Parate ji ki Duniya...

Dance of Democracy

2009-05-14T17:08:00.000-07:00

Elections are now over in the world's biggest democracy. And now, the most exciting time is about to come when the results will start rolling out and the new government formation will take place. But let me address the big problem which we all seem to talk about : Our elections are run on trivial issues and has nothing to do with development. If I have to comment on this problem, I would say: Trivial issues in elections are not a problem for me and neither for our country. In this blog, I will try to justify my stance. It's not required that you all agree with me.

Let's just start with one of the dumbest issue started by Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav when he stated that he will ban English and computers if he gets a role to play in the next government. As soon as this statement was made, large number of people rebuked this by saying that discarding English and computers will make us even more backward. Somehow, I do not agree with both the opinions. I would really have agreed to Mr. Yadav if he would have promised that he will ensure that all the people in his state get at least primary education in Hindi. But he didn't.

I would have agreed to other people's views if they could justify how english and computers make us pro-development and how is it going to help in a state with 40% illiterate population. I am not saying that computers can't help. But there is lot more we can do without using computers. Even if we use computers, don't you think it would be of great help if the applications are built to help large population who speaks Hindi and can not read and write any language. Of course, we can have mobile-based applications working on Hindi speech recognition which can help anyone. Of course, we can have IT services in Hindi in govt organizations to increase efficiency and transparency.

I do realize that English is going to play big role in our country as it is going to be the unifying language among states with multiple languages. But in UP, I won't fight for English when it lacks primary education. Surprisingly, none of the supporters of English argued of it as unifying language for India (where national language Hindi failed). Everyone supported it for it being a global language as if everyone in our country has to do some deal with Americans!

Anyways, it was just an introduction to a trivial issue: you can be pro or against it. It does not really matter in long run. Now, let's come to why the trivial issues don't have a role to play in long run.

After becoming almost open economy, we have realized that people do operate by the concept of profitability ( can be called as greed by some). Our political parties, regional or national, have been trying to behave in the same ways by capitalizing on issues which are not really developmental in nature. For example, the big complaint of most urban population is that none of the parties say anything in support of development of urban India and they ignore urban areas in favor of rural areas. The reason behind this was that our constituencies were marked on the basis of 1970s population census which was rural in nature. Hence, the bias was towards rural areas for winning elections. This year, we had demarcation of constituencies based on year 2000 census where urban population has edge over the rural population. And be sure of this that by the next general elections, the issues are going to be biased towards urban areas. That's the political capitalism! That's how political parties win.

Moreover, parties may have the most ridiculous agendas while fighting elections but when they are in power, they have to work for development or else they would lose the opportunity to make money! If you have observed the economic policies of NDA and UPA govt, you would have noticed that they are almost the same towards liberalization. And yet, it's the dance of democracy that prevents rural India from being neglected.

Now, let us see how government functions on development issues. There is big open document by Planning Commission of India which identifies the problems and goals for next few years in future. One of their focus area is to increase literacy to maintain sustained economic growth. And we see that the expenditure on education has been increased by the government to a level which was not seen before. According to document, there is going to be huge migration of population from rural areas to urban areas in next 20 years. This shift in population is going to be so big that it required setting up of Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission. Large number of cities have already started benefitting from these funds.

While most of us fight over urban-rural bias, the Planning Commission document paved way for 'Golden Quadrangle' project and other projects to widen highways to improve urban connectivity. While at the same time, commission was already working for rural road connectivity program. These programmes might be slow due to efficiency issues but they do exist and are meant for both urban and rural India.

The statement I want to make using all these planning commission jargon is that "Elections are fought on trivial issues but government is run on agendas identified by bureaucrats sitting in Secretariat. It's just the way how parties present it." Thus, election issues only determine which party wins elections and not how the government functions. If that was not true, we would have had Ram Mandir in Ayodhya during NDA regime or all industries and banks would have been nationalized during UPA regime.

Finally, I am not sure how many of us agree but the pace of development has increased in the last decade. It is true that is not as rapid as that of China. So, I might not be in a developed India when I turn 40 but I will definitely be in a developed India when I turn 60. And my dream of being in developed India will become true irrespective of what issues are chosen for contesting elections.

GhAntAdhAR

P.S: I know you might be tempted to argue over English and computer issue. Honestly, I don't care!

Parate ji and the Kerela Trip with Friends

2009-04-12T15:46:00.000-07:00

You know what, I have spent quarter century of my life on this planet. And I think that I have seen and experienced at least some of the things in life. And I have seen people who seem to be too social with lots of friends and acquaintances in society and yet, they still miss something called 'real friends'. So, they go on with their quest for true friend by becoming even more social.

On the other hand, I belong to a category who is not highly social because my quest for true friends is already over. It's not that my friends are great. It's just that when you are with them, you lose all your hopes from the humanity. And you just decide to accept your fate and decide to be with as limited a number of human beings as you can. And when you reach that stage, you share all your happiness and grief with them.

The Kerela trip that we had in January was one such trip which was all about sharing. So, me and my friends, who all are wisemen, started planning for the great trip way ahead of January. Being the wise persons, we all are exploratory in nature. The reason we are exploratory is because we haven't taken anything from ancient wisdom and hence, we need to see things through our own eyes to learn every new detail.

For instance, when we planned to go to Kerela, we treated Kerela as a single precise meeting point. And everyone was so happy that we all are going to meet at that single precise meeting point on the earth. But it was after two weeks of careful planning, somebody accidentally opened Google Maps and zoomed in on Kerela. He made an important discovery and decided to tell this to all other wisemen about it. The discovery was-
"As opposed to what we thought, Kerela is not a single point. Infact, it's a big state with infinetely many points. Now, we need to select the point from all those points where we all can meet."

This discovery was not at all good for us. Now, it took us two more weeks to decide on the meeting point. After all, selecting one of the infinitely many possible points is a difficult job. Anyways, we decided on something called 'Ernakulam'.

But this time, another wisemen pointed out: "We all wanted to go to Kerela to see things. I propose that we explore anything within 100 kms radius of Ernakulam on Day 1. On day 2, we go 200kms south to watch waterfalls and backwaters. And finally on day 3, we go further 200kms to explore the beaches."

The idea would have been great but somehow, the patience of one wiseman broke down and he said,"***, अबे यह क्या मज़ाक है? रोज़ रोज़ २०० किमी चलावाओगे क्या? मैं ऐसा करता हूँ की मुंबई लोकल में बैठ कर मुंबई के ३ चक्कर लगा लेता हूँ, केरल जाने से तो अच्छा ही होगा। मुझे एक दिन अपना दुखडा शेयर करना है ॥ मैं और कुछ नही सुन रहा। " Of course, everyone wanted to share their life. So, this led to some changes in the plan.

However, being the visionary among all the wisemen , I could observe things beyond this argument. I observed that the distance from Bangalore to Ernakulam is 450 km. And there is no way, we could cover that distance walking at night. So, I made the following suggestion, "Why don't we make a reservation by train to Ernakulam? If we leave at night, we will reach there by morning!"

That was a great suggestion and I received lots of appreciation for that. After that, we were all set to go to Kerela. The night arrived and we all were on the train. And that's when I realized the biggest mistake I made while making the suggestion. "Have we booked the return ticket to Bangalore?"

"No. You didn't ask us to book the return ticket. But we have learnt this important lesson now, always book the ticket to return back to origin." With this great response, the great adventure of wisemen to god's own country was about to begin.

We played poker throughout the night on train. We laughed and got excited about the trip ahead. And in the morning, one wiseman pointed another mystery to solve, "You know what? There are more than one stations in Ernakulam. Where do we get down?"

"Let's get down at the first station", another wiseman solved the problem! The station arrived; all wisemen got down with their luggage. All had amazingly superb breakfast of idli, dosas and sambhar-vada. And that's when another wiseman said, "Leaving on streets for three days does not sound like a good idea. Have we booked an hotel?"

The answer was no. And on the new year's eve, we all started search for a place to stay which were all occupied due to tourists flocking for new year and in a state, where people talked only in "god's own language: Malyalam" . We pretended to understand Malyalam and tried to get information from local people. But all we could get was "Bangadam Mangadam".

It was a difficult job but we managed to get a place to stay from person who didn't speak a word of Hindi or English. We had no taxi booked, but we managed to get one everyday. We covered Kochi, backwaters, waterfalls and beach as planned in a three days time. We managed to fight with a taxi driver in Malyalam (ok, it was he fighting in Malyalam). We even celebrated new year on the streets with local families and young people dancing and shouting. People offered us sweets and drinks at the stroke of 12. We did everything we could!

Kerela was truly beautiful and provided us with great experiences and joy. But the most important thing in that trip was the time, I spent with my friends, sharing all the happenings of my life. It is one thing to boast about friends when you are 20 and are in college. It's another when you can praise about your friends when you all grow up and each one is on the way to become more mature, taking important jobs or getting married.

I might be among the very few people on this planet who can say that he has got very good friends numbering in two digits. And I can say, I don't really feel the need to socialize to know more people when I am with them. And yes, it is because I have lost faith in humanity. I know, there cannot be more gems than what I already have!

GhAntAdhAR

Parate ji, When are you getting married?

2009-04-04T14:33:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the pleasant weather of spring, I am back in the mode of blogging. It had been a while since I blogged regularly. This entry is a fresh start and is more about the question that is tormenting me now-a-days.

"Which college are you going to join?"
"How many girl-friends do you have?"
"Where are you working? How much are you earning?"
"कोई लड़की पटाया या नही?"
"Did you have sex?"
"When are you getting married? कोई गोरी से तो शादी करके नही आएगा वापस?"

The above are some of the questions which I found myself being asked by others at different stages of my life. The first question was asked when I was in Class XII. The second was asked after I joined college, as if my college had infinite supply of girls. Everytime I was asked this question, I would tell them that my college had a sex ratio of 17 boys : 1 girl. So, relevant question to ask would be "How many guys have a common girl-friend?"

Then, I went to the next phase of life doing job. And the question changed to "How much are you earning? When are you buying a car?" And I was like a helpless person praying to the god to save me from these question. But sooner than I realized, the question changed to "Ok, you had a bad sex ratio in college but now, कोई लड़की पटाया की नही?" Somehow, I was fired by this question every now and then. And when I got over it and came to US. Something bad happened.

I feel that it's really a bad thing to happen to a guy like me. And that bad event was: I turned 25!! Age of 25 is considered to be the end of 'brahmacharya ashram' in Indian Vedic System. Now, it's time to get married. Suddenly, it seems as if everyone is getting married. Every now and then, I would come to know about a cousin or a friend from school or college getting married. As the society as a whole is very sadist entity, everyone wants me to get married as well. In the last two months since I turned 25, almost everyone seems to be so concerned about my marriage now. Be it orkut, be it g-chat or be it a telephone call, this question seems to be hauting me, floating in space, waiting for the right moment and as soon as I feel relaxed, the question strikes : "When are you getting married? Are you bringing a white woman when you come back to India?"

And this question takes me back to the good old days of college when my friend Sharma ji would come back from the library and announce his biggest finding of the day "अबे! आज लाइब्ररी में एक लड़की मिली (Guys! I found a girl in library today!)". And then, all my friends will gather around him to know more about his discovery: A beautiful girl in a library!

Sharma ji would continue his story then:

She was sitting in the second floor. I saw her for the first time. I went to her, sat in front of her, looked at her eyes and said, "Hey, What are you reading?"

She smiled and said, "I am trying to understand this concept in my mathematics text-book Kreyzig".

Kreyzig? That means the girl is from first year, I thought in my mind and said to her, "Oh! I am good at anything from that book. I can explain any concept to you."

The girl got really excited and said, "Oh, can you please clear some of my doubts? Please, please". She pleaded.

But I am a cool guy and said to her,"Hmm... only if I can take you out for the coffee and explain it to you there." The girl smiled and said "ok". We both left and had a nice time.

End of the Story.

Well, that would have been a believable story if the college I studied at, was not IIT-K and moreover, Sharma ji was not that a cool guy at that time. Infact, any variation of the story like girl got furious towards the end of the story is not possible.

Honestly, even though all my friends would gather around Sharma ji, he would never really have anything to tell. Except the fact that he saw some girl from some astronomical distance similar to what is between sun and earth. And with his powerful specs-ridden eyes, he could observe the girl reading 'Kreyzig'. You may agree or not, but for me, it was a big feat to observe something from such a distance. And the happiness for doing this could be compared to what Mr. Edmond Halley would have felt at the time of finding Halley's comet.

Anyways, things have changed. The time when a slight glimpse of girl was enough to the time when I am supposed to have one with me. Things are changing. Somehow, the changes look much more rapid now.

Still, I think I should answer the question. . I will get married in year 2013 when I am done with Phd.

GhAnTAdhAR

Parate ji and The Sexual Orientation on Orkut

2009-03-23T14:41:00.000-07:00

This article is meant only for those who are 18 or above. This is regarding the bug in orkut that I reported recently.

It was a really calm pleasant evening and I was loitering at the downtown of my sweet little village called 'Amherst' in Massachusetts(MA). May be I was out of mind, but then I decided to enter the pub. It's foolish to enter pub in the evening for variety of reasons. But let's not talk about that. May be I should have seen it as the sign of forthcoming dreaded incident about to happen. But I didn't and then, I did the second foolish thing of the evening, I ordered a beer!

'Hi, How are you doing?', were the words that fell on my ear-drums. I was shocked and when I turned back, I saw a beautiful girl checking me out and approaching me who caught me having a damn beer! Next thing I remember is I am in bed all sweating.

For god sake, please... don't misinterpret sweating! I just came out of horrible dream. Well, you might be thinking what was so horrible about it. First of all, girls are only allowed to check you out but it should be the mighty man who should approach them and not the vice-versa. This has been the tradition in human history and we ought to respect that. Secondly, 'Real Men drink Scotch' and not 'Beer'. Thus, you should never get caught having beer in front of a girl. With these thoughts, I decided that next time I have this dream, I am going to give this girl a lesson to respect this tradition evolved over the history of mankind.

It was a really calm pleasant evening and I was loitering at the downtown of my sweet little village called 'Amherst' in Massachusetts(MA). May be I was out of mind, but then I decided to enter the pub. It's foolish to enter pub in the evening for variety of reasons. But let's not talk about that. May be I should have seen it as the sign of forthcoming dreaded incident about to happen. But I didn't and then, I did the second foolish thing of the evening, I ordered a beer. 'Oh god! This should be the same dream again!'

And this time, I was all ready to give the lecture to the girl who approaches me. 'Hi, How are you doing?', were the words that fell on my ear-drums. I was shocked and when I turned back, there was a guy standing in front of me. Next thing I remember is I am in bed all sweating. I came out of a horrible dream! This dream is one of the consequences of living in a gay-friendly state like Massachusetts. But thankfully, it was a dream.

But this dream made me to think, "What if the sexual orientation in my orkut profile is accidently set to something other than 'straight'?" And that's when it led to the greatest discovery of all time. All the friends in my orkut friend-list were listed as 'gay'!

Well, recently, orkut had come up with the option of setting your display language as 'Hindi'. And as soon as you do that; all your friends suddenly become 'समलिंगी' or 'gay'. Actually, with Hindi as language, orkut provides you with following choices - gay, bisexual and bi-curious. No option for being 'straight'! And by default, it makes everyone gay. I reported this bug to orkut with following message-

"when I change the display language to Hindi, the sexual preference has the following options- homosexual, bisexual, bi-curious. But it does not have 'straight' as an option. Please, for the sake of ever decreasing minority of 'straight' users, provide the option of being straight :)"

You can check the responses here. The bug was not fixed as on March 23, 2009.

There is one more interesting thing about the options: bi-sexual and bi-curious. How do you differ between those two? Is it like if you have not consummated your relations, then you are bi-curious or else you are bi-sexual? Shouldn't they have an option of 'hetero-curious' then? Keep wondering :)

GhAntAdhAR

Wake up Asian elephants!

2008-10-24T07:29:00.001-07:00

My outlook towards current economic situation!

Markets plunging and diving down everywhere in the world with a falling rate in double digit everyday. Markets seeing the new lows that they had not seen in years. Everything looks so gloomy from North America, Europe, Asia to lesser mentioned Latin America and Africa.

The economic crisis began when the biggest economy in the world thought that it is an intelligent move to give loans to people who couldn't afford it. Not just this, the lender themselves were not in a position to afford giving such loans. But then, there were even more intelligent people in other parts of world (read banks in countries like Iceland and other countries in Europe), who thought that it's great to lend money to these lenders. But soon this bubble bursted and started sinking the world economies. And sadly, it has effected other countries more than the United States itself.

While everything may look gloomy but one must realise that US is no fool and with reforms and corrections, it will bounce back to normal state in few years. Nobody is going to take away its status as a developed economy. US will once again lead the way and we hope even Europe will come back to normalcy. However, by the end of this period, there is going to be one big change. The reliance of world on US economy will decrease and US will not have the same global dominance as earlier.

But who is going to steal the show? Western Europe is still struggling to find its golden era when it had edge in all the technology. Whereas Eastern Europe has acquired the upper middle income economy status but with its limitations of resources (both natural and human), it can only grow by specializing in some distinguishing area. They cannot compete in labor intensive areas.

Africa is yet to become mature enough to takeover other economies. Latin American countries are focussed on extremely leftist policies making them less of contributor to world. Once they were the most capitalistic countries of world but they faced repetitive economic crisis, instability and crashes due to their unsustainable consumption promoting economic policies. Probably, Brazil is the only country in South America which has maintained the right balance between regulation and freedom to support sustained growth with stability. In order to have stability, Brazil even decided to satisfy itself with relatively lower economic growth even at times when it could have easily afforded more. Brazil is likely to be important.

Latin American economies are full of paradoxes. They can always sustain themselves as these countries are the world's bread baskets. Most of them have the potential to be self-reliant in food and oil. And yet, petroleum companies have not been able to take advantage due to the unfavorable policies. All these countries belong to the exclusive club of very few countries in world with upper middle income status. Still, all these are economies with unmatchable income inequality. For example, Mexico being one of the top 10 economies in world is responsible for much immigration in US due to widespread inequality in Mexico. Moreover, in the last 30 years, Latin America's GDP share in world remained at 5.7% whereas for Asia it rose from 18% to 29%.

So, that leaves us with Asia. I like to call them as Asian Elephants rather than Asian tigers due to their huge size and population. These are the economies with huge potential and resources, have uncaptured but still developing markets. These are the countries which can fuel the growth by developing their own markets and decreasing reliance on developed countries for the same. Due to the low income status of many of these, it's not advisable to develop market for fancy items like ipods or other high-end sophisticated consumer items. Such development would lead to income inequality and would be unsustainable. Asia still has to develop market of basic requirements which can help them in long run.

Though Asia is likely to steal the show in this century, it is still a distant dream to remove poverty from this region. Even after the economic growth, it seems unlikely that poverty can be eradicated in next 20 years. Let's hope that India and China work together for the wholesome development. Both of these countries can do so. In India, it's democracy which will make government to do something for income distribution. On the other hand, in China, it's the will power of government which can achieve this. If they can regulate news and information, they can easily achieve equal income distribution if they wanted.

Let's see what are the outcomes of ASEM meet in Beijing. Till then, I can only say-
Come on Asia! Wake up! World needs you!

Ghantadhar

Can there be a heaven?

2008-10-19T12:15:00.000-07:00

This is probably the first serious entry in my blog. It's a result of some random but logical thoughts I had. This is not humorous like other entries.
It was Thursday evening. While I had been busy all day, the nature was playing its own game at that time. It rained that day. Though it reminded me of the monsoon rain after a period of hot weather, it was nothing like monsoon. The weather had been cold for last few days and no body wanted rain at this time. There was no pleasing scent of dry-parched land getting wet for the first time after summers. Yet, it invoked so many feelings inside me. And I decided to visit the small park at very small downtown of my village.

I was just sitting there on a bench alone. Enjoying the blowing warm breeze. While I was sitting there, my mind pondered "What was my idea of heaven few years back?".

Lushed greenery. Green grass everywhere. Beautiful, scenic and natural place. Calm and serene. A place where flowers grow naturally all around during spring. A place which shows thousands of colors during fall. A place where you have rains to clean and revive every lifeform. A place with a beautiful snowfall in winters.

That was my idea of heaven. And here I was living in a village with every attribute of heaven I thought of. It has everything which convinces me that this is the place where everyone would be happy and productive. Which means that I should be really happy all the time. But am I happy really?

And then came the revelation or the real truth. Probably something close to what Gautam Buddha might have learnt while sitting under a tree.

God had given me the opportunity to live in my heaven but I was not always happy. In fact, no body can be happy in their heaven. It's the human nature. If you get what you want and you stay with that for long, you will long for the change. Hence, even if you are in heaven, you will develop some different idea of heaven with time. Which simply means that there can't be a heaven!

This revelation was strong enough to believe that there can't be a heaven. So, does that mean humans are bound to suffer? And that is when the idea of attaining nirvana came into my mind. Heaven is simply state of mind when you are happy with everything around you no matter where you are. On the other hand, hell is another state of mind when you want everything that is not available around you. I was simply amazed with this thought. This non-materialistic idea of heaven had been in sanatan dharma for so long and we ignore it so often.

Next Morning
I can call it a coincidence. But it was strange. I was sitting on stairs to my house while basking sun in the morning, two persons wearing black suits approached me and said to me "Sir, do you want to live forever on this earth?". They were from some church. I said to them, "Only if you can convert earth into heaven".

And then I gave them my idea of heaven as a state of mind and also about nirvana. They listened carefully and said, "It's sad that lot of christians dream of going to heaven and this idea became more popular after Jesus. The god never intended to have different heaven. That's why he made Adam and Eve immortal to live on earth forever but they committed the sin. That's what I wanted to tell you heaven is everywhere."

It was interesting to talk about it. So, there is one more religion which has somewhat non-materialistic vision of heaven. I wonder if Islam has any such idea of heaven.

Ghantadhar

Parate ji at IBM IRL and the social man

2008-02-29T22:48:00.001-08:00

Some funny anecdotes from my life at IBM Research Lab.

As the legendary story goes, Once upon a time at IBM IRL, there arrived a man, who came just out of his reputed college in Bangalore. He came with a small bag hanging on his back. The bag contained all the important things needed for the survival. When he opened it, there it was: the most important thing, the bottle labeled "Old Monk", the most favoured rum in India. No doubt that this guy believes in "Reality is an illusion caused by lack of alcohol"

Well, being few years younger, I missed the opportunity to join the arrival party of this legendary guy. However, I had the opportunity to join his farewell party from IRL. And that's when I met another guy from office, the social man, the man with whom I expanded my social circle or rather "Reality is an illusion" club.

As we all are computer scientists, it is in our habit to measure everything. So, I thought of scaling the sociability. And on this scale, our social man has score "Smoked ciggarettes with atleast 40 IRL members (including Managers) , Got drunk with atleast 40 IRL members (including Managers) and X-Y-Z".

Yes, IRL was such a place where you can measure sociability by counting "with how many IRL members, a person smoked or got drunk". And if you know our social man, he was indeed the most social person by this criteria. He was the person who smoked with persons ranging from a colleague to a senior manager. It just happened that our directors didn't smoke or drink ... otherwise it wouldn't have been possible for them to escape from our friend.

Interestingly, his sociability didn't end with IRL members. At some occassion, he tried to extend it to X-Y-Z by smoking in presence of the kid of some IRL member. And the result, "Mummmmmmyyyy... he is smoking cigarette.....:( :( Ask him to throw his ciggarette". I don't know what social man felt but I was thinking, "Come on, kid. I am not asking you to throw the chocolate you eat. Then why are you disturbing my dear friend?"

But you know that kids are the most illogical creatures on earth. Probably, even girls are comparable but I will rather not say it. So, this kid was adamant on his behavior. And Mr. Social had to put back his cigarette. And before the kid could ask to throw the entire pack of cigarettes, we decided to leave the place. Well, that was the first time when I saw social man to fail in extending his sociability.

But he has many winning stories. And one such story is the farewell party of Mr.Legend. There we were, the social man, the legend and myself. Well, I am not that cool or person with high capacity when it comes to alcohol. But being in front of Mr. Legend, I had to act cool. Though I started as stranger to the social man that day, I was pretty sure in few minutes that he had huge potential for alcohol. Not wanting to behave in awkward manner, I decided to join the flow of glasses of Chivas Regal, Jack Daniels and Smirnoff. Surprisingly, it seemed to me that the fun is not going to end today. And then, I did the mistake. We ordered for three jugs of beer!!

Hmm... So, there were three full jugs in front of us. We kept staring them for a while. The continuously rising bubbles in beer make it a very interesting thing to watch. It feels like it will definitely do something good to the body when taken inside.

We looked at each other and laughed. While the other two laughed for they were so happy and sure of finishing their part, mine was just a choked smile as response to their laugh. It is pretty easy to imagine my situation, I was not even able to wipe out that smile from my face. I kept on smiling and kept on staring at my jug and the rising bubbles. While the other two were drinking merrily, I kept my eyes fixated on the jug.

And that's when Mr.Iqbal, our host at restaurant, came into the scene. He said to me, "Sir, we are about to close. Please, finish your drinks quickly".

"Quickly? What do you think am I? A tanker or something?", I thought. And yet, I was not able to wipe my smile away.

Mr. Iqbal continued to convey the information to my friends. I was getting tensed. But I didn't knew that I have saviour in the social man. Well, the social man did what he is best in. He socialized with Mr.Iqbal and said to him, "Mr. Iqbal. I am so happy with you. From now, we are friends and I want to give company to you. We are not in hurry. You don't worry about anything. Today, we will stay here and go out with you only when you are done with all your work. You won't leave for home alone today." And now, the situation was in full control.

"Wow! That was awesome. I could never have thought of that", I said to myself. The social man just bought me sometime to finish my part. I got excited and started. I couldn't finish by the time we left but it was satisfying that I finished atleast some of it.

Now, it was time to get the auto-rickshaw for home. Unbelievingly, I was able to walk steadily for a while and I went upto auto-rickshaw and negotiated with the driver for ride upto our place. He agreed upon the fare of Rs.40. My friend, the social man, being unaware of the deal, came to auto and said to driver, "Bhaisahab, the fare for our place is Rs.18. If you double it, it becomes Rs.36. But I am going to give you Rs.40. Are you taking us to destination?".

The driver agreed ofcourse with same deal being repeated. The social man was happy with his feat as he made the offer that driver couldn't refuse. But then, I told the social man that the deal was already done for Rs.40. This was something not acceptable to social man and he said to driver ,"Bhaisahab, now you must take us for Rs.36 only. You must listen to me." Somehow, the driver agreed for Rs.36 fare.

We reached the destination but the socialization of our friend was not yet over. He said to driver," Bhaisahab, you have been very kind in agreeing for the fare I demanded. I want to offer you Maggi in the maggi shop." The driver appreciated the gesture but said that he had to go. We bid good bye to the driver and moved on for more adventures that were to come with the social man.

So, this was the story with social man, the best friend I made at IBM IRL at some farewell party. And when I left IRL and it was time for my farewell party, he made sure that I had not just one but multiple parties :)

This article is a tribute to the social man who recently left IRL and whose farewell party, I couldn't attend.

Abhinav Parate "GhAntAdhAR"

Parate ji and his spectacles

2008-01-30T17:06:00.000-08:00

Spectacles: noun. Two pieces of glasses which hang on someone's nose to clear his vision but often make him look miserable and an object of joke for others

I just looked at my spectacles and decided to write my feelings about it. The definition of specs ,which I gave, is clearly not applicable to beauties like Nicole Kidman and Sushmita Sen whose beauty get enhanced may be 1000 times with spectacles on. However, there exist guys whose disarrayed hair always fall in front of their eyes and miraculously, my definition seems to work.

If I go back to the history when I didn't wore specs, the first spectacled person, I encountered more often in my life, turned out to be a very good friend of mine. It was year 1999 when I met him. Interestingly, it is very easy to picture my dear friend even if you haven't met him. Just think of the thinnest guy in the world you have ever seen. But please don't imagine him as a bonny person whose bone structure could be observed through naked eyes. Even if you do, now add a full pant and a loose full shirt so that you cannot see any of his bones. Now, add a smile on his face. His smile was really interesting as it was always present on his face. His smile and his skinny physique will make him look like a magnanimous person who is bearing all the sufferings of human kind happily.

Interestingly, his two-wheeler, the legendary Luna, seemed to add to this effect. I often felt that may be I could walk faster than his Luna's speed at pinnacle. Though Luna is often known for 'Luna mein hai no tension' but his crawling Luna, like himself, seemed to take all the tensions in the world to achieve speed which seemed to be around 10-15 km/h. But as I said, this guy happily carried this Luna as if he didn't want anyone else to bear the pain of riding it. Such a great person he is.

Well, that was not all. The god being sadist and funny in his own way, added to his miseries by making him wear spectacles. Just imagine a person who is trying to alleviate the whole humankind by taking all their pains along with his Luna, has to wear big and thick carbon-frame glasses!! Sometimes, the weight of glasses on his nose seemed so high that it seemed that he could not even maintain his smile for long. To get the picture, imagine as if some weights are attached on two ends of your lips and then try to smile continuously. I know it would be difficult but the effect produced will exactly be the same which was with my friend.

The god being even more sadist and funny in his own way was not happy with only one such guy. So, god decided to create another such guy and as usual, he chose me! And the person who saw all this happening was no other person but my good spectacled friend.

We both happened to be the student of same coaching class. Like most genious guys who don't show their genious, I was a backbencher in coaching class (My action imitating genious guys does not necessarily reflect I am one but it is true that I didn't show my genious .. hehe). And my good friend had to become backbencher forcibly with me. Although god was playing his trick on me by making me blind, I found it interesting to see the board in class which looked almost blank even if something was written on it. It's like there is something which everyone else can see but you can't. It was like a miracle! I had some days of fun with this but I decided to move to a seat little closer to the board. My friend was happy with this movement. But miracle repeated itself. The board was blank again!

So, we decided to move even closer to the board. However, the miracle seemed to occur rapidly now. We kept on moving closer to the board until we reached the front bench and still, I was not able to see anything on board.

And one day, while I was looking at my friend's notebook for what was written on board, the instructor asked me,"Why are you looking into his notebook?".

I said,"I am just looking for what is written on the board".

"Board mein kuchh likha hoga tab to kuchh dikhega, bevkoof. Apni aankhein check kyon nahi karata? (There is nothing written on the board, stupid. Why don't you get your eyes checked?", the instructor said in anger.

His words were like shocking revelation to me. I couldn't believe that there is nothing written on board. Unlike most people who say they didn't believe their eyes, I believed completely in my eyes so I couldn't accept that there is nothing on the board. It had never occurred to me that my eye-sight was getting weak! But my ideas of miracle were gone! I looked at my friend and his thick glasses. "No.... I don't want to wear that!", I told to myself.

But as I said, god is really sadist. So, I didn't pick carbon-frame glasses but I picked up glasses with steel frame which looked even more ugly. The gravity would often pull this frame down on my nose to give me the look of lala ji. Moreover, the glasses would often look obtuse on me with one lens always making some angle with another lens. Finally, I did change my glasses to something better. And I do hope that my friend and myself meet some spectacled girls someday when "humari aankhein chaar(4) aur chaar aath(8) ho jaaye".

GhAntAdhAR

P.S: The events and the looks in this blog are exaggerated. I and my friend are really smarty guys. Ok, even this statement is exaggerated. :)

Parate ji and the man with two birthdays

2007-11-25T11:17:00.000-08:00

The man with two birthdays ?? How come it is possible? That's the most logical question which I guess many of you might have. Well, it may be the most logical question but at the same time, it may be the most illogical question to ask because no man can have two birthdays!

And yet ... there are people in this world with two or more birthdays! Such people often have a biological birthday and one or more non-biological birthdays (Although all birthdays should be biological only). Usually, people have non-biological birthday because they have a different birth date on their driving license so that they can drive motor-bikes before they are actually allowed to. And some have different birth date in academic records so that they can retire much later from job than allowed time.

It was one fine day in my life on October 26,2005 when I received a call from my friend who happened to be my wingmate from hostel. He invited me for some thing next evening. He didn't give any reason and left me perplexed.

I looked at our alumni association website. The website said that my friend is having his birthday next day. So, he was inviting me for his birthday! Well, I was not sure as I remembered celebrating his birthday in April and we always celebrated anyone's biological birthday. So, this was not making sense.

Hence, Mr.Parate thought that instead of wasting my mind solving this puzzle ... let my wingmates think over it. I sent them an email... "Why would our friend call me on his non-biological birthday and what could be the reasons behind having a different birthdate in academic records?"

My wingmates are real wisemen. They can think beyond you may think. One of them is wisest of them all, and being philosophical, he can think in the n-th dimension which is atleast beyond my thinking. So, here was the response by him to my question (it's in hindi)-

ek asli(17th apr) ho sakta hai aur ek jo records mein(27 oct)
ya uski gf ka bday ho sakta hai
ya following koi din ho sakta hai jiss se usse lagta ho ki usse ek naya janam mila hai:

1. uska first propose

2. uska first kiss

3. near to death experience

4. dushman se chutkara

5. kissi icon ka bday

6. proposed engagement ka din

7. proposed shaadi ka din

abhi to dimag mien yahi aa raha hai, agar tumhe koi reason samajh aaye to bata dena
-A friend

All my friend said was "He might be having true birthday (17th April) and another on records(Oct 27th). Or Oct 27th may be some day signifying something that made him feel that is like a new birth. For instance, "first proposal, first kiss, near to death experience, freedom from enemy, birthday of some icon, proposed marriage day, etc..".

He further said that if I can think anything beyond this, please let him know.
Well, do you think it is even possible to think of anything beyond this?

The actual reason was not yet known to all the wisemen from my wing. The actual reason which we came to know was very very different. And it had roots in our hostel life.

It was in hostel that we had this way of celebrating anything. It was known as GPL. Well, to the more sophisticated and urbane type of people, "Bumps" is the name with which they associate this activity. But being from down-to-earth college from Kanpur... we simply called it GPL. Some people called it 'Gliding Pilot's Licence" euphemistically. If you are aware of what bumps is, you can understand about the euphemism. If you know Hindi, you might know what GPL can stand for.

If you are not aware of bumps, let me tell you what it is. In this ceremony, there is a guy who is supposed to receive this grand treatment. Let's call him the pilot. Pilot will be standing. Then, one strong muscular guy will come from back and slid his strong muscular hand below the armpits of the pilot. And then he will cover pilot's chest with his strong muscular arms.

Now, Another strong person will come and get hold of the two legs of pilot so that the pilot is now horizontally above the ground and gliding.

After that, more people will come and will start kicking the pilot so that he glides even further. It may sound so simple but believe me the pain you have to take for this memorable experience is intolerable. So, it looked like that the pain was intolerable for my friend too. And hence, during his first year at college in 2001, when people came running towards him for giving him this experience on his Oct 27th birthday, he decided to postpone it by lying that his biological birthday is 6 months later on April 17th.

And this is how, he became the guy who celebrated his birthday twice every year. He might have forgotten the date himself but my wingmates did remember it. He would often wake up on April 17th each year not even knowing that he is having birthday today. But people will come and remind him of his birthday with GPL every year. This was the first ever such reason I ever found out for having two birthdays. It continued for 4 years and finally, after graduation, he ended this on Oct 27th, 2005 by telling the truth and celebrating his real birthday.

Unfortunately, I forgot his birthday this year. So, I am using this blog to wish him "Belated happy birthday".

Abhinav Parate
alias
GhAntAdhAR

Parate ji meets snake charmer

2007-09-27T13:32:00.000-07:00

Snake Charmer ... I hope most of my friends being from Tier-II or Tier-III cities of India might have seen shows of snake charmer at some point of time in their life. We all might have our own experiences to share. Even I have one. So, here is my story...

I have very distant memories of my childhood when I would run wearing my stupid looking half pant in the streets of Jagdalpur, a town in southern district of Chhattisgarh.

Before moving ahead.. let's analyze this... "..when I would run..." Usually, it happens that people loose their edge in running with time as they happen to grow old. But for me, I can still compete with the fastest of all the kids and still obtain the same position which I would have if I were of that age. Yes, that's the beauty of always being the slowest while running!! You never loose your position as you grow old. I was last when I was kid and I will always be the last no matter how old I get. I am pretty sure the guy who would have been the fastest at that time will not be the fastest now. So, in that way, I have maintained my fitness which I had when I was eight!!

Now, let's look at another thing which I talked about ".. my stupid looking half pant..." Well, this is really something which amuses me ... "the half pant". First of all, kids look dumb and stupid wearing it. Secondly, it has got a really stupid name!!!

It's like as if you forgot to put your other half or someone just came and stole your other half of the pant and you ended up wearing just another half.

If you think of it, it's like some kid went outside wearing a full pant but he meets a guy who is like bully. The bully looks at the small kid wearing full pant. The bully sneers and brings scissors with him and using that he cuts the lower half of the kid's pant and takes it with him.

The first kid had no option but to cry and go back to his mom. And to pacify the crying kid, mom says," Don't cry, son. Look what you have got.. It's a half pant!!! It's the best thing you can get on this planet. That bully guy can never get this one... Moreover, he can't wear the lower half pant but you can still wear yours"

And after that, the half pant might have become a legendary story and icon among the kids for revolting against bullies. Soon, it might have become a fashion among kids to wear the legendary half pant . So, that's the story of the half pant or my explanation for why would I have worn that pant.

Anyways, let's move ahead or rather go back to time when I was running in the street (was I stupid) and I happen to see huge crowd standing in a circle. I run more and reach the point. I peep inside and I see a man holding snake with him. Well, that was the last time when I watched the snake charmer show (Some 15 years ago). After that, I might have seen them once or twice in a train.

Years later, I was sitting in Delhi chatting with some foreigner friend of mine who was planning to visit India. I asked her,"What do you know about India?"

She says,"Oh.. India is a land of Taj Mahal.....", she waits for some time and says,"... and it's a land of snake charmers".

Well, it's not clear how come people outside India have this image that we have snake charmers in every nook and corner. Even though it had been years when I met one. And I could not fulfill my friend's wish to see one as I could not find any snake charmer.

Let's move ahead in time...

.... And one fine day, I was travelling by auto to office of CBSE in New Delhi. I reached there and I paid the auto driver. As I turned to get down out of auto-rickshaw, I saw a muddy colored extremely shining thick disgusting snake with it's tongue moving in and out. Obviously, I was shocked to see a snake at the level of my face and at a distance less than 30 cms.

But then I looked behind the snake, here was the man standing I had been looking for a long time. Here was the snake charmer ... Let's call him 'Charmy'

Charmy looks at me and says, "Son, please give me 50 paise. I want to have some food."

He pushes his begging bowl forward. As I was in hurry and I could only find Rs.2 coin, I hand it over to him in the bowl just below his ugly snake. But he was still standing in front of me and would not let me get down of the auto. He says, "Thank you, son. Now, you can take out the biggest currency note you have and get it blessed by this snake and keep it with you."

Well, I got conscious but still I thought I will take out note. I had Rs.500 as the biggest note but I took out Rs.100 note and tried to touch it to snake.... but man... I was afraid.

Looking at that our mighty snake charmer snatched the note from me, folded it and touched it to the snake. He then asks me, " Bolo achchha ya bura (Say good or bad)". Well, my mind was all occupied with my Rs.100 note. So, I couldn't understand that I have to say one of the options he gave and I ended up saying "achchha ya bura (good or bad)".

He kind of ignored what I said and then did some thing with snake and then, he says snake ate my Rs.100 note. So, the mighty snake charmer was now trying to fool me. And he thought that I will believe this fact that his snake ate my money!!! What he didn't realise was my next course of action... I got hold of his snake's neck and started to pull it... (I can't believe that I did this)

I said, no matter what, I want money. But then, charmy said, "You tell me, what should I do? Should I cut this snake to get your note?". He started to bite the snake with his teeth. Yuck!!!!.. that was really bad to see him pull snake's skin with his teeth.

I don't know if I was being stupid or what.. but I still tried to pull snake .. I had no idea how I was planning to get my money.

But suddenly, charmy smiles and gives me the note which was hidden between his fingers. He says, "Now, please give me Rs.5. I am really hungry."

I was shocked. I gave him the five rupees he demanded. And moved towards CBSE office. The snake charmer vanished.

But now, I knew the reason why I didn't happen to see snake charmers all these years.. why they are vanishing. Because there are no more kids who are stupid enough to wear that stupid half pant and run in the streets to see the snake charmers show and give them a rupee or two for the show. It's possible that the charmy might not have returned the money to all those he fooled but he had no other option with his snake charming skills.

On a serious note,... India is still the country which can feed large percentage of its population for less than a dollar per day and keep them moving!!!
In the last 10 years of IT revolution, we have managed to take out 20% people out of poverty line. And in the days to come, we will only do good. We may not know how to do it, but it's India's time now and no one can stop us from growing. We will definitely make it.

Parateji got his hair-cut

2007-05-10T01:53:00.000-07:00

Long time ago, a family got blessed with a male-child (not implying any preference for male-child or anything against girl-child). The family was very happy. Celebrations began. Celebrations ended. Time moved at its own pace. Kid began to grow. As it was a hindu family, parents had to perform the ceremony of 'mundan'. It is a sadist ceremoney where a child happy with his/her hairs is turned into a bald person. People seem to be happy during such ceremony as they will tell you thousands of advantages of turning a kid into a bald person.

But for this kid, the parents were not very happy during this ceremony. As the kid's head didn't show a trace of even a single hair. He was already bald so there was no point in making a bald child bald again. The ceremony was just a formality. But parents hoped that someday hairs may show up. More than a year passed, the kid was yet bald. It was like a barren land with no traces or hopes that something can grow on it.

Parents seeked advice from so many people. But nothing helped. Parents were loosing hope to see anything grow on their kid's head. They were in the same situation as a farmer worried about how would he cultivate anything in his field during the drought period.

Usually, parents pray for the bright future of their kid but for the first time in human history, parents were praying to god for hairs for their kid. God was not merciless and he listened to their prayer and someday, he sent a person to their help, the person advised the parents to apply 'nariyal paani' or the coconut water to the kid's head every day. The advice was followed. And after a year and a half, the barren head of the kid showed some signs or traces of hair.

Time moved on and many years later, some sunday morning, an angry mother is waking up a grown up kid.. "Wake up, you idiot! Look at yourself, your hairs have grown so long. It's like a 'ghosla'(nest). Why don't you go for a haircut. I am asking you to go for it since last month and you don't even listen."

Well, if you have not got the idea, the kid who was bald for more than two years of his life was me. But now, I really have a dense forest on my head. And I have got scolded often for not trimming the forest or the nest or the mess or whatever you can call it.

It is usually difficult for me to go for a hair-cut. It is not that I don't want to. But it is the barber who is a problem for me. Well, I had the opportunity of visiting barbers across different cities in India and irrespective of the place, the barbers seem to face the same problem.. they all find my hairs too dense to operate on. So, they will often curse my hairs and me even though I am paying them for it.

Now, that I have grown up, barbers don't sound that offensive while cursing. But when I was kid, there have been many occassions when barber would say, "baal hai ya ghosla? (Are these hairs or bird's nest? )". I even remember an occassion when I replied back by saying, "kabhi ghosla kaat ke dekha hai jo bakwaas kar raha hai? (Have you ever operated on a nest or you are just talking crap? )"

As I don't want to pay for getting cursed and I don't like getting cursed often, I usually go to saloon not before two months in the hope that I will be cursed less frequently. But in these two months, my hair really turn messy so the barbers find it even more difficult to operate and I end up getting cursed even more.

Apart from this, I have many problems and phobias attached to the modern day hair saloon or parlours. To understand my phobias, you will have to understand little bit about the society. As the society progressed, the masochist man turned into metrosexuals or 'dudes' which I often call them. Although 'dudes' is the category of guys who work really hard for their looks or rather say their weird looks and even more weird dressing sense. There are also guys in this category who work really hard to build their physique. These 'dudes' often sound stupid but strangely, girls like them.

It is really impossible for me to comprehend, why don't people believe in just natural evolution? Why not dudes let their physique develop on its own? Why do 'dudes' make their looks artifical and weird? What is the problem with naturally occuring hairstyle and naturally developed physique? Why do you have to go for extra work and artificiality?

As the society progressed, more and more naturalists and masochists were getting replaced by the 'dudes'. As a result, the average time spent in a saloon increased from '10 minutes' to almost an hour.

Now, you enter a saloon or a parlour for a simple haircut. You find many guys waiting in a queue. You will find them admiring various hairstyles of guys in the magazines. They not just admire but they also discuss it with others. Imagine a guy saying to another guy, "My favourite is Tom Cruise. What a hairstyle he has got! Oh god, I really like him and his hairstyle." Yuck! I seriously feel sick there at saloon. Usually, a normal guy should make such comments about an actress. And even then, hairstyle would be among the last things to discuss if you are looking at the beautiful pic of a great looking actress.

And if you go to a big parlour, you will find even more weird guys whose faces are covered with some sticky cream applied over and some vegetable covering their eyes. Also, some hairband over their hairs. Worst thing is, you will also find guys getting pedicured. Come on guys, why don't you just take a nice bath at home rather than getting yourself cleaned publically. Fear of seeing such guys keeps me away from saloon. And it has happened many a times that I moved out of saloon without getting hair-cut just because I happened to see some man getting facial or pedicure.

Well, I am naturalist. But being naturalist has a cost. Some of my friends and almost all girls think of me as 'champoo prasad'. But this was just the beginning, I came to know during a chat session that my office colleagues once discussed this thing and came out with this comment, " If Parate, X, Y and Z are presented as brand ambassadors of our office, we all colleagues will end up staying unmarried." X,Y and Z are also my colleagues whose names have been changed to protect their identity and all are naturalists like me.

As things were becoming difficult, I decided to keep aside all my phobias and go for a new hairstyle even if it takes an hour. I kept a lot of money in my pocket and reached a big parlour. As I got inside, I prayed to god that let everything go fine. My fears were making me weak. I was already feeling sick. And as I got inside a room, I saw so many 'dudes'. The scene there made me feel nauseated.

But brave Parate ji moved on, a barber came to me and asked me to take a seat. He asked me, "What can I do for you, Sir?"

I wanted to say,"Just get me a hair-cut in 5 minutes and help me get out of this place". But I came to this place for a new hairstyle. So, I said to him, "I want to change my hairstyle. Do something good. Apply whatever color you want to apply... Red, Violet, Maroon, Green.. any damn color but it should look good. Transform me into a dude"

He said,"Ok, Sir".

After that, he got busy in the hair cut. I was not looking at what is happening to my hair because I couldn't see myself becoming a dude. Finally, after sometime, the barber said," Sir, it is done. Is there anything else I can do? Should I apply color?"

I looked at the mirror. My hairs were really short and the hairstyle was exactly like what I usually had. Their was no change in the style. And moreover, now the hairs were so short that nothing could be done on it. I got annoyed and said to him, " I don't think you left me in a position where I can ask you to do anything on this champoo prasad look. "

I was really annoyed. I paid him immediately and left. I thought that may be god wants me to be a champoo prasad. Well, to be honest, I am happy with the champoo prasad look. Still, I purchased hair-styling cream. Modified my hairstyle a bit. And that is the best I can have. So, please don't make fun of my hairstyle or my looks anymore. Please, let me live!!

GhAntAdhAR

Parateji's Encounter with Fairer Sex - II

2007-04-04T23:26:00.000-07:00

This story is independent of previous ones.

I am back with new story about me. But this time it is somewhat different. Like always, there is a girl in this story and there is usual end result "Screwed Up".

I don't remember exactly when it happened but I am sure that it happened in the first half of 2006. It had been a long time now for which I have been applying efforts to get a girl. Or to be more honest, it had been a long time for which I had been "thinking" of applying efforts to get a girl in my life. But I never knew I will meet her this way. Aise... is tarah anjaane mein usse miloonga.. aisa kabhi socha na tha.

It was my usual routine to come out of office and go to the bus stop infront of IIT Delhi main gate. If you don't know, this place is kind of happening place in evening time during weekdays. You will find this place full of beautiful damsels... you will find lots of beautiful girls with whom you would like to die in a car accident. Come on... don't get me wrong.. I have no intention of dying. It is just that in case I were to die in car accident, I just wish that these girls are with me when I die. I know.. it is little weird but this was one of the ideas that came into my mind when I thought of what could be a beautiful death.

People may have their own crappy ideas like .. dying in arms of their love. But I have no intention of sticking to one love, then selecting one love to die would be difficult...

I know my critics would say," You are not sure of getting a single love and hence, you have such ideas". So, my dear critics, you are happy to think in manner which makes you happy.
As Mr.Ghalib said," Dil ko khush rakhne ko Ghalib yeh khayal achchha hai"

Now back to the story-
I am at the bus stop and I am waiting for my bus to come. A bus comes.. I look at each and every window seat.. As it happens in movies, hero is able to find his love sitting on a window seat. Unfortunately, I didn't find my love.. instead there was horrible looking bus conductor shouting "Nehru Place .. Nehru Place... (to some person) Oye to andar nikal le...poori bas khaalli padi hai.. sawari aa rahi hai..(to some other person)aao ji aao bahut jagah hai bus mein"

He was asking people to get inside in a bus which he said is empty. I think Delhi is the only city where you will find an empty bus which is filled with atleast 60 passengers. So, to distinguish it from the normal empty bus.. I call it 'Delhi-empty'. In Delhi, no city bus is ever filled... it is either empty or delhi-empty but never fully-occupied.

I decided to wait for the next bus. Another bus arrived and I didn't look at windows this time. I just boarded the bus which was really empty and not 'delhi-empty'. I got the seat. My seat was adjacent to the passage in middle. And then happened the unexpected. There was a girl seating on the seat on the other side of passage in middle. Well, that was not very unexpected as the seats on the left are reserved for women. Unexpected thing was what she said to me few minutes later.

Usually, I don't look at girls so near to me. So, I looked outside and then looked downwards. And that's when I saw her feet. She was wearing sandals and I noticed something which somehow made me uneasy. I will let you know shortly why so.

But suddenly, she said to me,"excuse me.. what is the time now?". Thanks to my habit of wearing watch all the time, I was the only one there with wrist watch. I looked at her and told her the time. She smiled and said,"Thanks".

That's how the conversation started and I hoped that this conversation will move ahead and finally I will find my girl.

But there is a huge problem with me that I am not able to think of what to say to a girl. As it looked to me that it is now my turn to say something . I had to think of something and I thought for sometime and said something. Well, I really said something. I said,"Your nails are really big. You should get it cut" and I pointed towards her feet with very long nails. Now, there was no more smile on her face. Instead the expressions on her face were something I cannot describe. Then, she turned her face away to not to talk to me anymore.

I can't understand what was wrong with what I said. I was really disturbed when I saw her nails the very first time. I was just trying to help her realising that some sort of personal hygiene is needed. I was suggesting her something which will make her look little more human.

When I told this incident to my friends, they laughed. Well, I am still not clear what is it that makes someone laugh at this incident. May be you can tell me...

Comments invited...

GhAntAdhAR

Parateji's Encounter with Fairer Sex

2007-02-27T01:26:00.000-08:00

Mr.Ghantadhar is back with a new story. The story is not yet different but there are new characters and little new situation and a girl involved somewhere and an obvious end result "Screwed up".

Though the story is all about a girl and yet the interesting thing is that the girl involved here might not even be aware that she is part of some story.

When I was at school, I believed that 'Dinosaurs, Aliens and Robots exist only in stories'. It seems Mr. Steven Speilberg believed the same. So, he made three movies 'Jurassic Park (Dinosaurs)', 'AI (Robots)' and 'Close Encounter of a third kind (Aliens)'. Thankfully, now you can say that 'Dinosaurs, Aliens and Robots exist only in stories and movies'.

As I graduated from a college which was like "No woman's land", during my college days I added one more creature/object to the above list "Girls". Yes, I could watch them only in movies.
May be it was not true for Mr. Speilberg but it was true for me.

When I came to Delhi, it was like heaven with fairies all around. Everywhere I could see the fairies. They were so close and yet so far. I hoped that finally my days of loneliness were going to end. It was just the matter of time I felt.

And one fine day, I got the opportunity to talk to a girl. And believe it or not, it was me who initiated the talk.

I was little nervous, little hesitant. But somehow I approached and said,"Hello".

In response, she said,"Hi, My name is Nidhi".

I don't know what she was thinking but point to note is that a totally unknown girl told me her name in her first few words to me. I was really feeling good. Her voice was really sweet.I don't have words to describe my feeling.I got lost in my thoughts when she interrupted again by saying,"Hello".

I came back to senses and I said,"OK". It may sound strange that I responded with word 'OK' but that is true. Actually, when I can't think of anything to say, I just say 'OK'. And this happens a lot with me whenever I am talking on phone.

Hey, wait a minute, it seems I forgot to tell you earlier that I was talking on phone. I hope you people were not thinking that I was talking with a girl face to face. Oh god! How can you even think of it? Mr. Parate initiating conversation with a girl!!!... it does not seem possible atleast in this life.

Anyways, the conversation went on and she said it in my ear... OK OK.. I got your point...she said on her phone but I like this idea that she said it in my ears...

So what is that she said? "Sir, I am calling from HDFC Bank. Can I take few minutes of yours for a small talk?"

"Ofcourse! Why not? Why few minutes, we can talk lot more", that's what I wished to say... But I got little sensible and just said,"Yes". Anyways, it was not possible for me to say anymore than that as I get nervous when I talk to girls.

"Thank you very much, Sir. I wanted to inform you that we have approved your loan", she said.

Loan??? Who the hell was interested in loan? I didn't want to talk about loans anyways. I said to her," First of all, I never asked for loan. Second of all, how can you approve that when no one asked for it? And that is all of all."

That was too much for me to say to a girl. But I managed.

"Sir, please le lijiye na loan. The amount is very big. It won't be easily available in future", she said.

Well, I was little annoyed but anyways I said, "Give me one good reason why should I take a loan when I don't have any needs for now".

"Sir, you can invest money in HDFC Bank mutual funds. You can multiply your money", she said confidently.

Wow, here was a girl who was really trying to fool me. She wanted me to take a loan from her bank to invest it in her bank only. Moreover, I would be paying the interest on loan. And she wanted me to believe that I would be multiplying my money. "Great", that's what I said to her. And disconnected the phone.

Well that's was my first encounter during my job life. I just wish that god be somewhat fair to me when it comes to 'fairer sex'.

GhAntAdhAR

Exams at my Institute

2005-02-04T03:48:00.000-08:00

Hi all,
Today I had my last paper of my mid semester exams. And I realised that my blog would be incomplete if I don't write anything about exams which are compulsory part of my life here at my institute - IIT Kanpur. It is better to write down the incidents before I forget them.

People may ask me : What is so great about exams? Is there anything special at IIT-K?

My answer: No, nothing great or special yet something interesting.

Exams are something which I started liking from my second semester. Exams have always been festive season for me and my wingmates. Hey... it seems you don't believe me. Yes, exams can be enjoyable and festive too. It is because during exams, me and my wingmates started playing Age of Empires (AOE) in our Computer Centre. Although it was not allowed yet we did and who was there to check us during exams. It was a cool period.

Let's start with my wingmates' exam experiences:
First person I will talk about is Ashish Lohiya..more popularly known as fandoo or Demon Hunter. Very few people realise that he has got name 'Ashish' as he is 'fandoo' or 'Lohiya' for us. He has got the same problem like me. Now, I am not Abhinav but Parate or simply Parathe.

It is during the 3rd year just after our midsems. As exams were just over, it was time to celebrate and we people usuually celebrate it by sleeping long hours till afternoon (or may be evening). And on such auspicious occassion, we bunk classes.
And that is what Mr. Lohiya and Mr. Rahul Mundra (my another wingmate) did. But they didn't realise that bunking class can be dangerous if course instructor distributes the checked answer scripts in that class.

It is so because instructor does not get sufficient time to humiliate you in class but when you go to take scripts personally, he gets sufficient time to make your situation like hell.

So, Lohiya and Mundra along with one more bunker went to meet instructor personally. And here is what happens...

Lohiya: (Knock Knock)
Instructor: Yes...
(All three move ahead towards instructor)

Instructor: What can I do for you?
Mundra: Sir, we want answer copies.

Instructor: Answer copies? Are you people doing any course under me? I don't seem to recognize your faces.
Lohiya (thinking on his own mind): Even I don't remember your face, Sir. Afterall, I attended just one class. What's my fault then?

Mundra: Yes sir, we are your students.
Instructor: Very well then. Tell me the course name so that I can get your copies.

"Oh my God!! Instructor asked course name. I didn't attend class and he is asking course name. I just knew the course number and that too I forgot", all the three had the same thought.

And instructor was waiting for them to answer. Time was passing very slowly and yet no one said a word.
It was a difficult situation so Lohiya gave a shot, "Sir, course on communication."

Instructor: Sorry, gentleman. I don't take course on communication. I knew you are not doing course under me. You have come to wrong person.

Mundra started thinking, "Yeah.. we may have come to wrong person. No it can't be. Just 2 weeks back I attended his class. I remember his face."

Mundra: Sorry sir. Course number is EE3**.

I hope you can understand what would have happened to them. Luckily the number Mundra said was correct. But that's how the life is in my wing. We pass the course without even knowing the course name.

Let's look at another wingmate of mine. I will not name him. Lets call him Mr.X. He was also celebrating the end of midsem. And like Lohiya, he also bunked class. Now, some reliable sources told him that answer copies were distributed in class today. So Mr. X goes to meet instructor. He knocks and asks, "May I come in?" Professors at IIT-K are very polite and says," Yes, Come In".

X: Sir, I want the answer copy of compilers course.
Inst:(Politely) What's your name?
X: sir, I am X.
Inst: Look Mr. X . I understand that you have given exam and it may have gone well. And people sometimes get anxious to know how much marks they scored. But you should understand my problem too.

X: I didn't get you,Sir.
Inst: The problem is that I haven't checked the copies yet and I will distribute them in class when I check them. You are not required to take pains of coming here to collect it.

Moral of the story: Make your reliable sources really reliable. Incidentally, I was one of the reliable sources of information to Mr.X.:)

The above two were after exam experiences. Duirng exams, we just play and play. Exams really become enjoyable during winters when we all come out of our room to sit outside to have some vitamin D from sun. Although, we sit there for studying but it is more of a chit-chat session and when we realise that we need to study a lot, we come to realise that it is too late and it would be useless to study anymore.

I remember my first Departmental course- Data Structures(DS). It is during this time, I formed a trio with my room partner Bhuppi and my wingmate Peeyush Jain(PJ). We three are from Computer Science and we thought we could help each other during exams.

With that intention, we went to give our second mid sem exam of DS. Question Paper was very short- just 2 question. And one hour time. This is the thing which I like most about my departmental exams. They will give very few questions and sufficient time. And you can decide within 5 minutes, whether you are going to sit for 15 minutes or complete 1 hour. Because if something does not strike you, the you cannot sit there for more than 15 minutes. It is of no use. If you know something, then you can spend time but still not 1 hour.

So we three sat next to each other. Within 5 minutes we knew what type of paper it was -15 minutes or 1 hour? I realised it of 15 minutes. I looked helplessly towards bhuppi and PJ. Unfortunately, they also realised their paper to be of 15 minutes. That was 3rd Semester and now, 7 semesters have gone. We still have trio and we have never been able to utilize it. Even today in 8th semester, we look towards each other after few minutes and with same helplessness state. I wish god could provide us with just one opportunity to make our trio successful.

Anyways, we came happily after giving exams. No no.. exam didn't go well... we were happy bacuse exams finished.
Then, we three came to our room to discuss how much we are going to get. I said," I bet that I am going to get minimum marks among us and will give you Pepsi if I don't get min."

Bhuppi said," Think again before betting...I am betting the same... I will get the minimum"

PJ: " Are you people mad? It is me who will get the minimum. And I bet."

So, that was the deal. Few days later, answer scripts were shown. And the result, no body gained or lost anything out of bet.
We all got the minimum: 5 out of 60. It was minimum in the class.:))

Things like this happen and that's what makes the exam entertaining.
The paper I gave today reminded me of the same situation. As i had 4 questions to do. Of which I could attempt: only 1.
And I am going to bet again. Let's see what happens.

GhanTadHaR

Parateji at IBM IRL -II (MS and CMU)

2004-11-06T04:16:00.000-08:00

Hi friends,
My last post on this topic was to describe about the great journey I had ... with beautiful girls. But this time I am here to tell you about the friends I had and made during my internship at IBM India Research Labs. So, should we start with the introduction of them one by one? But before you read, please note that the persons described here are very good natured and things writen here may be little exaggerated.

Let's start with Mr.AVS or Anand Vivek Shrivastava or more popularly known as Anand Fighter Shrivastava. While people know him more because of his fighting skills (arguing with others) but I will remember him more because of his hairs. I can't understand why a man with very short hairs (may be less than an inch) will go to hair cutting saloon and get it shorter to 1cm. And after this, he would come in front of you to tell that he is looking sexy in almost negligible hairs on his head. It seems the sexiest person according to him may be some bald guy like 'Shetty' (villain in old hindi movies) or our own Mr.Gandhi. But onething about him is very good, you can say whatever good or bad you want to say him. You can give 'gaalis' to him , he won't mind as long as you don't say anything wrong about Linux or anything good about Microsoft.

AVS is student of IITK and you can contact me to get email id of this sexy person.I think I should move forward with next person.

Next person I would like to introduce is Mr. A Ramanathan alias Ramu. If AVS is half the weight and volume of any normal person ,Ramu is 2.5 times the weight and volume of normal person. Afterall, he is from big brother IIT Kharagpur. Ramu is the man whose smile is very difficult to be stolen from his face. A stud of his own kind!! Yeah.. it is true that his heart was broken once by some girl in Kolkata (if I remember correctly) and it was this incident which made him Devdas. No..devdas can't be a correct word as his was a different case.Let's forget it. But hopefully he loved girls although his affection for AVS told a completely different story. However, if you are interested in some new theories of reproduction, may be you should talk to him directly about his "Pyramidal theory of reproduction"

Our Next Hero is Mr.MS or Mayank Sachan. He represents himself as a very cool guy who can impress any girl. Is this a misconception of his about himself? Neah... He is really cool man.... afterall you need to be really cool to impress a girl whose name is something which reminds you of horror film. I don't know her name but remember the horror movie 'Gothica'.

There is a very good story about MS and I think MS is the character of this article and not Ghantadhar this time.
The incident is when a girl from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) came for internship at IRL. She joined late as compared to us and we were really sort of settled at IBM by that time. As the girl was from CMU, we nicknamed her Miss CMU. She was really a tiny girl... just like you can scale your image by some factor, it looked as if god had scaled her by the factor of 0.6. As our group of interns had 'Paarkhi Nazar' (We all used to wear specs ie. we were 4 eyes men)...., SO how could she remain hidden from us. As we were fully faaltoo guys, we had enough time to think of stupid ideas and here came one such stupid idea. MS said," I am going to take this girl out for a coffee ".

"Oh that's a brilliant idea but I bet you can't take her out", AVS said. I don't know what is that in AVS which makes him so confident. But there must be something stronger in MS which made him to say "And I bet too that I am going to take this girl out for a coffee at Barista within next 3 days". That was secondmost dumb thing to do to bet on something like this which was going to cost him anyway. Either he had to pay for Barista or he had to pay to AVS. Hey.. what you are saying?? Secondmost dumb thing.... then what is the first? Ofcourse, first was to tell this idea of taking girl out to AVS and me.. otherwise how could have I written this article?

Soon.. Ramu also got interested in the deal and said," Me and AVS will pay the bill if MS goes out with this girl". Oh God!!!.... Ramu is also a fool.If I were present at that time, I would never have got involved in such bet.. It will be MS who will go out with girl, it will be MS who will enjoy... Am I mad to pay for him then? IS ghantadhar made only for ghanta and nothing else?

DAY 1
Let's continue with the story.... both the parties were very confident but MS was really looking forward for the thing. And it is during lunch, Miss CMU (who is of Indian origin) sits in front of me for the lunch. And I talked to her... I came to know that she belongs to Delhi and she can speak Hindi. But wait a second... what is she doing? She is eating rice with something which I call 'Kaanta chammach' or 'fork'. Uffff!!!!... I have never been able to eat Pizza or Roti with that and she was eating rice!!! I felt so dumb and all my conservation stopped.

Here Comes Mayank Sachan
MS came for the lunch and sat beside me. Ofcourse our hero came to talk to Miss CMU. And soon,there conversation began. MS started speaking in his usual style which resembles someone trying to act as foreigner in Indian movies. God knows what accent he was using.... I never felt his way of talking that irritating... I said to him," Yaar.. you can speak to her in Hindi..she understands Hindi".

Why did I say that?? To tease MS?... No.. Actually I am ground to earth person and I feel when Hindi can work, one should speak in Hindi only.We should respect our National language.

But Before MS could speak more, Miss CMU managed to finish the rice she took, with her 'Kaanta chammach'. I wished I could ask her to teach me this skill of using fork which I could not learn. MS must have been angry with me at that time when I interrupted him.

Anyways, MS got his chance to have his first interaction with her and started thinking of his further line of action.

Evening
It was evening time the very same day. MS was thinking of something and decided to meet her again. He went to her lab where another intern named Nirmesh Mehta was also present. Labs at IBM requires access permission which MS didn't had. So he had to ask to Nirmesh for this.

Nirmesh opened the gate for MS.
"Hi Nirmesh" said Mayank.
"Hi...How come you are here?" asked Nirmesh.
"Just to meet you...Can't..."
" To meet me... Strange!!... you never came to meet me before", said the perplexed Nirmesh.
"OK yaar... tell me what you are doing..." MS tried to pacify him and turned towards Miss CMU," Hey... you are in this lab.. I didn't know. You are working with Nirmesh....On what project are you working?"
However, the reality was MS knew this lab because of her and not because of Nirmesh.
She said," I don't have any project now. I haev not been assigned one yet".
"Oh.. That means you are free.... why not have a coffee outside?", said our cool dude.
" Hmmm.. but what's the occassion?"
"It's my birthday.."
"birthday??? When ?? today??" asked CMU.
" Oh no.. it's very late but you will not be with me by then..."
What ?? Are you worried about MS who gave such a stupid statement. I am more worried about Nirmesh, what his heart would have felt on knowing that MS is giving treat to Miss CMU when he came to meet Nirmesh and not her.Unfortunate Nirmesh!!!

What happened next is secret which I share with all other intern friends. But isn't it obvious when I say that the statement was so stupid?
But something happened that lead to no one winning the bet.
I think I should stop now as I have to go out for dinner now and prepare for my Btech Project later at night.
But you should keep watching for this space as there are lot more characters to come who have their own story..like Rajan-the king of Sonipat,
Rajpal, Ravi, Pranav and the mysterious labmate of Pranav.
So keep watching...
GhAnTadhAR

Parate ji At IBM IRL - The journey (Part 1)

2004-09-18T03:36:00.000-07:00

Hello friends,
I am back again.. although after a long time.This time this article is dedicated to all those who did Internship with me at IBM India Research Labs, New Delhi. However, if you want to know about me, this article is meant for you too. But please don't laugh too much on me as all these actually happened in my life.

It was 14th of May, 2004. I am waiting for my train to New Delhi at Nagpur Railway station with my parents and sister. My parents were supposed to leave by another train(which was supposed to come after mine) for Durg where we live. I had barely a week to spend time with my parents after the semester at IIT and now, I was about to leave for internship at place supposed to be capital of India. So, I was spending whatever time I could spend with my parents. Now there was announcement on speaker," Train No.8xxx Kurla-Howrah express goinf from Kurla to Howrah is arriving shortly at Platform No.4"

"Oh! that train name sounds familiar. Yeah! It was in one of our tickets. Is it my train? Oh no! this train is not mine . It's of my parents. How can this train arrive before mine?", that's what I was thinking. For the first time in my life, I really felt like crying while getting away from my parents and sister. Am I lying? OK Ok, for the second time. First time, it was when I left for IIT for first time. But this time, I was more nervous as I was about to travel alone and that too upto Delhi!Anyways, I said Bye to my parents with an artificial smile on my face with crying heart. However, my smile always looks artificial so there would have been no doubt.

As they left for another platform, there was announcement for my train. I looked at my ticket and found that it's upper berth for me. I thought It will be easy to cry out there and nobody will see me.

Train Arrives
I enter a coach called AS-3 and look for my seat No.3. Hey but what did I see there? One...Two...Three...Four...Five... Six... Yes 6 beautiful gals sitting there at seats adjacent to mine. OK Now Parateji forgets all about crying. How can he with such gals around? But before I started looking dumb, I thought I should speak something. Speak?? What to speak?? Speak You fool? I was just looking into eyes of one gal who was also looking towards me. The words which came out of my mouth were.." Is this As-3?" Afterall my seat was occupied and I could not believe god could favour me with this.

"yes it is", one of them says." We have been waiting for you only", another says. Oh I felt flattered but here comes voice of another girl," You are the person with seat No.3, right?"
"Yes, I am", I answered politely. " Actually, we have this friend who has seat no. 3x.If you could please exchange seat for us.....", said the prettiest of them. Oh No! Before allowing me to talk and dream about them they have shattered my dreams of a nice journey. And that's why they were waiting for me. OH I was missing my parents too much but what if the seat exchanged is not upper berth..where will I cry out? "OK, I am ready to exchange but with a condition that the seat is reserved upto Delhi", I said. Hey hey, there faces started frowning and one of them told me that seat is reserved upto Bhopal only. "Yeeee.. I will be at this seat only", I thought. Happy once again. And no more crying!!

The journey
And the journey began happily. One of those gals went to her seat No.3_ and I was with 5 of them.All were coming from Bangalore and were going to Delhi. They were also 3rd year passed students. One of them took out playing cards and started playing Bluff. I watched them playing for around 20 minutes and then they offered me to join them. One said, " Do you play Bluff?".
"Yes, I do. But I last played 2 years back. I play other games now", I said.
" You can play but we are very strong players of bluff.. so be careful", another said. "Hmm.. OK .. I am weak player though", I replied.

And game began and ended and I won. It was a surprise for me. But it was because of that strong player adjacent to me who showed what she was putting down with her fixed strategy that allowed me to win. ' By the way what other games do you play, Abhinav?', one asked.
" I play Bridge", that was answer to impress and my friends know how strong I am at it. All of them were impressed.

I was thinking if this is the start then god knows how many girls I will be meeting in New Delhi!!
But all these were extra modern gals. I pitied one of the who was about to get married with a boy she loves. While involved with them in their shitty girlish talks (which I was enjoying), she started telling, " You know..what my bua saas (Husband's aunt) will do? she will churn out makhkhan and make ghee out of it". Oh ! That was a big torture to listen about soon to be her family. I thought How will she adjust there.

Anyways, it was nice to have someone to chat while long journey. And the next day..my destination ..NEW DELHI arrived.
Hope to meet you soon.
Bye
Ghantadhar

Parathe ji in Senior Secondary School-II

2004-07-06T06:01:00.000-07:00

Hi friends,
So, I guess you enjoyed my previous work and you must have found it humourous but please note that these all are real life incidents, may be happy or may be tragic.

After the success of previous articles, I have become now responsible to write good articles. I want to continue this but I need support for advertising this site to more unknown persons.

So here goes the article---
____________________________
Respected Sir,
I am a bonafide student of Sri Sankara Vidyalaya,Bhilai. I have passed Class-X Board Exam conducted by CBSE with an aggregate of nearly 85%.I have also got distinction in 4 subjects with 99 and 97 % marks in Science and Maths respectively.I have also cleared National Talent Search Examination.......................
Yours Sincerely,
Abhinav Parate
Attached photostats of:
class X marksheet
letter of passing in NTSE

An application similar to this was submitted by me to Principal of BSP Senior Secondary School for admission in Class-XI.Yeah..it was similar not necessarily the same as above. Hmmm...or I can say atleast the line with 'nearly 85%' was for sure present. How can I be so sure? If you would have been there in place of me, even you would have been sure.You will know it soon.

So here I am in Principal's office.Principal is reading the application.
He says,"Hmmmmm... Mr. Parathe, answer one question of mine"

"Yes, Sir",I said while getting ready for the technical question to be asked to me but there was something which disturbed my mind. Here is what I was thinking at that time, "Parathe??? No!!! How can he call me PARATHE!! He is Principal of such a big school and can't read that it's ParaTe and not ParaTHe!!"

But who was there to listen my pain..So,Principal targetted his technical question:"Mr.Parathe, How do you call it? Is it 'ParaTTHE' or 'ParaTTE'?"
I was totally surprised by such a technical question.I said politely," Sir, it's Parate".It's really difficult to be polite if your mind is in the mood of revolting.

"OK, now tell me how near to 85 is your nearly 85%?", he asked. (Now you must have got why I remembered the line nearly 85%.)"Because I have so many students with nearly 85% waiting for admission",he said smiling.

Ok OK,it was just 84.2% but I was school topper yaar.But principal said,"No, I can't give admission when you can't calculate your percentage."
Door closed for me!!!

But I wanted to get admission here at any cost.Even if I have to pay a huge price for that.So, what could be huge price?? Hmmm... call me Parathe!!!

I looked at the mighty walls of this school.I looked at the students there."How to breach these walls? How can I get inside this school?", I thought. I was unaware of the future when I was to make a crack in the same mighty walls which look too difficult to me to get inside.

Any how I managed to get admission after many more applications and meetings with Principal but I checked that there is no 'nearly' type of things.

Day 1 in school
The day 1 as I recall, I was not given a seat to sit. Wherever I tried to sit, some boy would come and say,"Hey buddy, this is my seat". The boys there finally showed me the place where I can sit. I don't know what was in their mind but they must have thought that I will be embarrassed to sit at that place. That place was in the row of desks where girls used to sit. The boys might not have realised how glad I felt with such a great offer!!! I was to interact with the girls of that school the very first day!!!

And there was another person, who became my good friend later. His name - M.Linuraj. Another new student in school to sit with me in the girls' row.

So I am sitting right behind the girls on last bench. Class began. Our class teacher arrived. So, as expected attendance began. So, everybody's name was to be called. It's a good idea to know name of others when he or she answers the call. But who was there to know about 'He'. I was waiting for names of 'she'. Am I not smart?? I looked at the girl in front of me..looked good but she looked smaller in height. But I didn't care of Oonch-Nich... afterall I am liberal person.
Teacher said,"****". She said,"yes". (After much thought,I have deleted the name and replaced it with *s to protect her identity.Let's call her Srishti from now.If you would have been lucky to read this article few days back, u wud have got the name ).OK! her name is Srishti,I was happy with the success of my mission of finding her name. And then teacher called my name and asked me to introduce myself. He asked my percentage in class-10 exams. I told proudly as I knew this section had 79% as highest percentage.

So what happened next?? You must be eager to know..But dear you will have to wait till my next posting in series - 'Paratheji in Senior Secondary School'. So till then Bye!!

Parathe ji ke crushes or crashes...!!!!

2004-07-04T04:36:00.000-07:00

So my dear friends,
I am back with my new post about me.I guess you have some idea about me by now.Today I got compliment from one of my friend, Mr. Mayank Sachan.He says that I can write a better book than 'five point someone'. And as he has requested to tell me about my past crushes or crashes,I thought that I should tell.

Honestly speaking, I had told about all these to only one person named Neha Agarwal and that too, only two months back.So, all these were with me for 20 long years.

So, let's go back in time when I was known not as 'Parathe' or 'Ghantadhar' but my own sweet name 'Abhinav'.
It's time when I was in KG-1. I don't remember but I have been told that I had a girl friend named Harpreet who used to sit with me!! A girl sitting with me..sounds great yaar. Last time when I sat with a girl was in DTC bus in Delhi and it was most embarrasing moment for me as I was new to Delhi and I was sitting on seat reserved for ladies. Anyways getting back to Harpreet, she would never allow me to be with another person. Oh my god!!! Is that true? That's what I feel. A girl dying for me.. sounds really great.

Initial Days In Bastar
But that cannot last long.Our family got transferred to Forest land of Bastar, the best place for eco-tourism in Central India. Here I was student of national English School, Jagdalpur Class-2.
So, as i remember my crush was Niloffer. It was a crush which proved out to be a major crash and clash. She was beautiful at that time but she bacame my competitor for First Rank in Class. No,it was not an ego problem but don't know why, before I could be her good friend, I became her enemy number one. Our class got divided in two parts...Supporters of Abhinav and Supporters of Niloffer. Yes ,I was that powerful to divide the class. Hence, we used to have regular fights.

Here comes Pallavi Datar...
So, Nillofer was the girl I hated most. It happens yaar, your best friend or love can become your best enemy too what u require is just a small 'chingaari'.Although it never happened again and I will never allow this to happen.

And now in Class-3, a girl arrived named Pallavi Datar. She was a newly admitted and a fresh breeze in my life. She is the one whom I would definitely like to meet someday. If I can say it correctly, Abhinav thought beyond friendship only once and was for her. She became my good friend. But what is this?? She too became my competitor for First Rank in class. But she was the one who made me First Rank. How??
She allowed me to cheat during exams from her copy. She would tell me the answers which I didn't know. But i don't remember any instance when I helped her. May be I am big-hearted gentleman who forgets everything after helping anyone. Or there may be a case as pointed out by MS (Mayank Sachan) that I was smart enough to exploit her and never allow her to exploit me.

First day she arrived in my life...or my class, I was very much impressed by her. And the very first day, I came to know that she was a Maharashtrian girl. 'Main bhi marathi, woh bhi marathi, sahi jamegi',I thought. That very evening I told to my Mom about her. As far as i remember, I was studying (actually thinking about her) and was continuously telling to my mom how beautiful she is.'You know Mom, she is maharashtrian too..', I told to my mom.My mom said,' So what is so great about that? I understood that when you told me for the first time and there is no need to tell 5 times'.

"5 times? I told this to you 5 times?? How come I don't recall", I thought in my mind. Anyways, I spent great days with her. And great nights went dreaming about her. I thought,' my life is settled now'. Please note that I thought of settled life in Class-3.

But no... there occured turbulence in my life.She got transferred after studying 1 year. Now, what would happen to me,I was left alone. When I reached class-4, the two sections of class-4 got combined. I got new competitor.Not Pallavi as she was gone. Not Nilofer as she lost all her confidence(I am not sure about it) after success of Abhinav-Pallavi collaboration. A new competitor!!! a girl again luckily. A girl competitor and my last crush. Her name- Ankita Pandey. Even though I missed Pallavi a lot, I really liked this girl.

Ankita Pandey, the girl I liked in Class-4 and Class-5. She was the one who finally made me second rank in school. Don't know how she made it but that would always come as shock for me . I would be the first rank for most part of the year but in the end, she will always be the one. I don't know if I am being egoistic. No, I am not. Still, Ankita was really a sweet girl but she talked really really little. While my earlier crush Pallavi's voice was sweet, I don't seem to remember Ankita's voice at all. But Ankita was most beautiful in that school at that time. Like all my crushes, I cannot forget her.

Finally, these were my crushes and crashes at past. Our family got transferred after class-5 to Durg and I started studying in Sri Sankara Vidyalaya Bhilai. Although I got girl competitor here too. But There were two and were twins and much larger than me in height. And then, a year later, another girl competitor, was real genious but she left the school soon. I met more gals here in school and interacted well with them but never thought the other way.

When people asked me if I have girl friend. I would get sad. So I started to look around. Found someone but not for long.. and before anything could happen, I stopped thinking about all these stuff.

And days went by, Passed class 12. I looked nearby but now in Nagpur. There is nothing like crush or something nor that I meet her regularly. But still .... hope something may happen. May be she starts liking me or I start liking her and do the most unexpected thing.. ie. say to her that I like her. But please note that I am not commited or I have anybody in my life. So my options are still open.

SO ANY GIRL FRIEND FOR ME....GHANTADHAR

Parate ji in Senior Secondary School

2004-07-03T02:30:00.000-07:00

Hi friends,
I am back this time with second posting about me. As you all are
aware that I wanted to change my popular name 'Parathe' and I managed to change it when I started writing some funny articles by name of Ghantadhar.

But soon I changed my school to one of the best school in Bhilai.
This school BSP Senior Secondary School, sector-10 is run by Bhilai Steel PLant and is known for its good results in both Board exams as well as in IIT-JEE.

So, here I was with the best students of Bhilai who seemed more to be like terrorists. Why?? I told you that in my previous post yaar. We students used to bomb our school. We used to breach the mighty walls of this school. May be a movie can be made with title- 'Deewar-Let's bring our heroes back from School'. Afterall, it was heroic act to escape right under the nose of so many teachers, principal and security guards.

I remember it was very difficult to get admission in this school and I got admitted after many trips to Principal's office. Principal thought I am not a bright student but anyways I got admission in all notorious section-D of school. Here I met friends where I learnt to escape and bomb. They all were nice. And somehow, only I was the person with above 80% in this section. All rest were in brighter sections of A,B,C and G.

As the days were passing by, our first exam came and passed. Result:
only 2 students passed in a section of more than 40 students.

Those who passed changed their section and subject from Engineering Drawing to Hindi. But I decided to be in all powerful section-D.
So, our section was popular as the only section where no student was present who could pass in first mid-term exam.

Finally, second mid-term arrived. My parents must have prayed to god so that I pass this time. I think I forgot to tell you, I was topper from my previous school and was struggling to pass here.

Finally, result were out after the exams and only I was the one who could pass. 'Great Achievement', I thought but not for long. Next day during our assembly, few people from other sections were having a chat and I was near them.One said, "You know, finally Section-D got one person who could manage to pass".Another said,"Really? One person who got pass.Who is he?". First said," He is new person named Parathe I guess..". "Oh No, not parathe again.. I am Parate yaar", I thought.
Another from there group said," so what is great if one could pass? Even in a class of fools, there will be a person who is least fool of them all and he is the one.. least fool. He he he..(laughing)"

So, I was the person (least fool) hearing all these right in front of them and they didn't know me. And at the end of class-11, I was first rank in my section and still not even in Top-100 of school.

And days went by, Class-12 results came and surprisingly the least fool of them all became the school topper. I still don't believe this.
And not just this, I got selected for IIT and my rank was AIR 1. Oh you seem to have doubts as you never heard of my name in AIR-1 list. OK, I was 1 in ST category and I, the least fool, arrived at IIT Kanpur.

But one thing that was still with me and will continue to be with me.. my popular name -Parathe.

Parate's first posting

2004-07-03T02:24:00.000-07:00

This is world of Mr. Abhinav Parate or known popularly as Parathe.If you don't know what parathe is, it's Indian dish and can be many types..Aloo paratha, mooli paratha and so on. I tried to change my popular name but all attempts failed.

Finally, I tried my hands in writing some funny scripts with name Ghantadhar..so I came to be known popularly as Ghantadhar in Sri Sankara Vidyalaya, Bhilai. I don't know what Ghantadhar means but still a better name.I was happy and classmates too were happy because I used to make funny comments in my articles about them which they enjoyed very much. And gals in my class, all were brilliant friends. I had the feeling that they all liked to talk to me. Still Abhinav was never in affair with anyone.

Yeah.. I can boast of one thing that I have always been a good friend for gals but never beyond that. May be because I was too happy with my life to look for a gf.

And then I changed school in Class-11. It was a good experience there. I came from a very disciplined school and the guys here were involved in bombing the school. We would get some crackers of Diwali and bomb our school.It was fun. It was fun how we used to run away from our school.

Want to know about it?? OK I tell u. There was a tunnel made by our seniors at the boundary wall of school which led to a big drainage canal or 'naala'. And then the real adventure was the canal was too wide to cross so there was a pipe which was put there and we had to cross it by balancing our body properly. But how to reach boundary wall?? We had an arrangement for that.We removed the bolts and nuts from our window. Allowed the window frame to stay somehow and when we had to runaway, we would get frame out and then run away. So, life was going on and somehow I managed to get into IIT Kanpur... a place which I dreamt of??? May be but my father must have. Anyways, to know more abt my life look into more blogs and u will find them interesting.