife located her husband’s (who claimed he was away on business) car outside another woman’s house and now she needs divorce from him.”

Looks familiar news? Yes, this is one of the headlines in today’s news paper. Looks like Google is helping out people, especially women, in validating the the genuineness of their husbands.

Well, its a great tech achievement to show the streets of a town on your computer screen. But each coin is having two faces. In the same way, this invention is having the other side too. How safe it is to show such a minute details of a town on web? If one can have easy access to a city’s details like this, he can easily plan his moves if he is planning for some disastrous activities. Hey Google, I am not against your innovations, in fact I am a huge fan of you, but my only concern is the way people use technology for bad reasons. In today’s world, where Global Terrorism is main concern, this feature of Google Maps may ease the life of Terrorists. But how far? I really donno.

Flash back of the walk under Trees

Around 1030hrs of 12th Sep, 2007, a mail popped-up in my inbox with the subject “Flash back of the walk under treessssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss”.

I was like, what the heck? Why so many Ss? It was from one of my old friends. With some strange feeling I opened the mail which read as follows: [ Its the original content of the mail, so my friend, don't get embarrassed. I felt it'll be good to share it as is, to retain its original beauty.. ]

I asked and almost forced you to come early in the morning at around
6.30 am so that we can go in the cool atmospher bofore sun raised
more. You came at 7.30am and at that time i was having my bath outside
the house, you smilled and felt happy to see somehow lazy fellow than
you, because i only forced more to come early. After that both of us
had breakfast of Avalakki, and left the home at 8.30am. When we gone
to another person’s home to get him for the walk, i felt very bad
thinking that already sun raised more and to get him sun could be
raised more+++, because the fellow to whom we gone to get  was still
on the bed and was sleeping well. we waked up him and he got ready and
sat for to have breakfast and had it like a passenger train….
slowly……… finally we left home at 10.00am…..
So at 10.00am started walk….. To where ….? got it…………….?
Walk for Kadapatti Jatra…………. memoriable walk under trees no……….
Have u remember it…….? how we enjoyed throughout the walk to
Kadapatti, we spent some time in water canal by making boats of leaf,
And we had again breakfast of Junuka rotti and kara enni by which we
carried. and finally reached the Kadapatti at 1.00pm and enjoyed lot..
do u know why i am recalling this..? because tomorrow, Thursday, is
the Kadapatti jatra… do u think we really missing those beutifull
movements…
We must make ourselves free  and make those movements to happen
again……… Hopes are there…. plans are there, but need to
implement it…… Will make that again yaar…………………………….

Regards…………
<his_name>………. [Name is censored as our mutual friends will definitely tease him after reading such a grammatically crap stuff from him.]

Well, even though it looks crap grammatically, I was impressed, and touched too. How many of us get a mail which recalls one’s childhood, or college days for that matter? Very few. And on that day, I felt very happy and lucky to have a friend like this. This mail literally sent me back to those olden, yet Golden days.

Each one of us will be having so many such special moments in our life. School days trips, college days hang-outs, chit-chatting with friends, evening walk with someone special, etc etc… We just keep missing them and down the line, forget them eventually, not all of us though. But how many of us try to recreate the same things again? Very few. I’m not saying that we don’t want them to come back but we keep on postponing them. For example, take my case itself. After reading this mail, especially his proposal in the last line, I said to myself “Kadapatti Jatra (fair) tomorrow? Oh shit! This guys should have reminded me few days back, we could have made it to the same again. Its OK, definitely will materialize it next year!”

Time passed away very quickly, the same 7th Sep, 2008 came and went off, none of us didn’t mention about that fair, not even a single bit of it. Why? We were busy with our day-to-day life, working for tommorrow, for a better tomorrow to be precise. But what will do tomorrow? Yeah, you got it right, we forget that yesterday we were working for today and start working for tomorrow, again. Then where is the time to recreate those Golden moments? No where, if one feels so. But if we take a stand and stick to that, we can surely do it. What do you say?

Patel’s Inn – a review

It was the month of December and we had to finish off our routine Team outing activity, otherwise we would have lost the reserved amount.

We were having very short time to decide upon the location, and were supposed to use only half the day for this outing. After a very small discussion and very little inputs, we landed-up in Patel’s Inn.

Patel's Inn

Patel’s Inn is situated in R.T.Nagar, Bangalore and we thought it’ll be convenient for all of us to return home in the evening. We reached the base camp around 1:45 pm and as soon as we entered the resort, all our expectations were gone for a toss. I mean, it was not up-to our expectations.

We started off with lunch, which was just ok, even some of us felt it was pathetic. Then we moved on to Badminton court which was literally in need of some cleaning activity. We had had couple of games here and thought to get out to Lawn Tennis. But this court need repair work itself.

Anyway, all of our eyes were on go-carting track and soon after spending just couple of minutes in Lawn Tennis court, we moved on to Go-carting ground. And this is the only place we enjoyed the most in the whole resort, but again only one ride for each individual, not good.

After all this, we thought of resting a bit in swimming pool. And to be frank, the pool is also not up to the mark. Ufff! I am saying the same thing again and again, ain’t I? Well, that’s what I really felt. And don’t ask me about the evening snacks, I am out now.

Oh yeah! I forgot about the billiards. Even though it was a week day, the Billiards room was crowded with the regular visitors. And we were given the least priority.

Bottom line: Patel’s Inn doesn’t worth Rs.550(+taxes) per head when we go for team outing. You can go for individual activities like Go-carting (which may cost you around Rs.120-150), or Billiards, etc.. But as a package? Strictly NO NO!

After Burn Effects

I wonder whether I am the only one who come across such a situation.
What situation? Being in Blank feeling just after a hectic project.

Well, is it really Blank? Its definitely not as its a feeling in itself but I am not able to give it a name.. During the busy days, I’ll be waiting for some free time. And when that day comes, I browse net, do some chit-chat with friends, etc etc etc.. say up-to lunch.. Then, what else? Nothing, just BLANK.. A feeling, where I start thinking, what next but don’t get any answer from myself.. Its some strange feeling which takes me nowhere.. I don’t know whether its positive feeling or negative, I can’t even tell you whether its good or bad, but yes, I get this feeling after every eventful event.. I call it After Burn Effects.. It doesn’t happen only in office, but in personal life too, after any celebration, like New year celebration with friends, Diwali celebrations with family, or an exhaustive trip.. And I am sure I am not the only one in this space.. But don’t ask for proofs..

Arthur Ashe’s view on Life

Arthur Ashe, the legendary Wimbledon player was dying of AIDS which he got due to infected blood he received during a heart surgery in 1983. From world over, he received letters from his fans, one of which conveyed: “Why does GOD have to select you for such a bad disease”?

To this Arthur Ashe replied:
The world over 5 million(5,000,000) children start playing tennis, 500 thousand (500,000) learn to play tennis, 50 thousand (50,000) learn professional tennis, 5,000 come to the circuit, 500 reach the grand slam, 50 reach Wimbledon, 4 to semi final, 2 to the finals.

When I was holding a cup I never asked GOD “Why me?”.

And today in pain I should not be asking GOD “Why me?”.

That’s Arthur Ashe for you!