Doubting Thomas Finds Similarity in Blasts

I am not talking about Bangalore and Ahmedabad. This is between the blast in Mecca Masjid, Hyderabad last year and today’s blasts in Ahmedabad.

The first pictures to come on all the news channels were from TV9. I’ll get back to the Hyderabad part in a bit, but for a local Andhra Pradesh Channel to be the FIRST one to air pictures from Ahmedabad, means either a record response time or a larger than national channels/ firangi money backed channels’ ground network. I shall let you come up with your own options. 

Now the Mecca Masjid blast, a TV9 cameraman was IN the Mecca Masjid, supposedly shooting the praying public at the mosque, for a religious program to be coming on the channel, with him at a safe distance away from the blast point, and the camera pointed at exactly the same angle as the blast. Strange coincidence ha. 

In both the cases, I am sure TV9 made a quick buck with their feed being picked up by channels with larger reach. I cannot allude to  the Gokul Chat and Lumbini Park Blasts in Hyderabad as I did not see the tv coverage. 

I know it is a sick thing to come up with, but hey, with the kind of uncertainty we are living around in, there is a chance of anything to be right. 

As far blasts are concerned, Kolkata and Chennai are the big ones which are left untouched, till now. Touch wood or whatever.

Hope

Hope is expecting your dead loved one to move their head to your side, give a rise smile and waking up from sleep, scaring the shit out of you. But then again false hope can only do so much. Everything shatters back to reality once the mortal remains are set on fire and you leave the place.

Fevi Kwik

It is advisable that one uses the Fevi Kwik Rs.5 pack judiciously. I will now qualify one such aspect of care.

It so happens that it comes with a cap for re-use. You use it once and put on the cap. A few days later, you pick it up again to glue something else. The cap opens, but the hole at the top is covered up with the hardened glue. There are umpteen options available to make it usable. 

It so happens, that I chose to open it, by biting on the hardened glue. Spurted out did the remaining glue into my mouth, causing my tongue to stick with itself in folds , my tongue to stick to the teeth of the lower jaw, my teeth of the upper jaw to stick with the teeth of the lower jaw and my teeth of the lower jaw to inner side of my right cheek inside the mouth. 

Instant panic allowed me to untwine my tongue and detach it from the teeth followed by separation of the now seemingly conjoined jaws and then the mouth. After a good 10 minutes of scratching my teeth and tongue with a screw driver, I had my mouth in a better shape than before and was able to talk. There is still some of it stuck to my premolars, but that is left to be fought with another day.

So now you know the moral of this story. 

And by the way, this is not the worst I have put my mouth to trouble. A couple of years back, I gargled and mouthwashed with Dettol. Strong after taste you know. May be you can try. So strong, for the next 3 months, I could not taste anything I ate. True Story, Akshay, True Story.

History

I am obliterating about forty years of it right now.

ATM Is God

I go to an ATM to draw Rs.10,000. It is not my bank’s ATM, but is part of the network. I wait in the line. I get my turn. I swipe the card. I hit the PIN. I hit the amount, that is , Rs.10,000. It asks if I would like a printed receipt. I hit yes. The money comes out. I count it. It is Rs.3,000. The receipt comes out. It is for Rs.3000.

Since I need Rs.10,000 in total. I do the math. I swipe the card. again. I hit the amount, that is, Rs.7,000. It asks if I would like a printed receipt,again. I hit yes,again. The money comes out,again. I count it,again. It is Rs.3,000,again. The receipt comes out,again. It is for Rs.3,000 again.

Since I need Rs.10,000 in total. I do the math,again. I swipe the card. again. I hit the amount, that is, Rs.4,000. It asks if I would like a printed receipt,again. I hit yes,again. The money comes out,again. I count it,again. It is Rs.3,000,again. The receipt comes out,again. It is for Rs.3,000 again.

Since I need Rs.10,000 in total. I do the math,again. I swipe the card. again. I hit the amount, that is, Rs.1,000. It asks if I would like a printed receipt,again. I hit yes,again. The money comes out,again. I count it,again. It is Rs.3,000,again. The receipt comes out,again. It is for Rs.3,000 again.

So, instead of taking home Rs.10,000, I take Rs.12,000. Then I remembered what ATM means. Automated Teller Machines right. Do you know what they do? They TELL you how much money you need. So better listen to them

P.S. The said ATM is the machine to your right in the Syndicate Bank ATM outside Rail Nilayam, Secunderabad.

The Law Of Life

“There is no escape from loneliness and separation……..” I told my self often.

“Wife, child, brothers, parents, friends…..we come together only to go apart again. It is one continuous movement. They move away from us as we move away from them. The law of life can’t be avoided. The law comes into operation the moment we detach ourselves from our mother’s womb. All struggle and misery in life is due to our attempt to arrest this law or get away from it or in allowing ourselves to be hurt by it. The fact must be recognised. A profound unmitigated loneliness is the only truth of life. All else is false. My mother got away from her parents, my sisters from our house, I and my brother away from each other, my wife was torn away from me, my daughter is going away with my mother, my father has gone away from his father, my earliest friends – where are they? They scatter apart like the droplets of a water spray. The law of life. No sense in battling against it…”

Mushti Quote – Mushti Quote

Mushti Quote  has got it’s own blog now. It shall be operated by a bunch of seemingly like minded people. The basis of Mushti Quote is stealthily hid in the site’s about page. If you want to become a part of the gang, just shoot an e-mail to mushtiquote@gmail.com. 

Bewars

The are infinite number of advantages to being employed. But there is one advantage to being unemployed that you cannot get. 

All one has to say into a phone is, 

I am a student and…

and the lady at the other end who had started off with the great personal loan that she will offer, goes

Thank You Sir, 

and thus the conversation ends.

Beat that.

 

Conversations with Strangers

I have noticed that I have start being a bit more chatty with strangers that I meet these days. The following are some pieces of information I have learnt from rank strangers.

Our watchman complained about robbers trying to whisk away vehicles in the wee hours. This was the second attempt in our apartment building, so I went to talk to the sub-control set up near Padmarao Nagar Park. The constable there told that only two days back they had caught one such robber, late at night in the Srinivasa Nagar area. It seems that most of these vehicle robbers and bike-gangs stealing chains are youth from rich families, who are addicted to alcohol/drugs. Most of these thefts are impromptu, based on finances and the pocket money cycle. They steal bikes and sell them for any price they get, sometimes even Rs.1000-2000! Since there is no pattern to these thefts, the police have been largely ineffective in finding out who they are and thankless that their job is, the times that they have caught these offenders, the rich-politically aligned- i am all powerful- super-dads have come to their wards’ [1] rescue and all their police work has ended in them getting to see the offenders go scot-free. If only those super-dads had funded their son’s vagaries properly, some random unsuspecting persons would not have lost their vehicles/jewelry. Just when I was feeling sympathetic to the lone policeman’s cause, I was brought back to reality. The constable started asking questions regarding completing graduation in a single sitting. It seems he plans to become an Sub-Inspector soon and for that he ought to be a graduate. He was enquiring if I knew some place where one could just GET a degree. Then he went on to make his career-plans even more clear. The city , it seems, is not a nice place for constables like him from Godavari to start their SI career. A small time place would be perfect, especially with the election season coming. The small time people/complaints are too much of a bother for too little benefit, he says. All he would do is get SET with some local big-shot and that would be enough. Though one cannot generalize based on the above statements, but I am sure this kind of attitude is all pervasive.

 

There is this soup-vendor on the way from Big Street to Parthasarathy temple in Triplicane. More about the prasadams at Parthu’s here. The last time I went to the temple, I stopped by to have some tomato soup. One year on, I did the same again. This time around I started asking a few questions. Now this stall had some Self Employment Group’s name on it. The guy started getting a bit defensive after a few questions which I thought he deemed them to be invasive for his business. After telling him that I was a non-local and that I had been a customer a year back, he toned down,  freed up with his answers  and even added the ” the moment I saw you, I knew I had seen you before” line. Now for the soup-deal. It is a franchise system, where one has to pay Rs.15,000 upfront. Each day he buys 4 containers of 4 different flavours, worth Rs.200, with an additional transit burden of Rs.50. On an average, he gets about Rs.250-300 per day, setting shop at 5PM selling one cup at a retail price of Rs.10 and closing at around 9PM.  Though  the franchises of a particular company have their own half kilometre no in-fighting radius, there is competition from other company franchises. So for 4 hours a day, considering the worst-case estimates, Rs.6,000 is guaranteed per month. This, apart from the day-job of a driver at L&T. Done with the soup I moved on thinking that if one is ready to put in their life into any which thing, there are bound to be ways to earn a decent living anywhere.

 

Indian Railways has these trains called Rajdhani Express. Supposed to be one of the better services offered by them. Starting this May, Airtel has taken over the maintenance of these trains, as I learnt from a fellow passenger who does a weekly Bangalore – Hyderabad trip. I was told this but there was no sign of the change. As luck would have it, an old rake had come and the up-gradations to the facilities were yet to happen to this train. The maintenance team was still Airtel’s, but there wasn’t much difference when compared to the normal Sleeper class. The toilets were stinkier than normal if I might add. The food was okay, but the chai-paise seeking staff was not. More on the economics of tea later. Let’s hope that in due course, things will change in this regard in all classes, on all trains. 

I am God

or so I would like everyone to believe, since I am about to predict the future by making the following announcement.

This blog shall be updated at a feverish pace till the end of this month and then, after the fever, cease to exist for a long time.  At least a year I would like myself to believe. The reasons for this planned hiatus are pretty straight forward. Not burn-out, no way. I just want to concentrate on a few things which are lower down on the priorities-ladder, after climbing which, I shall get back to full fledged blogging like this again. Till then enjoy the flow.