Adieu 2009

It has been over 8 months since I've blogged... I guess the 'hectic' MBA life could be attributed for such a long period of inactivity (my friends @ NM and partners in crime would vouch for that :P :P )...

Am posting this while I'm waiting for the 3 idiots (Hari, Nachi and Kunta) to land up at my place. Funny thing is that it used to be many more idiots... just the 3 of them remain.. And the sinking feeling is that the head count is decreasing at a rate faster than my receding hairline..

The plan for the new year bash is unclear... well, there are no plans as of now.. There is 1 car and there are 4 people.. we'll probably end up going where the car takes us... I think the way I'm ending 2009 encapsulates the entire year has gone... (and probably the way life has shaped up)... It just brings a smile (rather, a smirk) to think of the irony of life... The more you make plans, the more confusing it gets...

Yet another year gone by, yet another set of events gone by; some trivial, some significant; new friendships were forged, some were well, not broken, but just separated by distance; some drifted away;

Every year that passes by just drives home the point that What you want and What you get might be mutually exclusive.

I'll just leave this here - as a point to ponder, for any random visitor who might happen to chance upon this post..

Adios for now and wish you all a very happy and prosperous year 2010.

What's In A Name?

Ever since I was a kid, people have been calling me all sorts of names except for that one decent name, my folks thought would identify me.

I've been tagged as "Suppandi" (for my stupidity) by my cousins; a name they'll probably use even when i'm an age-old grandpa (won't talk too much about grandpapas here.. more on that later)..

Enter school where people referred to me as Guinea Pig aka Piggie for my nearly football shaped body and a pouting nose. That name stuck to me for nearly a decade and hell yeah, I used to be annoyed by that one; though I din't have the fitness nor the drive to chase down the bullies who called me a Piggie. D'oh.. :x (Some of the meaner ones used to chant "Dummi" - a fat, really fat, girl... They had a song for it as well... Bhari-dummi, handi mamsa i.e. pig fat, chicken mutton)

2 days into my engineering, when I felt I'd exorcised the demons of Piggie, and hey-presto, I got a new nick name - Thatha aka Grandpapa. My wise-ass friends keenly observed my glaring physical attributes - a receding hairline and a pot belly and they decided that I was the "Thatha" of the gang. God, did that name stick to me like a leech. Oh, and shortly the same set of folks also started calling me "BM" - an acronym of a famous kannada quote that I'd better not quote :). Now, here was a guy who had nested nicknames.

Scene: Engg college canteen, football session goin on...
Deepak: Oi Thatha, pass the ball...
Me - ignore and take ball forward...
Hari: Loafer BM, pass the ball to Deepak...

Deepak and Hari together: Loafer Thatha - BM, ball pass maado...
And I'm like "D'oh... that's like saying Bhargav Bhargav ... like some african tribal called Djemba Djemba..

Ah... Sadly, these names stuck with me during my MindTree days as well. And as luck would have it more names got appended. This time the car gang named me Khokua. For the uninitiated, it means Gundygut or Glutton. Some respite huh!!!

Fresh set of faces, different location... I thought I'd left my legacy of nicknames back in good old Bengaluru when I left for Mumbai to do my MBA... Alas... Some folks just don't have any luck.. :(
Here, it is/was of a different kind though... Initially, the junta just couldn't digest the fact that Bhargav can be a first name as well (and not necessarily a surname)... once they came to accept that, I was better known as Bhaskar - coz brand-Bhargav recollection was a numeral that the Indians claimed to have discovered i.e. zero.

After Bhaskar came Baga (after the dumb-guy in Lagaan)... People have started called me Bhargava or Bargav (minus the 'h')... To add to my woes, the faculty calls me "Uday" and virtually every lecture I end up giving proxy to my dad...
Faculty: "Uday has something to say about this case"
Me: "Err...My dad hasn't read the case study... Uday Jr. has a point or two"

Faculty (While calling out the attendance): "Uday"
Me: " Yes Sir..." (Haah..take that...successfully gave proxy to my dad.... yet again)

I try to book my flight ticket and I get a mail saying "Mr Chandra, your flight details are..."
In a fit of rage, I delete the mail only to realize that I haven't boarded the flight yet...

Just when I thought that the place where I'm interning would be nick-name free, i get my email id which says "bhargav.udai@..... .com"...Spelling mistake..that's the last straw...

And today..what prompted me to post this blog - Some random chap in office calling me "Bhargesh"!!! D'oh :x

For the sake of everything that's holy, it is BHARGAV - B for Boring, H for Hopeless, A for jackAss, R for Retard, G for Goofy, A again for Jackass and V for Vork-shirk (does work start with a V or a W?)

Random Saturday Mutterings

True..I like weekends.. I mean, who doesn't.. (Blah..din't have any other way of starting off this post).. Am lazy to have breakfast/lunch, right now... The very fact that I have to provide the momentum to get my posterior up from this comfortable bed makes me think twice...

Shifted to my new apartment... Am now the proud 'part-owner' of a rented flat in Juhu!!! Whoa...The Juhu!!! (Question: If it is a rented flat, how does it make me the owner? Ans: Good question )

To take a break from the eternally stressful entity called work, I've been tracking the general elections and of course IPL.

I'm voting for this Mulayam singh bloke. To me, this guy has been the best of the lot in terms of speech... He's promised that he would be banning English and computers. Nice. This is exactly the kind of people our country needs. I mean, why do we need computers? Or english for that matter? We could go one step further and ban schools as well. No Schools => no colleges => no exams (Note: This comment is purely accidental and any correlation with the author's exams and pending results are purely coincidental). We need more leaders like him.

Moving on to the IPL, I am pished. Mighty pished. Being a diehard Bangalore Royal Challengers fan, i am upset at the fact that the Icon Player of RCB hasn't been featuring in the Playing - 11. He is 42 years old and he needs a walking stick. He's got supreme talent but it's just that he cannot bat, bowl and field. Barring these minor aberrations (that can be overlooked), he's a great asset. Sunil Joshi - you have me on your side.

Ah... The Vome Sick The Me

Thanks to the extremely 'long' break that i got between my exams and summers (2 WHOLE DAYS), my homesickness has increased exponentially.

Strangely, today it was a different feeling though; wasn't the regular 'Miss my folks', 'Miss my friends' homesickness.
Just jotted down what I missed today (and over the past few months):

-My Girlfriend :) :) (With a TVS Victor - name tag :) :)
-My TT practice session
-My bean bag (which was the culprit behind my '33' - waist size (to be taken in past tense)
-My Casio Keyboard (The neighbours are happy though :o)
-7 am breakfast with piping hot ghee-masala dosas at Sidappa's and Chikkanna'
-Weekend visits to Blossoms book house
- Amoeba bowling alley (and beating Hari comprehensively :P :P)
- My Super-Fast BSNL broadband connection
- My neighbourhood library
- Mafia sessions at MindTree
- TP @ MindTree :P :P
- Speaking in Kannada (currently, I'm in a bad shape - I am bad at English, I don't know Hindi and I'm forgetting/gotten Kannada
- My set of Tinkle and Indrajal comics
- World Space radio

I cannot go on any further... the list is never ending...

Boo Hoo... 2 more months...

Not So Entertaining

Why do people try to pi*s me off everytime...



Well... I'm not interested.. nor am I entertained...

Holi-day

Played Holi today. Calling it 'played' would be an understatement.
Was dragged out of my room at around 10.30 am. (Joshi - my roomie categorically told me that t-shirts were being ripped apart. He saved one t-shirt of mine as I decided to go bare chested).
Was given 5 whiplashes (the whip being a banian soaked in all sorts of colors).
Joshi again saved me by warning me that people who had applied oil to their body would be scrubbed with 'rin' before being doused with colours.

Some 'sane' bloke got this wonderful idea of creating a 'Nagraj' out of me. God knows what the mixture was (it smelt like a mixture of paint and grease), but its application on me rendered a face that would have given an African a run for his money.

Took me 5 scrubbings, once with a brush that is used for washing clothes, to get rid of one layer of color.

Resembled a kindergarten kid's coloring book gone bad..

Played holi at 10pm again, this time, with the gals around. Thankfully no nasty colours this time, one wash and everything was off...

It was fun all in all... (barring the post-holi bathing)... Waiting eagerly for '10 Holi..

Lucky Day

Had a bit of a lucky day today... Just managed to scrape through all rounds of Antakshari before hitting form in the final round... Managed to lose the toss as well in the final round, which actually proved to be a blessing in disguise in terms of the questions... Got 'masakali' in the dumb c round which was a sitter...
Was lucky enough to scrape through JAM finals through a series of objections...
Was lucky to get movies like Shawshank Redemption, events like Euphoria and personalities like Pranoy Roy in the final round of pot pourrie...
8th of March wasn't so bad after all... :) :)

Nice. I finally believe in something called 'luck'

A heaven named Woodlands...

Am too bored to blog... Infact too bored to do anything at all, right now...
Just returned from heaven... I din't know that heaven had an alias - 'Hotel Woodlands - Juhu'... Vaibhav, the broke soul, had to convince himself that the hostel mess food was 'nutritious' and 'tasty'... Of course, his credit history ain't that good for any of us to be lending him any money.. :) :)

Found a very cute kiddo in the hotel... just felt like beating up the parents (for cheap thrills) .. and then direct a movie called "Beat The Parents"...

Now on a novel reading spree...
Just done with Eric Segal's "Love Story" - It wasn't all that bad... Well, in hindsight, it was a good book...Shetty was right (for a change) :) :)
Gotto read "Prisoner of Birth" and "Gates of Fire" simultaneously.. Got Dirk Gently waiting in the pipeline with "India's Bismarck" as well... God help me in my third trimester exams...

Yet Another Arbit Post...

Binged on rice today... Found some Restaurant called 'Woodlands' that had pics of 'Taranga' for display (that too in the heart of Juhu)... Nice... Had enough lunch to skip dinner... Bisibele bath was great as well...

Created 'FabCare/FabKare/ whatever, today'... Main features
- Washing clothes in Juhu Beach
- B-plan that made losses, not profits
- Realizing our dreams through your money (
- Delivery vans with the photos of the creators (B-I-O-S)
- Chairs in a laundry shop to 'entice' old people (whoa)

I think the excess-rice finally got to me..

Arbit Post

Just found out the purpose of my existence (for those who don't know read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) in the Corporate Strategy session today. There are 5000 varieties of cheese and I've just tasted 3 of them!!! So... 4997 to go and a whole lifetime ahead!!

Had been to Churchgate to meet Dad. He took me out to a couple of good "South Indian" restaurants. (And promptly regretted it). I acted like a malnourished kid being fed by a social worker (well, I couldn't have acted like one as it was a genuine case)

WHAT THE !!!*&^^%%^$^$

I AM PISSED!! Pissed with AB's baby. Pissed with a certain Ramprakash Omprakash Mehra whatever. Pissed off with a Moto Rockr phone. Pissed off with a stupid pigeon that
hogs more than 5 minutes of screen time.

I mean, come on, which insane moron could put Abhishek Bacchan in the lead role... The only role that suited Abhishek, was that in Dostana (where he was a natural)... Oh..And all the other roles where he dies in Scene 1 - (Good riddance) and the rest of the movie is carried through by other actors. (More about the death part later).Whenever there is Abhishek starring in a movie, you can observe the side actors / actresses, the trees, the backdrops and u'll find their acting better than his. Though it is quite amazing that he can pull off any role by portraying a constipated look.

I am so pissed with this movie called Delhi-6 that i actually began to like "Ghajini"!!!! Whoa!!! "The Ghajini". Infact, Delhi-6 makes Ghajini look like a sensible, well-crafted, enjoyable movie!!!! (More Whoa!!!) (Eyebrows, registering shock, raised so high that they are touching the back of my head)!!!

Another funny part of this movie (unintentional on the part of the director though). Abhishek ATTEMPTING to speak English!!!! And that too with a foreign accent. (Someone should tell him that he needs to work more on his tribal language first, which mostly sounds like Jhingalala Ho, Jhingala Ho, Hur, Hur; before making an attempt to speak ENGLISSSS). Tell you what; AB's baby is a Software Engineer who is on a BIG BIG BENCH!! Who else would come from America and stay indefinitely in India without having any plans of going back...

Right through the first half of the movie, uncle (read as AB's baby) roams around advertising his Moto phone. (Again, Moto has been stupid enough to retain him as a brand ambassador even after they've closed down operations in India. Duh!!!! I diint know that they were dumb enough not to identify that he was the cause for their brand failure in India. I mean, which sane guy would buy a Moto phone that AB's baby endorses!!! Hail India - the land where sensible people
live)

I still haven't been able to figure out what the director was trying to prove by stretching a 5 min movie to over 3 hours. Bugger doesn't have any sense of time. The most important part of the movie, and incidentally, the most entertaining part (where AB's baby was lynched by a thoughtful mob) lasted just for 5 min. I had offered to pay Su and the rest of the junta, Rs 10 (out of sheer joy) if AB's baby died in the movie;Rs 100 if he had died in the beginning of the movie. Though I was disappointed that neither happened, I did shell out 10 bucks when they beat the hell out of him. (God, How i hope that the filming of this scene was real)

Now to that godda*n pigeon. Masakali. Why...why..why, pray, does someone have to name that stupid pigeon Masakali and all it does it walk around here and there without adding value.. heck..had it atleast done what it can do best (leave bird-droppings) on the so called Hero's head, I wouldn't have objected for its existence in the movie.

Oh... I'd mentioned that AB's baby hits on Rishi Kapoor as well.. (Which is why I said he was a natural in Dostana).. Sample this: "You know, you are a very good looking guy" followed by "I am from America". I mean, how can anyone (anyone but AB's baby) call that obese, old, white-haired Rishi Kapoor "good looking"???!!!!!

Now for the 4 best parts of the movie:

1. The sensible mob lynching AB's baby.

2. The 5 mins i missed out during the interval buying popcorn. (I realized the importance of having spent those 5 minutes in a productive manner).

3. Sonam Kapoor - The only other value-add (apart from the popcorn) that prevented me from leaving the theater midway (and not shouting obscenities during the course of the movie).

3. Writing this blog after the movie.

And what pissed/pisses me off more than Delhi-6? Vaibhav spilling more than half of my popcorn!!!

P.S. I'm coming out with a new movie called Bangalore - 78 (if that guy can make a stupid 3 hour movie after a Pin code of Delhi, why cant I make a full fledged Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi series with Bangalore?)

P.P.S. Sagar (aka Subbu) came up with this brilliant status msg (very apt as well) which left me in splits. I've taken all necessary permissions from him to upload this as a part of my revised post - Sagar.Leo says : "gosh!! had their will prevailed, d monkeys livin at 110006 wud hv sued AB2 4 portrayin kala bandar"

P.P.P.S Roopam's status msg..another killer status msg...everyone seems to be in form "LATEst on "Bandar mania" :-- Monkey man has been spotted living in PEACE at Jalsa,Juhu,Mumbai-400049 ...wen he gets bored,he does however fly/leap to delhi-(11000)6 and terrorises innocents ;)"