Bellary..

Written in Feb 2000

Dust arousing from the black soil in the dry and uneven land without a tinge of greenery, with most of the existing veteran trees making their livelihood without leaves, special thanks to Tipu’s large fort radiating Sun's heat to its surroundings impartially, resulting in the re-arrangement of schools colleges time-tables after successfully bypassing the continuous focus from the Corona's rays; while some Medico guys with their white cream colored aprons that had not smelled a detergent over a week, sipping a burning cigarette, along with the hostelite medico gals, who on the other hand respecting the other sex's masculine ability and the fluency of English slang, with 10 and a half kg "Gray's Anatomy" book in their soft hands, sucking Pepsi outside the decade old canteen till the lab attendant informs them the arrival of Professor of the next session, who is normally paid much more than the peanuts for prompting them the type of slides the students were provided by the examiner in the Pathology lab,.......etc...etc....etc.; Yes! Summer has just landed Bellary when I visited last month, after marking the end of the previous season, the "Extreme Summer". It's said that Bellary has only 2 seasons...Summer and extreme summer!!

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When Sonia and Sushma contested against each other sometime back it was a month long feast for Journalists and Cartoonists of different zones, I had written something that time.....

This is the first time in my life time that I felt my self to say that I belong to Bellary, the place where I spent the 18 years of my life. All of a sudden that neglected place has appeared in the International map. I could never understand the reason why that place always took back seat right from the beginning. (Congress's life long rule?? huh). One of the reasons why I couldn’t tune to the frequency of this place was due to my native.. I had always identified myself to be from Udupi as my parents hailed from that place. 15 years back or so, when I had visited Bangalore and received the state level prize from the then Governor of Karnataka A.N.Banerjee, many gathered asked me from which place I was from and when I replied, they just raised their eye-brows “Really??? Bellary is it…??” However, the moment I revealed my native, they remarked “Ohh.. that’s the reason!!!”

Now it’s looking as if this place has totally vanished from the maps of India, Sonia Sushma clash has brought her back into the political domain. I, at least hope that whoever comes into power should do some good for her.

Wishing her (bellary) all the best..
Vishwesh

>>>>>>>>>>>

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But this time, my visit was totally different! Lot many things got changed since the last elections, especially after S.M.Krishna’s announcement of 3300 Crore sanctioned to her on behalf of Sonia Gandhi! Roads were all widened and better compared to the ones they used to have! No more potholes… More and more constructive programs happening in the city, water supply has improved with people no longer have to wait for days for a bowl of drinking water,, Almost stopped grumbling the poor transportation, high corruption and poor public development programs. I just could not believe my eyes, thought I, hope every area follows this model city. When I was still continuing to appreciate this magical make over just, felt like rays of the tube light started falling on my closed eyes...soon followed by Chiranjeevi starred M.M.Keeravani’s “Bangaara kodi petta” song started knocking my ears overlapped by a terrible voice screaming “Yashwanthpur ree...Yashwanthpur ree...” Diwakar travels hadn't updated his Telugu movie collections beyond 'Gharana Mogadu' and 'Muta Mesthri" for years. When I fully woke up, I was near Navrang theatre, a few kms from the ever crowded Bangalore Majestic Bus stand. Well..Was that a dream? What ever it is, a good dream..I didn't care much … Cleared the layer accumulated on my oily epithelium face, pulled my bag from the rack and started another day in Bangalore!

Divorse before marriage

Written in June 1999

In Politics, whenever we find the dissidents arising even before the formation of a ruling party, I often recall my friend's brother Ashwin's incident "DIVORSE BEFORE MARRIAGE" that happened long back.

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Ashwin, not so tall, not so handsome, quite intelligent, after completing his MBA from XLRI
Jhamshedpur, joined as a Manager in Cococola company in Delhi and started looking out for a bride. Earning five digit salary with a company provided car and quarters, was his major asset. Along with his parents, sister and a mediator one fine morning they left for Basaveswarnagar in Bangalore where Arathi lived in a small 2 bedroom newly constructed apartment. As mediator knew their place, they could get into the right place, right time. Festive atmosphere was all spread at Arathi's place. This was the first ever experience of this kind for the young and simple girl...Also this was Ashwin's first Voyage, which created more tense than the campus interviews he faced. Arathi's house was already filled with their close relatives of around 15 to witness the celebration, welcoming the guests with a lot of respect and home made Mangalore Bajji and Bisibele bath. A few minutes later arrived our heroin, who wore a purple colored saree with a matching blouse with a broach tied to dupatta, with a similar colored rhombus shaped bindi. Infact nobody could have realised that she had fought with her mother that she won't wear the saree, but a simple salwar kameez. An eye on the dress that disclosed her womenly possessed assets and an inhale of her smell was quite sufficient for him to get a kick. He strictly followed all the lessions and instructions that his sister taught. When the two were asked to have a chat, he didn't want to loose a moment of having her close up..Making his eye contact with hers, said "You look gorgeous!!" and inagurated the talk. Her sunken head nodded with a gentle complimentary smile and said Thanks. She didn't expect he would hit a boundary on the
very first ball of the innings. Now it was all again his turn.., "well..you see..I'm a quite reserved
person and have not talked to girls much since my school days.."; she then slowly raised her head. " ...my hobbies include playing cricket, ofcourse once upon a time, reading books and listening music...I heard you have passed junior exams in some classical music..but I don't understand A,B,C of it! I just do listen to Pankaj Udhas's ghazals sometimes,hmmm...old Kishore kumar's songs and that's it..". When she was still occupied by silence, he added again, "may I know yours?" "...I don't know how I passed the music exam..infact my mom had interest, she sings too..I listen to Hindi movie songs..and yeah...I have heard many ghazals..I watch a lot of movies..but I don't like reading..that's why I did my B.A; Perhaps even if I'm left alone in Siberia with a book, I may hardly opt for it!!" and giggled. He hardly heard anything, but was just looking at her dark and attractive eyes, color of the skin, her teeth, lips that had sticked with a gently applied violestish lipstick, her soft hair that had slept over her straight sticken back.., but he still managed to giggle. He talked little things about his parents, asked about her parents, and finally asked "Do you like me?" She just lifted her face and conveyed the message that he was longing for. His heart plunged out to express his love for her, but his reserved mouth interrupted and postponed it to the next time..


* * * * * * * * * * * *

Per his promise, 2 days later he called her from his Uncle's house in Udupi, "Hello....it's me..."
"Hello..???" from the other side.
"Didn't you recognise me?" he querried her.
"Ofcourse..I do..You sound different; I didnt expect you would call me..It's like hearing you after a long time.. " "Same feeling to me..the every hour, the every minute and the every second, I think of you and sirf you".
"Yes..Mr.Shayarji..even I waited for your call so desperately.."
"That's my pleasure...one of the best days of my life..since 2 nights, I could not sleep you know?
and all the time, your picture that has mesmerised me had blocked my eyes.."
Listening to his sweat words, she giggled and he enjoyed the every second of it.
"your voice is just great...I love your voice...and infact.." continued he, with full determination
this time, "..and infact.." said finally "..I,..I love you..."
"Even me too.." cooly she said and giggled and he gulped every bit of it for the cost of just an STD
call. "When shall we meet again..?" he asked.
"See..Ravi, ever since you have moved out of Bangalore, it's become quite difficult.. It's been a while we have met.. I have your picure, otherwise I would have forgotten your face by now,, haha... my appa has already started looking out for a guy and something needs to be done soon....Hello..Hello..."

Beep..Beep...beep..beep..

"Ufff...No!!!!!!See akka, once again cut!! these stupid telephone lines!.. Ravi had called me after a
long time you know and I was telling him about appa's plans..."

"Well,,Thank God..he will try sometime later then and I won't disturb you haha.. Atleast I can now wait for my Ashwin's call that he had promised me", Arathi took a deep breath and started waiting for her fiance's call which never turned up again..Arathi never received call from Ashwin, but after a day or two, her father received a call from the mediator only to inform them of another guy for her.."

Immigrants....

Written in Dec 2000

Sitting in the lobby floor, peeping out of the plain glass window I was waiting for my carpool friend to join me...The longest river of the world, Mississippi was punctually flowing across the other side of our office window. Barges were as usual doing their jobs utilizing her smooth flow. Men and women of all ages with T-Shirt/short combination were releasing the sweat and the Mitochondrian cells by jogging even in the bone chilling wind, when their fellow cyclists and skaters utilized that pathway to move parallel to the catchment area of the river. Memphians were all set for boiling Turkeys apart from a healthy honey baked ham for the next day's Thanksgiving celebration of year 2000!! City of Memphis looked awesome especially after the arrival of fall - waiting for the white christmas, when the whole downtown getting illuminated, with all kinds of Thanksgiving SALE on most of the shops; the interstate highway I-40 that connects east to west, also a tangent to some parts of Tennessee looked even more busier with the automotives engaging themselves to rule the traffic..This was also a high time for many Desis to design their long weekends traveling the sunny Florida or the bayside California/Las vegas at the West coast. People from Hyderabad and its neighbouring districts are the primary source of Indian Java population in the US. Doctors, surgeons, civil engineers who migrated from Madras and Bangalore ages ago were also no less in their numbers. Many Dallals from North eastern part of India have already conquered the business here!! Ofcourse people have adjusted to many things - the day to day lesser Fahrenheit temperature, the typical accent of Afro-Americans, the importance of Halloween's day, Martin Luther day, Labor's day, President's Day, July 4th, Thanksgiving and all other day's.., adjusted to all the evergreen nightclubs and hooters, the fast moving life...last, but not the least, saying "Hi..how are u doing" to any stranger coming across irrespective of sex or age. I have to accept the fact that I was one among those millions of Indians who migrated, temporarily or permanantly to the land of oppurtunity, United States. I was quite surprised to find that still many of this country men in the Central part of US doesn't even heard of India; many here still believe that everybody on the Earth does have the same religion, celebrate same festival, eat same bufallo and red lobsters!!...People across the world mainly Mexico, Japan, China and Europe have made their home here and ofcourse their offsprings are the natural resources of this land, language and culture. It's also sometimes an interesting phenomena for us to identify their original race due to their inappropriate hybrid identity. I understand that it is not just we, who are Dollar dreamers, but everybody across the world whoever landed here are for the same purpose!!

* * * * * * * * * * * *


When I visited my brother-in-law's native at Uppala (around 30 miles from Mangalore) 4 years ago, most of the people from the Northern part of Karnataka had made their way for their livelihood there. It was an extra-ordinary daily wages they received from the then Konkan railway construction agencies, that had brought all of them to this fertile land, Mangalore.
Foreseeing poverty, heat, drought in their native land Bijapur and Gulbarga, workers probably migrated during the season of the railway way back in early 90's, embosing their existance in Karwar, Kundapur, Udupi and Mangalore districts in Karnataka.

The highlight of the area; the greenary spread throughout the Western ghats, continuous water supply, road system, commutation, adjustable society, and ofcourse money were the main attraction for their expansion of growth amidst the sultry weather created by the Arabian sea. As local mangalorean labor found to be little expensive and more dominating abiding to
the prominent labor laws, these people from "Bayalu seeme" (dry land) soon found this to be their dream land of paradise. Cheap labor, adjusting nature was more than a considerable factor for the employers here! The minorities are always inferior in any part of the globe...so too this place. Numbers grew in as and when requirement incremented. First him, next his brother, then his neighbour and his friends occupied the piece of land. When they found stabilized and comfortable in this area, started importing their wives and children to this tourist spot, who has not seen the water and rain for ages! Some young men with strong muscles getting extra pay for their overtime work were of high demand in their place. Perhaps they are fed with most beautiful brides based on their immigration validity!! They go to their motherland once a year probably, during rainy season when it is not too hectic to work beneath the red soil...most of the guys take their stride to comeback with their newly married beauty queens of their province. This sometimes tighten their budget though helps tremendously in feeding them the regular raagi rotti and other stuffs- their primary source of food. They totally have different food taste from the locals, they can neither get their favourite mouth watering dishes from the outside hotels nor they were strong enough cooks to prepare during their tons of workload till their counterparts joined them. In the meantime many people with slightly higher IQ than the normals, also started creating hotels for them, which could serve all rottis to make them nostalgic.. Initially they also faced the problem of language accent; people from this bayarea speak different from that of people originated from the dry land. They both used to make fun of their respective languages at their respective backs...needless to say gradually they soon commommorated to the more complex frequencies. Konkan railway construction is now somewhat a history I believe!! But the people who discovered the means of immigration for their better living still lives taking Tulu and following the other's culture and tradition..ofcourse their siblings continue to occupy this land for the years to come.


* * * * * * * * * * * *


My friend who sits in the first floor tapped me, when I turned back. Next day, I had planned to meet a person who was an active member of some Indian cultural organization in Memphis city. Forming a music group in the next few months of my journey altogether takes another story.. I didn't want to be just one among millions of immigrants from India.. As soon as I sat in Nissan Altima car,,, Jagjit singh/Chitra singh's ghazal...

"Safar mein dhoop tho hoagi..Jo chal sakho tho chalo
Sabhi hein bheed mein thum bhi..nikal sakho tho chalo.." continued.

Happy new year 2001..
Vishwesh

All about work......

Written in Nov 2001

When my friend in Boyton beach, Florida calls me every weekend without fail, we talk many things; Our Hostel days, College days, friends, marriage, current affairs, latest happening in India, South Canara, etc - yet the main topic revolves our work!! More I discuss whenever I felt disgusted with my work load. I told him many times about the tension I had and that I was unable to handle that kind of situation. May be 4 years back or so, I remember him telling me over phone that he was in deep tension because of his work pressure. It was the time when he was working for Infosys and I was looking out for jobs. I still smell the sweat it produced from my body sitting inside the telephone booth in the burning summer and looking at the seconds the instrument displayed. It would cost me 2 Rs. more for crossing 180 seconds. 100-150 Rs. that I used to get from the Kannada magazines for publishing a cartoon hardly filled the petrol for my scooter, or tickets for the BTS bus, bills for the local calls or for the resume copies. I then had uttered him over phone with low voice, "some people have tension because they have too much of work, while some have tension because they have no work!!.." That was 4 years ago.., now both of us are standing on the other side of the globe, I asked my friend working in Motorola, "Hey, do you remember that?" Replied he, "Certainly, I do..you were depressed".

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

It was real fun working here in US for few months till I got moved to a different module. More than the new working domain or the environment, I kind of became the victim of the internal clash between my lead and the ex-lead of that module. We two were the new members to join the existing 4 members group. For some reasons, the existing team members started quitting the job one by one. One moved to a small town in Pennsylvania, the other resigned to pursue her studies if she is to be believed, while the rest 2 had already formed a new team as a result of which, was our entry into this team. So, no sooner I realized that I was the only working member of the team for all the problems and complex tickets. I was not even allowed to ask for any assistance from the previous owner of the application. Some tickets were small in nature, but some weren't.. I couldn't concentrate on my regular work. Ruth, who deals with the Logistics had some of her e-commerce Invoices not been rated which makes them unable to approve to go for payment. She was more an intelligent user than she appeared not just a reason or two; Many times she used to guess the reason for the problem she faced before just dumping everything onto us - like when they started getting 15 digit Waybill numbers all of a sudden for Fedex GROUND Invoices, when the total Invoice header amount didn't match with the balance due amount for Airborne..etc.

That was my first dive into Accounts module before I was caught under Reva's strange issue with the EFT stuff. Hispanic origin Laura started creating problems after she moved into the Vendor Bank Account maintenance group. Almost every alternate day if not everyday, we were paged to fix an abend in the batch job. Reason was not so difficult to trace - Whenever Laura or her supervisor Reva created a new Bank account for the vendor for Electronic payment, they somehow didn't realize to close the existing account there by causing the batch program that runs in the evening to make a million dollar decision, "to which account should that amount be transferred to ??"...Yes; it was a million dollar question for the poor batch program because, amount used to be certainly more than a million dollar!! Well..instead of looking at the database every evening to find to which account our ladies wanted really to go to, and closing that account, we finally thought of changing Online Mainframe code to restrict them to make multiple accounts open!! The real trouble started when we discussed this with them; "Oh...that can't happen because we should have 1 cent to pre-note to their account before actually going it live" Claimed Reva. "Vendors can also have multiple accounts when the current date is still less than the EFT date (actual next business date)" added Laura. "We should also be able to re-open the closed account, when the pre-note switch is 'Y',..we can also have multiple accounts when vendor's ABA number is different; but we can't...etc etc". they continued their can's and can't's for a while. Finally I came out of their cubes rubbing my fore-head. Yes!! it was a tough nut to crack..The every time I modify the code and asked them to take a look, they would be coming with new sets of validations followed by the pressure to concentrate on all other production issues. I even had to come out of the MALCO movie theatre once from watching "Lagaan" to fix a bug. Amir won the match, but I had lost... It almost carried for a month to finally take a proper shape. Reva was more than satisfied.. Now it's an easy one whenever she calls me and ask, why did vendor 'x' not receive his Remittance advice either thru e-mail or fax or EFT?.. What's the default check handling code that appears on the check when they just bypass that screen..etc. Meanwhile Tammy who works on Electronic Purchase Order group gets a daily duplicate report if she enters any Invoice twice thru her Online system. She called my lead and reported her problem. "Well..I can't show an example now, but I can call you when I find one" replied she, when I asked for an example. Once she saw me taking printouts in her floor, she dragged me to her desk to show an example. I told her "Hmm..Is this duplicate?? I don't think so.." I checked the program too and couldn't find any possibility. She accepted and said, she would call me again when she finds the actual one. I thanked God and ran back to my seat. I started running away from her whenever she happened to find me somewhere in the corridor, break pad, etc...Tammy never came back. During the same time or may be a month later or so, Tommy joined the Merchandising group taking charge for all the merchandising supervisors. Can you imagine a combination of a newly joined user working with a newly joined programmer? He started calling me once in every half an hour with his 1 liner questions, which always looked simple, but answers weren't. Questions like "How does the EDI, process Vendor direct parts invoices", "Does the PO Variance table has allowances in it?" almost chewed my whole brain for several unaccounted hours. Due to the frequency of his calls, I also guessed may be one day he would call me even for his stomach problems!!. But more than his questions, to me the problem was his accent. He hardly opened his lips while speaking; Concentrating on his 2 degree lip movements, I used to grasp few words like "vendor..invoice..matching..2nd time..EDI..Dorothy..rematch process..PO..undo ..payment" and used my internal processor to frame a sentence this way - " A Vendor number having this invoice is not matching for the second time thru EDI, even though Dorothy tried to re-match that Purchase Order by using the undo process to send it for payment". Ufff..I developed that skill gradually, my next task was to understand the problem and solve it..Once I told him the truth - "I joined this team just couple of months back, I may take sometime..". The soft cornered Tommy looked bit disappointed. But he became my good friend. I started working late in the evening and many times at home to understand the system of EDI matching process, which started getting worse day by day. The reason was simple - Several years back when the system was designed and developed, it was assumed that a vendor was suppose to send only upto max of 5 Invoices per Purchase Order raised, because the quantity of PO's were hardly few hundreds in number. Now that, it has increased ten times and vendor started sending more than 10 invoices for a PO making the system behave madly. In this phenomena, I also realized that we were not just scape goats, but there was one more technical group "Ware house Inventory" who apparently supported this merchandising group, the failure of which used to give us more problems than expected. That was the hardest time I ever had. Many times I was hardly seen by my room-mates though out the day.. The way the system was designed for an EDI process linking with the Unpaid Receivers was more complex than Fourier transformation. Nobody except the ex-lead of this group knew this system. There was no systematic solution for most of the mess-up's done by the Unpaid receiver clerks and supervisors who constitute more than 50 in number. Even now, there is no solution and if we develop something, that's going to be a new one. Laverne asked me once "Veeeeshwesh, do you love this kind of job?"...I took a pause and said, "Yeah...I have to!!" Laverne, Terry, Tiffany and others even today try to reach me with some EDI match failing Invoices and I may have to run some special process to fulfill their request till we come up with a permanent fix. Once while testing something, we accidentally FTP'ed a test file to the Bank. After few hours, they called us and asked about that duplicate file. Oh my God!! We then suddenly understood the consequence and requested them not to process that file. American Express, Visa and Mastercard companies rejected the duplicate file; however next day when Nancy bought the $192,000 rejects report, we realized that Discover card had already processed the file. I started chanting Gayatri Mantra...God save me.. Give me strength to face this... Needless to tell that, I later spent nights to change the database, reverse the journal legder entries, chargebacks, fees etc.. After all, these were all just some of the production day to day issues that I had to deal with, apart from my regular work. Later, when the users started approaching me directly, things weren't as simple as it could've been. My American boss sometimes felt bypassed was not that comfortable...


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Whenever my friend who joins me on Tabla calls me to have a practice session in the weekend, I would rather tell him that I was too tired to have a practice. He would comment "Tired??? Abe, kaunsa kaam karrahe office pe??"...In fact I was the one who tempted him to take his Tabla out of his closet before it could go completely out of tune.. Many a times, I felt returning back to India , till one Friday the fair and the beautiful lady from HR and our lead started murmuring along with my team member and all of a sudden he started packing his stuff within minutes, came to me and said, "Vishy..thanks for all your help man, my company no more needs my service.." I couldn't speak a word. Continued he, "please let me know if you know any openings anywhere..you guys will have more contacts than me" I was just shell shocked at his situation. His wife Tina wasn't working, his 4 year old daughter Tasha had just started attending school. The whole day, I was disturbed and felt so sorry for him. He was just one among the 30 other victims in the list our client had laid off out of their 200 member IT staff. Most of the people started looking at us in a different way; Of course we deserved that.. Were all looked thieves for them - stealing their jobs..aren't we?? I thought for a while. I got answers for all my questions I started asking from the very day I got moved to a new team. Yes!!! tension in work is far better than not having work!! I then thanked all the users Ruth, Reva, Laura, Cathy, Carol, Tommy, Tammy, Dorothy, Laverne, Nancy, Janie, Chaney, Owens and her team, Ray, Dawn, Dave, Bernice, Sandra, Mary Walker and many others for giving me work...the hard work.

Happy Rajyotsava day 2001!

Mere samne wali khidki mein... - 3 sisters!!

Written in Aug 2000

Punctually when I opened my mail box few days back in the morning, surprise was waiting instead of the regular barking mails from On-site. That was rather due to a rare "Invitation" from my college to attend the Annual function! Wow!!! What a day to begin....I was also asked to render an hour program at the end from Alumni! More than 3 years completed after saying adieu to the college and its memorable days. Very few people knew me when I visited the place finally after a long gap. I visited many places..the same old colorless, odorless and tasteless canteen where we used to have hundreds of one by two sips of tea, the canteen owner, professors, lecturers who made me do all the gymnastics to get the attendance in the final semesters, the stage which we had conquered for years...Incidently two of my juniors who were currently staying in the same hostel where I lived, introduced themselves and spoke to me.

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A building with limited rooms attached to a party hall (kalyana mantap), a long creeper spread till the roof, a rose plant without rose in it, tulasi plants across the bldg of 14 colorless rooms with 2-3 persons staying per room was the place I can never forget. Persons living in these rooms mandatorily getting 3 threads tied over their body, with all Engineering and Medical books spread upon the table and in the respective racks of their rooms. For the whole building, inside the room or in the corridor no one used slippers that could spoil the divinity and cleanliness of the building. That was the time and the place when I decided to spend my four years of Engg. life to carry tons of memory. A senior most person vacating the hostel after finishing his final exams, shared us quite a few things when I was about to begin my career..he explained a lot about 45 year old Engineering college, and the 40 year old mechanical lathes and the milling machines, and about the inactive Computer labs without faculty, about the lazy government attenders, about the 76 year old hostel warden, about the semi crack cook, his food, the tasteless rasam, chatni and the chewing exerciser chapathis.....last but not the least, the samne waale khidki's Sowmya and her younger sister Shilpa.

While leaving the hostel, our seniors had described us a lot of active activities abt Sowmya, who used to be the center of attraction for the hostelites, also was the source of attraction for all those thread wearing bramhacharis until she got married..., they had a low voice when uttering the word "marriage". Shilpa was probably a high school girl peeping from her house to see all the monkeys living opposite to her. I guess she would have observed many things from her tender age; those apes turning energetic as soon as they observe her sister, coming out of their rooms when her sister goes out to her friend's house...and many other activities of those engineering students. But by the time we joined, she had grown more a matured girl..., understood to become more serious when we started observing her movements, also learnt to make more sound during closing or opening the iron gate, and glance at the presence of the body builder of our hostel, also taking extra care not to get caught during her observation. She reduced looking directly at her opposite doors, increased reflex angled view without turning her long neck in her day to day visit to the college..the fair skin of the Gujarathi girl looked even brighter whenever the incident sun rays of Davanagere fell. In the name of accompanying her younger sister and brother, she enjoyed the security, company even during her slant vision towards the vehicles entering and leaving the opposite hostel. The other side of her house without an exception also had several eyes watching all her moves through the holes of windows each room possessed and that voice when she used to shout at her mummyji. She became an entertaining source, during most of our leisure hours, after the exams, during the tea time, after evening cricket, after dinner walk, power cuts, and many other idle chat hours. Her exams used to be the hot topic during our cold coffee time on Sunday mornings. An interesting point to note here was that, inspite of gaining so much of importance in the land of bachelors, no one wished to speak to her or make friendship...everybody just liked observing her movements by standing near the hostel gates with a newspaper in hand. I guess when we were about to leave the place for good after our four years of memorable stay, she would have been in her final year Commerce.

                                                                       * * * * * * * * *

I asked the 2 juniors who decided to talk to me about my Cultural Secretary days, all about the hostel and its stories, warden, rasam, mess bill and many other things.. They gave me colorful stories about the hostel, its development, its politics etc.. In the end, I asked how was Shilpa! "Shilpa...?? Shilpa who??" one asked me back.. "Arree...u don't know her? The fair gujju girl who was staying infront of our hostel" I remarked. The second guy was quick to react.. "Hey...it must be Shruthi's akka kano!" pause for few seconds...... I clearly understood the scene then, that the name of the cute little girl who used to wear white petticoat and play flower pots during Diwali along with her brother and Shilpa was Shruthi, (the younger sister of Shilpa I guess) during our stay in the hostel. Without a delay, I had realized that these people I was talking to were the third generation guys!

Waiting for that day

Waiting for that day - (written in June 2000)


Sometime back, when I had been to one of my friend's house, I was able to glance at a huge 6 X 6 ft box, that almost looked like a coffin box to me. I was told, none other than most sacred instrument of Indian Classical music resides inside. When I asked her to open it and play that elegant veena once, she somehow succeeded in convincing me for not playing. But I said, my next visit should see her playing and if not, I will not visit again. Nodding her head with much vibrations, she accepted the deal. But that time, both of us guessed that, I may never get a chance to visit her again if at all my statement has any validity. But I always hope, our guess should go wrong. Music is just a rare and a great boon one can expect from the almighty. Even the gifted ones may not know that it's a gift.

* * * * * * * * *
Few years back, I had written a article 'Friends for ever', in Youth Express, a Friday supplement of The Indian Express. That was the time, when I was just handed over my engineering degree and I had started creating my resume. One of my friends, also my batch mate staying 150 miles away from my place, called me up and asked if I was ready for a music program for Radio in next 2-3 days. What was I doing then? Just glancing at the avenues, Ascents and other Job placement ads, or probably applying for some MBA programs. 'O.K..Sure!!', I screamed. He immediately called all our other fellow men and confirmed the show, leaving me roughly just a day to prepare. Two days later, we all six members met at a place, where we had spent 4 years of Enggineering. Here's the team - His elder sister, also an excellent singer was in Bangalore, working for BEL . The one who has been associated with the percussion part of our troupe, Tabla for several years was then working in Kirloskar ltd, is now with Mico. Flautist of our team, who had passed with a Rank in Engineering from my neighboring college, is now in TVS Suzuki. The guy who called me, the wonderful Carnatic classical genius, is now with WIPRO. Our Key-board player, was already in Microline, Davangere. Another member, a graduate from Bachelor of Fine Arts, was a music teacher in a primary school. The Last guy, the then unemployed is now with BFL Software.

We all six met, some taking a day off to their respective offices and some (including me) leaving their job hunting activity aside. It was probably a long gap of several months, that we were united again and started picking up our respective instruments. Three of us, Keyboard chap, flautist and I almost spent the whole night composing new stuffs for the next day's program. Morning others joined, edited and brought out a new set of programs, and that afternoon, all of us left for the show. When we had a shortage of Mridangam for Jugalbandi, I had to play Ghatam too...I can still visualise those two days spent together. None of us were residing from the same place, none of us were from same domain, even the working atmosphere was different. It was just the bond of music, that had brought us together all of a sudden at one place in just a day. Ofcourse most of us were from Science, but it was arts that has brought us together. Wrote in the end, No doubt, SCIENCE might have brought PEOPLE together (thru network / communication), but it was ARTS that has brought HEARTS together.

* * * * * * * * *

Now, I hope that the music instrument inside the mammoth box, that had sensed and smelled her several years ago, once again get an oppurtunity to experience the elegent touch of her tender fingers. Let it get excited when her silky hair falls on its gloomy strings, her stunningly beautiful eyes make an eye contact with the plucking card she use to play. I guess, that string instrument is still waiting and waiting for that day, when its malkin allows it to peep the outer world, decides to open the box, pluck its dead strings giving it a new resonance.......and ofcourse not just that instrument, even I'm waiting for that day.

2 reasons...

2 Reasons - (Written in June 2000)

"Ae((&#**@))*fghfgh%^&%^jsfhh43^%$%$#JK..h&&^%^$...." 6:30 AM when my friend was still in his bed, heard his wife conversing with an unfamiliar voice outside. Disturbed by that conversation, he had no choice but to get up and joined the early morning mob cursing his wife for her encounter with a stranger. Only when he reached the door, realised that he had
made quite sensible decision in interfering, for the person his wife arguing was an astonishingly beautiful young lady, may be in her early twenties speaking beautiful Hinglish. With an immediate affect he rubbed the corners of his eyes, to find the lady with a brown valet made of crocodile's rough skin, holding a sheet of paper and a pen accompanied by an equal aged
unattractive male holding few newspapers. She had wore an attractive T-shirt with Bon Jovi with a guitar embossed on it, matching to her blue jeans deeply hugged to her legs. Couple of seconds were spent to understand that she was a sales representative and her intention was to promote the sales of the rapidly growing newspaper in Bangalore. He soon joined when
his wife was literally grumbling with that fair lady to convince her decision of not subscribing that newspaper. With no thoughts, he sincerely added, " I have 2 reasons for opting the other newspaper than yours..." She was hell bent upon him to give the justification for preferring some other newspaper over hers.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Probably I was in late high school when I had madly fallen in love with Journalism, Times of India being my favorite newspaper. My parents all the time feared that I might land in Journalism till I took Science in my 11th standard. As my place, Bellary had very few circulation of TOI, I had to visit the newspaper vendor near bus-stand almost every day on my way
to my school/college on my SLR cycle. Couldn't resist recollecting the days of early 90's.. Dilip Padgaonkar, the then Editor of Times, Shourie of Indian Express, Siddharth Basu and many others were undisputedly my heroes. But the only reason of my Times subscription amidst the poor circulation has to be affiliated to the Ramon Magsassay Award winner, R.K.Laxman. I still
refer his "YOU SAID IT" series, SCIENCE SMILES, IDLE HOURS, The Management of Management..., that I had specially bought when my father had been to Bangalore. Those were the days when I used to shamelessly imitate his cartooning lines, his common man, his ways of expression till I finally got moulded to use my own ideas and come out of his shadow.
Ramakrishna Hegde's and Telugu Desam's (NTR) defeat in the South, Rajiv gandhi's face hiding situation in the North along with the then I & B Minister H.K.L Bhagath and Jagdeesh Titler, leaving V.P.Singh to victory, Bofors, Mandal commission, Ram Janbhoomi, Gulf war etc..were no doubt the favorite topics of those times. For a cartoonist, good thing about politics is,
there is no dearth of ideas.. V.P Singh's fur cap, Rajiv Gandhi's nose, Devilal's turban, Chandrashekar's beard, P.V.N's lousy face, Saddam's big moustache..were any cartoonist's feast. That was the Times of India when I used to observe these features in Laxman's cartoons..Those were also the days when news readers of DD Ramu Damodaran, Minu, Salma sultan, Shammi
Narang, Rini Simon(khanna), serials like Kavitha chaudhari's Udaan, Fauji (SRK's :), Nukkad, Shyam Benegal's Intezar, Pankaj Kapur's Karam Chand appeared on whole and sole of small screens, DD. Those days R.K.Narayan's novels and Anton Chekov's stories also tempted me write innumerable short stories; ohhh...those days... it also reminds me getting fainted during the frog dissection by the smell of those frogs, imported from a local 'Avambhavi' water tank filled with dirty green water, mixed with chloroform to bring sedation to those innocent amphibians..Oh....those days!!! Ponnappa already had his column "OFFSIDE" in the third page of Bangalore edition of Times. The newspaper Hindu's cartoonist Keshav, also was no less favourite to me. India Today's Ajith Ninan, Week's Yesudasan and Prakash shetty, funny lines of our
local lad Panju Ganguli belonging to Business India, E-naadu's Sridhar, Kannada Prabha's Narendra, Udayavani's Nadig regularly used to feed me ideas. I continued the subscription of Times though not regularly, till I got myself into the Karnataka's traditional English daily Deccan Herald few years back.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Now his justification of 2 reasons started, "..this might give better coverage than any other, might also provide better news and analysis, more pages, more colorful, but my first reason for not choosing this is the subject of those articles covered which may not be appreciated by people of all age groups." The gorgeously looking lady looked furios..interrupted him to explain the difficulty in the subject he faced. He continued, "well.....for a few successive Saturdays the subjects chosen were either on extra marital life or Homo sexuality, why women...etc etc etc..one fine day, appeared an article, 'Do u wish your daughter to be a virgin?'.. My 5 year old daughter reading that asked me, 'papa, what is meant by virgin?'.. Well,, Then I decided to stop! There was a minute of silence..soon she recovered, raising her shoulders "I don't mind the subject...". He was firm in his reply, "..but I mind! ". His offensive mood absolutely made her go dumb,
decided to leave. He stopped her again..."you didn't ask me the second reason....", she was not sure she was in need of that, though slowly turned back restlessly when he concluded, "..the second reason is that, my colleague and a good friend of mine is a Cartoonist for the newspaper I subscribe..."... By the time he could complete, she had already reached the next door, when the other guy simply followed her. My friend went back to the bed telling his wife to wake him up after a few minutes..

My early morning headache

Written in July 2000 -

Head ache had already hinted me early in the morning, before I could leave for the office few Saturdays back. It was rather an unusual Saturday as we, around people of 30 set for a trip to a resort just few miles away from Bangalore. More unusual it was, for the metrics data revealed only planning for a trip, without happening it really. This time our forefront running guys after taking the initiative, made no less effort in pulling some of the good looking girls to their stride asking them to become the active lady representatives. This way, at last, by their sheer efforts, the trip didn’t turn out to be just a mirage.

Greenery spread evenly across around hundred acres of land, dark clouds covering the blue sky, when the temperature being less than 25 degrees..even added to the beauty of nature when herbs and trees joined openly in welcoming the spring, coming out of all their inhibitions and disappointments they had in the last punishing Summer. Volley ball, shuttle, tug of war, squash, uffff.. my head ache got even more stimuli. An unhygienic atmosphere I created, troubling my dear friend while playing an unfamiliar and a disliking game, still added as a catalyst, and I decided to move away. I was almost sure to search my array, all those plenty of Ibuprufen / paracetamol combination samples my sister had given me. By the time sun rouse right above my head, people were divided; it looked as if most of them were just waiting for this hour. The categories included the highly experienced, experienced, little experienced, and inexperienced ones. Highly experienced ones - even with glasses of Bacardi rum getting blended with the internal bile juice, still under control; the experienced ones - looking tired with an inappropriate mixture of happiness and sadness, little experienced ones doing different kinds of gymnastics giving fun to the audience, and finally the inexperienced ones. Amongst them, some looking at each other, some talking on politics, movies, music etc, while some disturbed people with headache, absolutely no business on hand, looking at that greenery, the grass with little stripes that had spread like cricket ground in Old Trafford, thinking of some ideas for cartoons.., and the last category, the fairer sex community, who by late afternoon, started cursing the inventor of the compound, Ethyl Alcohol to this world! As I needed to go to my Guruji Pt. Parameshwar Hegde's Bhaitak in the evening, soon after having cups of coffee that I thought would bring my headache down, I left the place, while rest were still enjoying their time out there.

* * * * * * * * * *

The enhanced version of my head ache was almost a victim of the black Carbon Monoxide, that was released as an end product of millions of vehicles that travel between Bangalore-Mysore highway. Cool evening, Sun had already started moving towards the middle east countries, when dark clouds and cool breeze slowly had taken the charge. Jhenkara of 2 tanpuras was touching my ears even before I could enter my Guruji's place. Trains from Malleswaram Railway station was very much adamant in adding its frequency to the tuning of tanpuras, swara mandals and tabla. Most of his students present there were already deep into the reasonance it produced. Guruji started rendering a khayal in Vilambit Ek Taal in Raag Jog, which is an early evening raga. Raag Jog (or Sanjog) means the "Union", derived from the Sanskrit word Yog or Yoga, the mood of which is based on the concentration and devotion. It just alludes to the union of an individual with divine. The Vilambit ek taal, which technically speaking is 4 times slower the pace than the usual Ek taal(12 beats) forming 12 x 4 times = 48 beats (akshara / bols ) for every cycle, the musician expands the raaga during the expansion of Taal. One interesting aspect, but bad too is that even the listener needs to be a literate to an extent to understand the technical complexity first before falling in love! At the end of the Vilambit, he started a chota khayal in Drut - Teen taal.

Complete 45 minutes, taking me to the world of Jog filled with the smooth flow of enchanting swaras sa ga ma pa ni sa with both types of Ga - Shuddh and Komal while descending, almost made me forget where I was and where did I come from. I opened my eyes only when he ended the journey. He finally ended the concert after couple of bandish’s and we had a small meeting later after that.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Finally after that evening extempore, I decided to leave the place at around 8:30 P.M.. My vehicle that was parked in my office, forced me to take an auto, where the whole journey went humming ups and downs of Jog! Reached my house late night, pulled out the newspaper sandwitched between latch and the bolt, sprinkled little water on my eyes and forehead, sat to glance the news, when my mind suddenly thought of re-investigating the problem I owned right from the early morning that was growing like a monster! Well... what was that? yeah...the head ache!! Can u beleive?? there was not even a remnant of it! It was mercilessly flowed down under the tremendous pressure of Jog falls! Isn't it a strange thing?......How my day began, how did it go, and how it ended...like a sinusoidal wave??? I said "Thank you gurugale for ur wonderful drug.....", few minutes later I had gone asleep.