Chp 35. Church on Easter

I love my community. Its not everyday that you post a message on a public forum and ask the people online if any of them can take you to a place you’ve never been to before, and people actually responds and volunteers to take you there, people you’ve never met or known before.

That’s what I did on Easter Sunday. As I have posted before, I have no idea where the mizo church is, or who the mizos here in Bangalore are. But there’s always this feeling of bonhomie among us, and everyone’s ready to help out anyone.

Jupiter, my new fren at Izawl.com who I have never met before, told me to come to Koromangala. I did that. He came on his bike, and I followed him all the way to Frazer town, to this church called Wesley Church. Man the place was filled with mizos, young and old, hip and smart. It was like a miniature Mizoram. Anyway, Jupiter and I introduced each other formally, and I met the other ppl who come online at Izawl.com

The Church was already filled up, so many of us sat outside. Its then that you realize, most of these guys come to the mizo Church not for the devotional experience, but rather to socialize with all the other mizos who are spread out all over the city.

Met a lot of mizos. I am definitely not going to remember all their names. After the Church service, we had our traditional tea time. We mizos just love drinking tea, don’t we. I surprised “P”. She was indeed surprised to see I made it I met her sister, mum and dad. They were really nice people. After that we went back together. Stopped at Corner House for a brief chocolate mousse on cream, and then back to my hostel. Had a great time together.

Dropped “P” at her PG hostel around 10 in the nite and then I was supposed to join Monu, Amra and Anita for dinner at LaCasa. Wasn’t that hungry. Anyway, I called up Citrus a fellow blogger who I have never met before to wish her a happy Easter and she happens to be free. Decided to meet up as we have left comments on each other’s blog for so long and its Easter after all: we might be able to share the message of Christ. So there I was zooming all the way to Cunningham Road from Jaynagar 7th block (One end of the city to the other) in the middle of the night.

After MG Road, I missed a turn and ended up somewhere completely alien to my much limited knowledge about Bangalore roads. Kept on driving here n there but everywhere all I see were hoardings and buildings I’ve never seen before in my entire life. Started panicking!

Finally stopped an auto-wala n told him to go to Cunningham Road and that I will follow him (this ofcourse after telling him that I’ll pay for the service). Its all Citrus’ fault. Trust a woman to give directions

Reached Cunningham Road shortly. Rendezvous point was at Infinitea. Waited outside for them to arrive. After many minutes and two cigarettes later, dear Citrus came out from the Tea Joint and said they’ve been sitting inside all this time! Aaaaarrrggh

Met her frens Marlene and Gareth. Nice people. Marlene was extremely sweet. Tried out an exotic tea (Kawana Arabia something something). It was… exotic After that, we decided to go to Church Street, since the night was still young (hardly 1 in the morning). Gareth had his bike and I followed Marlene’s car. Went to Java City and hanged out there till we kinda ran out of things to say I guess

You know, I’ve never had this kinda experience before. I mean, I can handle blind dates or spend time with someone I’ve never met before. But spending time with a group of frens who knew each other so well and whom I’ve never met before was an entirely new thing. I think I handled it pretty well.

But ofcourse there are minor complications when you hang out with a group you’ve never fraternized with before. Small doubts creep into your head. Like “should I offer them my cold coffee just like how we always share when I’m with my frens” and “well we’ve just met, how far have I penetrated within their defensive barriers” or “If I crack that favorite joke of mine, will they consider me a racist?” etc etc… As a matter of fact, sometimes it feels like those Group Discussions we had inorder to get into the IIMs. Coz everybody around you are strangers and you’re looking for a part in the conversation where you can join in, and once you do that, you have to make eye contact with everyone. LOL. Ok I made it sound so inanimate! Frankly speaking, it wasn’t that bad that night, and those people quickly became frens of mine.

In the end, Citrus n Marlene were really sweet to hug n kiss me goodnite.

To sum it all up, guess I socialized with two groups of people I’ve never met before today. A year ago, I don’t think I would have done such a thing. Guess IIM has changed me.

Chp 34. Izawl.com

The time to bid adieu to my seniors is nigh. Will post a special message specially dedicated to them shortly.

5 more days to go and one year is over for us too. Recently what have I been up to?

I came across this amazing mizo interactive website. Izawl.com. It has been active for many years now, but I never knew about it At first I was a bit hesitant on posting any messages there. But slowly I gathered enough courage. The thing is, my mizo sucks big time. Ofcourse I can read and write mizo perfectly, but since I haven’t spoken in mizo in such a long time, well there’s a slight problem when I try to read a mizo sentence that has typos! I mean, when someone makes a spelling mistake while typing in English, you can easily make out what the person actually meant to type. But in mizo, gawd, I’m completely lost if I come across a typo! Coz one word has like zillions of meanings, it all depends on the pitch n pronunciation.

Anyway, I didn’t give my actual details there. I used the nick name “Sandman”. That way, if I make any grammatical errors while typing in mizo, nobody will know who I really am I told only two people, “Jupiter” and “Gisele”, that I’m from IIMB. Those two have become my regular chatting buddies at that website.

I have the advantage of being online the whole day (and usually whole nite too) at that website, as most people come online from a Cyber Café or from their work-place. Me, I have the luxury of browsing right from my bed anytime of the day

I have decided to go to Church today. Easter Sunday. The only time I ever went to a mizo function here in Bangalore was on X’mas, and that too bcoz Hminga was here. After he left, I became an even more deserted island when it comes to a mizo thingie. Not that it bothered me much, as all my life I’ve always hanged out with a non-mizo crowd. But yeah, sometimes, now n then, I do feel a deep shallow emptiness inside of me, not having any mizo frens or not knowing much about my culture. That’s why I have decided to go to Church today. I will meet many of the izawl.com regulars there: jupiter, mos_def, sick sad world, Gisele, ne0n, XXX, ammi, nunoi etc etc. They couldn’t believe it when I told them I’ve been in Bangalore for almost a year now, and none of them has heard about me (It’s a community thing. Everyone knows everyone types.)

Anyway, lets see how things work out

Chp 33. Puchhka!

If I was granted just one wish on what food I’d like to eat for the last time before I die, it would be “puchhka”.

By puchhka, I do not mean the south Indian version of the paani puri. Yuck. Those are horrible. They use “patanis” (chaana) instead of aloo chaat and not only that, they even serve it hot! Eeewwww. That’s the only thing I hate about staying in Tamilnadu for the past 14 years.

By puchhka, I mean the typical Kolkata style paani puri. Aloo with lots n lots of chaat masala, kala nimak, other spices and tamarind. Maaaan, just writing about this is already making my mouth water.

I spent 3 lovely years in Calcutta before I moved down South. Almost every evening, me n my frens used to run to the chaat-wala behind the school gate before the evening “prep” classes commence. We always have puchkas, and sometimes the bhel-pooris and jhal-masalas.

I was just in 4th standard then. But never-the-less, I was always the champion puchhka eater. 16 years later and I still am the champ. Hence this is an open challenge to all of you out there. If you can eat more than me, I’ll pay for the puchhkas (and maybe a dinner treat later if you’re of the opposite sex). Otherwise, vice-versa.

Speaking of old times, man, I really miss those Cal days. For one rupee we used to get around 5-6 puchhkas. And now, each friggin puchhka is 50paise. This is when you realize the puchhka-wala understands much more about the economy and inflation better than you do. And they are shrewd at marketing too. In Cal, u’ll find a puchhka-wala in almost every street, but never two of them on the same street. Boy, dada even knows about economies of scale. And I really don’t wanna start on how well they maintain their inventories. Seriously, the IIMs should make a deep study on them. If the “dabba-walas” of Mumbai can create such a flur in the economic scene, why not my “puchhka-walas”?

If you really wanna know how crazy I was about puchhkas back then, check this out. I even named one of my G.I.Joe characters as “Puchhka Joe”! He was ofcourse, always the good guy who kill C.O.B.R.A Commander and Destro in the end. *sigh* those days….

Anyway, enough of puchhkas for the time being. I getting more and more hungry over here….

Until next time… goodbye.

Chp 32. Time to start blogging again

Finally, placements over, section web-site designing over, and Strategy Presentation over! I’m free now (relatively speaking ofcourse)

100% placement in IIMB at Day2 itself. It was indeed an extraordinary feat performed by our seniors. Kudos guys! Now this is the right way to leave a lasting impression on IIMB, and not by having hazaar discussions on who could have impregnated the hostel cat (which by the way, is pregnant once again )

Man, Day3 did not even take place. Amazing! For the uninitiated, here’s a brief explanation. Placement is the biggest word in any of the IIMs. We have Day0, Day1, Day2 and Day3 companies. Day0 (or DayZees) are the big investment companies like JPMorgan, Goldman Sach, Lehmann Bros etc. Dunno whether I’m allowed to talk about the companies that come here for recruitment, so I’ll stop at that. The popularity (and obviously the salary they offer) decreases as we move down to Day1, then Day2 and finally Day3. By Day3, a batch is 100% placed, but this time, our seniors did it in Day2 itself. Truly great.

After the placements, Sagar, Soso, Pankaj, Naoemi n I went to play at a local playground in Koromangala. I had a great game of basketball after such a long long time.

It all started the day before that when Amol, Ankita n moi were eating puchhkas at Jaynagar 7th block. Met a couple of guys dressed in basketball kit coming towards us. So I asked them where they play, n they told me its just around the corner. We went and checked it out.

Anyway, the next day, I went and played BB there, while the other guys who went with me played football next to the basketball court. I was surprised to find a hell lot of mizo guys coming to play basketball. Its like they were all over the place! The football ground on the other hand, was dominated by Arab students. It was indeed really nice to meet and interact with so many of my “brothers” that day.

Went back to hostel (after moving at 1kmph thru the Bangalore evening traffic) and we had our traditional Hostel L^2 party to celebrate the 100% placement. Free Booze! Seniors were in a happy happy world indeed. So were we. But I did not party that night. I just sat there in my room enjoying the free booze while everybody else was partying right outside my room with disco lights n 10,000 watt speakers. I wasn’t at the party that night bcoz my leg was completely out. Its all bcoz of that basketball game. It was the first time I played after I had that ligament tear, and man was my body aching like Hell.

The only thing on my mind right then was a huge blonde Swiss masseuse with two buns on her hair, massaging my every muscle n bone. Aaaaah….

After the placement, we had the inter-section website competition, where I was up almost every night till 6am working on the code implementation etc. This was immediately followed by the “Competition & Strategy” project submission. I initially free-rode on the project because I was working on the section website, but towards the end, I really had a tough time catching up with what my project mates had worked on.

Today we had our presentation, and everything worked out perfectly. I now know so much about the Steel Industries and Companies World-wide! Makes me wanna hold my head up high among others who have no idea about the Steel Industry Knowledge is fun

Chp 31. Inter-section website competition

Havent updated my blog in such a loooong time. Past 4-5 days i was dead busy with our section website. Dunno if u guys from outside can view it. Anyway,here's the link:



http://unix2.iimb.ernet.in/~vanl04/website1/seca.html



Its 5 in the morning now. Got so much to write on my blog, but right now, i'm out! Haven't eaten much in the past few days too bcoz of our section website. Tonight i was supposed to go with Pankaj n his french girlfren Naomi to this new pub at Taj. But bcoz of my work, i couldn't go with them.



Met them just now. Seems they went to Club-X instead. 500 bucks no cover charge. And the place closed down at 2am bcoz there was some trouble with the cops! lol, thankgod i didn't go. Am dying to read what the papers gotta say about this tomoro. Probably "Manager of a well renowned disc arrested..."



What the hell is happening to Club-X anyway? The last time we went there, there was no cover charge, and they gave us a lousy cake, which nobody touched. At this rate, believe me, they are losing a lot of loyal customers.



Anyway, guess i will sleep for now... sleep for the next 48 hours or so. I am so dead tired....

Chp 30. Anara CD controversy : My take.

Ever wondered how boring the life of a scientist must be?

Ofcourse these people enjoy their life coz they are doing what they are passionate about. Their work is their life. But to us, they live in a boring world called dullsville, whose only inhabitants are the geeky nerdy thick-thick glasses type of the human species, who probably never had sex their entire life (even the married ones ).

And just imagine how excited they must have been if, one day, they are asked to analyse a porn CD!

Lets take one scientist for example. We shall call him “Mukundan”. (I dunno why, but the name Mukundan always spring up when we discuss about nerds and everything that’s geeky in nature. Mukundan was my classmate back in engineering college. A typical first class nerd and teacher’s pet. He’s always the goody goody type, topping the class in every subject, never showing his assignments to anybody else. He spends his entire day studying. God, I hate the bastard! )

So one day Mukundan receives an order from the Supreme Court asking him to analyse a porn CD and also find out if the girl in it is the real Anara or she’s super-imposed into it? What would his world feel like right then??? Oh man… probably, oozing saliva from his wide open mouth, heart beating wild like a crazy Japanese Taiko drummer drumming away after downing 10 shots of vodka and making a panting sound that would put a dog on heat to shame.

If you’re a bit lost, I’m talking about the Anara CD controversy which is in the news now and then. Anara Gupta, a former Miss Jammu beauty queen, has been accused of acting in a porn flick. She ofcourse challenged the accusation and there’s a legal battle going on right now. The court has sent the CD to various forensic labs all over the nation. In a way, don’t u think the Law is responsible for promotional activity?

I mean, they sent the CD all the way up North, to the Chandigarh-based Central Forensic Science Laboratory. The people there said its positive the girl in the movie is Anara. Then the Court sent the CD down South, to Hyderabad, the Andhra Pradesh Forensic Science Laboratory, where the people over there said its not Anara. So the Judge presiding the case thought. North and South is done. Lets send it to West India too. So we find the CD traveling on a nice Indian Airlines flight to the Gujarat Directorate of Forensic Science. I hope they are planning to send the CD to North-east India too. Otherwise I’m suing the Government for discrimination!

And man, you should read some of the statements these people make.

Sources at the CFSL said scientists had examined 'frame-by-frame' the pornographic CD sent by the Jammu and Kashmir police on January 23 before coming to the conclusion that the girl in the film was Anara.
-Times of India

Frame by frame???? Lol. And I thought there couldn’t be anything worse than watching a Shakeela movie right at the front row of a cheap local theatre! (Long story. Being in Tamilnadu for 14 yrs, I thought what the heck, lets see what all the fuss is about this Shakeela everyone talks about. So one fine day I went with my classmates to watch one of her movies. GAWWDDDD… I couldn’t sleep that nite. Those thunder thighs kept on haunting me in my dreams for atleast a week.)

In Hyderabad, the Andhra Pradesh Forensic Science Laboratory Director K P C Gandhi said "We had compared the CD as per forensic biometric studies from head to toe, including the fingers, toes and the hair line. We found the lady featured in the blue film sent by the J&K police was not Anara."
-The Hindu

Toe? Hair-line? Definitely takes the fun out of watching a porn flick don’t u think? Unless ofcourse you're planning to get real kinky...

And here’s the best part.

The report was of three pages, but many documents, including still photographs, had been attached with the report, the sources added.
-Indianinfo.com

Now its time for the lawyers to have some fun! Imagine the pictures making the round in the courtroom, passing the penetrating eyes of the lawyers (what am I saying? You can’t get more “penetrating” than this ) and just imagine the Jury asking for a recess so that they can run to the photo-copier machine and make a copy of the “evidence”
Anyway, lets get back to the scientists now. I don’t know why, but today I am on a scientist tripping mood

Mukundan and his colleagues are sitting in their messy laboratory, crowding up around the State-of-the-art computer. In goes the CD.

Mukundan: “Dai machan…. What a figure!”
Colleague 1: “Seriously. I’ve never seen anybody as beautiful as that.”
Mukundan: “So do you think its her on the CD?”
Colleague 2: “Who cares? Now just shut up and lets watch the movie peacefully.”

If you meet anyone who works in a forensic lab, chances are that he’ll have the Anara movie hidden somewhere in his computer!

All this made me wonder. Are these people purposely giving out contradicting reports so that the CD can be sent from one forensic lab to the other? And all this time, poor Anara and her family are under tremendous pressure. Just how would YOU feel if one of your close family member is accused of acting in a porn flick? Globalization or not, we are still Indians, and by that we mean saying “Chheee chheee” to such issues.

Ok, I’m not, but most Indians are

One thing I never understood till now. Why is this issue making such a big thing when we have people like Shakeela making a new movie almost every week???? Is there some kinda “license to screw infront of a camera” that I don’t know about? For God's sake, media people, plz leave Anara and her family alone.

I even feel that RK Puram scandal was blown way out of proportion. But then, who am I to judge. We have different background, with different level of tolerance. That’s what build a great Nation. Diversity. Cheers to that…