English speaking Country

India is my beloved English speaking country. Whether people know the language or not, English is a fashionable language for Marketing and publicity. It is not that English was force fed during the British rule, but it was more of an evolutionary adaptation by people of India to cut across various cultures when Hindi is not enough for everyone. English has become so important for us that people of all economic background are fond of using it.

I am more fascinated by how the mass population who are not expected to be good in English, love to use it for tail stickers and small sign boards. You can find them in the back of the Autorickshaws, Trucks, Water tankers etc., I do not mean to undermine their efforts to express in the language that is alien to them, but I would rather go to the length of appreciating their work because, they have no fear and nothing to lose by making Typos and that they are doing something out of their comfort zone without worrying about some stupid blogger who might write a few lines or so from their slogans.

Here are some I enjoyed around Bangalore.

Cashmir pashmina shawls – Perhaps, he took only “Cash” for Kashmir Shawls.

Bretainiya Spread – We are honest. We will write it ourself even if we are wrong even though it may be there as Britannia on the Box in the shelf. (I hope I got the number of “t” and “n” correctly myself !)

Puncher Shop – You can go to this shop to get punched. Price may vary by preferred anatomical location.

Vegitabil Superfasht – Just to let you know that This is a super fast truck carrying fresh Vegetables, which can take its own sweet time on an inclined highway blocking your Audi or BMW in the back. Atleast it did so to my small car on the Krishnagiri highway.

Do not Falow me, I am sunami, Sound OK Horan – I had a hard time typing this one with Auto correct on!

And the latest I saw shows you clear cut steps on how to save your country.

“DEAR CUSTEMER USE PAKING BAG 2 ONLY CHILLY, BEANS, TOMATO, {S}ONION, BENDY, GRAPES & 2 SMALL ITEAM, PLEASE TRY TO AVOIDE PLASTIC BAG & SAVE COUNTRY”

Let me clarify what “BENDY” is. Bendy is Ladies finger (UK Version) a.k.a Okra (for my American friends). It is pronounced as Bhendi in Hindi. I have no clue what {S} is doing here!

So, what funny tail slogans did you see in India? Share it here!

Indian Companies, Raiders of the Lost Chair

Long Long ago there was a Chair in a busy IT office, brimming with people. There were just too many people in the building that there was limited room for breathing. They called it the boom, every single maintenance work was getting outsourced to India and the executives called it “Strategic Outsourcing”. No one even imagined the magnitude of growth and hence people were hired by putting fliers on the trees on the roads (Which were later cut by the corporation to build a Metro rail).

Coming back to the chair, this was one special kind of chair. It had a really soft cushion with adjustable height and nice tilting push back. The texture of the fabric was nice and smooth and one could really sink into it after lunch for a nice afternoon siesta, I mean a productive coding session. This chair was really unique, but the office was full of this unique chair. In fact there was one chair like this for every desk. But during boom time, people come in faster than buildings can rise and/or be leased. So people had to double up in cubes/desks/conference rooms/empty dining halls in cafeterias, lonely table by the restroom (which could seat atleast 3, with monitors positioned like the lions in our Indian Emblem on One Rupee coins and oh by the way the Emblem has 4 lions even though you can only see 3. You can’t see the 4th lion because it is a Tenderloin).

They wanted more and more people, but they didn’t have enough chairs. As a result, chairs were stolen from conference rooms which began to look like a big pool table room with no chairs. But that wasn’t sufficient, so chairs were put on Time sharing mode until new chairs slowly arrived and unbundled. In any case, the number of new people coming in out numbered the pace at which they could buy the chair because of all the process involved in procurement and number of signatures needed to buy one chair was equal to the number of people working in one floor.

During conferences with the onsite team, the offshore team usually 10 to 20 in number (or in some case 20 to 40) gang up on that one speaker phone in the conference room with no chair. The American on the other side speaks in his stylish English and the team standing offshore stare at each other, while the Team lead says yes, without knowing that he was answering a question, “Can you participate in a Rodeo contest next week?”.

Chairs were stolen, because people couldn’t understand a thing that the customer sitting onsite said without grounding their asses on the chairs. It didn’t matter whose chair it was, it was vandalised. You could go to the restroom for a 2 minute break but you will be back to no chair to sit on. Heck, you could even get up to connect that PS2 mouse port to the back of the Pentium II desktop, suffering loose contact, and you may sit down and fall to the ground, because that was enough interval time for your chair to be whisked away. “No Mercy”, they shouted and continued “Give us chairs or we will steal it!”. For sometime, it became the motto of the company, I mean not the company just the employees of the company. The shareholders had nice chairs at their home, except those poor souls who bought employee stock with no chair to sit on at work and with no idea that the bubble would burst in 2 years.

Chairs were shuffled, you never sat on the same chair once. So, the chairs were always showered with variable aroma of farts by multiple unrelated employees, whose only connection was eating the food served in the cafeteria.

There was only one way out of this misery. Onsite. People wanted to go onsite because they didn’t have a chair to sit on, while the management keeps taking surveys over survey trying to find the real reason behind people wanting to go onsite (which actually yielded “Disneyland” as the answer), they never knew that it was the chairs. Sometimes, even the employees didn’t know why they were frustrated and unhappy over their career. They kept insisting it was their career, but no it was just their carrier, the chair! All they needed was a chair that can be raised and not a raise.

But then the bubble burst. Everything slowed down. New buildings were leased, unfortunately when people were laid off or when the CEO gets involved in a huge conspiracy, and now there is more space than people. There are more chairs now than people. It can be so unpredictable that between the time interval that the chair is adjusted the person would be sent home. The companies were cutting costs by cutting projects. They were laying off the Developers and restructuring the management during touch economical conditions. It was quite logical. With no work to do, they had to lay off Developers because they were the only ones who did the actual work. Management is quite essential to the company because they had to run the company and they were the only ones who had the power to lay off, so unless every single developer was laid off there was no way that the management could be laid off. Besides it is cheaper to lay off a Developer when you think about the severance package that needs to be given in millions for an executive and in thousands for the ordinary Developer. It all makes sense.

But the employees are now happy because they have more chairs. They can sit on one chair everyday and it will still be enough for the whole year. Heck, they can now fill every chair with the sweet aroma of the fart every single day and not having to sit on the same chair again.

The chairs got back at their theives. They finally got their justice, but they still get farted on.

Jet Lag

Jet lag is a phenomenon where a person gets from a place of one Timezone to a place of another timezone in a high speed jet, while sitting his ass off and doing nothing nothing but sleeping, eating and watching a Tiny monitor. Obviously because of the huge difference between the speed of the jet and the speed of the person’s rear, there is a Jet lag. (Note: Jet Lag is not the reason for Flight delays and Jet Lag has nothing to do with Jet airways or Jet Lite).

CODE LAG

A major section of Software Engineers travelling from US to India seem to sleep well during nights without the supposed Jet lag. This is due to the fact that they sleep at work staring at the computer. So if you suffer from lack of sleep due to Jet lag, just imagine yourself looking at millions of lines of C++ or Java code or just imagine looking at a Powerpoint presentation from your HR Department. These things knock you out immediately. I call this Code Lag.

JETTY LAG

While packing, always remember where you packed your underwear. Write it down somewhere or just mark the suitcase. You can also try to keep your underwear in the same suitcase where you carry your expensive new electronic item like LCD TV. The Indian Customs department will do the rest to mark it with a huge ugly cross mark with a chalk piece. If you forget where you packed your underwear then you may have to spend a day inside out in the old underwear, until you find fresh ones or buy new ones. I call this Jetty Lag (Originally coined by Chutneycase in a different context involving super models and what they wear and don’t wear).

SHIT LAG

Shit may come and Shit may go, but Bathroom remains forever.

So obviously whenever you get bowel movement, you just go to the bathroom. If your bowel movement had to happen only in the morning then your bathroom will disappear for the rest of the day and reappear only the following morning.

Since Jet lag confuses your whole body, it can also confuse your internal drainage system. Usually you will be in a fit, do I go before dinner or right after dinner. Do I have enough urge before dinner? Should I eat more to get the push. This my friend, I like to call Shit Lag.

Note 1: Bathrooms are not of standard shape and size in India. So if you are going to be in a place unfamiliar to you, walk to the bathroom and take a look. Depending on what you see there, control what you eat (Otherwise, be ready to sit in an awkward position in the Autorickshaw, till you reach familiar surroundings). No one knows when shit happens!

Note 2: If you see a variation in the speed of shit release (either an increase or a decrease) you are either having diarrhea or constipation and it has nothing to do with Jet lag or the speed of your rear in the Jet.

FUTILE ATTEMPTS

The following attempts will not cure Jet Lag:

1. Running in the airplane as fast as the Jet. I mean if you do this, you will practically knock over the crew selling expensive but duty free stuff, pass through the business class, break open the cockpit door and jump out of the airplane through the front glass window. Don’t try this, even at home.

2. If you are not a Software Engineer, obviously it is difficult for you to imagine millions of lines of code. You can try to imagine yourself as an Indian Govt. servant working as a Head clerk at the Treasury, sipping single tea while staring at a stack of dusty files. Sleep will come automatically.

3. Do not attempt to wear 2 underwears, to avoid forgetting where you packed. This will backfire by creating extra space in your suitcase for your wife to carry some more stuff that may increase the weight of the suitcase by 0.5 Kg, even though your underwear weighs only 0.05 kg.

4. Do not attempt to predict the time of the bowel movement. It is as uncertain as the electron in a Heisenberg uncertainty principle. If you predict a time and stay in your familiar place, it won’t come. If you predict the place where you will feel the movement, it won’t be at the right time. You have to go with the flow, I mean literally.

Helping undecided voters

The US elections are getting very close but it is a known fact that there would still be undecided voters who cannot make up their mind. It is not like they have 10 choices to pick from, they only have 2 unlike India where we have diverse number of political parties (who form coalition and end up becoming just 2 to pick from, but that is another story). I am not sure what makes them difficult to pick:

1. Not enough choices?

2. Fear of screwing up by electing the wrong person?

3. A One time chance to show who has the real power?

4. No holiday on election day?

Whatever the reason may be, the fact is one shouldn’t escape from the voting responsibility. So I went ahead and asked the candidates themselves and couple of related others, to provide some advice for the undecided voters and this is what they said:

So there it is, Obama and McCain projected their key campaign words.

I went on to conduct an imaginary poll to see which of the above boxes had the most effect on the undecided voters. I was hoping that the box 3 would have the most effect but surprisingly box 4 won by a huge margin. I guess people badly need new underwear (In the movie Slacker Uprising, Michael Moore lures some of the college students to vote by giving them free packs of underwear, during one of the college campus visit). Upon further investigation I found that half of those voters were from India, where politicians are known to give freebies in exchange for votes. Relax guys, you will get your chance on freebies like Free Color TV and Free bag of Rice next year.

Who do you think will be the next U.S. President?

None of the above mentioned should be considered seriously, but your Vote has to be! Good Luck America!

Picture Courtesy (Via Google Images):

Obama – http://www.britannica.com

McCain – http://im.about.com

Bush, Moore- http://weblogs.newsday.com

Marathon Marriages

Law of Marathon Marriages:

1. When there are cousins and relatives who are in the same age range chances are they will not get married in the same year, unless you plan a Vacation to India during that time.

2. The net amount of marital force is calculated by the formula = Number of vacation days multiplied by Number of Marriages.

3. For every Marriage happening in a Marriage hall in Madurai, there will be a Balloon seller standing opposite to the hall.

Marriages are made in heaven goes the old saying. But when Marriages happen in quick succession and especially if you are supposed to attend each and every one of them right from the time you land, it becomes drastically deviated from being heaven. I wouldn’t call it hell though as I loved the experience and the food. Well Ok, mostly the food!

The last vacation to India, We had close to 25 days to spend in Madurai but most of the days were spent in attending marriages and functions. We had to attend a marriage function right on the day we were landing in Madurai and I totally wished I had the following conversation with the Air hostess of the delayed Air Deccan flight from Chennai to Madurai.

… IMAGINARY CONVERSATION BEGINS

Me: Excuse me, Artificially-looking-beautiful-due-to-heavy-makeup Air Hostess! I am getting late for my cousin’s marriage. Can you please ask the captain to drop me by the marriage hall.

Air Hostess: Sure, why not! Whatever the customer says, Customer is first.

(She moves towards the cockpit)

Me: While you are there can you ask him to not wiggle the airplane, it feels funny! and ask him to drive faster, I just saw a 90 year old passing us in his bicycle in mid air! and Please go in and change the color of your uniform, your bright red color dress is blinding me!

(She comes back from the cockpit.)

Air Hostess: The Captain said you must be crazy. There is only one runway in Madurai airport, so if we take that runway and put it near the Marriage hall, where your Cousin’s marriage is going on then there will be no runway in the airport.

… IMAGINARY CONVERSATION ENDS

After we arrived home we were immediately transported to the cousin’s marriage. We were hardly dressed for the occasion and by the time we went there the marriage was over, but we were about on time for the Photo Session and Lunch. I enjoyed the food so much that I shamelessly had extra helpings of Veg Briyani when everyone had almost reached the end of the game eating their curd rice. Such was the start of the Vacation of Marathon Marriages.

The procedure to attend a marriage function after you are married is drastically different from attending one when you are bachelor. The itinerary between your home and the marriage hall is usually intersected by a visit to the in laws, especially if the marriage is happening on your in laws side.

So, The next day we got ready and went to my in-laws house from where we were supposed to go to another marriage hall for attending another cousin’s marriage.To avoid myself explaining the relationship (which I am terrible at) I am just going use the phrase “Another Cousin” for every Cousin. My wife had to get dressed for the occasion at her place, as the materials needed were (in)conveniently at her place.

As I entered the in laws house, I couldn’t help notice my Father in Law sitting on the sofa wearing a Munda Banian and a Sangu Mark Lungi. He was sitting there silently channel surfing with the TV remote control. Here I am completely dressed and ready for the function and he was lounging in the couch. So I had to ask:

Me: “Aren’t you getting ready to go FIL? We have to be there in 30 minutes.”

FIL: “Relax, Your mother in law has just now got in to get ready. Please sit down now, why don’t you have Bovonto and watch some TV for a while”

And so I made up my mind and sat down on the couch watching TV with him. In few minutes I was involuntarily getting restless of the fact that the time was approaching, while the daughter merrily played with her toys and FIL still in his relaxed at-home costume watching TV. Just then, my Wife and MIL came out of the room in their Saree.

Me: Great, we are ready now. FIL, I think you should get ready now and we should go.

FIL: Relax, They just got dressed. They have to wear Jewels now.

Me: But, we have to be there in 5 minutes. We will be disrespecting them if we go late. ( Which I actually meant to say – “We gotta go, what if the food gets over? I want to eat the main lunch, not the Its-over-so-let’s-make-up-something-quick lunch”)

FIL goes back to his TV watching. I now wanted to beat the restlessness and so carried myself to the computer room and played a few games for a while. Apparently it seems it takes the same time for a Woman to wear Jewels as wearing the Saree and I am scientifically unable to explain this phenomenon. So we were obviously getting delayed. I finally realized it doesn’t matter how restless I am, things will happen at its own pace, I had to be patient, a self realization moment.

The Jewels were on and I finally heaved a relieving sigh and got up from the computer. But FIL is unbelievable as his relaxation didn’t end even after that. I badly needed a magic wand to wave at him and get him dressed but his reply was “There is always the last touch up!” and he was right. As they were just about to finish on their last minute touch up, the FIL man went in and came out in his dress in 1 minute. He simply put a Well disciplined McClaren Formula one Pit Crew to shame.

But I learnt something that day. I learnt to be patient, I learnt to endure under circumstances and keep myself cool. I learnt that it doesn’t matter if you get restless, you just sit down, relax and play along. When we got there we were not as late as we thought. Everything was fine and I was able to have my moment of eating a delicious meal.

20 out of 25 days of Waking up early, getting ready and going through the waiting process of the ladies getting ready, attending the function, smiling at people, laughing at jokes, cracking intelligent jokes and receiving blank stares, cracking dumb jokes and setting the entire hall in laughter and so on it went. We had a fun time and when it was all over, emptiness returned and we were back to our normal life.

When we work on things, we fail to see the bigger picture. We only see how difficult the task at hand is, we forget that we have worked tougher tasks before or there are people who have worked tougher tasks before. If you learn to see the things in that perspective, there will never be a moment of frustration. You will be able to handle and solve any problem in your life. I will leave you with a Haiku:

See not a Problem

as a Hurdle, but see it

as a task to solve!

What I mean is if you are going to be late for a Marriage don’t be so late to miss the lunch!

Road Trip Facts

Road trip can be fun, but:

1. The total time taken for reaching the destination is calculated with the formula:

Total Time = X + iY

Where X is the estimate of time duration provided by Google Maps.

Y is the Total Rest stop time that we are planning to take.

i is the Number of Insects that come and hit your car Windshield to commit suicide.

2. Murphy’s Law of Road Trip states that “If it is your turn to drive the car, and if a freeway can be closed then it will be closed and you will have to follow the Detour for some unknown amount of time”. During this condition, following the GPS will lead to going round and round the same place like a daredevil stuntman in a cage. If you are yet to have lunch at this point, you will feel like a highly charged particle going around the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), not that I have any experience of going through it or knowing how it will be.

3. Freeways are built by human beings and is not a direct creation of God. Hence, freeways are subject to Natural damage and will need to be worked upon once a while. So if you are not surprised at Road Construction signs then you are an Atheist, Otherwise it may be your first road trip, just make sure you don’t fall behind a truck. If you fall behind a truck don’t curse God if you are an Atheist. If you don’t understand this then you will scream “Oh my God!” whenever you enter a Road Construction zone and fall behind a Truck that won’t budge a single mile per hour beyond the posted speed limit.

4. If you miss an exit the GPS lady will automatically adjust to your fallacy, recalculate and provide you with a new route automatically. This does not mean in any way that the GPS lady is in love with you or attracted to you or having wet dreams about you. But the problem is, you will fall in love with this lady and you will be obsessed with touching her once a while to find out the route, next rest stop exit, restaurants etc.

5. You will love to compare the number of miles you drive with the distance in India. What you can cover here in 4 hours will need about 8 hours in India. So as we drove 600 miles one way during the trip we had travelled from Madurai to Chennai (444 Kms or 276 miles, which takes about 8 to 9 hours by train or 10 hours by road), had a little business meeting and then drove back from Chennai to Madurai all on the same day. It is fun to do this comparison.

6. Did I say the GPS lady is not in love with you and certainly not having wet dreams about you? Yeah, don’t even have second thoughts even if you are desperate.

7. Law of Road Trip Inertia: When you reach the destination, come to a complete stop and retire for the night, you will still be feeling that you are in the freeway. Your dreams during the night will involve rectangular sign boards of different colors and shapes, speed limit signs, white dotted lines and the Voice of the GPS lady (But no, the GPS lady isn’t going to dream about you)

8. Your back will hurt. Resistance is futile. If you manage to sit in a yogic posture in an attempt to minimize your back ache, your neck will hurt. If you try to nullify your neck pain by bending down slightly, the pressure will be passed down to your rear. In any case, atleast one part of your body will ache and you will know more about it during the night at the motel.

9. The big circular red sign with a slash in the middle that comes up on the GPS screen when it becomes horizontal doesn’t indicate that you have to keep your coke can perfectly aligning with that sign. Now, this is a kind of wet dream that the GPS doesn’t want to have.

10. The probability that a Super 8 motel franchise is run by a desi is 1 billion to 1. So if you end up in a Motel run by a Gujarati Desi fellow, please do not hesitate to ask him for directions to the Ganesha Temple. He will be much more accurate than the GPS lady by 18 miles. Do not be afraid that the GPS lady will break up with you, remember she wasn’t loving you in the first place.

11. It is easier to pass Trucks when they are not there. Trucks are like Auto Rickshaws in India. You never know about their driving style. The time between beginning to pass the truck, driving a safe distance ahead of them and changing the lane back to the right lane is slightly short of 25 blight years, where 1 blight year = 1 blinking light from your Indicator.

12. For every 30 miles on a given freeway there will be an Indian restaurant named Tandoor. How else when you drive on a freeway with nothing but mountains and forest on either side with SUVs threatening to pass you anytime and Road construction sign popping up randomly between kids getting restless in the back seat, the GPS lady shows up with Tandoor Restaurant in Clarksville, TN coming up in the next 27 miles? It is either a freaking coincidence or there is an Indian Restaurant named Tandoor in every 30 miles of a Freeway. I am fairly comfortable believing in the latter.

Wise people used to say “The Journey is the Reward”. Road Trip has a lot in store for you as a Reward. In spite of all the buts you will love it because Road Trip to me symbolizes freedom.

Road trip is always fun.

PS: For the last time, GPS lady definitlely is not in love with you, now get over it.

One Act Play: Techno Wizards of Time

Characters:

Dinesh – Yours Truly.

Dinesh’s Wife.

Marconi – The guy who invented Radio.

J.L Baird – The one who gave us TV.

Time: Late evening on a Summer day.

Place: Dinesh’s Apartment.

It was a relaxing evening, I sipped a cup of tea and parked myself on the couch with Remote control on one hand. I was browsing through the TV channels, finishing up my tea with noises of daughter crashing items in dishwasher and wife asking me to take her away from there.

Suddenly, a bolt of lightning struck outside the apartment and two men appeared. The men walked the corridor and disappeared into the entrance as I was watching them from my patio door. Within 2 seconds I heard a knock at my door. A look at the peep hole showed those two men standing outside with one man restlessly standing. I opened the door for them:

Me: “Hi, Can I help you”

Restless man: “Can I use your restroom please? very urgent”

Another man: “Hi, I am Baird, Inventor of Television and he is Marconi Inventor of Radio.”

Me: “Yeah right!”

(TV Background: In a startling turn around of events, Steve Wozniak, the Co Founder of Apple inc, disappeared from his home. He is unreachable on his cell phone and no one knows where he is. He seems to be missing)

Marconi: “Please believe us, I need to pee. Here is a 100 dollars!”

I push the money away and politely ask him to enter in to use the Restroom.

Me: “So How did you guys get here?” I asked Baird.

Baird: “Oh, Marconi came to my home and we hopped in this time machine that he brought and We came straight to your home, since you were the chosen one.”

Baird was pointing me to a Hummer that was parked in front of the building.

Me: “That’s a Hummer!”

Marconi walks out of the restroom as I exclaim that.

Marconi: “I know, It was modified into a time machine by a great computer engineer.”

I was about to ask who was that great computer engineer but Baird bends down and exclaims at my TV.

Baird: “So this is a high definition TV? This looks very sharp. I am glad my concept has come a long way. This is so slim, and whoa that’s a lot of wires in the back”

Me: “Actually there better and bigger TVs, this is just a small one 26 inch, middle of the line”

Marconi interrupts Baird’s curiosity.

Marconi: “We just wanted to travel in time and see how things have advanced. Do you listen to Radio?”

Me: “Not much. I used to, but now I have a huge collection of Music library, so I don’t need a radio. Besides, they just talk too much on the radio before playing any sensible song. I listen to online radio though!”

Baird is still looking around my TV set and admiring the picture quality.

Marconi: “Online Radio? What is that?”

Me: “You see I come from India and the language from where I come from is Tamil. I like to keep tab of a few online Tamil Radios and listen to them once a while. They play random songs without any commercial interruptions.”

Marconi: “How do you listen to it?”

Me: “Well it’s easy really. I go to the site where I have the internet link for the radio and download a little pls file. Usually they call it launch.pls. A Pls file is a continuously streaming playlist file. I then add that file to iTunes on my computer. iTunes is a easy to use Media Juke box. iTunes then syncs the file to my Apple TV in the living room and voila, I can now listen to Internet Radio on my TV”

Marconi: “Radio on TV sounds very interesting! Baird, We are now put together, did you see!”

Baird rises from his squat position, as he finishes up examining the TV.

Baird: “I am thrilled to hear this. My friend Marconi, I can’t believe how times have changed and how people are putting these things to use in various ways.” he turns towards me as he shakes hands with Marconi and pats his shoulder, “So, what radio stations do you listen to?”

Me: “Oh, I love Geethams. They play classic Tamil Ilayaraja songs all day interluded with some new numbers here and there. They are very focused on playing melodious songs, a good day-starter and night-put-to-sleeper.

I like Jore FM a bit, because they play with a request queue and it is interesting to see what people request.

Mudhal FM and Nila FM are also good and play nice songs. Even though I have a lot of songs in my library, Once a while I like to enjoy the randomness and the sense of not knowing what is going to play next. It is exciting and Fun to listen to, especially that I can sit in my living room and do it.”

Marconi: “This is so fun to talk about. I love what you are doing and we are glad that our inventions have been put to great use. We must now take leave. Thank you for your time!”

Marconi and Baird slowly walk towards the door and open it, I stop them for a question.

Me: “Can I ask you who invented your time machine?”

Marconi: “One of the greatest Computer Engineer of your times, Mr. Steven Wozniak, Co founder of Apple Inc. He came to my house a few days back and wanted to tinker with my Radio Invention and in return I got to travel in his time machine into the future! I picked up Baird on the way”

My mouth was open but unable to utter a word in bewilderment. Marconi and Baird looked at me with a smile and waved good bye. I was still trying to come out of bewilderment and said, “Goodbye to you both, It was nice meeting you”

Marconi & Baird: “Nice meeting you too, and oh what is your name?”

Me: “Dinesh!”

Marconi and Baird kept walking away in the pavement towards their time machine.

Marconi: “What? I can’t hear your name”

There was a roaring sound in the background and I was shouting my name as Diiinnnneessshhh. Marconi and Baird hopped onto the Hummer and disappeared in a flash of light towards the sky. I didn’t know if they got my name, but I am now hearing someone yelling my name at me. Then came a huge shake of my shoulders followed by another yelling Diiinnnesssshhhhh.

It was my wife: “You dozed off after you had the tea. Were you dreaming?”

Me (Yawning): “I guess. I dreamed like Mungerilal from Mungerilal ke Haseen Sapne!”

Wife: “You are weird, come down now, dinner is ready!”

We picked our plates and started having dinner as we alternatively fed our daughter from our plates with the music of Ilayaraja from Geetham Radio softly playing in the Background.

It is amazing to see how technology has grown over the years. A Haiku for this realization:

Sound of Radio,

Picture in Television,

Time caused their fusion!

PS: The Haiku that I wrote before are not really Haikus. Haiku is supposed to have 5-7-5 syllables structure and I was doing 3-5-3 for some reason. So it was just Hai, not Haiku. I apologize for this mistake, from now on I will have it in the proper format.

PPS: This is an arbitrarily weird attempt at showing that one can listen to Internet Radio on your TV using Apple TV. Of course I could have simply outlined the steps like a tech blog, but since this was a personal blog I spiced it up by bringing Marconi, Baird, asked Steve Woz to convert a Hummer into Time Machine and reminded myself of the old Doordarshan serial Mungerilal ke Haseen Sapne. I had fun writing this and I hope you enjoyed reading it

61 Years of Independent India

August 15th, We as Indians Celebrate 61 Years of Freedom but

- We still take ages to make some decisions.

- We still resort to Bandhs to protest, halting everyday affairs, hurting traffic and folks on emergency.

- We still have fights over territory.

- We are still fond of reporting a news about an Indian in a foreign country, no matter what significance or insignificance the event holds.

- We have won the olympics Gold, but the media goes Ga Ga about it in a different way. I am really proud that we won the Gold and I can only congratulate the person Abhinav Bindra for all his work (and only his work). I do not know if the country (Admin authorities, Sports ministry and People like me) were in anyway congratulatable on Abhinav’s acheivement, but still congratulations on just being there doing whatever you were doing (or not doing). So why don’t we win more gold? Here is a straight answer.

With all this going on we have one reason to celebrate. 61 years later we as a country have come a long way as an Independent Country. From Democracy to Green Revolution to White Revolution to Cricket World cup to Olympic Gold Medal to the Modern IT Revolution we have all reasons to be proud as Indians. For the Celebration of the spirit of the nation that is India and the Oneness, here is to my motherland, Happy Independence Day.

Picture Courtesy: http://www.iconspedia.com

On this day, I would like to share my old July 4th Fireworks post to throw in a blogger style celebration of Indian Independence.

Also, Here is an old short story of mine named The Library from the archive. It is a story occuring during pre-independent India and then ending with a Modern day acheivement. I hope you will enjoy.

Happy Independence day, Jai Hind!

iPhone 3G Release date for India

According to Technews the iPhone release date for India will be August 22nd. (See list of countries at TUAW).

Technews says that the gadget will be priced at around Rs. 20,000 (Approx USD 500). This is not a bad price at all in India, in fact it is very competitive in my opinion. I remember 5 years back spending Rs. 10,000 on a Color Screen Sony Ericsson phone (Yes, Color screen was the latest technology during that time). I used to play Alien Ship on that phone so madly.

Anyway, Rs. 10,000 for a color screen phone back then and Rs. 20,000 for the iPhone now is a good deal. I have heard a lot through my friends that people in India spend in the order of 35 to 40K Rupees for phones, so considering that iPhone will actually be a midrange priced, if at all it is priced at Rs. 20,000. If you have any opinions on this, Please feel free to share it with me.

To count down the days to the release of iPhone in India I have 2 interesting posts for you from my archive:

iPhone’s effect in India

iPhone Line (Queues) in India

Update: It seems iPhone 3G is heard to cost a freaking 30 grand rupees in India. I am not sure how many would be interested in it if it is priced this high, given that 3G doesn’t exist in India.

Mini Travelogue: Statue of Liberty

If there is one place in New York City that would be called as an Important monument to visit, it is the Liberty Island that houses the Statue of Liberty. I guess this is a known fact universally, which was why the place was heavily crowded on the day we visited. I guess it is crowded most of the days. The Ferry ride to the Island was enjoyable, but the ferry itself could have been a little better. There were limited seats and on the way back, most of the folks ended up riding in standing.

Lady Liberty was green and beautiful just as the way you would have seen in tons of Hollywood movies that picturise a drowning or destroying Manhattan. Why is she green? There is a scientific explanation involving Copper, Oxygen and the reaction between those two called Oxidation. Read that in the picture below:

If this was India, Lady Liberty would have been a Goddess. She would be wearing flower Garlands and Priests would be performing Poojas and Pudavai Sathals (Dressing with Saree). There would have been people from the nearby village coming down in their bullock cart and cook Pongal and vettufy Kada (Cutting Goat). Ladies with yellow sarees will be found doing Angapradhakshanams (rolling over on the floor, around Lady Liberty). There will be a long line for receiving “Koozh” (a traditional energy drink like Kool-Aid).

But since this was not India, Lady Liberty was simply a statue symbolizing Liberty. She was not decorated and there were no people offering any kind of services. There was no pongal and Kada, but only Pizza and Burgers in the Cafeteria. There were no ladies with yellow sarees performing Angapradakshanams but there were ladies and gents performing unique stunts with their cameras to get the perfect picture of Lady Liberty. There was no long line for Koozh, but there was a long line at the Ice Cream parlour.

Lady Liberty deserves more than just a tourist’s visit.

She deserves respect for the grandeur and beauty that she is clad in, She deserves to be watched by Poets to compose Poems about her, She deserves to be watched by Artists to paint her in all her elegance.

She definitely doesn’t deserve a common blogger like me writing a mediocre mini travelogue about her, but here it is, a tribute from a common blogger to one of the most artistic architectural efforts of Mankind, The Statue of Liberty.

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