Haemorrhage!

I got hit in the knee yesterday.
I got hit on my right hand today.
I am perenially bleeding through my skull.
The seven fingers of my left hand are always trying to rip off from me.
My right hip has always been attacked.
My left waist is always injured.
Please allow me to live!
Please don't bleed me to death!

Tatt-2 can't dance saala!

I watched JTYJN yesterday with a couple of guy friends. Sad. I know it's a date movie.
There was this song called 'Pappu can't dance saala' which was really good.
Wait a minute! Pappu sounds very similar to Tatt-2, my dorm name. So, I thought I should rewrite the lyrics a little to make it more fun and more realistic. So, here's the new version.

Nahi muscular, Nahi popular, Nahi muscular, Nahi popular, he is a loser, he is a bachelor
Tatt-2 ki zubaan tez hai, Tatt-2 cricket mein waste hai
Tatt-2 ki aankhen chaar hai, Tatt-2 dikhta bekaar hai
Duplicate ghadi haathon mein perfume sasta wala
But Tatt-2 can’t dance saala, Tatt-2 can’t dance saalaTatt-2 naach nahi

Paida Tatt-2 hua to kismatein chamki
Aur uske ghar par giri paani ki tanki
Hey hey hey Tatt-2 dikhta hai bhaisa
Hey ye.. ye bhaiyya ke tabele ke jaisa
Hey hey hey Tatt-2 yaaron ka yaar hai
Hey ye.. ye.. Tatt-2 dimaag ko ‘shot’ hai
But Tatt-2 can’t dance saala, Tatt-2 can’t dance saalaTatt-2 naach nahi sakta

Papa kehte hain bada naam karega,
mera Tatt-2 to aisa kaam karega
Hey hey hey Tatt-2 ke paas hai M.B.A.
Hey ye..ye.. karta hai Dombivli mein holiday
Hey hey hey Tatt-2 mugta rehta hai..
Hey ye.. ye.. jahan interview karta hai hagta rehta hai
But Tatt-2 can’t dance saala
But Tatt-2 can’t dance saala, Tatt-2 naach nahi sakta!

They think I am no good.
I agree, because I am, but a shadow of myself.

Two emails

Dear Karthik,
Thank you for your interest in the PQR Group. Although it is clear that someone with your qualifications has much to offer, we have been unable to identify an ideal match between your particular background and experience and our current needs. However, we will keep your resume in our files on the chance that a suitable position should become available at a later date. We appreciate your taking the time to contact us and wish you the best in your job search.

Sincerely,
XYZ,
Strategic Growth
PQR & Co. Ltd
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello Karthik,

Hope this finds you well.
Subsequent to your interactions with Greg, we regret that we will not be able to advance your application to the next stage of discussions.
It is always very difficult to discontinue an interview process, but we are buoyed by the fact that we interact with exceptionally qualified and talented people who have a wide range of opportunities to choose from. On behalf of the recruiting team at ABC, I want to wish you the very best in your career.

Best Regards,
DEF
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I signed out of my gmail inbox and got back to therapy. Nothing to worry about.
Therapy consists of watching porn and Michael Madana Kamarajan, eating vada pav, playing cricket in my lane with 6-7th standard students and cheating and reading some amazing books suggested by a very good friend of mine. Never knew reading could be this fun.

The call

Job hunting is tough. Especially in these times when people are struggling to hold on to their own asses. So, when I got shortlisted for an interview at a top notch company, to say that I was thrilled is a lie.
I was nervous. Finger biting nervous. Hand shivering nervous. This was my chance after a long time. Light at the end of a long tunnel.

So, I started preparing. Prepared like there was no tomorrow.

It was going to be a telephonic interview at 6 pm in the evening. So, I was all geared up at 5:45.
Mobile phone charged. Check.
Sheets of plain paper. Check.
Pencil sharpened. Check.
Spare pencil sharpened. Check.
Earphones of my mobile phone. Check.
Settle down calmly in my bedroom with doors locked. Check.
Pray. Check.

It was 5:59. I started staring at my clock. Every second seemed like a year. I was like a guy who had just proposed and was waiting near the phone for her to call.
Seconds, minutes crawled by.
Still no sound other than the raindrops in the balcony.
I could hear my heart beats. It was driving me insane.

This continued till 6:20. Nothing happened.
I did not get the call. I tried calling my friend who works there.

Then gave up. Felt like throwing my mobile phone on the wall. It had no network. It was on emergency mode. How on earth would I have got a call on that fucking phone?

Why me? The worst thing is I couldn't even yell out my frustration. I didn't want to affect my family.
So I called and cried. Now the son-of-a-bitch network was working fine!

Unintentional loudspeaker

Just found out to my surprise that orkut is a big, huge, monstrous zillion watt loudspeaker. Within 23.6 seconds of me changing my location from London to Mumbai, I received 492 scraps asking me whether I am back for a vacation or for good or am I just having fun or am I plain crazy.
Should I use 'reply to all' and shout about my situation?
Or should I just get back to my bed and try to lose sleep thinking about another uncertain sunrise that beckons?

PS: This is my ringtone now. :)

Sayonara

Time to bid adieu to the city which promised a lot but delivered a painful blow. But yes, I have grown up now. Grown much older than the one year I spent here. More than anything else, it has proved me the idiocy in placing too much faith on people, no matter how close they are. I have learnt more and more things as I spent more time in this city. Every place I have gone before has always given me new friends whom I treasure even now, but this place has disappointed me. It has shown me the darker sides of people, that people can be very selfish and heartless. Not that I have been a saint either. I have been at my worst here. Grow up Karthik!

Will I miss this city? Probably a little bit. I will miss the sheer variety of things available here, the closeness to the exhilarating Europe and the clean Thames.

Will this city miss me? Haha, are you kidding me? I had very few close people here and by design or by fate, each and every one of them has hurt me big! So much that I don’t even want to think about them anymore.

But then, I ruminate. I will ruminate.

These people and my moments with them are my memories which I take from here. Please don’t take them away from me! I know some of the emotions were faked, but still I would like to be an ostrich and be naive.

As I sail into the waters both familiar and unfamiliar, I might look back at the peacock feathered page of my life sometime later. Don’t know whether it will bring a smile or a frown in my face. But change my mood, it will.

Sayonara Old Blighty.

My love..

It’s 2 in the morning and I am wide awake. You don’t allow me to sleep. You keep coming back into my mind all the time. I think about you ALL the time.

I know it has been 2 months and our separation has been painful.

I think I need you now.

I crave for you. I want to be with you. I want to feel you.

I love you!

More than ever.

Please come back to me, you little drop of heaven on earth. I miss you sooo much! Mmmuaaahh!!

Alter - Ego?

I get out of house once in a day for having my dinner. Dinner is fairly uneventful with me taking a book with me and reading it as I effortlessly slurp the ‘South Indian Meals’ at one of the quintessentially Thamizh restaurants in East Ham. However, today it was thankfully different.

I was talking to my brother on phone and we were discussing about the increasing price of samosas in theatres in Mumbai. We generally talk in sentences containing words from English, Tamil, Hindi and Marathi. As I hung up the phone and started salivating in the thought of devouring Chole Baturey, the guy, who was sitting in front of me and sharing my table, smiled at me and asked,
‘Are you from Mumbai?’
‘Yeah’
‘Where in Mumbai?’
‘Dombivali. Have you heard about the place? If not, its near Thane’
‘Dombivali? Wow! Where in Dombivali’

OK, this is getting interesting.

‘East. Pandurangwadi.’
‘Arrey wah! I am from Anand Nagar.’
Pandurangwadi and Anand nagar are adjacent lanes.

Both of us have lived our lives there.
Both of us are Mechanical Engineers.
Both of us were vegetarians.
Both of us ordered Chole Baturey.
Both of us missed Vada pav.
Both of us were returning in a week to the adjacent lanes.

Both us had been made redundant.

Similarities can be painful sometimes.

L(unch) and T(ea) days - Part 3 - Journey back home

Venky pulls a chair and sits with us. I feel that he kind of knew about who did the work in our group. So he directly looks at Amit and asks, ‘Did you get the paper on Desublimation from the IIT library?’

‘Not yet sir. We did not have access to the IIT Library. I think we need a letter from you to show it to the librarian.’ Another piece of pure genius.

Fact: We don’t even know where the library is located inside the IIT Campus. We have been to the campus twice before.

Once, for submitting the forms of JEE, when we were really inspired about the whole thing and thought that getting into something like AIR 350 would be a cake walk. But then, I don’t like small numbers. So I added a zero to that and ended up being AIR 3500.

I think I still have all the unused Brilliant Tutorials material in my house. It was used for two purposes. My mom sometimes used to roll puris and keep them inside the books before frying them, so that they are not stuck against each other while taking them off for frying. And my brother used to carry one of the books to his school to play book cricket with his friends. No wonder, neither me nor my sporty brother ended up anywhere near the IITs.

Second time was for doing our Communication Skills Assignment. Can you believe it if I say we did our Communication Skills assignment in the Tribology lab at IIT Bombay? Yes, you have to.


Venky then starts explaining about the Desublimation process for the 348th time. And again, only Amit understands it and the rest of us are nodding like Joey. I doze off for a second and suddenly Abhi pinches me and I wake up to see Venky has left.
Amit has already written 15 pages of notes from the discussion. He and Santo are discussing about some concept of Heat and Mass Transfer which they could apply to the project, while me and Abhi go to drink water, discussing about the political scene in Maharashtra.

So, project discussion is over and now we need to get out of our ‘adda’.
As we walk out of the North Block, Abhi suggests that we should go over to his place, do some VB coding for the project, watch some TV and eat Bhel and Pani puri.

Project work for Amit, TV for Santo who wanted to see the match and Food for me. Nice marketing Abhi!

So, we go to the bus stop and wait for the famous ‘Filterpada’ bus. What a funny name for a place! Filterpada. We always used to tease Abhi about this place. Does the name mean everybody’s taps have water filters attached or something? I really don’t know. All I know is, Abhi used to run after the bus every time we used to leave L&T. Every single time. He has never reached the bus stop before the bus. He always used to see the bus go past us and then run unsuccessfully to catch it. Hmmm, probably that was purposely done by him to get some exercise every week.

And funnily, today there is no sign of the bus as we walk towards the bus stop. Santo is discussing about an E-Commerce assignment we had to submit on Friday, about how he cut the answers short and submitted a 3 page assignment. Important point was that there was not even a single answer which made sense since he had copied alternate lines from Amit’s assignment.

Forget about the poor E-Commerce professor, I think William Shakespeare would have died once again in his grave if he had read one of the answers from that assignment.

I am shattered when I hear this from Santo. How could he do this to me? I assumed his assignment was a ‘true copy’ and cut his assignment into half in the same manner and submitted a 3 page assignment with much bigger handwriting. I should have read atleast one complete sentence before copying. But then if you write an assignment in the midst of playing ‘Bollywood Hollywood’ in class, then these mishaps are bound to happen. I am sorry Will.

Yes, the bus has arrived. We get into the bus and get into the seats on the left side of the bus, because there is sun on the other side. But then, you cannot win against the sun, can you? The bus took a number of turns and now the sun was right in my eyes as I was ogling at a Gujju babe standing at a bus stop.

We are back to our best, talking about the Mumbai traffic, E-Commerce assignments, Gujju babes, Kurla’s famous Panipuri waala, bus conductors' unwillingness to give change, as the bus slowly crawled towards Kurla, where Abhi lived. I think we could have walked faster than the bus. But then, we are paunchy people, out of which one person's only exercise in a week is to run 100m towards a bus stop.

(to be continued)