Tonight, I was missing dear ol' Gurgaon like mad. As in, let me be a bit specific, I was missing the Keema Paratha of Kabab and Curry, Sector 14. And those merry days with merrier people in a hardly merry mood.
Great gang we had. Arun R, pungent, vicious, vitriolic, spewing his venom at all and sundry, hating every minute there, throwing shit on every shit that happens around the place. A wicked spectacular wit to throw in disarray every brilliant argument. Vivek Laha, overanalysing every minute detail, getting angry at everybody and exasperated at everything. Thanks to Laha, and the realisation of what an intellectually pleasing thing it is to analyse, I am not just a data gatherer anymore. And when the two of them, Laha and Arun, locked horns, it was brilliance at times and abject tomfoolery at others. And if for Arun, there was Laha, for me there was Arjo. Arjo Chattoraj, with the intelligentlyly coined name (by Arun obviously) His Royal Cynical Highness, proud, abrasive, taciturn at times, rambling and verbose at others, one of the few guys with whom in argumentsI had to get down to personal levels to ensure I make my stand, I hated so much to lose, and he was so good. Vinayak Shenoy, on the phone half the time, being barbed the other half for being in placecom, the butt of most of the spew. He just listened most often. And when the comments came, they were incisive and well-thought-out almost all the time. Myself, confused, blabbering, screaming, shouting, dithering. Occational item numbers (of the quality of 'Babuji Zara Dheere Chalo' without doubts) provided by Saurav DasGupta and Gautam Bhupal.
The invariable Chicken Biriyani of Arjo, Mutton Biriyani of Shenoy, the five Keema Parathas shared by Arun and me, and hey I forget what Laha used to order.
Trips were taken of all and sundry, with the one v/s four situation being often encountered, fought against, and fought against vainly. Tempers used to rise. Voices used to get louder as Gurgaon got colder, and sometimes the Parathas too. The walks back, a good 2 Km. The piping hot coffee and the Mother Dairy mishti doi. Throwing the empty Doi bowls in front of Love Makhija's house...
Kids, shit scared about the future, about the not too distant future of the placement day, which sometimes revved into a deeper discussion regarding the rest of our lives. The camaraderie, buddyhood, the companionship of people we could and did share our deepest anxieties with, and deriving strength from each other...
Miss you, Gurgaon.
Thursday, December 30, 2004
Monday, December 27, 2004
Saturday, December 25, 2004
Some more beauty in simplicity
Just could not stop falling in love with this beautiful, beautiful little piece of genius. I am a sucker for all things simple, how can I help myself?
And among all those feel-good songs which I will put on the comp to ease out a rough day, i.e. Take it Easy, Yellow Submarine, A Hard day's Night, Country Roads, Sweet Home Alabama etc, comes a new addition, Cotton Fields by Creedence Clearwater Revival. Thanks, Sauravda, for suggesting CCR to me.
And among all those feel-good songs which I will put on the comp to ease out a rough day, i.e. Take it Easy, Yellow Submarine, A Hard day's Night, Country Roads, Sweet Home Alabama etc, comes a new addition, Cotton Fields by Creedence Clearwater Revival. Thanks, Sauravda, for suggesting CCR to me.
Friday, December 17, 2004
Monday, December 13, 2004
Weekend activities
Theatre:
“Two” (1990) is the story of a landlord and landlady couple who own a pub in Northern England. Amidst the not–so-friendly banter between them, they also move seamlessly from chitchatting with the customers while serving their drinks to directly interacting with the live audience. While the landlord and the landlady form the major narrative element of the story, other characters are introduced; the customers of the pub. They are seemingly very ordinary, next-door-neighbour couples and individuals, but the scenes also offer acerbic, social comment on relationships in our times.
Cast - Ashish D'Abreo and Itisha Peerbhoy
Alliance Francaise de Bangalore
Saturday 11th Dec.
Semi-decent acting. The guy was a little woodden, the girl was overdramatic. Brilliant music. the funny scenes were quite good, the poignant, serious scenes were a let-down.
Rating: ** (on *****)
Movie:
Femme Fatale
HBO
Saturday 11th Dec 11:30 p.m.
Too smart for its own good. Does not quite make the cut. But then, there's Rebecca Romijn-Stamos. Heavens is she good! The camera loves her. Well, so do I :)
Rating: **
Music:
Why Worry/ Dire Straits:
Nice to re-invent previously heard pieces of genius. Well, buried somewhere within the perfection of Sultans of Swing and Tunnel of Love and Once upon a time in the West and Private Investigation and I'm the Fool and Lady Writer and Down to the Waterline and Twisting by the Pool and So Far Away and Brothers in Arms and Your Latest Trick and Portobello Belle and Water of Love and One World and so many others, there it was, waiting for me all this while, waiting to be re-invented, loved and treasured. Beauty in simplicity. Thanks, God. It made my day. OK another thing contributed too. But that can come later.
Throughout Monday morning and Afternoon.
Rating: *****
Saturday, December 11, 2004
University Challenge 1
It all seems so long ago, and pardon me folks for being bad with dates, and am humbly requesting the rest of the team to fill in on the numbers. And when Hari Rajagopalan (bless his soul) sent an email from Synergy Communications to the now almost defunct but roaring at that time W5H quizzing group, my heart skipped a beat. Would this be a culmination of all the hours of reading up on all the info of the world, or well, like always, I will remain the almost-man…
University Challenge India, the Indianised version of the University Challenge UK an dthe College Bowl USA, which made TV Stars of Bamber Gascoigne and Jeremy Paxman, which is considered the ultimate college quizzing tourney (and no, you will never find stupid shit like ‘the ultimate test of intelligence’ for a quiz contest from me), is here in India. And guess who is conducting it? The ultimate showman of the Indian quizzing circuit, Siddhartha Basu (again, no better thing about Mr. Basu from me). And would we be trying out? You bet!
Now in college, setting up W5H had been a bit of an issue, especially with the senior batch not being the most co-operative. And in a world as ruthless as that in a Bschool, well, that was saying quite a bit. And in W5H, there were two two-member teams that dominated, those of (gloat, gloat) Vivek Laha and yours truly, and of Amit Didolkar and Harish Kumar Venkata Bhamidipati. So it would have been pretty obvious that the four of us would team up. Right? Wrong.
We were quizzing oppositions, and in Bschools, another word fits in well with oppositions. Rivals. So would you quiz with rivals? No. And well, we were definitely on communicable terms, but our friend circles were different. And well, there were other people in their group who quizzed. Well, there were other people in our group who quizzed too. So making a team was an issue. But Laha and I accepted that the best team from MDI would invariably be that of the four of us. But that would never be, right? And to complicate issues further, the qualifiers were to be held during our summer training. And the four of us were all posted outside of Delhi. So there was a total communication breakdown. And BTW, you have to fill up a truckload of forms and registrations to actually get to qualify. That was issue no 2.
Laha was in Bombay with BMC. I was in Ahmedabad with M&M. And we were shooting emails everyday…. Which two other guys would we ask? Obviously Amit (summers with Wipro- Bangalore) and Harish (with Dresser Rand- Ahmedabad) would have made their team with two other guys from their group. (Don’t tell me this thought never came to your minds, harish and Amit), And then, suddenly…. Just send an email, Laha. And he did. And the answer comes in pronto. Amit Didolkar: “ That would be great. We would love to team up with the two of you”. And that was that. We were a team.
Would not carry on here about the efforts of those people who were seen on TV only for a glimpse at a time. I, we are indebted to them for making it all possible. Friends. And would not get into the details of all the effort put in by those blokes, to see to it that we would make it to the Final stages. Honestly, selflessness is an unheard term in the brutal, dog-eat-dog world of Bschools. These guys epitomised that novel concept of putting others before self. So yet again, thanks a lot to Cyril Thomas and Rakesh Ramnani for making it all possible. It was not quite our victory, but your victory it sure was.
For the qualifier, we decided to travel to Pune. A major reason for it was that the day before, we had our Alumni meet in Mumbai, which none of us wanted to miss. Whatever the reason, we did go to Pune. And to reach Pune from Bombay, we took the Bombay-Pune Highway, my first experience of that amazing stretch of land.
We qualified.
After reaching college, came the next stage. Vivek Laha was our captain, and well, in terms of attendance to the practice sessions he was the absolute bottom of the barrell (oh yeah we did practice, regularly and frentically, and we made a competition of it, as in, what better that pitting my wits against three guys who are so much worth pitting my wits against, that the day is made), but well, coming back to the topic, Laha was also spectacularly good. So were Amit and Harish (now christened Venkata to put the South Indian flavour, Basu loves variety, you know). I did not quite bring up the rear. Well, we did well as a team. In between the competition, came respect, came trust and faith, and the confidence to break the trust at times. These competitions went a long way to get us close together, and we seamlessly merged as a team, with our own strengths and weaknesses. And our strengths were pretty much mutually exclusive, which is a good thingie for any team, for sure.
And here we have to mention the name of another guy. Rakesh Ramnani and Cyril Thomas we know already, now came Indivar Nayyar. And trust me friends, it is a tedious job asking questions (basically reading them out of a book), 80% of which you do not have a clue about. For us it was just a rush of adrenaline, we were competing, buzzing and trying to prove that hey, I belong in the hallowed company of the other three. For Rakku, Indi and Cyril it was honestly, tedium. But they held on to the tedious, monotonous and boring job of asking questions from quiz books. And I believe the best way to prepare was precisely that. A quiz contest should not ever be an exam. We competed, we never mugged. It was all adrenaline.
(… to be continued)
University Challenge India, the Indianised version of the University Challenge UK an dthe College Bowl USA, which made TV Stars of Bamber Gascoigne and Jeremy Paxman, which is considered the ultimate college quizzing tourney (and no, you will never find stupid shit like ‘the ultimate test of intelligence’ for a quiz contest from me), is here in India. And guess who is conducting it? The ultimate showman of the Indian quizzing circuit, Siddhartha Basu (again, no better thing about Mr. Basu from me). And would we be trying out? You bet!
Now in college, setting up W5H had been a bit of an issue, especially with the senior batch not being the most co-operative. And in a world as ruthless as that in a Bschool, well, that was saying quite a bit. And in W5H, there were two two-member teams that dominated, those of (gloat, gloat) Vivek Laha and yours truly, and of Amit Didolkar and Harish Kumar Venkata Bhamidipati. So it would have been pretty obvious that the four of us would team up. Right? Wrong.
We were quizzing oppositions, and in Bschools, another word fits in well with oppositions. Rivals. So would you quiz with rivals? No. And well, we were definitely on communicable terms, but our friend circles were different. And well, there were other people in their group who quizzed. Well, there were other people in our group who quizzed too. So making a team was an issue. But Laha and I accepted that the best team from MDI would invariably be that of the four of us. But that would never be, right? And to complicate issues further, the qualifiers were to be held during our summer training. And the four of us were all posted outside of Delhi. So there was a total communication breakdown. And BTW, you have to fill up a truckload of forms and registrations to actually get to qualify. That was issue no 2.
Laha was in Bombay with BMC. I was in Ahmedabad with M&M. And we were shooting emails everyday…. Which two other guys would we ask? Obviously Amit (summers with Wipro- Bangalore) and Harish (with Dresser Rand- Ahmedabad) would have made their team with two other guys from their group. (Don’t tell me this thought never came to your minds, harish and Amit), And then, suddenly…. Just send an email, Laha. And he did. And the answer comes in pronto. Amit Didolkar: “ That would be great. We would love to team up with the two of you”. And that was that. We were a team.
Would not carry on here about the efforts of those people who were seen on TV only for a glimpse at a time. I, we are indebted to them for making it all possible. Friends. And would not get into the details of all the effort put in by those blokes, to see to it that we would make it to the Final stages. Honestly, selflessness is an unheard term in the brutal, dog-eat-dog world of Bschools. These guys epitomised that novel concept of putting others before self. So yet again, thanks a lot to Cyril Thomas and Rakesh Ramnani for making it all possible. It was not quite our victory, but your victory it sure was.
For the qualifier, we decided to travel to Pune. A major reason for it was that the day before, we had our Alumni meet in Mumbai, which none of us wanted to miss. Whatever the reason, we did go to Pune. And to reach Pune from Bombay, we took the Bombay-Pune Highway, my first experience of that amazing stretch of land.
We qualified.
After reaching college, came the next stage. Vivek Laha was our captain, and well, in terms of attendance to the practice sessions he was the absolute bottom of the barrell (oh yeah we did practice, regularly and frentically, and we made a competition of it, as in, what better that pitting my wits against three guys who are so much worth pitting my wits against, that the day is made), but well, coming back to the topic, Laha was also spectacularly good. So were Amit and Harish (now christened Venkata to put the South Indian flavour, Basu loves variety, you know). I did not quite bring up the rear. Well, we did well as a team. In between the competition, came respect, came trust and faith, and the confidence to break the trust at times. These competitions went a long way to get us close together, and we seamlessly merged as a team, with our own strengths and weaknesses. And our strengths were pretty much mutually exclusive, which is a good thingie for any team, for sure.
And here we have to mention the name of another guy. Rakesh Ramnani and Cyril Thomas we know already, now came Indivar Nayyar. And trust me friends, it is a tedious job asking questions (basically reading them out of a book), 80% of which you do not have a clue about. For us it was just a rush of adrenaline, we were competing, buzzing and trying to prove that hey, I belong in the hallowed company of the other three. For Rakku, Indi and Cyril it was honestly, tedium. But they held on to the tedious, monotonous and boring job of asking questions from quiz books. And I believe the best way to prepare was precisely that. A quiz contest should not ever be an exam. We competed, we never mugged. It was all adrenaline.
(… to be continued)
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Too much to write, too little time in hand
Want desparately to write about:
1. Trek to Shivaganga, Sunday, 4th Dec 2004
2. Cristiano Junior. Died. Saw him play a year ago. The most glorious way to die, for any sportsperson.
3. University Challenge India 2003, Semi finals. After trying so hard to forget, it keeps coming back to me at every small incident. It's been 422 days. 422 bitter days. As Robbie Williams would have said, "As my soul heals the shame, I'll grow through this pain, Lord I'm doing all I can to be a better man".
Hope there's some time in hand in the near future.
1. Trek to Shivaganga, Sunday, 4th Dec 2004
2. Cristiano Junior. Died. Saw him play a year ago. The most glorious way to die, for any sportsperson.
3. University Challenge India 2003, Semi finals. After trying so hard to forget, it keeps coming back to me at every small incident. It's been 422 days. 422 bitter days. As Robbie Williams would have said, "As my soul heals the shame, I'll grow through this pain, Lord I'm doing all I can to be a better man".
Hope there's some time in hand in the near future.
Thursday, December 02, 2004
Great article on one of my favourites
Bib is real good writer. Great article. Faultless to a fault. And I do remember the Brown Board behind the TT tables in the Old sports complex, with the name of K Anil, 87-91, Cricket, Karnataka Juniors, Karnataka, India Juniors, India.
The K Anil of that day has travelled many a mile, and with many more yet to travel, I'm sure.
This article could not have come from a non RVite. Congratulated Bib the moment I read it.
The K Anil of that day has travelled many a mile, and with many more yet to travel, I'm sure.
This article could not have come from a non RVite. Congratulated Bib the moment I read it.
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