Little Tricks

Little children are to their respective parents what pets are to their masters.
As I sit on the stone seats in the DRDO canteen I see so many children, accompanied by their parents, playing and running around (both are the same to them I guess).
Every once in a while some uncle or aunty goes by who knows the parent. They say hello to each other and the uncle proceeds to meet the child. The mother says "hello bolo” ...the child says hello. After asking some dumb questions (like, what are you doing here? Where is appa or amma?) the uncle leaves and the mother says again "bye bolo" and the child lifts its arm and shakes its wrists .
Point is every parent teaches some tricks to his/her off springs. The dog doesn’t know what it is doing when it raises its leg and pushes it forward; we presume it is a hand-shake. Like wise the children have no clue what hello or bye or the waving action imply but they have been taught to do that by their parents. The more tricks the child is taught and is able to execute successfully (or as wished by parent) the more amusing or "cho chweet" the child is.
I saw one girl respond to the command "flying kiss do babu ko" also. Very nice. Ten points to amma for training the girl.
There is another side to this.

Two weeks back I was waiting for my friend near a KFC outlet near CMH road. The outlet happens to be right at the crossroads and so many people pass by it. There was female beggar sitting near the steps of this KFC outlet and along with her was a little girl. She would not be more than 5 year old. She wore a bright green dress and it had jari lining also I think (or it is good for the story) . The little girl stood beside the beggar and did nothing but watch the crowd and most probably was trying to come to some conclusion as to how people managed to drive so chaotically even at a signal post.
When ever she felt like, the beggar nudged the forward and I guess it was some sort of a signal because the girl went straight to the people closest to her and staring asking for alms. She simply put her palms together like a bowl and raised it sky wards. The palms would not even reach till the knees of the people (Pretty obvious but somehow I felt like mentioning that specifically). If some one was in a generous mood they gave her a coin which she deposited into hands of the beggar with out a second thought. After this she stood beside her until the next "signal" was given .It was amazing (in a sad way), she was like a trained pet!!
Some times she didn't get anything so she simply put her "bowl" down and went around roaming near the KFC steps. She kept hoping now and then and stopped to observe a small bug going on the pavement.
Point again is, she had no clue she was begging. She had no knowledge of things/feelings like self respect or self reliance which in a way is good ,for the awareness of such things will only make her detest her life (of being a beggar).
As this train of thoughts ran through my head a couple walked in with a Labrador retriever. Their first plan was to tie the dog to the pole which ran along the steps and go in to have a bite. The man ran into some technical issues as the chain had no hook or such so as to facilitate such things. So it was decided that he would sit there and that the lady would get the eatables parceled.
The lady went in leaving the man with the dog and he started stroking the dog's head and back.
All this the little girl stood and saw. I suppose what went on in her mind was:"There is no one to show me such love, at least half of that much love." But since she is a little girl I don't think she thought about such things and so she simply stood still and marveled at the big dog.
Ignorance is bliss they say. In the case of the little girl I am very happy this is true. I only hope that some day she will come out of that life without loosing her entire sense of self-respect.
I think I will name her Mala.
Group hug and pray for Mala okva?? One two three go.

Raghavan

P.S: Refer to this comic strip http://xkcd.com/531/ . Move the mouse over the strip and read the text that comes up.

Hum Ne Veg Bolatha!!

The company offers one non-vegetarian dish as part of the daily lunch menu. Few days back a vegetarian (a strict one at that) found a piece of something in his portion of sambar. Since it did not taste (or look) like anything he was supposed to eat he thought it was a piece of non-vegetarian dish and handed it to one of his colleagues for "testing". The test turned out positive and the unfortunate vegetarian was deeply hurt by the fact that his hitherto pure body (and soul let's add) had been contaminated by a dead animal’s flesh. This unfortunate vegetarian would go on to shoot mails, notifying this matter, to the FOOD committee (Yes, we have one such committee. Too bad if your software firm doesn’t care for such things) putting the entire division in which he works in CC.The mail described the incident as a utter disregard towards the vegetarians and said that the sentiments of the veggies have been hurt seriously by such incidents.The day passed away with little response except a few replies supporting his line of argument (with everyone else added in CC).

Little did he know, the turmoil his mail was about to create.

A week after the "ghastly" incident the aforementioned FOOD committee, in an attempt to take strict action against the caterer (as demanded by THE mail), decided to scrap off non-vegetarian dish from the lunch menu (forever apparently).Now, I know that in India, the Brahmins have always received huge respect and their word as never been breached but this decision was genuinely stupid. I have brought Brahmins into the picture because there is no other reason for one to be vegetarian in India (unless you are some health freak).Also, one would expect vegetarians to have the sympathy of people in such cases since they are the "bechare ghas phoos khanewale" but still, this decision was genuinely stupid (once again).The committee notified the decision through a mail which was broadcast to every one in the company. This mail got bombarded by replies (with everyone in CC off course) over the next two days and there was such an uproar from the non-vegans that the FOOD committee might have been sitting under police protection to avoid any violent activities against them. The writer in everyone seemed to have awakened all of a sudden as mails flew in all directions which were CC-ed to everyone. Hasty, outrageous, un-necessary were words used to describe the decision. “Fixing the bug and leaving numerous side-effects”,"Cutting a head to cure a head-ache" were similes drawn towards it (though I don't know what the first one meant).The entire non-vegetarian population was thrown into a fix so as to what to eat from the next day .Many of them lost the motivation to eat and dragged along behind their respective teams.
The food committee members were constantly at the receiving end of the evil looks and curses of the non-vegans. One of my team members raised a valid point by saying "I don’t understand man, if they find a cockroach in veg food tomorrow will they ban veg food also?”. This logic seemed supremely flawless and I was pretty sure he would do something about this stupid decision (one more time).And just as I thought he did do something about it. He went and joined the FOOD committee stating that it lacked enough non-vegetarian members and that this was the prime cause for this stupid decision of theirs(again haha).Also, he gathered a few non-vegetarians to support his entry into the FOOD committee and had a long argument with them and his vegetarian counterparts trying to convince them about the stupidity of the decision (last time) and gave suggestions as to how non-vegetarian food could be served without affecting the sentiments of the veggies. His ordeal ending after about an hour-and-a-half and he came back vindicated and announced that non-vegetarian food would start again from the coming Monday (after a drought of one week). This came as huge relief for all vegetarians too, who had heard nothing other than the misery of their non-vegetarian friends as they poured it out over the lunch table through out this week.
All ended with a statement from me that even though this incident had thrown many people's dietary habits in utter chaos, it has given rise to a new dish called Chicken sambar.
Seriously, I have eaten sambar all my life and have unwillingly (in most cases) tasted all sort of combination my mother tried with the taan (vegetable) and masala that go into it .I got to eat sambar rice even in my college, though it is located in the remote district of Dhanbad in Jharkhand (not Bihar) but this thought of mixing sambar and chicken never ever crossed my mind or the minds of my non-vegan friends (theirs being non-vegetarian minds and hence having a wider scope).

Footnote:-What coincidence I am Sambarboy and I have got this opportunity to share a newly discovered variety of sambar with you.

Saftu

Working in this human-farm type atmosphere I have kind-of got used to the people that surround me. I know nothing about them apart from their names which are written on the name-plate atop their respective cubical and yet I have a neighbourly feeling towards them. It might me due to the fact that we all strive to make saftware for a living or simply because I got used to the faces and saftware vastu (saftu) they are a part of. Saftu is sort of a harmony between physical and cyber forces, meaning, to make efficient saftware, I need so and so person to sit diagonally opposite to or behind me, another person with his chair facing east and one more facing anywhere but to the north-east of the toilet and so on.

For a long time now, about 2 week (I guess that is long in this saftware world), the cubical next to mine has remained vacant. The person who occupied it got shifted or went abroad if I have figure out correctly from his relentless trials of getting a travel laptop over the phone with the Systems Admin. guys. Even though I knew nothing about the former occupant of the said cubical I grew a familiarity towards him and I was coding very well thanks to the saftu energy that I drew from the surrounding (of which he was an integral part).

The HR department, unaware of my saftu theory, refused to let one seat go vacant and allocated it to some person thus effectively utilizing our (or their) resources. And so, my new neighbour arrived today announcing herself by completely disrupting the saftu of my cubical and it will take a while before she learns the ways of level three right wing cubicles (if any). Moreover, I have to get used to her (not that she cares whether I succeed in doing so or not) and gauge her saftu energy and according shift my chair or table or computer so as to revive the above mentioned saftu harmony. The fact that she is a "she" presents added problem to me for there has been a lot of junta surrounding her this whole day. I guessed it might be so since it was her first day at the new "house" and all her friends came to attend an unofficial house-warming ceremony. Sadly, it does not look like the conglomerate will be temporary as she seems to be the epicenter of all chatter and this has quite a disturbing effect on the peaceful atmosphere that I had got used to for so long. But one does not complain if one's neighbour is watching his/her favorite TV show in high volume or if they shout into their mobile phones while leaning on the compound wall separating the two houses .Similarly, in Saftware, I have learnt, that one does not complain or raise his/her voice against such apparent nuisance but comforts oneself by either joining them or absent oneself from that place and materialize near the coffee machine and stay there till the "party" has come to an end.

I hope that the day comes soon when my new neighbour finds the above mentioned harmony with her surroundings and starts to contribute constructively to the saftu of level three right wing cubicles.

Of low rise jeans and sleeveless Tee

This article was written for my college newspaper- Mailer Daemon .

It is high time someone said a word or two (or even an entire paragraph) about the recent developments in the dressing sense of the students here. The students belonging to the lower half of the 4 years seem to have taken up the job of revolutionizing the fashion in the campus. The most noticeable fashion trend emerging among the kids (this would refer to my non-immediate juniors) is the low-rise jeans. For the ignorant, low rise jeans is a kind of jeans that refuses to hide one's underwear’s patti . Thus if you are a guy wearing a pattiwala underwear, there can be no better dress to show it off than the low-rise jeans. Growing up in a very conservative family, fashion to me was the 2 meter Raymond’s trouser material that I used to get from my grandparents after prostrating 4 times before them. Therefore the concept of the low-rise jeans seems absolutely alien to me. One is often lead to think as to why someone would wear something that skids halfway down the buttock? I remember trying it myself when I once pulled my normal jeans down so that it would look like the low-rise and failed miserably .For, when I came back to my room I found that the jeans had actually been sweeping the campus roads all the while.

The younger ladies on their behalf seem to have set the sleeveless Tee as one of the standard dress codes to the class. One has to understand that a hot day to them is a hot day to us too. Again my very fashion illiterate mind is lead to think as to why should this particular attire be limited to the female domain of the students only? I know a few brawny guys who could scare the teacher to death if they wear a sleeveless Tee and sit in the first bench. This at least would help the students by getting rid of an hour of boring lecture.

But jokes apart, I believe that one (boy or girl) must dress like a proper engineering student when inside the campus. People are free to wear what they want, no doubt, but not inside the campus or to the class or to the library .When you are going out for the movies or to have a fancy dinner you can show your wardrobe off to everyone. The dress we wear or the way we eat or the way we speak to people are all part of us being engineers .As engineers we are supposed to have an air of dignity and respect around us. Thus the way one does the above things shows how much he/she values his/her engineering. But then again, all is well that ends well. So, it is for you to decide, the next time you wear a low-rise (or a sleeveless Tee), weather you look like an engineering student or like an 11th class kid going out with his/her buddies to the mall.

Venkata Raghavan

P.S .Read the Wikipedia article on low-rise jeans (subtopic:-medical concerns)

Nice poem

It is by pure chance that I found this poem while surfing the internet. The words rhyme perfectly but does the poem make sense or not and how far is it true are questions left to the reader.


Sugar and spice and everything nice
That’s what little girls are made of.
Spiders and lice and wee little mice,
that’s what little girls are made of.
Alabaster skin
and emerald eyes,
and ruby red lips,
to hide all her lies:
That’s what little girls are made of.
A forked silver tongue
and a head full of bats,
pierced dimpled cheeks
and claws like a cat:
That’s what little girls are made of.

Sugar and spice and everything nice
That’s what little girls are made of.
False promises and lies
made through half open eyes,
with angelic smiles
and feminine wiles:
That’s what little girls are made of.
An appetite for money
and a runt made of honey:
That’s what little girls are made of.

Sugar and spice and everything nice,
that’s what little girls are made of,
and deceit and pain
and betrayal for gain:
That’s what little girls are made of.

Funda...

The thing with the world is that there is so much sorrow and hatred in it. So much that if all the sorrow and hatred were brought together at one place the weight would cause the earth to suck itself into a black hole. OK, bad logic. But that is the truth. There is lot of sorrow and hatred in the world. And to prevent the above catastrophe from happening, all that sorrow and hatred is distributed uniformly throughout the entire surface of the earth.

Why only on the surface, why not beneath it? Well, us human beings don't live beneath the surface now do we? That is, all the above mentioned gigantic amount of sorrow and hatred is in the hearts and minds of men/women alone. All other life forms ranging from single celled bacteria to a sea horse have found a nice balance with the nature and the other life forms around them. They seem to be happy to live and let live.

Human beings on the other hand are greedy idiots. They are proud that they have the highest brain-body ratio. They are arrogant and assume that some 300(or whatever) million years of evolution was, in some way, primarily to give way to the man/woman kind. It is us human-beings who seek more and more and roam around greedily on this planet. Look what he did to the dodo .Look what he did to the ozone layer. Look what he did to the forests. Look what he did to the beautiful snow covered mountains of Switzerland. Look what he did to the Sumatran rhinoceros in remote forests of Sumatra (well I don’t know what exactly he did but he sure isn’t leaving that poor shy creature alone).Look what he did to the Hindi movies, not one is viewable. Look what he did to the internet; damned thing is filled with bogus crap and porn. Look what he did to almost everything.

And for all the miseries amidst which I live I blame one thing. The apple. The apple made Adam and Eve do naughty things and give birth to another idiot. And from then on the process never stopped. Now we have a planet full of idiots. The apple fell down from a tree & hit a particular guy's head & made way to a whole new era in a whole new subject which I had to read for my JEE preparation .And lastly, and this is one of my personnel troubles, the apple is an annoyingly difficult fruit to eat or cut or both .

I also blame Pandora for opening that idiotic box. I blame Sir Robert Clive for winning the battle of Plassey and laying the foundation for the British conquest of India. I blame Archduke Franz Ferdinand for dying and thus triggering off the World War I which may be said to be the cause of 33% of the world's present miseries. 33% of the rest might be due to the 2nd world war and the remaining 33% is the result of the pure insanity of human actions.

I could have been born on a planet in another solar system which had millions of sunny beaches with half-naked women running around.

I could have been born on a planet where all the tree leaves where made of chocolate & all the creepers were maggi noodles.

I could have been born at a place where all the food that one could get was Italian and nothing else.

I could have been born at a place where the oceans and other water bodies were of tea/coffee instead of water (tea/coffee bodies they would be).

I could have been born there where money grew on trees and no one had to prepare for campus recruitment.

I could have been born on a comet so cold that I could have to drink hot chocolate and soup, but then they would become cold. Drop that

I could have been born on a star so hot that I could get all the ice-cream I wanted. But that ice cream would melt away. Drop that too.

Damn!

All my wishes need the planet earth to exist. While I thought I could live happily without this planet .I need earth for the Italian food, for the maggi, for the tea and for the half naked women most importantly. All the pleasures of my dream world would have to come from earth. But then I would want to live on earth because all the beautiful (and tasty) things I need would be there.

It would be filled with sorrow but it would also be filled happiness. It would have jealousy and deceit but there would also be trust and friendship. It would be cruel but there would also be kindness. It would have hate, but it would also have love. It would have internet filled with porn but it would also have fresherworld.com or orkut or Wikipedia. There would be poverty but there would be the wealth of culture and heritage. There would be thieves and there would be the police. There would be Windows but there would also be Linux.

And the thus the world would be filed with great many thing to explore and experience .I am glad I was born. I am glad I live here; here in this world filled with so much sorrow and hatred that its combined mass would make the earth suck itself into a black hole.

Ready for take-off

Aeroplane.It has been a fascination for the young and the old .The sight of one stands as an advantage for many mothers who struggle to stuff some food into their offspring's mouth . For the toddlers it is truly a mystery as to how that thing {which is not a bird} can fly. And when they reach high school ,Bernoulli comes in with his 'principle' and destroys the mystery and shatters all the mind-blowing theories they might have developed in the context. When it was introduced I am sure it was a rich man's thing {as with any new technology} ,but now thanks to globalisation , liberalization and privatization {as my economics teacher used to say} a new and wonder full concept of low-cost flying has emerged. Low-cost or economical airliners call it what ever u want but there is not denial of the fact that it has made air-travel a dream come true for the so called middle class man/women .

I remember very well my first flight .The moment my mother came bursting through the door and announced that we were going to Bangalore{from Hyderabad} on a plane , I started crying .The endless list of movies with plane crashes and wailing heroines is bound to leave its effect you see. But the flight was real fun . The unlimited chocolates i could have.The neatly arranged snack that they gave us etc etc. I, as a 9 year old was marveled when I saw houses reduced to the size of matchboxes and lakes and ponds becoming tiny blue/green spots on the terrain. Apart from that I have always wondered ,even till date, as to how the air-hostess perform their perfectly synchronized "dance" regarding the safety instructions.They never miss depicting beautifully even a single instruction that is being recited wonderfully in the mics that are hidden systematically .Off course the low-cost airliner does not offer the unlimited stock of chocolates or the packed snack but it sure does allow me to avoid a nasty 36 hour train ride back to my home.

During my recent trips back home by (aahemmmm!!) flight I happened to arrive at the airport some two and a half before my flight.Since I had nothing to do ,I decided to look around and read each and every security information my eyes could find . And I have to say some of them can be really funny and intriguing .For what ever reason ,a particular group of men chose to ram a building with an aeroplane ,the airport security has become more severe.My ticket was checked 5 times and my bag had to go through 2 X-ray scanners which they would have found out to contain nothing other than clothes. As I stood in line to get myself through the metal detector I happened to notice a rule which barred a passenger from taking pickles in the flight . Now until my plane took off I thought about all possible ways in which a passenger can harm the rest and put their lives in jeopardy by using a jar or packet of pickle. All I could think of was that, the passenger would smear the faces of the flight attendants and pilot and co-pilot and some passengers if necessary with his "highly lethal pickle" and hence take over the plane.Just imagine something of this sort happening . The news headlines will read something like "PLANE HIJACKED : MANGO PICKLE USED AS CHIEF WEAPON" . Immediately all the mango pickle industries will be slammed anti-social elements and will result in large scale protest. Thousands of forwards will be sent requesting the closure of these industries. Communities in orkut will be created which will be titled 'anti-pickle' or "we hate pickle" or some such thing. And should the industry yield to these protests and hence close down, the entire population of Telugu people will be up in arms because as I have learned living with them, it is very difficult for them to live and eat knowing that the world production of mango pickle (avvakayya)has stopped.

There was this other rule that if under any circumstances the flight gets over-loaded the concerned authorities have to right to decide which passenger (or article) should be off-loaded. Now ,if under any circumstances the former must occur--imagine the plight of the poor person who till that moment called himself a passenger of that flight. The heavier people will try to hide themselves against all odds.

But no such things happened and I had a safe flight.No wind blowing in my face like in the train or the never ending rhyme of "ticket-ticket" as in the case of a bus . Air travel offers its own trills and I believe it is worth every rupee just for the sheer fun of flying.

Credit Devatta Namo Namaha

Engineers and Credit

Well, it is my privilege to write about something as great and wonderful as credit.

I am an engineer in the making, in other words I am a college student; a college student in India. This means that I am not employed in any part time job which pays for my expenses. The money required for my futile needs is sent to me by my loving mother or caring brother. And as is the case with the majority of the students, the money in my wallet (like all other things in this world) does not last for ever. Replenish able –yes. But not ever lasting. And when the phenomenon of running out of money occurs, the divine power of credit shines upon a mortal soul.

No money for tea??? No cash for cappuccino??? Just step up to the concerned seller and say “please add it to my account” or typically “mere account mein likhe lena” (try for a facial expression which make you look constipated). And you will have your tea (or cappuccino).Ahhh, the taste!!!!!!!. The feeling of walking away without paying gives a profound sense of satisfaction and in that feeling the tea tastes even better.

What I am writing about is not to be confused with the loans that we take from our dear friends from time to time. Both the credit and the loan system have flourished due to the financial deficit of an individual...but taking loan is different from credit. Loan is borrowing money and that is not good. Because borrowing money makes you feel poor and the other party richer (though both your respective parents might be working in government offices and are always trying to save that extra rupee). This might leave you with a sense of inferiority (which is not good).

Credit, that I am writing about is entirely different. It is the process or idea which allows one to pay his bills when he/she wants to or feels like paying them .The money that I have might be needed for other, more important things thus prompting me not to pay for my tea immediately. For example my mother used to buy the supplies and all the stuff from the near by kirana store and pay him at the end of the month when she received her salary. In the interim, the money she had was spent on more important things, namely, us: - her children. For our chocolates or cakes or chips packet, etc etc (sob!!! I love her).

So u see credit helps you prioritize your financial expentidure.WOW!!!! How wonderful it sounds when it is put that way. Another example, the 10Rs I have will buy me a nice cool cup of cold coffee. But I might need it to pay for the Xerox of an assignment which is to be submitted by evening. And thus the cold coffee goes in as credit (by reciting the above mentioned mantra to the Nescafe stall fellow) and the money for the Xerox is paid. Off course, one might ask as to why the cold coffee is needed when I have no money?? But you see that is the whole idea of credit my friend. Fulfilling your little pleasures even in the momentary deficit of money. The useless yet important phone calls to your girlfriend(hoping you have one),the tea which you need even though it is 12 in the night, the shirt that has to be washed urgently because you have nothing else to wear ;everything can be done by paying homage to the ‘MAHAN CREDIT DEVATTA’

I do not have strong evidence to prove that the female students in our college practice the holy tradition of credit. But judging from the above example of my mother, I am sure they will put it in action at some or the other point of life.

So you see my friends. It is unavoidable. It teaches you many things. It fulfills your little needs.BUT.Be careful. That wallet of yours will be filled with currency at some or the other time and at that time you better pay up. Or kiss your tea (or cappuccino) good-bye.

THE C S I MALE

C S I (Conservative South Indian) Male

Whether it is the frustration of not having a girl-friend in my college life or the jealousy of seeing other guys roaming around with pretty ones by their side or the longing that I have to endlessly talk over the cell phone walking to and fro in my hostel corridor or simply and attempt to present the facts; whatever be the reason that has prompted me to write this post. One thing I will declare openly in the very beginning is that this post is about me and other C S I males like me.

The C S I male???!!! New term??? .That is short for the Conservative South Indian male {henceforth referred to as C S I male}.Firstly what does conservative mean. According to the oxford it is about being opposed to changes and following traditional ways. It is about purposely being low for the sake of caution. Everyone is conservative in some or the other aspects of life like money, education etc but the south Indian has the speciality of being conservative in his approach to the divine feminine. In simple language – girls. This post is about such males.

Lot has been said and heard, written and read about the C S I male but he still refuses to change. I know that because I am one of them.

No risk what so ever we want to take: - trying to talk to a girl or hunting for a girlfriend. The thing that I consider 'it' has a ‘risk’ must tell you something. We are in no way capable of finding a ‘friend’ in the opposite sex. The very idea of talking or the simply saying “hi” needs lot of thought and practice (no practical for this). The only person I have to help me out in this regard is my dear old mother, who unfortunately gives an advice fit for a Telugu/other south Indian movie story (OR the very advice is picked straight of some useless movie). Either the reply is typical (which I already know, but am expecting something different) or some this ‘outrageous’ (which I don’t wan to accept).And her comes the problem. We simply don’t want to change our views or opinion about girl or all this 'stuff' (what stuff is I can’t explain ….it just is …..Stuff) .

Welcome to the world of the romantically handicapped south Indian male. Where every conversation no matter how small if remembered and treasured as an achievement ,where the very task of saying hi to a batch mate requires herculean effort and iron will , where the thought of going up to an girl and saying something needs countless rehearsals in the mind. I know that none of the above require for us {us as in other C S I males like me} as smart as Madhavan or as brawny as hrithik .But still we stumble at the very beginning of the ‘process’. As long as a girl appears before me as a chat window or as a orkut scrap I have no problem in replying but face to face?? I can’t find the strength to lift my eyes off the ground below {leave alone those’ beautiful eyes’ and stuff like that}.

Hyderabad being a hard-sore southie land is expected to be filled with C S I males .But NO. the pizza corners ,the multiplexes and the eat-street have changed all that .unfortunately or fortunately I had to leave Hyderabad at the right time and land my sorry self at Dhanbad{please refer atlas}for my b.tech degree . Now, the female population here is pretty scarce and thus the poor old C S I male has few chances of changing himself. The hip-hop north Indian on the other hand seems to require no reason at all to go up to a girl and start blabbering rubbish in her ears. DAMN!!!!! If only I could find that much ‘courage’ in me.

Then again what is wrong in being a C S I male?? When I am old enough I will fill my profile in some matrimony site, apply to some newspapers and my girl will be found in no time. Chi…chi…chi. I sound like a 40 year old unmarried guy with half an acre of clean ground on his head.

I wish I could change and be a ladies man (or something close). But……all in good time ma friend….all is good time. That is what my C S I male brain / heart says to me. So ……until then I guess the girls have to wait for the Romantic Raghavan to arrive

Nomenclature Nuisance

Firstly , I would like to say that any exaggeration which has gone too far are regreted . One remarkable thing I have noted in the comments posted is that almost all of them more or less agree to atleast one of my claims .Now what makes it remarkable is that all the posts are by my dear old South Indians . It makes one think if all of us share the same psycology .Whether our thinking is influenced not only by our peers and freinds and happenings around us but also by the regional background that we share . Surely eating "avakkaya" and "pulihara" cannot influence one's thinking . But the fact remains --we do share a common opinon .
As one of the comments reminds it is individual effort which matters most while building stong relations [especially when we come from different ethinicities] . As I ponder over the reason for our similar thought process here is one more interesting thing that I have noted in my stay in I.S.M ;namely ---South Indian names . If u are a North Indian this blog will surely remind you of the nightmares that our names gave you.

There was a guy named Subba rao . No one knew what was before or after Subba rao . He wrote his JEE and entered I.S.M and all of a sudden Machiraju Venkata Rama Subba Rao was born . Poor old Subba had thought his name was perfectly normal but little did he know that all his north indian batch mates where cursing him for "releasing" that vast name. And us south indians seemed to cruise along with that titanic of a name . You see in my college it is absolutely neccesary to know the names of all your batchmates . So ...you can imagine what trouble Aakash Verma or Harsh Kumar or any other northie went through . But they have something to feel happy about .Subba ,being the nice guy he is didnot "release" his 'real' full name . If he had done so , there would have been serious trouble.

I am helpless guys !!!. It was not me who named me . Rajagoplan Venkata Raghavan had to suffer when his name was being called in all weird ways ,all wrong ways,and not to mention funny ways . This one time i got called 'vekanta' by my lab assistant . Now, that is bad when you have 3 girls sitting and laughing at this weird pronounciation. None of my friends had a merry time with his name during our ragging . Things went bad when one got the other guy's name wrong and half the times the other guy was a south indian ,the reason behind being the villanous senior who wanted to see the northie fumble with the poor southies' name . Man !!!!! What monsters . And at last it was the southie who got blamed for having a long name. Even this matter is settled now since we have come to third year . And we have a good laugh when we remember the 'nomenclature nuisance' .

raghavan

WOW !!!!!!! A South-Indian

I have been watching the comedy by Russell Peters lately and I have to say that the guy is damn funny .Some of his jokes can bring waterin one's eyes . For those who don't have much idea Russell is a canadian comedian with an anglo-indian descent .For more info check out <<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Peters >> . Those who had the patience to read the entire thing must have noted the fact that much of his material explores the cultural divides between many different ethnicities . Well , one might wonder how such a track can be funny but .....believe me when I tell u people, it is damn funny.
The guy, really, as wiki says compares people from different ethnic backgrounds and just presents the difference in a unique way . Offcourse there is some exaggeration involved but I think it is acceptable. Some of his comparisions involve jamaicans and indians, americans and indians, english folk, chinese folk ,sri lankan folk ....you know the whole lot. And sometimes the things that he says about us indians turn out to be true to some extent .And the thing to notice is that such simple/small matter often escape one's thought .
Seeing him compare all different kinds of people , my attention turned immediately to my local neighbour hood ,that is ,my college campus. Again for those don't know, i study in Indian School Of mines in Dhanbad,Jharkand {yeah,yeah...erstwhile bihar} and we have people from all over Indian coming and reading here. You have J&K to chennai, and jaipur to kolkatta. And when one puts all the guys in one hostel one can witness one hell of a comedy show ,LIVE . Especially between the south and the north because the south indian {boletho the 4 states} cannot speak hindi properly and the north indians {many} are not good in english . Some of them reply in hindi even when questioned in english . I guess there is some strong anti- english thing going around with those guys . And in 99% of the cases none of the two parties has interacted with each other before landing themselves in this place. And that is where the comedy begins ........

>>OH!!!!!!! You are a south indian !!!!! WOW ,u look like any other normal human being ...i thought ppl down south have some extra physical features . I hope u live on oxygen ....do you ??? Do u know hindi ???

>>ahhh ...no sorry i don't

>> OH !! that's right u must be speaking "that " language at ur place

Each one finds the ways of the other guy pretty weird and doen't understand them even after 4 yrs of b.tech. When I saw the northie eat this dosa with a spoon--- I was shocked .When he ate jalebi and had tea after that I felt something funny in my stomach. And similarly when he saw me mixing rice with my hands ,he was pretty suprised.
One of my senior was asked by his relative if the currency used here is Rupees or not . MAN!!!! Now that is now n-bomb dropped right on his head. Imagine want went through him when that question was thrown at his .
This one time, there was sambar made in the mess for lunch ,after days of roti torture. And this guy comes and sits beside me and says {in hindi} "well...u must be feeling happy .....isnt't this want goes on in our house every day "

>> ahh......no

>>> NO !!! what else do u eat ???

>> sometimes roti,puri and other stuff

>> Abhe !!! u make rotis also ...mast yaar

Come on !!!!! how insane can one be .Yeah, he might have little knowledge about south indians but just because I am one does'nt mean I have been eating rice, sambar and rasam all my life since my birth . Like , I don't go around asking guys from rajasthan "hey !! Does your father ride on camels to his work place" or "does the camel come and pick you up from the railway staion" .Nor i would a expect a guy from gujarat to eat 'dhoklas' every day .OK,now that good an example but I hope you get the point.
I want to merely present the situation in the initial days of coming into such multi-ethnic places. The solution one finds to overcome these ethnic boundaries is left to him/her . The basic problem in such cases , I think is lack of information and communication and most of all-- assumption . We seem to simply assume stuff about the other guy .Language as I said seems to a hurdle in this case ,but definitely a crossable one . All that is needed is to go the guy ,shake his hand and start speaking. Now that we are in 3rd year, we are pretty cool about all this "cultural background" thing or I would say we got used to it . As some one pointed out, once one gets busy in building a stong relationship with people these ethnicities don't matter . But initally when we land into such situations we are in for one good hearty comedy show.