But..

I see the blue swimming pool stretching in front and my moist feet rests on the side of the 5ft end. Any person who hasn’t surrendered oneself to gravity before does hesitate; after all we aren’t hard wired to plunge. I took a breath and left the ledge and hit the water at a pretty obtuse angle. Slap! So that’s what Tom feels like when, during the unsuccessful chase of Jerry, he lands face first on the water and breaks into a dozen pieces. It was just the start of endearment.

It was some million summers back and I rushed upstairs to our second floor bedroom and closed the door behind me. I went into the bathroom and locked the door shut. I took out the cell phone and dialed the number. I was sitting on the toilet seat. The phone at the other end rang and she picked it up. On a Richter scale my heartbeat was over 10 now.

I said something like ‘hey it’s me’ followed by some blurb. The bathroom tile was reflecting my face and honestly I looked sick. ‘There is thing I’ve been meaning to tell you since a long time’ was the prelude to the spiraling disaster. I was wanting to say I love you but eventually I hung up without saying those exact words and it was a good thing being where I was. I might have peed my pants. Trivial things are forgotten. She even asked me to come over to talk things out but I took a rain check, flushed and went down for lunch. Chicken is better than a face-off.

Few years later in Mumbai, it was day before Christmas and the mall was lit up. A gigantic tree reached up to the ceiling and was adorned with muted lights and confetti. We were having dinner in the food court and I remember watching the people streaming out of the last movie screening. I looked at my watch and it was around midnight. We walked past the bookstore towards the escalator and I glanced around to see the display window showing some bestseller. We went down one level and we turned around to go down to the next.

‘Listen can we talk?’ She knew it and there, moments which seemed like ages later, I said it. Ok, so there is this rule of grammar that the school, for a reason I can appreciate, never teaches you. In a situation like this if you ever hear the words ‘but’, ‘although’ and however’ it’s time for a beating retreat. It was Christmas by now and the kids were cheering at the base of the tree. ‘Have fun while you can’ I murmured to them under my breath and walked out. Took an auto back home and on the way deleted all the texts on my cell phone. Therapeutic effect.

Years later and a few time zones to the left. UK gets really cold during the month of November. It hadn’t started snowing yet but the wind was biting and the days had grown short. We were all sitting in the lecture room poring over our laptops and trying to figure out something immaterial and boring. The instant messenger however was buzzing with activity. She was sitting next to me and we were chatting. The window was an overpopulated mess of smileys and emoticons. I had made some joke about Richard Branson getting the opportunity to go into a virgin everyday and was feeling really stupid about it when this overpowering urge gripped me.

I glanced over to my left and saw her. Looked down on my keypad and typed ‘this might be inappropriate but I’ am getting this feeling that I like you’. Return key. She was staring ahead at the blackboard. Darn it, look down. She eventually did and a smiley appeared on my screen. Oxford was a really nice place.

The water gushed against my face and filled up my mouth. I surfaced. The dive had hurt me but then in all probability I had jumped in wrongly. I swam to the edge and came out of the pool. Dripping, I stood there rubbing my chest, which I had bruised.

‘Headfirst, Headfirst, Headfirst’ I repeated, a deep breath, closed my eyes and took the plunge again.

Pecten in the Sand Box

The spring was over and summer was on

Austin was hot and the streets had gone

Parched and shimmery. May was here and

When the pecten called, Denver was my new land.

 

The drive was long, through hills and dirt

El-Paso was mid-way and my back began to hurt

Miguel was happy that Le-Bron had scored

The one sec shot and Orlando was floored

 

The Mexican flag flutters nearby they said

We turned right and I-25 stretched ahead

We passed Santa Fe n other New Mexico sights

The 8 o clock horizon showed Denver city lights

 

The house was fine though the parking was tricky

And sleeping on someone else’s bed seemed icky

At first but exhaustion took its toll

Next it was 5 in the morn and I was all set to roll

 

Drive to Shell to short and swift

5^th and 14^th Stanford Place. Took the lift

to the front desk. “Hi I’ am the new intern in drillin”

Just a sec. Lemme fetch you manager Chris Hakulin

 

A tall, lanky Finnish gentleman came and said Hi

Took me around the floor and after a while I

Was sitting at my desk with million forms to complete

This is what they call on-boarding. Frikking Sweet!

 

By the end of the day I had met and known

Andrea Boock, Jose Santiago and Jess Malone

My buddies for the summer interning at Shell

For some reason I heard a voice ‘this is gonna be swell’!

 

A happy hour at Lodo’s or a dollar taco at Lime

Saturday mornings at Wash Park never realizing time

Flew swift. Hiking up the Rockies or Pike’s peak by cog

Weekends went snap and come Monday, the same ol’ jog

Studying directional tendencies in Pinedale

is my project and effectively it boils down to ‘all hail'

MS Excel. Some head and some toil later, I can

Now safely say that Peter Voser is the man!

 

HR is rarely praised but I would thank them now

Houston and New Orleans was just a tad short of wow

Watched LSU knock off Texas’s baseball crown

And made up for the grief by owning Houston Brown

 

24^th floor room at W. Mississippi streamed the view

And for a strange fuzzy reason that night my heart beat anew

Bourbon St, Vampire Tour were merely some crazy means

Of enjoying the dark and soulful city of New Orleans

 

And while all the flights and hands of clock ran

Continental and United had a rather demonic plan

“Sir you can’t check in online” their moronic website says

Solamente porque su nombre es Jose Gomez

 

Back in the mile high town an untaken road

Was treaded. The power of ’10^-9’ was showed

To the wise and all keen tech nerve centre of Shell et al.

I would have jumped on but the wagon was too frikking small

 

Engrossed in smart fields I kept time at bay

Shooting out 20 mails was my target for the day ;)

Nonetheless 6 weeks passed and I was half-way through

So much had been done so far and yet so much to do

 

The story remains unfinished. So much more to tell

This was but a blink in the intern-life at Shell

Few answers are still pending. A lot depends on the few

A promise to you my dear friends, I’ll get back to you. 

Fifty stars and the lone star

This post is dedicated to my friends: Ashu, Miguel, Angel, Gandhi, Lauren and Drea 

When somebody uses the term ‘fresh off the boat’ I don’t mind the cheap shot but please at least respect your own Boeing.  Well admittedly I’ am not that fresh anymore. It’s almost a year now and on this 4^th of July weekend when none of my friends are here with me, I find time to reminisce.

After a 22 Hour flight you land in the same weather you had taken off from. Welcome to Texas. I drove from Houston to Austin on the first night and the place was so desolate, dark and quiet. Damn Youtube! I had such a different image it mind.  The next morning I woke up with a weird feeling of isolation, like a dog-eared page in a book, distinctively different yet a part of the herd.

Morning also brings another feeling. Although I had been to the US before there was one thing I respect about the French that I despise about Yankees and Brits. Toilet paper. Why kill trees or worry about recycling when you have Atlantic on the right and Pacific on the left??

Austin took quite sometime to grow on me but when it did it was malignant. The place that had looked quiet on the first night had life blown into it and was brimming with colors, sun, cars, hotties, cap-metro, cyclists and so many people I’d come to know as friends. Just the confetti was missing.

UT itself was imposing and it blended so well with the city that it did not look like a university per se and walking from one end of campus to another was a feat for the quadriceps. Classes began, moved into a new apartment, commuting on buses began and life started switching gears.

Going grocery shopping was like embarking on an adventure. Hop off the bus in front of H.E.B and then do a couple of lunges and squats. Warm-up before a workout. The place was so massive that a fly coming in would think that it was a new planet. Finding a carton of juice in those gazillion aisles deserved a same elation as Marie Curie’s radium find. Except that I didn’t die after drinking the juice. The way back was an ordeal, as I had to lug four 15-pound bags from the bus stop to home. That is when you appreciate the value a car and the fact that every American has two hands and four wheels.

When I applied for a driver’s license I rented a car and that night was the first time I was driving a left-hand drive and believe you me, it’s not easy. It’s like walking on your hands when you lose your bearing. I got fifteen honks on the very first day but did make it safely back home.  Americans say that Asians are good at math but are poor drivers. I say why don’t you come to India, you’ll be good at neither.

I got my first car, a Honda Accord EX Coupe with the money I had saved up from my fellowship and I’ am really proud of the five scratches that it has till date. I’ am pretty comfortable driving on the right side of the road now but I’ am skeptical about driving my dad’s car when I go back home. One scratch and I’ am disowned!

I had worked for an oil field service company before I came here to the US and after a year of studies I got a chance to work for an exploration and production company as an intern. I drove from Austin to Denver, a total of 1800 miles along with my friend. I had a throbbing back pain for a week but was an awesome experience driving thru the hill country, desert and along the Rockies. For some odd reason being away from Austin made me sad. I had begun to relate to it.

My intern began and I came to know and like people and gradually with their help eased back into the life of corporate world.

This one year has given me a lot. I’ve taught myself how to get a feel of the weather on the internet without going out of the house, talked my parents through the yahoo messenger setup, played softball and ran towards the pitcher with the bat in hand, seen snow at 14000 ft, gone hiking and seen a snake creep over my feet, learned to dabble in Spanish, drank half a gallon of milk in day and loved my life like never before.

Aquí está a la vida y a los Estados Unidos.

It's a Brand new joke !

“Yeah can I see those headphones?”

“Which ones sir?”

“Those .. there on the right .. the umm.bmmm..ymm”

“What? I couldn’t hear you .. do u mean the Bhattacharya ones ?”

“Yeah .. those .. give it to me” 

Lucky dog. This guy Amar Bose. Being a electrical engineer would have had no use for him had he been born Amar Bhattacharya. Who in the world would buy a sound system by that name? Can you imagine calling up the service center number of this company and they go “Welcome to Bhattacharya Corporation .. press 1 for technical assistance .. press 2 for placing an order” I would laugh for an hour if I heard that someone did name his company such. And I’am also not saying that Gupta Corp would name a good name. Even if it did manufacture fissile material shielding it would still sounds like a grocery store.

Some brand names just get lucky. If Steve Jobs had worked at a banana plantation and Beatles had not named their record “Apple” (yeah that’s the reason why Jobs called his corporation so) the story of i-Pod and Mac would have been different today. Imagine a white glowing, peeled, half eaten banana shining on the lid of the laptop. Except for monkeys no one would like that. “Hey did u see the i-phone?” “Yeah.. the one that Banana launched right”

No offense to you Banana Republic, your brand name stinks and so do your over-priced clothes.

And what is the deal with the brand- Tom Tom? I wouldn’t care less if they had named it Knock Knock. It sounds like a horse beating the African drums with it’s hoofs. No complaints about the GPS they make. It does a perfect job but couldn’t you think of a better name. Navigator? Path-Trak? Blip? Opto-Route? See, it took me 2 mins to think of four humane names. How hard can that be?

Snickers, it sounds more like a brand of under-wear than a candy bar. 7-up, sounds like 7 naked men surrounding a woman. Subway, unless you are selling turkey and chicken bred in the dark underground alleys, you have no right to retain such a misleading name. Once in Mumbai I asked a guy in the street “Excuse me, do you know where is the nearest Subway?” and his look changed from blank to bewilderment to contempt as if I was trying to make fun of Mumbai and said “Andheri Station is around the corner” but when I elaborated he said “Sorry, I don’t know”.

Axe, nice! For a male range of products you couldn’t think of a more masculine name than that? RPG’s, machete, hombre, sledgehammer huh?

Canon, add another ‘n’ and the camera can blow your mind. Literally. Why such a hostile name?

ASUS, ha ha ha ha ..really? That name?

Even in the automobile industry few names are very credible like General Motors (not that the company is credible anymore!), Ford Motors and even Honda and Toyota to some extent. But what’s with the tongue twisters and acronyms? Volkswagen (voks-va-gun or volk-sva-gun or vaulk-sva-gun or wyaaaa-wyaaaa-barf) and Lamborghini (don’t care how it’s pronounced but what is with the yellow color!) and the king of it all Porsche (phor-sha or por-shey or when I can’t afford one why the hell should I know how it’s pronounced). BMW just makes do with an acronym – Bring Me Woman but Broke My Wallet! and don’t even get me started on Volvo.

Brand names attract a lot of slur but I guess that the acid test they go through make them market-proof but then again the H₂SO₄ I carry around is of a slightly higher concentration. Skeptical or not, some of these do offer a laugh in the boring aisles of Walmart or HEB.

“Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha”

“What happened there?”

“Nothing. I just found a pack of frozen vegetable called Apetits. If that’s how they call it” 

The digital marijuana

Do not smoke they said. I said fine. Never do drugs. I said yes of course never. Never drink alcohol. I crossed my fingers and said yeah. No one said anything to me about Facebook.

The rage of social networking sites hit me in the junior year when I was hooked onto Orkut and took extensive pains creating my profile, putting in all the info with intense quality control and, I have mixed feelings as I say this, my circle of friends grew. I even bumped online with some long-lost people who were now on my ‘Friend’ list. Gradually Orkut expanded it’s umbrella and became more flexible in usage. People began to use it as a dating engine and two friends of mine (wonder why all this happens to my friends and never to me!) found their potential match on Orkut. In one case the potential wasn’t strong enough to drive the current and it went phut!

That being that, 2 years later I was sitting at my friends place in Andheri, which used to be my weekend getaway, when I saw him logon to Facebook. It was a totally cluttered website with too much information to fathom in one glance. If Orkut was a showroom, this was a warehouse. Stickers, notes, maps, quotes, gifts, trivia, ads, red boxes, white boxes, yellow boxes. It was as if Ronald McDonald had thrown up after eating a box full of crayons. Finding what you were looking for was like an Illuminati Trail and there was no Robert Langdon. In all, it was confusing. I was also told that this wasn’t for Indians i.e if you live in India. If you are in US, that’s a different matter altogether. The inability to understand the logic and messiness of the site got me hooked. And the occasional lack of work in Schlumberger helped. I joined the network, went through the ritual of filling the info, imported contacts and I was in.

If the intrigue got me hooked, the search reeled me in. I went to every box, fiddled around, moved it and at the end of to days I was bored. I rarely logged in again but that was until I moved to US for my studies. Here the network was so widespread that if it had been prevalent over 50 years back Roosevelt and Hitler had been on each other’s friend list. The US Constitution should add an annex to it’s free speech clause about the liberty to post at anyone’s wall. People from all age group are active on it. I once went to a friend’s graduation party and later that night I got friend requests from her mom and her aunt! Let alone people, even dogs have facebook accounts. But I’am sure they would just pee on a laptop if they saw one. It must be the owners.

Over time the clutter was taken out too and the interface became much more simpler. The population here was too much active. So much so that Facebook recently changed it’s “What are you doing now” to “What’s on your mind”. That makes more sense since when you are logged onto facebook, chances are that you have pretty much nothing else to do.

As I kept bumping into people around campus the parting question would often be “Are you on Facebook?” and thence on a single face to face stumble would grow more personal. Facebook has become like an obsessive-compulsive disorder for me. I sometimes even clean up my wall to make it look like less used! Even while writing this blog I must’ve logged in 20 times at the least.

Initially I was just involved with it. Now I’am totally committed. It’s like the egg and ham breakfast. The chicken was involved, but the pig, my dear friend, was totally committed. 

Nothing worse to learn about !

Circa 1994 when I first heard the ‘F’ word and thence on the learning curve has been steep. It’s true that that they don’t teach curse words at a sex-ed class but then we did not have those either. Indian education system boasts of high standards and rolling out geniuses but when it comes to birds-n-bees we have to rely on street talks, friendly banter, the shady shop around the corner and after hour television.

I was in 5^th standard and we were playing soccer on the field outside school when there was brief scuffle and as it broke apart a boy, I knew was in the same class as me, shouted “Take that you @##$@@@%!^@#*”

Ok that’s a new word for me so I later went upto this guy and asked him “You just uttered something a while back which did not sound Hindi to me. What was that?” And he told me that he was sitting in his Dad’s shop two days back when he heard some customer use that word hotly and that’s how he picked it up and that’s how mostly all of us do. No one sits you down and writes on the white board for you spelling out the phonetics, you just take it off the airwaves. But that is not where the learning stops. It gets worse or should I say exciting.

I’ am in the school bus riding back home when a guy, who’s 4 years senior to me, is talking to his friend about something called a condom and from the auxiliary information I can make out that it’s not a term in physics and neither in chemistry and to say biology would be to a digress a lot. So when I get back home and I ‘am having lunch with my mom I ask her “Mom, what’s a condom?”. I swear to God her hand stopped midway to her mouth. “Where did you hear that?” “Just some guys in the bus were talking about it” “It’s something you do not need to know about now. You need to grow up”. And the matter was buried. RIP.

Years progressed and I kept assimilating information with which I had no idea what to do. When I learned about Faraday’s law I knew that I would need it when I studied turbines, when I leaned Pascal’s law I knew I’d need it n fluid dynamics but when I learned the F-word, the C,P,G,L, and what not words I was at a loss of what do with this information. Clandestine information was exciting but overwhelming. And later when I learned that birds do it, bees do it and even educated fleas do it my floodgates were creaking already.

If it only had been the ending to it. Internet hit India big-time during the late 90’s and my knowledge bank surged and by surged I do mean phenomenal, exponential and tsunamial. Few years later I entered hostel life and then I hit the freeway. No u-turns and full speed ahead.

15 years later it seems like I have nothing more left to learn. People keep saying that you are always learning. True! Very True! But about science, finance, current affairs, Obama’s deeds, Pak’s misdoings,  Dow Jones crash but not anymore about “Bad Stuff” that you need to stow away under lock and key until you are an adult.

That’s what adulthood snatches away from you. A twisted, grey but really awesome childhood. 

Lost in Translation

This is for my friends who miss understanding the beautiful song ‘Jai Ho’ .

It does sound like a slaughter of the actual lyrics but then that’s what lost in transation is !

 

Jai Ho !  

May you win !

 

Aaja aaja jind shamiane ke tale 

Aaja zari waale neele aasman ke tale 

Come Come ! Under the alive canopy 

Come under the blue brocade sky

 

Ratti ratti sachchi maine jaan gawayi hai 

Nach Nach koylon pe raat bitaayi hai 

Ankhiyon ki neend maine phoonkon se uda di 

Gin gin taarey maine ungli jalayi hai 

Bit by bit I have lost my life 

I have danced the night away on hot coals 

Blown the sleep away from my eyes 

Burned my fingers counting the stars

 

Baila! Baila!
 

Dance! Dance!


 

Ahora conmigo, tu baila para hoy
 

Now with me, you dance for today


 

Por nuestro dia de movidas,
 

For our day of moves

 

los problemas los que sean
 

whatever problems may be


 

Salud! 

Cheers



 

Baila! Baila!
 

Dance! Dance!

 

Chakh le, haan chakh le, yeh raat shehed hai 

Chakh le, haan rakh le, 

Dil hai, dil aakhri hadd hai 

Taste it. The night is sweet as honey 

Taste it and yes, keep it 

The heart is the last resort.

 

Kaala kaala kaajal tera 

Koi kaala jaadu hai na? 

Your black kohl lined eyes 

Do have some black magic in them. Ain’t it ?

 

Kab se haan kab se jo lab pe ruki hai 

Keh de, keh de, haan keh de 

Ab aankh jhuki hai 

Aisi aisi roshan aankhein roshan dono heerey hain kya? 

How long have you had this on your lips 

Say it. Say it. Now that you look down 

Your eyes glisten like diamonds

 

Chorus and end

8 PM to 8 AM

There is this traditional thing that I have been missing on for the past two years because of corporate life being ignorant about the term ‘winter vacations’ but this year again I had a chance to do it.

Three friends (Nitin, Bhoopi and Myself) do a night-out @ Nitin’s place, in the first week of January and reminisce over the past year. Sounds like a dumb thing but given the fact that we rarely get to catch up with each other the 12 hours is like a Hoover Dam collapse of information, bickering, dogging (if there is a male equivalent of bitching), flaunts and more-or-less all the cargo of our train of thoughts minus the quality control!

So the three of us are eating at Dastarkhwaan (a totally down-market but awesome kebab joint in Lucknow) when we decide to continue where we left off. So I call up Mom to tell her that I won’t be coming home.

“Are u guys drunk? Is that why U are not coming home?” Her first reaction.

“Yeah that’s right! So I thought that instead of making a scene in front of you I’d rather do it in front of Nitin’s mom” My response

“Ah! Ok. See you over breakfast tomm then”

Sometimes providing too much info to parents can come back and bite u in the ass.

Nitin had recently gotten his bedroom renovated and it’s jazzy blue walls, surround sound, a plush floor spread were few of the reasons why this hangout was chosen but more so than any other was the fact that the floor plan permitted us to laugh out loud, use expletives generously and make lewd comments without waking up his parents.

Bhoopi was engaged, to be married next year so the starter of the night was his tale of chivalry and madness at courting his ladylove. By the end we clapped and told him to consider auditioning for MTv Roadies. Raghu too would surely be floored.

Nitin had a habit of downloading songs from every possible Hindi Movies from www.mp3hungama.com (for those who give a middle finger to ‘Stop Piracy’) so was DJ’ing for us and his surround sound was thumping away. Whenever he enqueued a Ghazal in the playlist, he got kicked in the butt. After all it was 02:00 in the night and we did not want a sedative.

Precisely at this time we felt an urge for a cup of chai. I’am not a big fan but tagged along. We crept to the kitchen, careful not to make a noise. Bhoopi who had recently flaunted his chai-making skills to his would-be-in-laws took the kettle in his hand. Chai-patti and Cheeni was added in measured quantities and the pot was boiling. I was crushing the ginger and making some corny joke when Nitin’s mom came out of the bedroom rubbing her eyes.

‘Tum log itni raat to kar kya rahe ho?”

“Aunty chai bana rahe hai. Main adrak koot raha hoon. Aap ko ek cup chahiye?” She went back to bed laughing.

Later we dared each other to do a bottoms-up with the tea but in Vinay Pathak’s terminology of Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, nobody was ‘Macho’ enough to do it! 

Two hours later, we washed the cup and drank coffee in the same.

I wish I could give an excerpt of the conversation, not that I give a damn about secrecy clauses, but I’ am too immature to be able to make sensible statements out of 12 hours of garbage talks.

Next day Bhoopi was leaving for Delhi and thence to Purdue. Nitin would get back in the rhythm of his job and I had just one more week at home. Our stomach hurt from laughing and the effect of coffee was wearing off. We pulled the sheets and wished – maybe some day again.