605,Building No.59,Shubh Sadan, Tilak Nagar, Chembur, Mumbai-18

This time, the titles self explanatory, fellas. I'm in B-Town and its pretty much mind  blowing. A long hiatus this has been, and its equally due to my laziness and lack of inspiration, or even the removal of the little bit that existed.Now one thing that's characterised this visit has been- Heat or to put it in a more understandable form for all the males out there, Hotness.
                                       Dosas. To all those perverted and Half-perverted guys out there, *Gotcha* :D. There's this place called Khao Gully, which literally translates to Food Lane. I'd been there a couple of days back, and its really frigging awesome. To think the max crowd there turns up only at around ten thirty, and to realise theres more XX than XY there, is frigging awesomer. But whats awesomest, is the 36 (Damned, you read it right) different varieties of Dosas they dish out here. I had the time of my life tasting exotic stuff like Jeeni Dosa, Cheese Maggi Dosa, Paneer Chilly Dosa. I ordered some out of expectancy, some just out of curiosity. And the efficiency with which those guys made the dosas, will definitely put Carnot's Engine to shame. In the one hour that I waited there, those guys must have dished out at least 500 dosas. And the labour division, order taking and clearing up were all top notch. Staying with the Foodie side of me, I tasted some brilliant stuff that's called Falooda here. I even succeeded in convincing curious people like Mom that it was really Jellyfish. 
                                                And the four or five sites I've visited here so far are all seaside places. That long strip of tar that hugs the sea, which has in the past, and continues to provide for excellent love-scene shots in Hindi movies, and acts as a convenient refuge for all classes of people in all states of mind: The fat rich guy who wants to walk his dog, the excited young man who wants to convey his success at the job interview to his expectant lover, the little kid that wonders how the crabs get into the water and still don't drown, the guy whose life is in deep misery and wants to seek solace on the soothing blue seafront, the small boy who sells tea to the above classes of people, and hoping against hope that he might one day adorn those magnificent high rise sea view offices that dot the coast. You know the name of this place, its Marine Drive. I seriously felt the overwhelming urge to join that pretty girl who was Para sailing over the seas.

                                           The only disappointing thing (Apart from the fact that beach Pav-Bhaji costs fifty bucks :O), was the state of the beaches. Seriously, you don't want to enter the water. You end up with fifty plastic bags around your feet, and if you're as unlucky as me, three inch long axle grease deposits on your feet that require serious scrubbing to be removed.                                                                                                       Id also been to this park, i forget its name. It was really well maintained and had an awesome view of the adjoining sea. There i got to play with this one year old kid, which apparently didn't want to get off me in the end. After ten minutes, it finally relented, giving up some sound from its mouth indignantly, which my evil cousin sister interpreted as 'Daddy'. Damn her!!!
                                Well, coming to the address that is also the title of this post, its an awesome place. As you've guessed from the door number, its on the sixth floor and makes for an awesome view. The locality is super hi-fi, but still rings with cordiality. No pomp and show from the residents, whatsoever. It has two brilliant grounds, and Gully cricket is in a seriously different level here. And the shops give you everything you want, in their special forms, from Pani Puri and Frankies to Fresh cream Pastries and the evergreen Vada Pav. The evenings are awesome, because the sun sets only at around 7 in these places. My conscience will kill me if i don't say this, but the girls here are super awesome. They're pretty, and you can't see a trace of wrong attitude in them. Which is to say, if you smile at them, they smile back. I'm definitely not complaining while I'm around this heaven of a place :)  

Where you face the sea and see the face (No prizes for guessing which face :P)

                                          





                                                           



 

Tie,Tie,Tie

The past week has definitely been colourful. From the white of sickness, to the green of jealousy,the bright golden of the unforgiving sun,the red of the scraped knee from the successful three-run-saving dive,and just to round it off, the outrageously eye-soreish orange of the Kochi Tuskers, notwithstanding their Silver hearted display against the marauders from Bollywood Town. Searching for Blue? Gotcha.
                                          Just a few weeks back, a friend of mine had narrated a deeply intriguing tale of a school friend of his, who died under extremely suspicious conditions.  He was a very popular guy at school and was a computer genius. History has it that, he wanted to experience the feeling of death while still being alive. And mysteriously, he doesn't turn up at school for a few weeks, while his parents still think hes at school, warming benches. And no one knows where he goes and where he comes all the while, not even his close friends.Mystery. And one fine day, he decides to give Death a missed call and hangs from a ventilator, using his school tie. Unfortunately, Death's reflexes were not to be underestimated, and the call was picked up. Not even his influential dad could persuade the hospital to admit a suicide case, and thus went his life. His friends sense something mischievous afoot, and try to extract information from his laptop. But its all password protected and set to get destroyed if force was used. More mystery.This was no Sherlock Holmes story, no explanations to make things fall in place at the end. All I could manage, as my friend concluded the story with a desperately inconclusive touch, was an open mouth and a permanent image of a Blue school Tie, with ventilator at one end and vented feelings at the other.
                                         As the world celebrated yet another Tamil New year, and as polling booths wound up election operations, "where was the undersigned ?", you wonder! As people who know me have rightly guessed, i was on the cricket field, representing my college in a District league match. Despite health concerns and admonishing from three different women, i chose to play. Things didn't start too well as we lost the toss and were forced to bat first. Yet again I was in a situation of playing with the tail and guiding the team to a decent score, and i just about managed to do that. But my bowling was patchy, and the match was a close one, and though we should have won it hands down, we let it slip and the match was a, wait for it, Tie. Final ball, three to win, last wicket to go, they poked and ran, and I thought we won. But a wayward throw let them steal a second, the perpetrator was someone who was probably playing his last match for the college, and in his life. As he sank to the ground dejected, we went over to him, and his fellow final-years put an arm round him and said, "I've never seen one wrong throw from you till now mate, cheer up, this will be your last :)". He brightened instantly. Power of bonding over a game, power of friends and friendship.
                                                Staying with the field, I realised how hot it is getting. Global warming, and it helped me get a friend. I realised I had  missed my hat, and was gonna get baked on the field if i dint borrow one. A gracious member from the opponent team lent me one with a smile, and i was ever so grateful to him. Another friendly-'tie', away from the limelight. And the heat is driving the whole of me crazy, including my balls. So much so that Ive stopped wearing underwear at times. I guess it Ties me down. Tie and underwear in the same sentence bring to my mind Navjoth Singh Sidhu, who so 'intelligently and brilliantly' quoted "Humility is like your underwear. Wear it but don't show it."

                                     So in the chronological order, there's the the Blue-Tie, the Friend-Tie, the Hat-Tie and the Underwear-Tie. Guess I've 'Tied' it all together,four random words, for The Ensemble. Word-prompts are an awesome idea ;)

We are The Ensemble, We seek change, and not in coins!

                                  
                                  

                                          
                      

Anna, Amma and the apparent Wardrobe

Declaration: The title is not self explanatory, but its just a blogger's way of making sure the whole post is read :P

Well its IPL time, and its a month-and-a-half of total Cricket. The late night action, the glamour and all the nail biting finishes -Like the Promo says, It's Awesome. But look at the other side of it: The Money, those pretty bits of paper printed with Ben Franklin's and Mahatma Gandhi's visages and whats evidently coming when theres money(read as D-U-H!!). After having watched day after day of twists and turns and having always wondered " Why Harbhajan Before Pollard?" and more recently "Why Yusuf before Gambhir?", its just staring in your face: Was that Fixed??
                             It's an ugly feeling, after having enjoyed all the cricket with so much passion, when you collapse into bed and realise its all for those "now-not-so-pretty" bits of paper. And no one was gladder than me when, the IPL got lesser attention than it deserved, and Im not talking about, to say it the Chetan Bhagat way, The *INDIA-Excellent* World cup Win. Enter the phenomenon, Anna Hazare.

                                   I don't know where he was hiding all this while, but he did surface with a bang. Having always undertaken small scale "fasts-unto-death" in childhood to get my dad buy me the new computer game or the Rbk cricket bat,I can realise the power of such a fast.(Well it worked each time for me).And thus came frenzied negotiations, and we can all expect the LokPal Bill in a while. Though its still unclear what exactly the bill professes to do, I have understood that it involves an all-powerful Peoples committee to keep tabs on corrupt officials.Though there are questions about what will happen in case of corruption within the LokPal or if citizen representatives go overboard and interfere with government functioning, its definitely a step forward. I can now actually go to sleep,  trying to reason that Pollard couldn't keep is guns blazing for too many overs, and hence the decision. And i love the Idea! to keep cricket clean. What an idea sirji!
                                        Also, its poll time in TN, and frankly im shocked at the desperateness because just last night i was walking down an empty street and Actor Prashant in a campaign vehicle waved at me. With Kaipulla Vadivel going hammer and tongs, its a new dimension. After Apr 13 , it could well be Dusk and the sprout of the New Green ( I'm desperately cross reference-ing to avoid trouble). The apparent wardrobe? Oh well, like the Election Commission Squads are finding out on a daily basis, wardrobes contain more than pretty clothes.  Like you know, pretty bits of paper ;). I can see you're panicking about the yet-to-come 180.
Its on its way....When cricket is played for passion and not for money, when administrators don't accept bribes,when election winners remember the govt is by the people, for the people and of the people, and when success is more about what you know than who you know (Thank you, CB), that is when

life is beautiful!

Life is Beautiful, indeed :)

                                    

Long time, No Sea! :(

From the title, you will realise, I'm missing Chennai terribly. Especially now that every day of the week I'm baking to death in my room. Heat. So, that will explain the long Gap between my last post and this one, I'm just back in Chennai, and having a wonderful time.
So, there must have been a thousand instances in the past month when i thought "I should blog about this", five hundred when i actually thought it was a good idea, 250 when i reconsidered and rejected, 100 that made me think its gonna be popular, but none that could get me out of laziness induced stupor and get me blogging.This one was worth writing about though.
One of my friends recently faced a "Change-yourself-to-meet-the-situation" Vs "Stick-up-for-yourself-and -throw-it-off". She handled it real well, i thought. But doubts keep creeping into our minds after every important decision that we make. Especially if a lot is at stake.Let me give you a few instances.

Flashback: The first time ever i was On-a-hat-trick in a match. It was an Under-15 match, and i loved the tournament cuz they gave awesome prizes for Man of the match! I was faced with the choosing the right delivery to bowl. It was Traditional Off spinner Vs The quicker one. Considering the pros and cons, and the natural instinct of a young guy to go for the jugular, i bowled the faster one. He well-left it. And i immediately regretted the decision. The man of the match went to a guy in my team who hit six fours off a single over. I was 14, and that decision haunted me for a while. But then in the next match, I got wickets with the quicker one, and my doubts vanished.

On a more life changing scale, very recently  I was faced with a situation, common to all done-with-school- and-ready-to-enter-college people. Do I choose a college that has a prestigious brand name but is yet to prove itself  because its a new branch, or go for a college that is relatively good but definitely more fun? I went for the latter, and I kind of regretted my decision for a while, and was feeling ugly, but then, there came the twist in the tale. Like every life changing moment, it came in a flash.I made it to the cricket team, and got awesome friends. After that i never looked back, and life was absolute bliss. So my point is, whatever decision you take, stick with it till THE END , you are bound to see how right you were, sooner or later.It just takes that little event, or a little change in the way you look at things to show you that you are awesome and you were right all along. Life will throw twists and turns, like in any ODI that England plays, but face it and proudly say it the Reebok way,

I am what I am

                                            






                                  

                    

Time to get quirky!

I'm crazy. A lot of people will vouch for that. But I like keeping things simple. Of late, things are slightly beginning to get complicated. College life, i guess. But then, I decided to make things simple for once, atleast for my blog. So here's what you need to know to view my next 180.

1. Plurals can be spelt with a 'z' instead of an 's'. Like you can spell boys as 'Boyz'.
2. Vodafone ad experience. (Crazy huh? I told you!)
3. Ability to appreciate simplicity
4. sense of humour

What do you see in the picture?

Answer:

PS: Please comment even if you're gonna swear. In this world, Feedback is everything !Good day!

The more you ask, the more you get!

The title might sound like advice from a retired football manager to his successor regarding player management, but it could also refer to how persuasive you have to get to get the extra Vada from the mess server, for, the only good things in the Mess are always limited. Okay, getting serious, the title indeed has something do with the following 180. It was my first made-on-demand creation, and my friends think its the best creation of mine till now. I don't know if you will feel the same way, but i'll still show it to you anyway.Just goes to show, everybody does their best when they're pushed to do it. I should know that, given my schooling, footballing and cricketing background and experiences. If there was a place where i could write credits, there would be three entries : 

• Motivation and Idea: The person who got me to do this, during a phase in which I was beginning to become bored with my own ambigrams.
• Drawing Aid: MS Paint
• EXECUTION: Me :) 

The reason why the word is highlighted comes right below......

\m/ Execute \m/ 

The two little tykes that piss off Candace!

Well, how smart kids nowadays can be is best seen in Phineas and Ferb. Whenever theres a marathon of it, i have no shame in admitting , i watch it as eagerly as my brother. I simply love Dr.Heinz Doofenshmirtz too for hes the reason the show rocks harder. So heres my next showpiece.

Some way to spend a summer vacation, boys! Don't give a damn about Candace!