Life on the Road

After 6 days of non-stop fun and joy and everything else included, life finally went back to its slow paced, boring ways on monday morning. BITS was so so, IIT-K was awesome, just for the rock show, the quizzing events of beatzo, were in a league of their own. Now the words mindboggling and nervejangling have been used as pocket change to describe certain 'reputed' or so called QM's, the real reputation lies in the content and not in the QM's gasbag antics. Some of the greatest quizzes, which yours truly has enjoyed have been done by not so famous peeps, may it be at IIT or NSIT, even my own DCE. Sadly however, after the shambles on wednesday, i shall abstain myself from making a comment on quizzing quality anywhere

This post shall not be another one on rants and qualms and what shit. This is life on the road, away from home, a world that i know. Going to BITS, i took a train called Bikaner express, the train was late by no less than 2 hours, and with a unreserved ticket, i did try and try to get into the compartment. Sadly, this was not a Rocky movie and my efforts were futile. Then i gave up and went to the sleeper coach, to my utter amazement, it was near empty. So i srtuck up a conversation with some Rajputana rifles soldiers returning home from assam. And some parts of it were surreal. They had been on the road (train) for the past 3 or so days, and would require another half a day of travel before they reach home. They asked me stuff too, the usual Where do you study kinds, after a while i realised how fortunate i have been to be born and bred in Delhi. I mean, these guys, who actually do something for their country, had no clue about certain syndromes/facilities and stuff available in the big cities.

Then ofcourse, the highly overrated utopian Pilani failed to impress, barring a few events & the occasional bit of eye candy, four days and a few events later, it was time to go home, and ironically enough, we actually felt like we were leaving something behind, barring the 50 bucks that they still owe us :). Since the buses are very luxurious and have the best possible facilities, we decided to skip them and take a cab instead. The cab driver conveniently raised his price to 1850, when the ride was not more than 1000 or so bucks. And ofcourse, listening to Rabbi's Gill te Guitar sure made it more fun, passing by Oasis after oasis, and seeing the dim moonlight light up the fields, it looked very poetic, and very fun. ofcourse the chat was a lot of fun. With the topic changing from the indi-music scene to the jazz rock band like mahavishnu and shakti, it made for a lot of fun, the weary eyes soon took over and people started dozing around, yours truly couldn't get any. So i reached home at 12 or so and the family was awake, came here, checked some comments and the mails, slept a couple of hours, ripped own a zip, took my clothes and shifted em to another bag.

And then i decided to push off for the railway station, and reached one hour before the scheduled departure, and found the train was there already. And the reputation of the train did precede itself, the seats were filled up with people from the unreserved compartment, and to my dismay, they offered me a seat to sit on, the seat which was already reserved in my name. Then ofcourse, there was a movie plot kind twist and turns, where my partners and more importantly, the ticket keepers, had nt shown up. So i decided to dash off to the PCO and found that the ticketek would indeed be here, and the other guy kept on sleeping. The sleeper slept and the ticket guy just made it on time, as i was contemplating getting off the train. The blue line like journey was very taxing, with the train stopping everytime it could, and everytime it couldn't, it did the same.

And then ofcourse, we had a great time in Kanpur, the hospitality is just heartwarming, and overly kind. The plush rooms and the miminal paperwork meant that the formalities didn't get too shady & rigorous. And the quizzes and rockshow, it was a toss up. But we kind of got the best of both worlds, we listened to the rock show as we participated in the quiz. The results were nice, and the competition was the stuff of legend.

Travelling is tedious and all that gyaan. But trips like these don't happen too often.

Remebrance of Things- Past, Present and Future

I sit here and listen to Aerosmith, wait now its Stillwater and Audioslave, after a marathom weekend of writing, yep. I was given The Ultimate Assignment (it had 42 pages in all), and even copying that takes a lot of time. So much so, that the winamp MP3 list had gone through quite a few songs . Well Im not here to talk about that (though, i just did). My thoughts after finishing the work;"The Bastard has beeen nailed", words of Edmund Hillary to Tenzing Norgay after conquering the Everest.

Anyways, today was a time for reflection, as the musings continued in my twisted head. I recalled some of the things that i did in college, of course there were others, which were more illicit and spicy, but they shall be posted some other day and time. Today is all about my years in 'The Village', a not-so-affectionate title for college.

The Early Days
College for me was a whole new ball game for the first few days, I knew of only one form of education & teaching. Where uneducated teachers come and bark their lectures at unattentive students whose only aim in life is to.... (well, think of something). Fundamentally, the first half remains till today while the second half changed when i joined college. Here I was, A mama's boy still, thrust into the land of the toppers, the CAT champs, the perfect GRE scores, the 3 job holderrs, and most remarkably, the Beer Guzzlers, chain smoking potheads. Not that they ran the show or something, they were the ones who get all the attention somehow. So i cleaned a couple of rooms and did some ragging stuff to get to know the DUDES of the college, and did a fairly decent job, may i add. Then ofcourse, the bunking started, while people used to bunk to go out with their beloved, to sit in the canteen, to smoke up or to do nothing. However, for me and the likes, it always meant cricket or basketball all day long.

During one such game with the 'village boys' (yes, this is true, it was a all village team and we had a bet), as i was bowling the last over, this senior came and gave us a little rollicking, saying that he needed a 'Crowd' for a event and we fucchas were out playing. After the usual mumbo-jumbo and a few jitters, my team scraped through with a few runs and off we went to the event. As luck would have it, it was a lonewolf quiz. The elims from sports turned out to be crackable and I somehow ended up in the finals, albeit after 5 tie-breaker questions. I held my own despite the constant banter and ragging threats from the seniors in the audience and above all, the host himself :) . I finished a decent fourth out of six, considering that was my first quiz as a finalist (Didn't quiz at all in school, barring a couple of events as audience) and the GODS themselves had all qualified. The gods later on opened up and I got to be their partner, and above all, am still good friends with all of them.

The Transit
This result suddenly made me believe that i was decent enough and could quiz a bit. This spurred me on to compete more and get more good questions. Then ofcourse, 'An Offer was made which i Couldn't resist'. A senior, who i considered to be a divine person, asked me to team up with him. First of all, I couldn't believe that i had such a offer, and secondly, with power came the responsibility. So I knew I had to hold my end for us to do well as a team. And boy o boy, well we did. We swept the first few quizzes with astonishing margins, then ofcourse there was the odd heated word and we sat as different teams, didn't do either one any good, IMHO. The juggernaut rolled on and on and we ended up winning most things in the college circuit. Sadly, his CAT preparation slowed him down and meant lesser number of quizzes, otherwise, it would have been even more fun.

And in the month of september 2003, the greatest thing of all greatest things happened. HT Horizons used to do a quiz called ICE-Breakers, which ran for only 2 editions, won once by NSIT with the incomperable (he is that, undeniably) Rohan. I didn't know its that big a deal, so I had asked The Invincible and Legendary Debashree to team up with me for a few quizzes that she and i would show up for. DID we win? You bet. This story looks like a fairytale out of children's lit. and for me it still is. The underdog won. And I didn't know the accolades and the what-nots that came with it. Chuck the prizes for a second, as hard as it maybe to do this, I was in the HT supplements twice and enjoyed pop (Read: Rock) star status for a couple of weeks. Here I was, a newbee to the hostel life, and soon people who I never knew would walk upto me and shake hands with me. It felt good,& still does. And we finished third in the IIT open quiz, 'Kombat', one of the best results that i have achieved considering we were the best all college team on stage. . University Challenge had just happened for the first time in India, that did also help, considering the publicity and the free food and all that came with it. Sadly, we didn't do too well in UC, losing in the quarters that year and the most unceremonious exit known to quizkind, a first round elimination the following year.

Yeah, I did carry on quizzing, but somehow the charm went out, with quizzards in the so-called delhi circuit increasingly becoming reminiscent of mercenaries. And we won more, for the college and ourselves, but somehow the whole thing turned into a futile mechanical exercise, rather than the intellectual activity that it is & supposedly believed to be.

Ofcourse, there were other things to do in college like basketball, volleyball, the odd game of bulls-n-bearz. the JAMs that were so enjoyable. But these remained intra activities while quizzing was more mainstream and more competitive. I will miss em all, just played my last competiticve game of basketball, ended up losing by 3 points, in a 103 point thriller. And tommorrow is the last volleyball game, sadly, memories is all that will remain. And fond memories they shall be....

Blogging in the Name of......

The post comes about as I reflect on the pot-shots and other garbage being thrown by IIPM and a few artificial and superficial bloggers who confuse Alma-Mater for Alum- Mater. A lot of typing has happened over the weekend in the world of blogs, I am not so sure how much of it has been for the better.

This is how it all started , when Gaurav posted a usual post. This reveals (probably, the facts still disputed) the credentials or allegedly the lack of. But somehow, this started a forest-fire, which went on & on & one and culminated into this. As the editor-publisher of JAM, and a IIM-A alumni, she probably thought that it was a moral & a journalistic ethic to bring it to some aspirants' attention, the tall claims that these institutes make. I hereby clarify, that i don't necessarily uphold the views of any of the parties, however, since Rashmi and Gaurav are IIM alumnus, i think its only natural that they ought to know a thing or two, if not more, about management. But this, has gone way out of hand, with comments, despicable as they can get, being posted on youthcurry. And ofcourse, where there is a comment, there has to be a blogger. Somehow, about 1 million (or there abouts) bloggers were born, and they posted their own management fundas along with those of the other avid bloggers, and this started, what yours truly refers to as, World Wars. The term has not been a cult or a popular success, but i have survived much worse.

Coming back to the matters which are more pressing than the odd potshot, these events added up and have culminated into a resignation, now i am sure Gaurav Sabnis, someone who I have never met in person, an avid blogger, yet most importantly someone who believes in standing up for what he thinks is right (& it truly is, AFAIK), will get a lot of respect, if nothing more. And yeah, he's capable enough to get over this and turn the page.

Sadly however, this also means that someone who posted facts has had to bite the bullet, IMHO, and this is unpardonable. I am not politically perfect and far from it, most readers of this space know that. But if IIM-L didn't teach him a thing or two, where else could he have learnt? Yes, he stood up for himself, and resiging a job at IBM, just for doing the right thing, is a choice not many would dare make. That shows the exemplary nature of the man. Sadly, when i got to know of this matter vulturo's blog, i hoped and hoped that it was a rumor, worse than the alleged AAJTAK and Tehelka's of JAM. But I was wrong, and i felt dejected, not because i feel JAM is a journalistic bible, (wont mention you know what, dont want to end up in jail), and i dont think any (almost all) of the blogger's would qualify as godly authors, One can't deny the 'smoke without the fire' saying, can one?

Gin soaked gentleman, someone whom i had known and acquainted with some while ago had also made a post in the same regard. Now, if burning PC's is a solution, i have a better idea, my HCL is growing OLD, and i need a new PC, so instead of burning them, why not hand them over? Did i hear morals, If mr unstoppable had any, there would be a lot of better posts on a lot of blogs. Sadly, this never happened, and we had ourselves a skirmish, I don;t really care about who came out victorious.

PS: Vulturo, at one of my meetings with him, actually mentioned this fact on how controversial blogging had been in the states, adding up to many ejections from jobs and what nots. I didn't really want to see a live demo, 'Inspired' as our country can get, i did see one.

The Ultimate Post

Ok, Since my original post has been removed, thanks to the wonders (blunders) of technology, i am here for a rewrite. This ,by the way, for some of the regular eaders, happens to be my 42nd endeavour as a blogger, and i didnt really think i would write this much, knowing a little bit about myself. Hell, i have survived and living to tell more stories and more rants and qualms about life.

Since 42 in quizzing and Literature parlance has been described quite aptly as The Ultimate Answer, i think i would try and make this post as ultimate as possible, or close enough. So, here are the 42 things, ideas,facts,suggestions, call it what you want.this will be soulful recollection, slightly less radical than usual, hopefully. And this is some collection of 42 thoughts criss crossing my head

START
1. Blogwriting should be renamed to Blog Fighting. (Credit-Neha)
2. One person per blog, leaves things simple and easy to follow, no hotch-potch of 200 blogs being run at once by 5000 people!!!!!!!!!
3. Blogspot should be punished for messing up my original post. and i should be paid damages....:) I stil love it, so no hassles
4. Blogging should be about love, peace and co existence, and all the good things in between, no other stuff should be allowed.
5. More Templates and fonts, and free HTML tuts, so that people like me do a graffiti on their blogs.

moving on
6. Grunge music should be properly defined, instead of being called loud, Alice in Chains should return and kick Oxford's ass.
7. The PAAAP (pop) music of the 90's, Backstreet Boys, Spice(less) girls and co. should be honnored with Madame Tussaud statues, for ruining music for good.
8. The line

"As long as there will be music,

we will be coming back again"

Should officially be voted as the most scariest line ever in music history, considering its from a backstreet boys song.
9. Once great, now OLD bands like Metallica and U2 should pack up, they cant go any better, and the worse the fans should not witness.
10. The boy band vidoes featuring 500 hot chicks should be archived, simply because their would be a subsequent announcement of one of the members being 'Gay'.
11. MAD should do more spoofs of music artistes, rather than spoofing movies, the music spoofs are better

A bit further on
12. For my next birthday, i will get RATM, Audioslave, The Beatles and Led Zeppelin, and ofcourse, ze GOD himself, Rabbi to do a closed doors concert aptly called,
"me and F.R.I.E.N.D.S."
13 Engineering colleges should be located near civilization, of course the nearby villages grow good weed, but thats where the benefits end.
14. Ok, this is where i am a BIT radical. Movies like American pie, The Graduate and Original Sin should always be screened uncut on TV, so that the Ganda bacchas can go more ganda.
15. Beer, Petrol and whatever other indulgence people have should be provided free-of-cost, and people must have the right to pick-their-own-poison.
16. Bands which imitate the beatles shall serve their afterlife in hell, and worse.
17. uummm, k, Quentin Tarantino should make more movies and write yet more scripts, he rocks.
18. Some one will please explain the Stanley Kubrick school of movies to me someday
, which would be fun to understand,hopefully.
19. IMDB should go desi and cover indian movies.
20. OK, now for some more revolutionary ideas. Cricket and Hockey have to be outlawed and banned from a country obsessed with mediocrity and hypocrisy.
21. Our Bhakti Bhaavna must go louder, with people like Cradle of Filth , showing up and doing the Jaaagrans.
22. The Great Indian (zaleel) Laughter challenge should become a daily sitcom, that ways we can discover yet more ways of higher nonsense and laud Siddhu, who is aspiring to start a Death Metal band with shekhar suman, considering the unnecessary loud shouting and headbanging which goes on.

More Shit
23. World peace is a empty and a hoax concept, should be banned from use at beauty pageants, just to see what the Hot shot contestants come up with.
24. BCCI,as is inevitable, should be handed over to Laloo Prasad Yadav, since he has a Cricket team of his own including the extras and the coach, there would be no jhagdas and they would all use the choicest swear words from bhojpuri/maithili and do the job that present crop can't.
25. Bipasha Basu and Shahrukh Khan, along with Karan Johar, will start a fresh TV show, aptly called,"So fucking dumb yet so hep and proud".
26. The times of India will be renamed to The Crimes of India.
27. More papers and mediamen continue to achieve a Orvellesque era of Totalitarianism .

Ok, Some Creative collabarations i wish would come true

28. Quentin Tarantino and Ram Gopal Verma doing a gangster flick, multi-lingual, Similarly, David Dhawan and Monty Python,uuummmm too dreamy, is it? The first one, would be a DREAM, if there ever was one,i shall call this the 'almost_useless' dream.
29. Ok, this is my favorite, Kishore Kumar and the Marx Brothers, or better still, the kumars and the marx brothers combine along with one extra dude, and remake Seven Samurai. Leave that, just a comic musical would be awesome.
30. The goody goody things of life like music, books, movies, food and all the other stuff must be cheaper.
31. Delhi , The city of Djinns, will be a lot safer for women, and have more of a nightlife, the rowdy elements must be disposed and taken care of.
32. If only the distances in delhi would become smaller, no cops on the road, break the speed of sound.....
33. All of one's friends should be as close as possible, as Mic Jagger says," you don't always get what you want"........ You only miss people when they are not around.
34. News channels air some informative entertainment programmes rather than crime watch and whatever patrol, and some informative anchors wont hurt either.
35. I must stop living like a insomniac nocturnal nutjob and learn to sleep on time. Sadly, i cant even hope of getting this right. Somalia will upstage them all and win the soccer world cup before this happens, i am waiting for the day.
36. Message T shirts must look like graffitti boards, with multi lingual messages and as many at a time as possible :)
37. People change from their fundamentals and become more rational for their own good and for the greater good of others.
38. Some one will come and explain me some physics, some of which will make some sense to my peanut brains.
39. I will do something worthwhile for the country, so that others carry on gloating and riding this country like its a whore.
40. The Shawshank Redemption would become real and someone's HOPE will actually free them from their own demons.
41. People like me start blogging and start typing their radical, angry, uneducated, politically incorrect rants on forums and blogs and make fools out of themselves, while getting some praise along the way.
42. Somewhere in time, DNA would read this post, and would aprreciate it.....

as i have always said, i continue to HOPE...............

The Legacy of Ex- Gentlemen and women

Another day in paradise, not quite. As usual, saturdays are meant for sleeping and lazing around, and watching movies and reading, but today was different. As i was the defending champion of a quiz, i had decided to bunk a cricket match, and instead go for the quiz. So i went, and as and so it happened, the quiz was done by some extraordinarily intelligent and astoundingly brainy CREATURE called arpita, and had questions ranging from medico trivia, to old calculus stuff from class 11 and 12. Sadly, they even managed to squeeze a couple of "wrong" questions in the elims. And yeah, did i forget to mention, the elims was MCQ's- multiple choice q's for the uninitiated. So if any of you grew up playing Samurai and atari video games, you would have gotten those 4 and 8 in 1 types, surely. Sadly, when these SAD elements of quizzing combine, you are the game who is played, and all of it is done without any rules.

Now, my disappointment is not with the quiz, believe me, in the era that i have quizzed, other people including myself have seen much much worse, something these people can't even fathom in their wildest dreams. But when i have a streak of 4 victories in LHMC, and winning whatever i have shown up for, i think i am entitled to a bit of chit-chat and banter. So the quiz starts and we are told that its a MCQ format, with +1,-1 scoring, sadly, i told my partner to hold back and not maaro tukkas. Not a prudent decision, i may add, but it would have been worse to qualify, then i wont have written all this.

I have nothing personal against LH, i have won some good quizzes, one was a real shady one, where i almost got a -15 for jumping up and down on stage, which was revoked, and we managed to win that joke of a quiz by 5. The other quizzes have been pretty good and better than many others i have been to,as far as the quality of content and presentation and were done by a very good friend and partner,neha. Sadly she is no more a student and as they say, quizzing has gone to the dogs. I had done a quiz for them last march which was well appreciated, had ok ok participation, but sadly the feminine jealousy and envy of some one 'else' coming over and doing a quiz there was not tolerable and the lit secy. was blasted within a couple of inches of her life, so much so that she had to cancel a few events.

Now i am not a world champion, i repeat, but i have beaten all my contemporaries and a few others, so i can run my (keyboard) mouth on MY blogspace. And this post comes against all doctor's orders, so i think i may get blasted by a few people later on, which i won't care, considering it would be peanuts whn compared to what i had to FACE in the morning. Not that i have won everything i ever took the elims for, the biggest learning curve was sitting as audience and being a scorer occasionally, ironically enough, sometimes i miss that too.

I wasn't always this spectacular and this good, i learnt as a understudy from my seniors, who literally taught me how to quiz, for some, that may be stretching it a bit, but i have no qualms about using these words. Yes, LHMC has been a subject of speculation before and much too much has been made of nothing. i dont want to start a world war again. They can atleast learn from neha, just a little bit, and be MORE sensible and open. Gloating on egos of self dependence and what nots won't serve anyone for the better, would it.Yes, all of us learn, but not when the reputation of the college is at stake, for a college is known by the quality of the events they put up at their fests, believe me, mine is a lot worse. I dont think the CREATURE mentioned above or any others apart from neha would come and read this, but i hope they do. SADLY, Hope is all i have....