Time 11:20 p.m.

Mobile Network : Airtel

I try making a few calls, my outgoing services are barred. I ask my roomie to give me a call; my number is not reachable. What-do-you-know, after everything, maybe Airtel have finally allowed me to port out of their network to Idea. I quickly switch over to the Idea sim and start the phone. I make a few calls and everything’s working fine.

Time 11.50 p.m.

I go onto the Idea website to create a login for my number. The website throws an error to me “The number you have entered is an non-Idea number.” Well, it wasn’t wrong. So, I then dial the Idea customer care. After the customary automated menu options, I finally reach the ubiquitous (and unfortunately again, ubiquitous-ly useless) executive.

Ex: Good Evening sir, How may I assist you?

Me : Yes, my name is blah blah blah … Airtel sim not working …  ported to Idea … not able to create my login id.

Ex : Oh yes sir, you see you haven’t yet completely ported out from Airtel, that’s why the system does not recognize your number.

Me : Eh? Say what?

Ex : Yes sir, you will have to contact Airtel customer care to resolve this issue.

Me : You want me to call the Airtel customer care from an Idea number?

Ex : Oh no sir, please call them from your Airtel sim.

Me : But I just told you, my outgoing and incoming services have been barred on the Airtel sim. I can’t make any calls from them.

Ex : Oh no sir, you must be wrong. You can’t make the call from your Idea sim, we haven’t yet activated your services.

Me : Err… I am making this call from the Idea sim, you do know that, right?

Ex : Ahhhh…. Sir, I meant you won’t be able to make normal calls. Customer care would be accessible.

Me : Before calling you, I made a few STD calls. It was working perfectly fine.

Ex : Sir, actually our system is a bit slow so maybe that’s why your details haven’t been updated here yet.

Me : Awesome. Ok. I’ll give you a call tomorrow then. Hope everything would have been cleared by then.

Ex : Definitely sir. Is there anything else I may assist you?

Me : Is there anything you have about me in your system that you can help me with regarding my connection?

Ex : Err, no sir, since you know that the system …

Me : Thanks. Bye.

I wonder why I ported.

Btw my next most traversed route : Pune – Goa. Now that’s a route I would wish to traverse more!

Earlier when they started getting married, I used to blame it on them. Woh Maadu (Marwari) hai – unke family mae jaldi shaadi hoti hai. Or at times I just kept a sarcastic view. Woh toh frustrated insaan tha. Life mae laundiya pata nahi paya, toh shaadi kar li. But still it was marriage, acceptable by all means.

But kids?!!! That’s a different zone. New responsibilities. Completely different lifestyles. I can’t even picture myself in their shoes. It scares the hell out of me putting myself in their place. The closest I can relate – is having a dog or a cat at most.

I’m 28, soon to be 29. And I am still not ready for a marriage, forget kids. But all around me, while I see most of my close friends including 21-22 year olds getting married, I do hope they keep a good amount of time before they start thinking about kids. Else I’ll have to start working on another role – Ninja uncle

Ahmedabad to Pune Route

Starting Point : Ahmedabad

Destination : Pune

Itinerary : Ahmedabad – Vadodara – Surat – Vapi – Mumbai – Pune

Distance : 660 km

Travel Mode : By road

Travel Vehicle : Pulsar DTSI 150 CC

Additional apparatus : One helmet, one fully loaded & charged Ipod Nano, one fully charged Sony DSC H7

Modus Operandi : Leave Ahmadabad early morning on 19th, and leave the rest to the road.

Childhood passed on to teens, then came college, and then work. Even then this movie always eluded me. Finally thanks to Star Gold, after a marathon period of 6+ hours – 3 hours of the movie, 3+ hours of ads in-between, finally this one too was ticked off the list.

One actor of that era that I greatly miss in today’s movies is Danny Denzongpa. Amazing versatile actor – a man of the level of Amrish Puri or Amjad Khan – although I wonder how many people remember this guy. It’s a pity we hardly remember villains as much as we do heroes. A few decades later, I guess people would only remember the characters Mogambo or Gabbar, not the actors behind the characters.

I have lived in over 7 states, and that accounts for more than 20 cities where I have spent atleast a fortnight. I can speak 4 languages, and decipher (to an extent) what the person in front of me is saying in another 3 languages. No, I am not rehearsing what to put in my resume if you are wondering.

Out of these 20 odd cities, I have the luxury (?) of visiting the local saloon in almost all of them (trust me, it is a luxury, especially if you are ready to spend the extra buck to get a face massage), mostly to get a shave. The process for a shave in any of these cities would generally mean the following steps : I enter saloon, he looks at my shabby beardy face, beckons towards the empty chair with a nod. I sit, and he gives me the shave, and then I pay and leave. Once in a while the enterprising one tries to start a conversation, but generally due to lack of a common language and the short duration of the entire activity, its a wordless process.

Except for this time. I enter the saloon. The dusty radio is blaring some local songs, the saloon’s half empty as it’s close to noon – not the busiest time of the day for your saloon,no? I take up one of the empty seats, he gets his gear ready; and then the one in a million question -

“Saar, you want to keep the moustache?”

I almost fall of the seat. Words fail me, I mutter something and give him a disapproving nod. He gives me a weird look, and gets back to work. Once done, I pay him and get up and then I look around.

Out of the 7 odd guys in the saloon, I’m the only one without a moustache.

Then it hits me. I’m in Chennai.

So happy that I had to post this while sitting on the loo-seat. I had to. Seriously!

Bombay, here I come!!!

Prior to my management education, I had a life. I might not be getting in business worth crores for my company, there was very 0.0001% probability that the CEO of the company had even heard about me, forget knowing me. Office meant breakfast, lunch and numerous small coffee breaks with friends, sitting in the cafeteria, laughing at jokes and checking out the few chicks in the office campus. Yes, we also did the work, but there was a time, when I used to look forward to going to office. Weekends were meant for my personal activities, to catch on with other friends. Yes, I had a life.

Now I don’t know what to do. I am lost. Completely lost. Even if I get time once in a while, I don’t know where to start. Yes, I have money with me now. But seriously if somebody could tell me how to buy my earlier lifestyle, I would gladly do so.

If somebody has a solution to this, please please tell me.

But what I find more idiotic is the 20,000 odd strong crowd sitting out in the hot sun, still watching the debacle. The current score stands at 75 for the loss of 7 wickets, the most recent wicket being that of Bhajjie. But still not a single person has decided to leave the match and get on with his life. Every one of them is still sitting out in the stadium, watching the idiotic match. Why you would ask. The easiest answer would be hope – Indians are cricket crazy people, and they’ll still be hoping for a miracle, probably expecting the tailenders to get to a decent score.

I disagree. Its not only just hope. Its also money. If someone gave an option to the people to get back some part of their ticket value by leaving now itself, I can guarantee 90% of the stadium crowd will take the option and leave. It’s all about “lemme atleast get the most of what I have spent” attitude of us Indians. This isn’t only about cricket. Let me give another example. Two weeks back I had been to an utterly hopeless movie, “All the Best” wrongly trusting online reviews suggesting the movie to be an excellent comedy movie. I should have got an idea then itself when I noticed that the theatre was less than half filled, even though it was less than a week since the movie was released. 10 minutes into the movie, and I was already fidgeting in my seat. Half an hour later, I couldn’t stand the pathetic “comedy” scenes. Thankfully my friend also agreed with me on the same, and we decided to make a quick exit. What surprised me that the rest of the audience preferred to sit it out. The same monetary aspect acting here of course.

When will we get out of this attitude? By moving out, I had two hours to spend on better things than sitting in a movie hall watching a utterly crap movie. On a parallel note, today I get the entire day to do stuff other than sit in front of the tv hoping for a miracle. I only hope the 20,000 odd people sitting in the heat in the Guwahati stadium figure out the same.

The reasons are numerous. The beautiful landscape for starters. I can spend hours standing at the door just staring away at the landscape. The second is the wide choice of food options I get to savor on a train. For a tea lover like me, a long distance journey offers different versions of tea :- for e.g. the utterly useless tea bags offered by the railway pantry caterers, the waterish but masala flavored chaa of Western India (read: Gujarat), the elaichi flavored chai as you move towards central and north india, and last but not the least, the plain and simple hot milkish tea offered in southern states.

But apart from all this, what is so enriching are the different types of people you find traveling along with you. Ideally the best way to experience the same is to travel second class, as in most AC compartments the people just completely shut off themselves from others, preferring to spend the time sleeping or reading. But once in a while, you find this highly interesting personality who makes up your day completely. As I did a few weeks back, while traveling from Mumbai to Chennai for the Diwali holidays.

He was a young 8 month old software engineer working in Wipro Pune. Let me call him Vijay, after the tamil movie star Vijay (he kinda looked like him). Having boarded the train at Pune around 12 in the night, Vijay spent the first half of the journey sleeping away to glory. It was after lunch, when he switched on his laptop, he became of interest to me. After taking permission (to play music) from the rest of us, Vijay started playing videos of popular tamil movie songs. For the next odd hour or so, he was a sight to behold, as he got completely enthralled in the music. With his feet tapping, his fingers snapping in the air and his head shaking in rhythm with the songs, if only I could have provided him an open floor, Vijay would have joyfully performed the complete dance moves right there itself. As for me, I was ruing the absence of a camera to take a video of him.

Get him to do the same on a flight. You’ll never see this side of Vijay.

Indian Railways rocks!