golmaal hai bhai sab golmaal hai…

Way back in 1992, I saw it for the first time in life .I don’t remember anything more than an animation of the human digestive system which the teacher was showing in that dabba screen. Understandably yours truly was over-awed by the occasion of having the darshan of a computer for the first time. Technology has come a long way since then and over the years I have kept pace with inventions that have bygone. Well most of the time my outlandish ideas out running the sluggish thinking of the techie inventors.

Google ever since they came up with “google earth” I was always tempted to call up Larry Page and ask for something more…I would love google to come up with 1mm resolution images, which could seep through the roofs of houses to my little dingy room. It will come in handy as I always forget where I keep my pack of toothpicks and I don’t have to search all over the house all the time… Rather i ll sit on the cozy couch and do a Google earth search and do a Eureka hip shake after I locate it. It will come in handy for misplaced or lost needles at home too coz Mom always says she can’t find where she kept her needles. Very useful especially in office that I can find when my Boss is just near the door and I can in a jiffy close the arsenal.com website and open some complex power point!!

Btw guess u all know Steve Jobs is one smart fella...Would be terrific to see him coming up with some iOpeners ideas like inventing iLashes for ladies or a touch screen iCar …These days he claim that iReland and iRaq belongs to him…exactly why iRish don’t see i to i with Steve. Well brainy chap he is that why they say he is an iCon. After I met him at iOwa, I had an iDea that I should have a quick brunch somewhere. I walked into the KFC counter and had an unhappy meal that reminded me of something else.

I want KFC and Mc-D to come up with French fries and chicken nuggets that help reduce weight. Just imagine if they come up with a secret formula for the KFC chicken that will help you loose weight. More Chicken nugget you eat...The more you loose weight…1 chicken nugget you lose 100 grams…and another one 200 grams. I get Goosebumps when I think of that. It ll be the invention of century. . You can start catching the chickens even before they hatch....woo!!…All scientists out here I am giving you free ideas!! ;-p

After that light lunch which made my pocket feather light I took the flight back home. The Kingfisher airline pilot was red-faced coz I reached the airport quite late. But I say there was too much red out there and with all the kingfisher planes parked together in the runway it looked like a red light area. They should recruit airhostesses who wear white saree’s, make them wear full white sleeve blouses serve kingfisher neem extract instead of the beer and play bhajan’s in the in-flight entertainment system. All these just for the heck of it…scandalous wouldn’t it be.eh!!

Talking of airplanes, nowadays we keep hearing about big aircrafts, which can carry 555 passengers... Only if they knew our airlines if given a chance could accommodate at least a thousand in a small turbo prop plane and our railways have been holding the Guinness records (most humans/goat/hens all in a single coach) for decades... And I have not seen any other organization with as much innovation as Indian railways. Would love to see a special train on the lines of “garib rath” where people can travel ticket less...This train will cater all the ticketless travelers in our country. The TT will be forcibly recruited hardcore criminals/terrorists from our jails and shoved in each compartment... Wow... And then the fun begins. Saves a lot of money and health for the Police too!!!…


Last week I saw an ESPRIT umbrella at an up market shop here...Never knew an umbrella was a fashion accessory until I saw that...My close friend who specializes in business espionage says, taking cue from the current brand craze Starbuck’s is going to introduce branded pappads. Eating Star buck pappads will be latest in thing in town, which will guarantee jealous glances from passerby’s…Ladies will drop on the knees seeing guys who could afford Starbuck’s pappads!! And Versace is coming out with retro-bindi’s starting 1000$ excluding tax and ear buds embossed with high quality Versace embroidery work... Our ‘Popy kudaas’ and ‘Haldiram’s’ should reinvent themselves as chic fashion statements. If ESPRIT can do it why cant Popy!!

Taking cue from investors in gulf and due to rising land prices I would love to see the land mafia back home to create islands like the ones near Dubai. But instead of shapes like palm trees I would like one for me shaped like an ‘arivaal’…and one for my bro shaped like a ‘chuttikaaa’…There will be a separate island accessible only by air to simulate Malayalees who can’t bear without going to Middle East. And to make them feel at home we will have a brand new “Kalady Duty free” shop at the airport…To give the authentic touch sheikhs will be invited once in a while and wearing sun glass (which in neutral Minglish is called a kooling glass) made compulsory in this district...

And the last request of all. Why don’t all the people in the world decide...Say..Okay let’s slow down a bit. Why are we competing hard against each other? Let’s have a 4-day weekend. And the whole world will work only for 2 days henceforth…well who is in a hurry man…;-P


P.S Folks who are severely malnutrioned after Silverine's miracle diet.please help yourself with a calorie boost from the chef's kitchen..

Mr. Schmidt country and some lessons …

I still remember writing a blog from a small café two days after I reached Hamburg.. all excited and gaga over the trip..And a year went by as quick as...well 365 days!!!.. giving me unforgettable experiences...fulfilling many a dreams and a lot more..

I complete one year of stay abroad today. And a year has taught me some wonderful lessons. (As if am going to learn ;-P)…All the lessons learnt in the eyes of a small town boy who was exploring a new country just like a scaled down version of Vasco de Gama…


Lesson 1

For someone like me who never had to interact with a Caucasian before in life it was a new experience. When I was a kid a white man/woman were a kauthukka vasthu (can’t get the exact English translation for that. I guess it means ‘curio item’)..I used to look in awe at the phoren tourist who came to shed their clothes at our kovalam beach. They were looked at like aliens with a curiosity to touch them to see if their skin is like ours or if they had five fingers in each hand just like us.. Like we always looked down ourselves as a poor hangry people. ‘no money..poor poor..please Saar some Singapore dollars..you white fair and lovely..very rich fella..’

The whites were a people much above us...The last one year helped me shed this apprehension or stigma I attached to interacting with a Caucasian..If I say in more dramatic cinematic style I ll lift the line from a movie and say, I learnt to talk man to man.
The white skin doesn’t awe me anymore. I understand they are as human as us..and as inhuman as we are.. I might have still carried that baggage of white “the better guy” stigma back home.

P.S. My co-workers are nice folks who happen to appreciate our culture and ideas..I like my work place coz I get to work in a team of Indians..Germans..French..Spaniards..Brits..Russians..Poles and Japanese ..We have Hindus..Jains..Christians..Atheist..Muslims..Bhuddhist and Jews in our team.. Am sure this combo is a real heady mix…

Lesson 2

Had a picture that poverty existed only in Africa and Asia..Learnt that poor people exist throughout the world even in the supposedly affluent west. And sometimes I think the trauma the poor here goes through might be much more agonzing than what the poor back home face coz here they are simply alone. Completely isolated from the society in the midst of prosperous and affluent lifestyles...At least back home the poor have a network of their own...they have people amongst themselves to share their miseries and sorrow. Here the poor are folks who have succumbed to drugs or binge drinking and in the process became social discards…

Lesson 3

Faith is almost non-existent here.. Church is a place where they can get married and they can be packed in neat caskets for the delivery to hell or heaven..wherever...
Otherwise the church isn’t of much relevance…The west now suffers spiritual poverty. This country is now having an atheist population of 40-45%.I have nothing against atheists myself having harbored such sentiments in the past. But the point is atheism has indirectly resulted in an intolerant society where atheists ridicule sentiments of the believers.


Lesson 4

However communication gets better. However advanced be Gtalk..Skype..Messenger..it is just not the same as having the friends around you. Technology still doesn’t get better than bytes or pixels.. I have learnt how important is to have friends near you. I have friends out here but they wont ever be like the friends back home..

My close friends are now in different corners of the world. Wondering when we ‘ll get a chance to meet again.. There is nothing like the nostalgia of good old times that can make you crave about home.


Lesson 5

Although the foreign land has all the facilities you can think of… the majestic Alps…the charming castles…Disneyland…stylish cars…trains…it doesn’t stand up to the beauty of our country. We have more people smiling in out part of the world despite the fact that we don’t have reasons enough to smile about… We have more people sharing food from the same plate despite the looming poverty…

Our country is colorful …Almost as if we try the extra bit to literarily make our life colorful...Everything looks like shades of grey out here…

The colors…the tolerance…and the spirit of our people are simply unmatchable…You learn to appreciate how good our country is when you stay outside, even though there are thousand reasons to crib about our own country. How true when Gregory David Roberts said…” In India the heart is the king.”

Addendum

I got lucky when I was given the thinking blogger award from Mishmash who in her own rights is one of the best foodie bloggers around here having a distintive style of lacing a food blog with anedcotes of little stories back home.Thanks a lot..

I would pass on this award to my obvious choice of fantastic four who might have already got this award and a few others like ..
Shruti..who blogs quite far and in between..but I love reading her philosphical insights about life..Alex who create sparkling gems from no where..and Rupa who writes some thought provoking posts...

Dedicating this song for friends out here..

Tag tharikida Tag!!

It has been long since I had done a tag and this one from Silverine (formerly Princess of Pala and now presiding over the Kingdom of Bangalore) was a nice break…

1. Pick out a scar you have, and explain how you got it.

I have a scar on my shoulder, which is almost hard to find now. It happened when I was riding a scooter at a breath taking top speed of 30-km/ hr and rammed behind a pick–up van….

Well this question reminds of me cousin who sports a scar on his cheek after a daredevil attempt to shave when he was a kid!!

2. What does your phone look like?

Surprisingly it looks like a phone!!.. Uh!!

3. What is on the walls of your bedroom?

An original Van Gogh painting. I got it for a bargain at the flea market.. I am ready to sell it for 50 dollars…any takers..

4. What is your current desktop picture?

A Tom and Jerry cartoon at home. And in office it is a beautiful $None$…coz a plain blue desktop might just give a false indication that the chap is a headshot professional. ;-P

5. Do you believe in gay marriage?

I don’t know…But for sure I wouldn’t want my son to tell me one fine day that he is gay and that Dad wrote a few decades back in his blog that he believed in Gay marriage…
Honestly I find it hard to digest…

6. What do you want more than anything right now?

Audi TT ...just for visiting the shop to buy a case of beer and some currywurst.


7 . What time were you born?

Ohoohh..I had forgotten to wear my Tissot that day.. ;-P.
But the records say sometime around 9:00 pm.. Dad says he missed the 9 o’clock news.. And Mom says she missed her favourite serial…. But the district of Kottayam dint miss a beat when this kid came to the world with a 10-paisa smile!!!

8. Are your parents still together?

Yoo!!!.. Thank god they donno much about law!! ;-P

9. Last person who made you cry?

Not a person. But some holocaust videos…I was feeling desperate after that..

10. What is your favourite perfume / cologne?

Anything, which doesn’t smell like a mosquito repellent. But in general I don’t like fruity smells.

11. What kind of hair/eye color do you like in the opposite sex?
Pink hair and yellow eyes with a dash of purple… eh..
Until I saw the question I never thought about it.. On instant thoughts I loved the looks of Princess Diana…

12. What are you listening to?

A random song which I found in youtube..Loved the picturisation...

13. Do you get scared of the dark?

When iron maiden sang fear of the dark. I got slightly scared. But otherwise I am dead scared of dark..

14. Do you like painkillers?

Brain seizure…brain seizure.. Brain unable to handle such silly questions..Question skipped..

15. Are you too shy to ask someone out?

Who said that…only did yesterday I go out with Gwen Stefani… ;-P
To be fair to the question …Yes. That is one of my biggest fears that I may not gather enough confidence to ask someone out…

16. If you could eat anything right now, what would it be?

Oh..well it is 9 degrees today. and that too in middle of summer…And I think some tapioca , fish curry and a hot kattan kaapi is what I want the most now...

17. Who was the last person you made you mad?

A drunkard who was pouring obscenities at a Nun.. This guy did not have the decency to talk properly to someone who was trying to help him.

18. Who was the last person who made you smile?

Well it was an incident. I was waiting to catch the metro at the station and I saw a poor guy rummaging the waste bins and vending machines where people might have forgotten to take back the change. I dint want to give alms to him. Coz I felt that might offend him, as he wasn’t exactly begging. So I went to a machine, which was bit further ahead. Bought something and intentionally left the change in the machine..

Three minutes later this poor chap who had seen me using that machine came back with the change and handed it to me. He had apparently thought that I had forgotten the change.


And I am tagging Nags, Mishmash, Sreejith,Srijith, Mayth, Venky ,Still searching and anyone else who wants to take up this tag.

The Salmankhan redemption…

They sentenced me for no wrong I did it. Killing a black buck. I swear, I dint do it. I was aiming at the endangered Asian tiger and that dumb black buck just crossed my aim…Your honor I don’t deserve this sentence. You know??...I am now shooting for the World Wildlife Fund(WWF) sponsored movie...”Bucks that pays” and another one with Sanju bhai “Prison stories”

I was taken to the jail from the court in an old Jonga jeep... probably as old as one I used to travel with my bhai friends…Once I come out I’ll donate my Pajero for the Jodhpur DCP...He has promised me good food from home...

Met the prison warden for the first time at the jail reception portico. A thin spooky guy with a torso just as big as my biceps…He showered me into his room and said...

“I believe in two things - discipline and the Bible. Here you'll receive both. Put your trust in the Lord. Your ass belongs to me. Welcome to Jodhpur Central jail..”

Nice chap…I told him it was not from any of my movies. But with a quick jerk he bought me down...And I learned the hard way he was not my fan! :-(

I met many guys there. A familiar face in there too…Khalnayak…my beloved Khalnayak too…We hugged each other and sat down to discuss our future projects. But the evil warden pushed us to the granite quarry to break the stones. I was happy about it..I was missing my imported gym equipments and now I could at least work out the crude way..But working in the quarry is not as cool as dancing with the babes in Goa..But neways Sanju bhai gave me a ‘jaadhu ki jhappi’ and then I was fine...

Later in the evening during our evening tea break...I began pondering about Sanju bhai..

He's just institutionalized...The man's been in here fifteen years, Hey
ram, fifteen years. This is all he knows..these walls are funny. First you hate
'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, it gets so you depend on 'em.
That's 'institutionalized'...They send you here for life and that's exactly what
they take, the part that counts anyway.

Nowaday we don’t get to hear any music..life sucks big time out here..so we keep singing our favourite song “Another brick in the wall”..But Sanju gets angry fast coz he doesn’t like the bricks in the prison wall..

While serving onion pakodas for the jail intern I overheard this conversation..

Reviewer: You feel you've been rehabilitated?
Sanju: Oh, yes sir.
Absolutely, sir. Yeah, I've learned my lesson. I can honestly say that I'm a
changed man. I'm no longer a danger to society. That's the God's honest truth

Poor guy how many times they asked him this..

Meanwhile I had a mission of my own. I arranged a friend of mine to get me a poster. When I ask something from Vivek Octroi...He just gives it. No pretension. .I asked for a Katrina poster and the dumber gave me an 'Ash' glamsham poster…grr…

How could I ever doubt his insincerity...

Well no one knew why I asked for the poster which I hung inside my cell..

*5 years later…*

Jodhpur central jail warden Thakur sahib conversing with constable bholaram..

..Lord! It's a miracle! Man up and vanished like a fart in the wind. Nothin'
left but some damn rocks on the window sill and that cupcake on the wall. [He
gestures toward the poster of Aishwarya Rai hanging on the cell wall.] Let's ask
her. Maybe she knows. What say there, fussy-britches. Feel like talkin'? Oh,
guess not. Why should she be any different? This is a conspiracy. That's what
this is. It's one big damn conspiracy. And everyone's in on it. Including
her!

Later taken from Sanju’s prison diary..

Salman crawled to freedom through five hundred yards of shit-smelling foulness I can't even imagine. Or maybe I just don't want to. Five hundred yards. That's the length of five Amitabh Bachchan’s, just shy of half a mile..


P.S Any hate mail from ladies for de-glorifying Khan Uncle will go to junk mail!! ;-P

P.P.S..Onam greetings to all…I got invited by a malayalee family out here..so I too have my share of Onam sadhya..woohooh!!!

Jokes apart..

I often used to count myself unlucky for a variety of reasons…Am sure all of us had at some point thought that things happened pretty unfair for you...Maybe the bad appraisal you had...Maybe the crooked nose or balding hairline you have…Maybe a incompatible husband or wife…Our prejudices of how much life has been fair to us is decided on such mundane to relevant reasons.

How many times have we appreciated how lucky we are? I mean even being able to have three square meals everyday makes us a lot luckier than the poor man who has to rummage the garbage bins daily to fight his hunger pangs. How being half deaf is not a big deal when someone is there who cant see or hear anything at all…How you had parents who made sure you never went hungry ever when there were orphans who never got a chance to call someone Daddy or Mommy. It sounds cliché to say this .It is our nature never to appreciate how lucky we are…

There is so much misery in this world and I sometimes wonder when it all turns into a big catastrophy...Holocaust was long over 62 years back. But aren’t mini-holocausts happening every day around us. The west hates the Arabs...The upper castes hate the scheduled castes...the nationalist hate the commies…Indians hate the Pakistanis. The Americans hate the outsourced Indians...The world seems to running on hate.. Gandhi..Mother Teresa...They came...They tried. But we put their snaps on the walls and said...”You talk good...you rock…but c’mon you must be kidding...it doesn’t work that way”..

Our little life is juxtapositioned in this big hate vessel trying to gasp for the little joys which makes us happy. We don’t even manage that most of the time. The happiness that we seek in our own little ways. Listening to Mozart...Falling in love...Being loved...All is another jigsaw puzzle in the big scheme of things…

At times we miss that all these puzzles are what makes our life worthwhile. We miss the pieces sometimes and get frustrated. Sometimes everything falls in place and we are ecstatic...But then the point is finishing that puzzle coz that looks beautiful in the end…


Life is a like a Giant Ferris wheel. At times you are on the top and you feel like having conquered the world. Things look beautiful up there..The sky is vibrant blue..The wind is caressing your face. And you are on Cloud nine…But not long before you come down...The low ebbs in life happen…. There is pain...obstacles and chaos… But then it is like that wheel ...Hold strong when the wheel goes down. It is worth the exhilaration of going up again…

life made simpler...

Son: Okay...Now you go to 'Home'.

Mom: Son...am trying this thing from home.. I ll do it only if we can do it from here…don’t think of me going anywhere else for this. Uh..

Son:Okay..Okay..You have misunderstood me…. Navigate somewhere towards left and move straight up…

*After 5 minutes*

Mom: Yeah...But I don’t really get the point…I moved left and straight up and I have reached the kitchen...And I can’t see the computer from that far.

Son: Uh…oops…Okay…I ll make it simpler...Navigate using the mouse towards left and then straight up to the Home icon on the screen and click it.

Mom: * Click*…. Mone... Something seems to be wrong here…

Son: Has it hanged?? Or did it crash… :-O

Mom: No.. No..I swear I didn’t doing anything like that..You know I would never do anything like that.

Son:Oh..Mom…it is okay. Try Escape

Mom: No. I think there is no point. I don’t think I can escape from this misery. The screen is blank and lifeless…

*After 1 hour of negotiations*

Son: Well it is quite easy now on…Type the user name in the empty box left
Okay…Okay...And now type the password…

Mom: But I don’t remember the password I wrote it in a paper sometime back...Oh.But I used that paper to wrap the fish …Do we have any other way out….

Son: ROTFL !!!!Leave it...I don’t think you ever gonna get to do this!

Mom: Yeah...Tell me when u are goin to take that exam…

Son: whaaat????????????

Mom: You just mentioned..… Wasn’t that an exam u talked about all the time..

Son: LOL!!!

Mom: You never mentioned that one..

And the battle goes on and on................

Quotes Unquoted…

There is nothing like love at first sight coz love is blind!!(I am not sure if its original)

Half the people in the world enjoy life because there was M.A.S.H, Frasier and F.R.I.E.N.D.S.

I love to take the road less traveled...Coz it would definitely be in a better shape...Aint it?

In the beginning God said ..”Let there be light”..But it was Edison who bought it home..

Don’t give a drowning man a glass of water..He might like something else for a change..Coffee..Cappuccino….Coke… :-0

I have given up drinking for good. I save more money for the cannabis..

My son started liking apples ever since I bought him an I-Pod.

I bought my wife from e-Bay but they don’t take back goods once sold.

Son to Mom: why don’t we sell Dad and buy Santa Claus??

Bush at a white house press meet…’Am a damn serious person’… Lol!!!!! another of his jokes..

Don’t be the good guy who did something bad...Rather be the bad guy who did something good.

I am emotionally strong. I cry only in the bathrooms…

Internet has made me lonely. I don’t see real people anymore. I have forgotten seeing anyone really ROTFL.. I haven’t heard anyone LOL…I have started seeing invisible people in the messenger!!

Basic Instinct is an adulterated movie..

Sex drugs and rock n roll doesn’t interest me any more. I like it other way around.

Einstein told E=mc2 and all said wow. And I said London=Trafalgar square. And no one cares!!

Never love yourself too much. You might feel sorry for you when you are sad…