beingdesh

Category: Personal

  • Bye Bye Bangalore

    It’s Game Over Bangalore.
    14th June’ 2006- 16th May’2008

    So bye bye to my first job, to all those Hot Idlis, Dosas and Coffees, Mysore Pak :), Super Expensive movies(which I never saw, I saw only at super cheap places), those farewell parties and non-farewell parties, bits and bytes of alcohol, the niceness of Jayanagar, the famous 201 bus, lots of blogging, all that stupid CAT preparation, good weather, lots of cute looking girls whom I only watched at times, all that Dada vs Dravid discussion, Kannada Songs, late nights at office and returning back home in cab on a strange empty road, Vasanthi on Radio City, my bus journey to office, BMTC buses, Majestic, heavily crowded city market, even more heavily crowded Forum, the UnBanglorish BTM, Highly Bangalorish Basvangudi, the farway lands of Yelhenka and Hebbal, Volvo Buses, MTR, Food Street, juice shop near Kamkhya, the cooking we did, EB(Emotional Black-male, our so called pet dog), all those stupid street dogs, those stinking chicken shops, a housemaid who talks to only one person, has an animagus Crow and does black magic at night, to all my office mates and great friends I made at work, my reunion with many of my old school friends, and my continued union with all my DAIICT friends. I will miss everything.

    Above all I will miss my roomies at Seshgiri and the Three Towers of Kathriguppe( a clan famously known as Kathriguppe ke Kutte)- including seshigiri and two other houses inhabitated by fellow daiictians who became great friends at Bangalore.

    Its Mumbai… this Summer

    Technorati Tags: Bangalore

  • Connect DA-IICT

    As people who have gone through what you are going through today, we have learnt our lessons through our own share of success and failures. Now, we the Alumni of DA-IICT would like to extend our help and support to you guys in resolving your queries on career after graduation. With our friends and seniors in various sectors and walks of education ranging from Physics to Film Making, we look forward to help you guys to the best of our abilities. You can send in your queries on anything related to your career, be it Job, MBA, Internship, VLSI, Film Making and anything under the sun.

    Shoot a mail to connect.daiict@gmail.com with an appropriate subject and we would find the right person among us to resolve it for you. Given our own commitments and constraints, it may sometimes take longer than what you expect to resolve a few typical queries, but we would make sure your queries are attended to.

    We hope you put us to the best of your use…

    Terms and Conditions:
    1. You can ask us about your internships, but please refrain from sending us your CVs, SoPs etc…
    2. Please use a proper subject line with the most appropriate key word in square braces. For eg, if you are asking something about a VLSI, please use [VLSI] in the subject so that it would facilitate us in our division of duties.
    3. We are not legally liable to provide anybody with any assistance. We are just a voluntary helpdesk. We only facilitate people in making decisions, in as many cases as we can.
    4. We have no legal hierarchy, and we represent no organisation or enterprise. The opinions expressed are entirely our own, and carry no affiliation whatsoever.

    – DA-IICT Alumni

  • Sales Pitch

    I was formally introduced to this concept by someone from my company’s sales team during my assimilation. Although over the period I have realised that everytime we end up selling something, although intangible, but everytime you talk, you want people to buy it, more so true in case of a self-obsessed person like me.

    It ranges from formal sessions like interviews, to just a cup of coffee, anytime anywhere. But if you keep in mind that it’s officially a sales pitch I think it gives you more confidence. Consider my first and till date only job interview, although I was nervous, I was good in selling my confidence, my passion for loads of other things than “C”, my love for Java(which too has disappeared) etc etc.

    Few days back when I attended a b-school interview it was another such attempt. But after talking to my friend’s sister I realised that it’s officially a sales pitch. The panelists are consumers who are looking for the best deal, I am nothing but a salesman who sells himself off. So this time I kept this thing everytime in my mind while giving any answers, it helps quite a lot. Only that thinking of you as a commodity can be demeaning sometimes, I mean I am obviously different from a Parle-G.

    Btw, do read the interview transcript, it should be fun.

    Coming back to me, I think I am good in selling things, although not the regular shopkeeper stuff but things I have realised for the past few days after giving a thought to what actually interests me. For example I wanted to consider couple of friends of mine for this course at ISI Kolkata that they should do as they are good with numbers. Anyway people dont see much beyond an MBA or MS for higher eductaion nowadays. I just tried to make the pitch exciting by saying that guys from ISI are quite in demand among good looking bengali gals ;). Couple of them really got excited and hope they will apply. By the way Bengali Girls are really quite beautiful J.

    You talk to any girl and you will realise that they too are looking for a package deal, so when one proposes it should be Sales Pitch rather than regular proposal. We had a brainstorming session on this one last week and some real good points came up. Although we are not looking at a slideshow for asking a girl something, but a step by step breakdown of things helps. (Maybe, some experiments will be conducted on this theory soon :))

    When you talk to your client you sell him your work, when you ask your boss for leave you try to sell the need of taking one, when you talk in appraisal your boss sells you his rating, when you say sorry after doing something terribly wrong you sell your ignorance, when you ask your dad for money to buy a new cell phone you sell your innocence, when you are in a discussion and just want people to buy your thoughts, sometimes ignoring there is something buy from them too.

    It’s always a buy-sell thing, we trade thoughts and that’s how all the humans co-exist, but some people label it sharing, I disagree. It’s never sharing because sharing is done for mutually agreeable items, like you can share a pizza or a Mysore pak or a nimbu soda, but you will only buy knowledge when you think its good for you and you can use it and it comes with the minimal cost, the same way you end up buying toothpaste. Cost here though can be a set of multiple parameters.

    So just try it out once, whenever you try to talk to someone, think of the items you are selling to him, think of yourselves just as a Eureka Forbes guy and have a go, I am sure it will turn out quite well. Sales Pitch is not as mysterious as this year’s WACA Perth pitch, but again like that it’s sure to give positive results.

    Technorati Tags: Sales, Marketing

  • Angrezi aur main…

    Class 4th-5th

    It all started with that, we were given some sort of scholar badges and all (for consistent performances with a particular score in core subjects), there was this English teacher who I didn’t like at all, you know the sorts who went ahead with people who get top marks in junior sections, all those cute looking piglets whom they think are brainiest who get everything right, although I wasn’t that bad but she never gave me marks, maybe I wan not a piglet anyway.

    Class 6th-10th

    Same not so old boring angrezi teacher who gave marks to girls and little healthier sort off pigs and screwed me up again many a times. I also had a fight with her which messed up my relations and so I never got a scholar badge till class 11th as they held me back some way other for English and sometimes Hindi. Maybe I behaved like a dog here, pigs were still in demand. My confidence in languages till 10th had already received a heavy blow though. worst still I became a horrible public speaker in those days due to that.

    Class 11th

    Probably one of the best teachers I ever studied under was Mrs. Biswas, elegant and caring are the words which come to my mind. She had such an awesome persona and like others, her marks were not based on pre-conceived notion of an individual. All notions of animalism chucked off for the time being.

    Class 12th

    The year I cherished most in the school because my favorite teacher Mrs. Ratnam taught me for the first time (sounds unusual but true). She is the one I knew throughout my school tenure, the bestest teacher there ever was at DPS Korba. It was delight as she taught English in an year when no one thinks about it. She took my interview way back in 1988 and its quite ironic that she retired the same year I left school, 2002. Best year for English and me 🙂

    College Days, one Cat, workplace, blogging etc etc.

    Everything went fine, reading speeds were good, although I was regualr reader earlier I improved, did more discussions, turned from a hand shaking- leg breaking speaker to a nice confident aggressive presenter. Did all of this stupid writing, all dung, read dung, ate dung. See now I became a Pig.

    Good days for English were obvious.

    CAT & XAT this year

    Similar percentiles of 84.16 (84.13 in other) (Overall 97.7 in CAT, 99.42 in XAT) help me secure a missed call from IIM’s and XLRI. All the AIMCATs I hardly got below 95%ile, my worst performance coming up in these two examinations.

    Although I am disappointed I would like to add that my English is not that great, its just the way people judge your language skills, the kind of exams they look for, I don’t know.

    In that regards the best language teacher I had was my French teacher at Ahmedabad, she had an amazing persona and I really excelled when it came French learning.

    Although disappointed I am not broken, its enough of these exams for me, maybe something better out there for me. No one is an authority to comment on what I am like in anything, English has screwed me for a long time and hope it enjoys f**k*** me again and again. At least the language will get some pleasure out of it.

    Living in Bangalore has made me a dog again, pigs are the most intelligent ones, thats why there English is good.(George Orwell says so, although both the species should control there reproduction rates :))

    Technorati Tags: CAT, XAT

  • Dreaded S-Word

    1993

    two kids from class 3 fighting as Abhishek watches on (still be christened with any of the present day nicknames).

    bippu*- saale kutte kahi ke???
    ritesh*- shocked and about to breakdown
    Abhishek and rest of the audience- Haaaaauuuuuuuuu……
    ritesh*- full-tu crying, I will complaint this to Ratnam Mam [My fav teacher in school, bestest teacher ever, will write about her sometime)

    Pumped by anger, insult and what not ritesh decided to complaint and bippu got punished, junta was obviously shocked at bippu’s behavior and happy that bippu got punished.

    1999

    All of us on the playing, tiddu*-famous for not blurting out any bad word till date fires one on pattu, pattu laughs like hell and so do the others, tiddu rages and starts a bat-beating session on pattu, pattu and others still laugh and welcome another member to the gang.

    [*Names have been changed to confuse identities]

    Gone are those days, in primary school using the S-word (something similar to a Brother-in-law too, your wife’s brother, I don’t know why it became an abuse in the first place) meant that you were the full-time rowdy in class, other kids parents wanted their kids to stay away from you, and it was not at all good public behavior, you were the big time culprit of every wrong deed done in class. Slowly though, with secondary and higher education an Indian student gets graduated in profanities too.

    Nowadays when I see kids using the F-word is much more than feeling, its mostly going away from our culture of using the S-Word to perfection. Although lots has been said about girls not using it but I know a few who use it nicely. But lets not get into gender aspects as of now.

    Although the Hindi/desi equivalent of the F-word is considered quite crude in its usage but I don’t know why people consider the formers usage as much more decent (relatively). Both are the same, a conservative may say that they are bowing to western culture, but I think its much more to do with the popularity of such terms in Hollywood, its counter-part Bollywood has been not so liberal in usage of abusive language.

    I picked up foul language sometime in mid-school, when we passed school there was only one or at most two boys still away from its active usage. In my college I found only one among 200+ boys (but he had his own versions of curses, which went quite above everyone’s head). The good things about using foul language are,

    • Good way to throw out your anger and frustration, go and shout from a roof/hill top, or do it after getting drunk.
    • Gives you a good time cursing your bosses, peers, any boy who roams around with good girls or mostly anyone.
    • Comes for free and is quite relieving, much more than dhyana or yoga.

    The only things about it which is not good and I don’t like is when its done in a seriously serious manner. People start fighting over it and makes matter stupid. When I and most of my friends do it, its mostly for fun, although we know making fun of other people is a serious crime, but everyone does it, and criminals are bound to use some foul language here and there. Some serious misapprehensions which are associated with this are,

    • it slows down with age- I think this skill mellows with age, the usage becomes more or less perfect and less hurtful to others.
    • you shouldn’t say it in front of girls- ???? pointless

    Although in front of parents and relatives better don’t use it. I mean you can but better don’t. You might have noticed it, sometimes when you are at home, and things haven’t rubbed off from your tongue you feel like shouting sometimes, do it in a bathroom, safest place to do it.

    By the way some unique ones which I have come across in my life are,

    – Indi-Poi Indrapal- used by a schoolmate, he considered this to be the mother of all profanities
    – Dusht Bijuke – Bijuke is Pure hindi for Scarecrow, my friend in college made it quite popular.

    I am not mentioning lots of them which would like a bit indecent on my blog.

    Whatever be it, never ever use it to hurt anyone, as long as its for fun, use it…

    And for all those like the F-Word, try using the S-word!!!

  • Small City Dreams

    An unshaved face, a stinking jeans, a dirty t-shirt, Kapil’s wrist watch, drinking frooti just before it, this and a whole lot of superstitions, nothing worked. Six months of stupidly wasting time was followed up with disappointment and nothing more. Six months of screwing up my brain, with just 3 movies (2 were at the end of period when it was getting closer), 2-3 canceled outings, Diwali* away from home, all this amidst hell lot of work pressure at office, night outs, nothing worked. I had a realization the day I gave it, that why people leave this country, so much struggle to get anywhere that people get really pissed off. Anyway I decided on something else though.

    I want to move to a smaller city, much much better than going to a country where no one knows you (this would be a bit different in my case, as I would be still Desi for them :)). So new vision statement for life was drafted,

    Small City, Medium Money, Small Dreams, Lots of Happiness

    Money has been kept medium as of now, but even small is Ok. I am tired of hearing about,

    • People taking EMI’s to run there life, take a home in Bangalore and pay up for next 20 years. Buy a car and pay up for next 4-5 years.
    • People using credit cards to run there life.
    • People stuck in traffic for half there life and profanity-fying the condition of Bharatiya Roads.

    Basically I am pissed of city life, after living 17 years in a township in Korba, Chattisgarh and four years of engineering in an extremely peaceful Gandhinagar, this is all too much for me to take. I think its better to strip down on your Monetary ambitions if you get happiness in exchange. The thing is after seeing so much, going to small place won’t be much of an issue for me atleast, there maybe difficulties initially but in long term it would be much more effective. In return I get,

    • A HAPPY family life…
    • A nice home with lawn and jhoola in it 😀
    • Kids who don’t pass out in pubs and watch movies for 25 Rs…:)
    • Me watching movie for 25 Rs
    • Neighbors who atleast talk
    • Cheap vegetables, cheap commodities, cheap most of the things.

    Even if I earn what I am earning now for the rest of my life at a small place, it surely would mean much more savings for me than me living in Bangalore. Maybe I am thinking too long term, but anyway one has to do it. Smaller towns and cities stay better as the big cities grow, the “Supposedly” successful crowd moves city wards, small remains mostly the same. although I am worried by the Mall-ification of these places too but most of them, I expect to be quite stable even in case of economic swings. Thinking about what I can do there,

    • A sarkari naukri, but extremely difficult to get that one.
    • Moving into Public Sector…
    • Moving into things like Manufacturing etc. which maybe the industries at these places.
    • Goto a small place, start my own petrol pump, a halwai shop and a hotel.

    All this will come up sooner or later, lets see how this stupid MBA thing goes on, one thing is for sure, I have had it enough for a lifetime here in a city.

    *Diwali Celebs were quite different this time, though I missed being at home but this is what we did for Bangalore Diwali,

    1. Got confused on Nark Chaturdashi as everyone in Bangalore celebrated that day itself 🙂
    2. One round of pooja at home on Lakshmi Poojan, couple of crackers bursted, prasad included Peda and Mysore Pak.
    3. Another bit of pooja at friend’s house, 2-3 rounds of crackers (extremely low quality ones), and gobbled up lots of mithai
    4. Dinner menu included- Davangare Benne Dosa(Butter Dosa) from my favorite shop in NR colony. Followed up by a nice bottle of Wine.

  • And it changed at last…

    New look DAIICT website is up and running…


    Nothing is better than a change and that too after 6 years of same old boorish(as in clumsy) bluish tinge haunting our College’s website. Ever since my second or 3rd year at DAIICT the question of a new website has been equivocated by Profs and students alike.

    Lots has been talked about the Website in Batch of 2006 mailing list, the few good things coming out of this,

    • A good, neat and clean UI.
    • Proper info everywhere, FAQ’s, Alumni pages are quite good.
    • Finally all the clubs, committees and activities in college given a proper placing on website.

    etc etc.

    Hope now people applying outside India won’t face many issues with regards to Website as all the information has been put up quite nicely.

    Kudos to the team involved!!!

    Btw last few weeks our people from our batch have been quite nostalgic when it comes to college. All was triggered by this pic sent by Vivek,

    This pic reminds me of the countless nightouts at DAIICT, seems to be taken around 4-5 in morning this one.

    And then this website thing and then there were mails forwarding pics of Profs and all, and mails about the new E-Cell at our college…

    College was great, miss it like anything… as we realized during the Bangalore Meet last month

    One happy shappy pic from the meetup (courtesy: Pratyush)

    Technorati Tags: DAIICT

  • 23

    • A prime number – the smallest with consecutive digits …
    • Number on the T-Shirt of Michael Jordan, and off late David Beckham …
    • Number of Chromosomes we have …
    • Years since I made my Debut in the game of life…

    40 to 50 more to go, lets see what I can do in rest of them?

  • Bhains Ki Taang, We Won!!!


    It was the Great Indian Wet Dream, having an India-Pakistan WorldCup final, and surely proved to be one. Starting with the resolution this tournament has been quite up on its sex quotient. This was twenty twenty is all about, its what Sex and Violence do to frigid cinema, its all about adding that extra much needed masala to a great game going through its worst phase after a uber-boring World Cup and suppa-disappointing Champion’s Trophy last year.

    It hits back badly on purists, most notably the well known Greg Chappell, last employed on the post of decimator of Indian Cricket Team, the one who thought Tendulkar lacked attitude and skill, Pathan is always low on confidence and I won’t mention what he did to my favourite cricketer Dada. According to that guy this is just hitting, I just pity him now that this team which doesn’t include his favourite player Suresh Raina (wtf) won the world Cup without the coach.

    Match Day

    Superstitions, a Mallu Star, a Mazdur and a back in Form Pathan

    Venue– Quark’s Den
    Edibles– Veg Puffs, thums Up, Some Desi Namkeen, Some Haldiram stuff and those cheesy chips by Lays (which give me a nauseating hit)

    Match started on a poor note, our Match routine which involved,

    • a can of Kingfisher for the quark.
    • a bottle of Knock Out again for quark.
    • a bottle of Fosters/Budweiser for Daisy. ( no Fosters in Australian Match)
    • Mast Mirchi Bhajji worth Rs.15.00

    was missing. As if this was not enough our sitting arrangements were much more varied then the previous ones and I think that lead ton India’s debacle.

    Although the Pakistani Bowling was superb. Main mast moments were the opening sequence(run out appeal against Yusuf Pathan), six hit again by him and Rohit Sharma’s mast knock. I like this guy because his favourite dish is Kanda Poha which his family was telling the recipe on AajTak. I love Poha(also called Pouva someweher). Just one of many reasons why I simply adore Shara-Pova ;-)…

    The second one was the real thing, RP was up right from the word go, it just took an innovative profanity(read Mayawati ka Bhai) to generate that spark and make him pick up the first wicket.

    Sreesanth according to me was the real match winner for us, offlate we have compared him to a dangai (rowdy or something, the one involved actively in riots) who can’t even throw stones properly. They are all over the place. The Mallu Star is as unpredictable as one could get. Ok he is a match winner if can bowl well, but that rarely happens as it happened against Australia. But I don’t really see him out of the team too. surely we have next Ajit Agarkar ready.

    Anyway in case these kinds of bowlers are more popularly known as Rhythm bowlers, who bowl when they are Rhythm, utter crap, even I can bowl 6 yorkers an over if I am in Rhythm. Also I think Agression is OK as long as you have stuff within, a samosa without aloo can’t even become a papdi.

    So such a bowler didn’t even hear to all the profanities flying all around the room like charms were in Howgarts (refer final few chapters The Deathly Hallows). In came a new idea to call on Sankatmochan and a round of Hanauman Chalisa brought calm and produced a maiden and another good over.

    Similar chants were fixed for each and every bowler,

    • Irfan- Jai Dada, with dashes of Jai Dona-Dada
    • Sreesanth- Hanuman Chalisa
    • Bhajji- Nothing really worked, we tried everything from Jai Siddhu to Jai Monty Panessar to Jai Bhajji himself.
    • Joginder- Main Mazdur mujhe devo ki basti se kya- “Ramdhari Singh Dinkar”. Refer Bal Bharti NCERT, Class VII. It seems people identified him as a Mazdur from that poem.

    We were damn superstitious with sitting arrangements fixed, a particular person locked inside a room and me diving at every lofted bowl to the foot of TV stand.

    Anyway all this crap somehow worked till the deadly bhajji over and then it were the Indians who won the game. Although I should Pakistanis were an awesome side. Misab is surely the new age Miandad (he almost did a name change from Joginder to Chetan…)

    The end would have been surely a disastrous one, all the mantras failed in final four overs, so our brave Sreesanth didn’t find his Rhythm and jerked of few forgettable ones. He took a wicket later with a sensible one. RP’s next over was again a mast one.

    Then came the final one, I have backed Joginder throughout this tournament, according to me belongs to the league of Gavin Larsen/Chris Harris kinda bowlers who can suck of the runs in the middle overs for opposition by their slow line length bowling. Although when his first wide happened, I thought its over, and then a six and it WAS over.

    The End couldn’t have been this bigger, bigger than the Jim Morrison the end or a Hindi Cinema The End. Or much ironical as Sreesanth held on to an awesome catch (whatever it be it was still awesome for me). In the words of one of my friends company mate,

    Misbah thought he was sending the ball to a place where there was no one. He did not know that there is a Malayali in every corner of the world!!!

    Anyhow no qualms against Sreesanth as of now, he is the part of the best cricketing moment we ever witnessed. Pathan’s comeback has been the most delightful thing which happened, amazing comeback to prove his strength as a bowler and fowl all attempts made by Chappel to destroy his career. Also RP has been awesome throughout the tournament. all in all our bowling looked nice and quite non-scrappy.


    What we witnessed was the Best Blue Film ever with 11 Men in Blue completely You-Know-What the pakistanis…

    Post Match

    It was surreal, completely unbelievable, we were dancing, hugging each other, the neighbours and their kids came out to the balconies, everyone was dancing running around, firecrakcers all around, millions of SMS’s being sent around. And when Dhoni lifted the Cup, it was just so GREAT.


    Shoaib Malik’s post match comments etc…hmm, they were extremely disappointingly. I won’t reiterate the same but with so much ire back home it must have been something to avoid it. Pakistan has always been my favourite team when it comes to any tournament (obviously after India) and the only thing I sometimes not so like about them is the importance religion takes in the proceedings. Cricket is the last thing we want to be hampered by such differences. Also I think that it would be better if players are allowed to speak in language of their own choice, it avoids confusion and players can speak out what they feel properly. With Ravi Shastri up their a normal conversation could have been struck and maybe what Shoaib actually wanted to say would have been much more clearer. Even French, Russians, Chinese etc. do it in every game, I think Cricket should get past its colonial hangover of English usage.

    Aur Main Ban Gaya Dhoni!!!

    Dhoni is here to stay, after Dada he looks the only guy who suits the job. Dravid’s captaincy should be forgotten as a pathetic phase in Indian Cricket(though I don’t have anything against Dravid the batsman). Dhoni is calm on field, he TALKS, shows less of emotional jhol jhaal, has loads of ads under his tummy (he too has one) and quite unlike most of the Captain brigade he is much more fit.

    He has lead India to its greatest victory after 83 world Cup, the first big Indian victory in my life span and many others. Add to that the batting by Yuvraj and comeback of Pathan and you egt the best three things to India this World Cup.

    What Next???

    Nothing let us roll our Aussies in India, about Ganguly, Dravid and Tendulkar I won’t comment much, but for people already starting to shout in favour me not so much in agreement with them.

    All in all a great victory and a moment to cherish throughout our lifetime. But all this makes the next year for me and few of my friends so much difficult following celibacy as fallout of the victory.

    Never mind anything for the country…:)

    * Originally Posted on Pen The Game

    Pics from WorldTwentyTwenty

    Technorati Tags: Cricket, TwentyTwentyWorldCup, Final, India, Pakistan, Dhoni, Sreesanth

  • the resolution

    Gandhi tried it, so did Ronaldo, now its our turn to do it for our Team…May India win.

    Jai Dada, Jai Bharat!!!