Anniversary Issue

Dear Readers,

My blog is one year old today. A year ago it started with this silly post "First Article"

I never wanted to write a blog. There are two reasons, however which have prompted me to write one. First is that Lech has started writing blogs. The second is that I get bored after/during office( I stay 1000 kms away from home and visit home every 3-4 months).
This blog however is not a substitute for my autobiography. You will have to buy a copy if it all it gets published.

Now, Lech,who incidentally started blogging on the same day and I guess a few hours before me(though his timestamp suggests otherwise), no longer blogs and I visit home more often(say once in two months), I have still continued blogging. Talking about statistics, I have penned down 63 posts excluding this one. I have about 2750 hits now, which I hope to increase it to atleast 10000 by the second anniversary and if you guys keep reading and I keep posting, I don't think it will be a problem with last few months average being at about 20 hits per day. I also am setting a goal to update my other blog Cool School Days more often.

Looking forward to keeping you hooked,
Neel Arurkar

Home Food

Home Food is one of the reasons to go home often. The ten days I was in Bombay, I made it a point not to eat in restaurants at all and feast on home food. I must confess that my decision was partly infuenced by the leptospirosis scare after the floods. After months of eating in hotels and office canteens(five or six of them)here in Bangalore, I relished whatever food I had at home. For a short period, it was break from those thick Rotis at Balaji(I usually have dinner at Balaji). I had a variety of dishes at home. The list includes Black Forest Cakes, Pizzas, Dudhi Halva, different bhajis, Pani Puri, Pav Bhaji and Independence Day Special. The dish I had many times during the course of my stay was Independence Day Special.

Carrots, cauliflower, baby corn and french beans are boiled and salt and pepper are sprinkled for taste. Do let me know how you find it, if at all you try it. The other items in the dish(clockwise) are coconut water, chapati(bread), gaud masala amti, walacha birda, pantoli(enclosed in turmeric leaf), morawla and bananas.

Remember, customer is the king

"Pasha you suck. You are an inefficient, indifferent and lazy government servant and your fat a**e is an indication of that. If you continue being that lazy, the rats that bite the computer cables in your office will soon bite your a**e.......". I wanted to send this as an sms to Pasha everyday, to remind him of his duties. Pasha is an inspector with Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation(KSRTC). He was responsible to ensure that we promptly got the refund for our bus tickets after we met with the accident. But lazy and inept as he is, he delayed it till we finally we got our refund about four months later from some different officer. Though I do not send the above as sms considering that I am a decent guy(I think so) and he is a SoB(I think so), I do send him 'Remember, customer is the king' sms everyday. Poor Pasha. He must seriously be fed up. And I do not think that there is anything wrong in what I am doing. After all, I am sending sms to his official mobile number and that is being done to instill some accountability towards the public in that d***head. I was actually going to add this sentence 'To tell Pasha that customer is the king, click here.' in my post, which would make his official phone number public, but backed off on second thoughts. To read more about these guys, click here.

Morning Walk

I had never ever had a morning walk before. I mean, I have walked in the morning but not for the sake of having a stroll. I am too lazy to sacrifice my sleep for such things. But today is a different day. Yesterday I asked Heramb whether he would accompany me to Shivaji Park and he agreed. Considering the fact that today is just three days away from my return to Bangalore and considering the fact that today is just a week away from his return to the UK(Yeah return. That SoB is going to UK for 4th time in two years), we both decided to sacrifice our sleeps. We set out at 0730(yes, I call that morning). Shivaji Park in the morning looked a bit different from the Shivaji Park in the evenings. So much less crowd and so many new faces. I realised that people who go there in the mornings and the people who go there in the evenings form disjoint sets. Agreed that the dopes are there in the morning and evening and also afternoons and nights and the body builders in the Open Air Gym must be coming both in the mornings and evenings, but I can bet my fifty odd bucks, that I won in the market yesterday, on the fact that my observation is true if the sample is restricted to the few girls that we saw in the morning and few girls who were not there in the morning. We did not restrict ourselves to Shivaji Park. We also went to Dadar beach, where we saw that the Worli-Bandra sealink work progressing at a (reasonably)rapid pace(looks like I will have to buy a cam soon. You guys can see an older picture that I found). We ended the walk with a Bun Maska Chai for me and Bread Omlette Tea for Heramb at a shabby Irani restaurant called 'The Light of Bharat'. Now, I am barely able to hold my yawns. I am going to have a heavy lunch now and hit the bed. In the evening, I am going to Shivaji Park again :-)

Telephone Diary

I never thought that I would get out of touch with(read forget) so many people whom I used to meet everyday. And they meant so much to me. School friends with whom I used to share my lunch, college friends from whom I copied my assignments and so many more. At such times, my telephone diary comes to my rescue. As I flip pages of the diary and go through each and every name, I wonder how did I forget these people. They meant something to me and that was the reason they were in my diary. Do they now not mean anything to me? Of course not, but that is the way things are. Now that such information can be stored in a mobile phone, having a telephone diary is a bit obsolete. I do not remember when I last updated my paper telephone diary. But nevertheless, it is still used because I have not transferred its contents into the phone. And yes, the paper diary would also act as a backup in case I lose my phone. Now as I write this, I am feeling the urge to go through my diary again, so that I can contact long lost acquaintances, most of whom are from Bombay(I am in Bombay till next Tuesday). But damn! I have left my diary behind in Bangalore.

Arvind Mills?

Arvind Mills is one of India's leading garment exporter. So when we heard that there was a sale put up at their Electronic's City manufacturing unit, we all rushed. By we, I mean not only my friends, but hundereds of other people from my company too. I bought 5 shirts and they cost somewhere in the Rs 200 -300 range(5-7 USD) each. That was quite cheap considering the fact that they had labels like GAP and Levi's on them. They were, what people called as export rejected stuff. Lech picked up a shirt too. And he picked a replica of the one that I had picked. So now, before going to office he phones me if he is wearing that shirt, to ensure that we both do not end up wearing the replicas on the same day. But then what can I do about the hundreds of other people in my company who bought stuff at the sale. On Wednesday, I came face to face with this guy who was wearing a replica of my shirt that I had bought at the sale. He was lost in his own thoughts. I stopped him even though we were absolutely strangers and asked,"Arvind Mills?". He nodded, smiled and walked away.

Salaam Bombay

It was 94 in 24. 94 cms of rain was recorded in 24 hours. This is the highest ever rainfall recorded in India in a single day. Bombay was crippled. The latest figures confirm 420 deaths in the city which is a home to 13 million people. The local trains stopped. All the vehicles stopped on the roads. Electricity in suburbs was cut off. Mobile networks were jammed. Landlines are still being repaired. Houses of the people who lived in low lying areas were flooded. People drowned. Some died in landslides. Some were crushed under compound walls. I never believed that this could happen to my city(I am from Bombay, but work in Bangalore). Ah! Most of you have already read this in the newspapers. So let me tell you, how it affected my family. My father was trapped in a bus for 20 hours. My uncle had to walk in five feet deep water all through the night to reach his home. My landline is now dead. And yes. The motor that pumps water into my building burnt its coil. So there was water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink for a few days. But then, why crib? Why not salute the indomitable spirit of Bombay? Why not salute the thousands of volunteers who left the comforts of their homes and helped the stranded people? To read about such inspiring stories, click here.