Which came first - the chick or the egg?

Location:
Handicrafts exhibition
Beach Road
Pondicherry.

State :
A little tired and busy with work.
Will be back with regular posts soon.

Tamizh Rock, doctors and etcetera.

[ This is the last time I'm announcing my return to regular blogging. Here are the comeback posts, 1 and 2]

It's definitely fun here in Pondicherry. More often than not it's funny too. Funny was how Ganesh Visarjan was done here, or for that matter how Ganesh Chaturthi was celebrated here. Funny was smelling fresh flowers on long plaited hair during a rock show. Ok, maybe I did not get that close to any Tamizh woman to actually smell the flowers. But it is indeed strange, the sight of many women in the traditional Tamizh appearance in a rock show. One definitely expects smell and sight of something better in a rock show.

Here are the details. The venue was JIPMER and the occasion, their annual fest - Spandan. A very funny name to begin with. Not that the names of the fests conducted in the college I did my engineering from were any better. Sparsh and Kashish sounded dangerously close to names of characters in K-serials.

Having attended rock shows and performances in engineering, architecture and management institutes, it was funny watching doctors organise an event. We engineers are good at problem-solving, hence take care of a problem as and when it arises. Also, go to any extent possible in solving the problem. Even if it means ending up in jail, which happened in my college.

But doctors you see, are very clinical in their approach. At the entrance,they brand you with indelible ink on your wrists as a mark of identification of entry. Later it dawns on you that it is infact a wonderful medical idea. The mark is to identify the right vein in the wrist to give an injection in case there's any complication because of drug overdose, or if the subject dozes off due to lack of interest. They make sure they don't make you over-excited by being a little more enthusiastic while introducing a show. You might get a heart-attack for all you know. Doctors know better. Then I realised that most of crowd was seated for the entire show. They did not want to put their best foot forward and enjoy the show.

Personally, I did enjoy the show. There was good music - a very good band, a wannabe band and a band whom we didn't watch for their entire duration. Motherjane was the very good band, Moksha , we really didn't get hear much because we had to leave by then. Having spent close to three hours in a doctors' place, we believed that it was in our best interest to follow the 'Early to bed, early to rise' principle. There was another college band - Junkyard Brew apparently, which really did not make me enthused enough. They were trying to hard to be rock stars and the music wasn't really polished. Motherjane on the other hand played excellent music for one and a half hours. It was definitely not a mean feat considering the fact that their music was more compact, more polished and more organised. Wish they had a CD stall at the venue. The Dream Theater influence was unmistakable,and that perhaps was the right dose for me. Not having heard John Petrucci for a long time had left a void which Motherjane definitely made up to a certain extent.

This rock show brought back memories of the days when I was the manager of the college band! Mrinabh, Joji, Chinsi and Shubham. Short-lived though my stint was, it was indeed great fun. Also brought back wonderful memories of the Chaos experience at IIM-A. Those were indeed the best days of my life. More importantly, in some way or the other those few days have instilled some sense of madness and craze in me, which have better best days for me in the future!

Related/ Unrelated blabber.

1.
Bloody stye in my eye troubling me again. This time though, I have read Catcher in the Rye.
Here is the limerick when a similar stye had troubled me.

2.
Arjun Sharma
is not attending the BlogCamp
as he is busy MOCKing CATs. Irli bidi Sharma avare, innond saari sigona. MOCK maadi. Looking forward to meeting some interesting people there.

3.
Had a long PJ session with Ram after a long long time. Time so long that our watches would've grown really long, if they could grow.

Analyse these -

i. Which TV channel will Inzamam appear on?
A. Zee, because he is In-zy.

ii. Which biscuits will Inzamam give you?
A. Priya Gold. Because 'Haq se maango, Priya Gold'.

iii. What did the ICC tell Inzamam?
A. Stop scratching your balls. Otherwise you'll land in trouble.

Funny, aren't they? :D

4.
Bharath writes about our
meeting with Kiran Karnik in his latest post. I think that was the day we realised that our key to success is our madness.

5.
Bharath apparently has a friend who is crazy about stocks and shares. I
decided to learn some lessons so that I could test my knowledge when the meeting
happens. Here are my initial lessons -

i. Sensex has no relation whatsoever with having sex with any of the Sens-Sushmita,Riya or Reema. About sex with Rimi and Raima, I am not too sure. The whole Sen actress' group is so insane and so confusing.

ii. There is no problem in wearing stockings to a stock exchange. But be careful if you happen to do that. One cannot exchange stockings in a stock exchange.


Not bad for a novice, eh?


6.
Bunker 13 is an incredible fun ride. MM has to be the man. I'd definitely want to be born as Shantaram in my next birth, but do not mind if I'm born as MM.Just that I really do not want to be the person who he turns out to be in the end,but the experiences he goes through and the life he lives are outrageously amazing.

This blog on Googleblog, apologies to my blogs and ponderings from Pondicherry

0.This blog on Googleblog!
1. Apologies to my blog[s]
2. Ponderings from Pondicherry
3. Related/unrelated blabber











Dear [main] blog,

Before the apologies, let me share a great piece of news with you. I think this piece of news should more than cheer you up. In fact, I have to issue a Coffee and cats warning[It is for the knowledge for such trivia that I find quizzing interesting to the extent to which I’m crazy about it now]

This blog had the privilege of appearing on Google’s official blog. The previous post appeared
HEREon the Google official blog. Make sure you clear all you cache and the refresh so that it appears in the page. If you don’t want to take the trouble but still want to verify the authenticity of my claim, here’s the screenshot. That was probably the best day of my blogging life. So much so that a correspondent from am leading national English magazine read it and contacted us. We should see an article soon.





1. Apologies to my blog[s]

Let me apologise for not paying enough attention to you. But I guess you do understand that you are one of the only two things that I take seriously, quizzing being your competitor for my attention. I agree I have not been visiting you often enough and not providing you enough with enough food for your growth, believe me I’ve been thinking of you all the while. One of the thoughts that crossed my mind was that I should give you a face-lift and make you more beautiful and visually appealing by changing the current template. Better still, I thought I’d show my love to you by moving you to a totally fresh place named Wordpress where we’ll be able to able to move much more freely and customize our home. Another gem of an idea happened to me when I was riding on the M-80 by the Pondicherry beach and it suddenly stopped because it had forgotten to turn on the petrol knob
[I was totally Left stranded on that boulevard. Thanks M/s Karat and co for protesting, but please let the media cover some other news as well. And please for a while experience the pleasure not seeing your own faces on TV and in the newspapers].


I must admit that I have a little difficulty in managing your family. For example, there’s your travel blog sister who I believe will get lot of attention now because I’ll be hitting the road soon traveling to four different Indian states in South and Western India. And I have enough goodies for your photo-blog brother, with Scott and Kate’s cameras. Also there is the big brother, the Movie Company blog – 10+3i. I have some real great news in store for him. Suffices to say that the documentary –de Young Basanti has reached some good hands and I’m waiting for a final word before I reveal anything. So to make this job of managing your family easier, I am planning on investing in a brand new residence for you all where all your other relatives, like my projects and presentations, my quizzes, videos, useful links on the internet can reside in peaceful co-existence. I will take some time for me to buy web space and a domain name and set it up into a complete web-residence for you. But I’m sure it will be worth the wait and the investment. [Could you please suggest a name for my web-site? I have thought of quirky.in, which sounds too informal and nikhilkulk.in, which sounds a little funny]



Ponderings from Pondicherry.

There are so many other things happening that I’m afraid of missing recording them here. That is why I call up Bharath and ask him to remember them for me. At a later date, I’ll sit with him and then fill in the details. Because I’m not studying anymore, which euphemistically means I don’t have much free time, which straight-forwardly put means I don’t have much time to waste[as it was termed by a certain section of ‘intelligent’ people in college] books, movies and music. That is why another idea struck me when I was looking at the Siemens hearing aid of my newestest friend, Balakumaran at the deaf school. The idea was to appoint Akshay Rao [aka Kaak, to whom I owe my ‘half-way between sanity and insanity attribute] as my literature consultant. His assignment involves, watching Just Books on NDTV Profit, reading Bibliophile in the Outlook and going through press reviews of books periodically and give me regular updates. He will gain by getting a share of my gyaan during our discussions and additional perks which involve gifting him a T-shirt or a book every six months subject to his satisfactory performance. I keep regular track of the latest happenings on the technology and business front, my obsession with Web 2.0 still continuing and my understanding of the Indian Politics is only getting better. I am in search of a sports consultant now. I believe it’s a good thing that I haven’t caught on the soccer World Cup fever. My belief is that I am now investing time in something much more concrete and having long term benefits. But my greed for information and knowledge prompts me to look for a sports consultant as I don’t want to lose out on the World Cup as well. I also need a ‘masala Bollywood’ consultant. Here in Pondicherry, we have people who think that there’s movie by the name Cheena Gaate, which on further enquiry turned out to be China Gate. So with no ETC and Zee Music and no Jita to discuss about Raj Kanwar, Sunil Darshan and co, I’m finding it a little difficult to keep track of the same. Positions open for this post as well. Any takers?

Balaji is afraid that I might have turned ‘good’ and Sajani Mrinalini Dutta wonders if I’ve turned decent. It’s a little funny because people tend to turn apprehensive when they see others become ‘bad’ or ‘corrupt’, but in my case it’s the other way round. It’s mostly the other way round in most of my cases. Maybe because, I’m sitting on a revolving chair and hence it’s the other way round. [Isn’t this testimonial enough to the fact that I’m still the same idiot who cracks horrible PJs and talks non-sense most of the time?!] Maybe the experiences that I’ve been through in this short period here and the people I’ve met have only made me more humble. They’ve also made me more conscious of the fact that heroes are not only the ones who make headlines, but there are innumerable unsung heroes who in their own ways have made people’s live better. This is definitely true of the teachers at the school for the hearing impaired. Trying to communicate with the hearing impaired is indeed a taxing job, and meeting people who have been teaching the gearing impaired for more than ten years and their passion, concern and dedication towards what they do is what reaffirms my faith in the human spirit. As someone who is decently informed of the latest technologies and has access to resources, I feel responsible in seeing to it that such gifted children and these angels striving to help them are provided with simple, yet efficient solutions.

Same was the case when we visited the Koonimedu, 10 kms into the ECR road between Chennai and Pondicherry. Read more about it on my travel blog, sometime soon hopefully.

The experiences there again left me with a feeling that there are enough resources available to help people lead better lives and definitely there is a huge need for better solutions for their problems. What is amiss is a proper ‘delivery system’, in biz-speak. I’m sure there are a large number of credible individuals and organizations working towards solving these problems. India’s problems are complex and are subject to various factors, but such experiences also spur me to do something from my side towards this cause. It might not necessarily involve reducing poverty or providing better health facilities or clean drinking water as a means to work towards this cause, I think my focus will be on knowledge and would certainly involve the small towns and villages. Balaji again wonders if there have been any ‘it’ moments during these trips that have led me into thinking like this. I don’t think that is the case. I have spent a better part of life in towns and villages of North Karnataka, and that experience has kept me in good stead all this while, helping to keep my feet on the ground. As I was growing along there was this urge to help people as I could identify with them and their problems. It is a culmination of such everyday experiences, rather than any ‘it’ moments that lead me into such thoughts and making such plans. And my biggest strength when I indeed embark on such a thing will be such experiences. There are some in the thought pipeline and some have come on paper, albeit in a very sketchy and a rough manner. Over a period of time, we will come out with something concrete and viable. What say, Bharath?!


Random related/unrelated blabber.

1. Good or bad, lucky or unlucky- I do not know. But I miss reading The Times of India here. When it Surat, it used to be daily source of humour, on account of some hilarious articles[read laughable reporting] and some sensible information on the Op-ed page on Sunday. Not to forget the free sleaze and non-sense glitterati news that accompanied it. I only get to read The Hindu. On careful perusal, it is proving to be too bland and blatantly Left for me. Getting up in the morning is one thing, but having M/s Karat and co staring at your face is not just another thing. Isn’t this what our grandparents used to say when something used to go wrong?! – “Whose face did you see first when you woke up today?” Now we know whom to blame when my day goes bad. But the funny thing is in spite of M/s Karat and co happening to me, my days have been great so far. So am I immune to the Left?! May be because I took the injection on my left arm!

I’m no big time BJP supporter though, but I’m annoyed with the usage with the word saffron with BJP. Saffron as a colour is sacred for Hindus and it not the BJP’s property as well. Somehow my impression of The Hindu as a ‘comprehensive’ paper isn’t quite the same now.

2. Scott and I went shopping the other day. Here’s our shopping list :

Businessworld – Rs. 10
Business Today - Rs. 10
Outlook Business - Rs. 15
Business Standard Rs. 4
The Economic Times - Rs. 1.50
The Indian Express - Rs. 1.50

and

The Economist - Rs. 150 (One Hundred and Fifty)
__________________________________________________
Total - Rs. 192


3. Thanks Sharma and Hitesh for the conversations, I hope I have returned the favour to Sharma and Hitesh, you better work on it well and learn your stuff at MDI well. I want you to be oozing biz-speak bull-$hit by the time you pass out from there.

4. Pandora rocks! If you still do not know what I’m talking about, check out www.pandora.com, I think I’ve almost perfected the Greenday station and with a little more effort, will perfect the Coldplay station. If anyone has some similar things, maybe we could share stations!

5. I think we will start on our full-blown trip from next week. Will keep people informed of our itinerary. If the two trips that we’ve had are any indication, I’m sure we will have lots of fun and adventure, more importantly learning and experiencing on the forth-coming trips. But there huge amount of work to be done before that to ensure that the trip goes on smoothly and we are able to spend more time on our documentation and research.

Update from Pondicherry! - The much awaited post!

So, what do you want to know?!

Am I alive?!
Where am I?!
What does my job here entail?!
So, what exactly am I doing now?!
Who are Kate and Scott
The office and people in the office
My time till now here in Pondi.
Oliver
Photos from Pondicherry.
1.The beach
2.Sunday Market
3.Random Shots



Yes, I am alive.

I am in Pondicherry. People generally refer to it as 'Pondi'. Now don't start having ideas

What does my job here entail?!

I'm dealing with the Media and Publicity aspect of PlanetRead and
BookBox . PlanetRead and BookBox are now growing and the organizations need regular correspondence and dialogue with media. So, this Computer Engineer is more like the person who'd be taking care of that aspect. So, if you hear about PlanetRead and BookBox and know what they are working on, I'm doing my job well. That's in the long term. You obviously won't see PlanetRead and BookBox hogging headlines in the next few days or weeks. Well, they already have in the past though. Be it at the Google blog or
The Stanford Daily and at The NewYork Times(the link to which doesn't exist anymore) So, my job here basically deals with taking care of the fact that PlanetRead and BookBox are projected well in the media and that their brand value and recognition increase and get better by the day!

To make this happen I understand that there's lot of ground to be covered initially and lot of learning to do, both in terms of understanding of how things work in the organization and how best one can present it employing the most suitable media. There's also lot of learning on being adept in dealing with people cutting across different sections. You can't deal the same way with the kids on the street who you're scared will harm your camera, and the Regional Director of
NASSCOM.
This is where I believe devoting most of my time working with SPIC-MACAY in college, will keep me in good stead. Interestingly, the case is mostly the same at work here. But yes, a lot more serious finds it amazing as to how I manage to be comfortable dealing with different people! Who is Scott?! Read on. But then Scott already knows what SPIC MACAY is!

So, what exactly am I doing now?!

Right now, it's more of learning than working probably is the best learning I've had, both in terms of learning on how to go about things and the people that I'm spending my time with. I spend most of my day working, dining, arguing?!, discussing, wondering, contemplating, hypothezing, debating, shopping with Kate and Scott. Who are Scott and Kate?! Read here!

Scott and Kate bring with them a host of skills and ideas and my time involves picking it up from them and offer to them what I've to offer. Together, we intend to leave PlanetRead and BookBox with lots of assets, human or otherwise by the end of this summer when they leave for the US. Then, my job here involves leveraging on these assets to promote PlanetRead and BookBox all over the world! Yes!

PlanetRead is expanding into other countries, through its Global Outreach programme. Very exciting times ahead indeed!

Over the next two and a half months, we'll be traveling to all the South Indian states, Mumbai and Ahmedabad as well to meet and interview the people who matter in the IT,tech and the media industries. There are famous names. But I wouldn't want to reveal them now. Watch out for the final piece we come up with. Then you'll know. I'd be working with Scott on the field research, the camera and the editing work. With Kate my work would involve working on the communication aspect in terms of making and maintaining the blog and reaching out to a wider audience. My job also involves working with them keeping the long term requirements of PlanetRead and BookBox and how best we can utilize their work and stay for out purposes.


Who are Kate and Scott?!

I could simply say Kate and Scott are interns from the US who are working with me here at PlanetRead. To make things more interesting, I'd say they are students of Brown University which is part of the Ivy League. They took the class of social entrepreneurship under Dr.Brij Kothari and now, they are in India! That's how powerful Brij's interaction with them was! Brij's coming to India in the near future and I cannot wait to meet him! To spice up things a little more, Kate is very good-looking and I get to carry around her on the bike for our culinary needs or otherwise. Poor Scott has to bicycle around while I get to ride Kate around! [I'm eagerly awaiting for her reaction as and when she reads this!:)]

Kate works more on the design, visual appeal and communication aspects of presenting PlanetRead and BookBox's work to a much larger audience from a world perspective. She chronicles personal her experiences and those of people here, in this blog. Kate and I are also working on creating an official blog for PlanetRead and BookBox. Those will give you, the audience a better idea of what exactly happens here and present a human face to its activities. Now, do I write that episode, Kate?! Not now, will do sometime soon. Maybe when I'm articulate?! All this said, Kate has a power of keen observation which I believe is a great asset for a person dealing with the design aspect of an organization, or for that matter anything!

To define Scott, I'll use the same word he uses to describe everything in India- intense. This guy is awesome and amazing. Now, these are again two words which he uses the most to describe everyting here! The energy he brings into everything he does is mind-blowing. Be it when it comes to planning the schedules for the village trips, or in learning more about India and its people, or even it's simply talking about general things.

For sure you'll hear more about Kate and Scott in the coming months, as I'll be spending most of my time with them. All I can say now is that this is a huge learning opportunity for the three of us. Needless to mention, we'll also have lot of fun dong this!



The office/People in the office
The office is a bungalow with a small but beautiful garden and a terrace having a breath-taking view of the Bay of Bengal. Our workplace looks something like this



The best things about people in the office is that they tolerate me. Be it making The Bored Board, or putting up with my poor jokes! The bestest thing is that they understand my PJs and are able to appreciate my puns.! appreciate will be too much of self-appreciation, but yes, people here are definitely the ones I can relate to more than most people I've spent my time with. Ananya is my English teacher here. I get free English lessons everyday. Today's lesson was that using 'having to' is not right! Parthibhan is a 'hand'some cricket player with a safe pair of hands. We soon plan to start a PlanetRead cricket club with him as the President and the watchman and I being the Secretary cum peon. Mital finds me very cute and she's said that some 97 times in these ten days. Needless to say, she is equally sweet! Pappu is one person whom I'm glad to have met. He's one of the enthusiastic persons I've ever met in my life. He reminds me so much of Prabhakar from Shantaram. Everything about him is special, be it his contacts and his ability to get things done, his smile and even his body structure!Say this to him and he'll laugh. The laugh so funny that it'll cheer up your day! We have Maaran Sir, who is like a father figure to all of us here at PlanetRead and BookBox. Vinod's the co-ordinator and takes care that everything runs smoothly. Bobby is our in-house philosopher and poet! Francis and Amma make sure we do our work efficiently by giving us regular doses of coffee, buttermilk and snacks!

Nirav is now in Mumbai as we now have ten programmes with SLS from the earlier six programmes. Vikram, Vinay, Rajesh are in Mumbai. I had a great time with them in Mumbai. Looking forward to spending time with them when we visit Mumbai in some time from now.

My time in Pondicherry till now

It's been almost 10 days since I landed in Pondicherry.Landed?!Well not exactly. I arrived in Pondicherry in an ECR bus in which I was treated to almost a dozen Rajanikant songs and a proper, masala Tamizh movie with just the right amount of violence, songs, item song exposure and perhaps not enough comedy. It was interesting enough to have me look at the TV whenever I was woken up by the person next to me falling on me and trying to become my laptop.

So, I arrived in Pondicherry and not all at sea, though there was the huge expanse of the Bay of Bengal by my side. The office, where I stay as well, is just a road across the beach and I had no problems reaching here. Nirav's instructions were just perfect.No doubt, he's the Chief Operating Officer!:)

I've settled down comfortably here and I really do not find it surprising that it appears to me that I've known people for a long time now. There's a way I connect with people and I guess the connection's just right here! There's a nut who joins us for coffee in the evening, after dinner. Let's she how she reacts to being called a nut! Guess I'll have to buy a Nut and Almonds chocolate to make up for it!

Oliver

Oliver is Scott's very good friend. They've been friends for a very long time now. It was quite amazing that they were meeting in Pondicherry after not having met for the last four months or so. That evening I spent with Oliver and Scott walking through the streets of Pondicherry, visiting the church, going through the meat and the vegetable market will rank as one of the best evenings I've spent with anyone. The discussions ranged from music to markets, politics to culture, religion to education and it was one of the most intellectually stimulating discussions I've ever had.

Oliver has seen more of not just the world, but even more of India than I have, having spent lot of time at Varanasi at the Little Stars School as a part of Where Be The Dragons. He's also been to Bhutan and Sikkim. It was his sixth visit to India and one could get the feeling that he exactly new what it was like to be in India and experience it. The very fact that he was checking out of a very luxurious and swank hotel to move into an Indian hotel is a testimony to this. He outsources animation work to Chennai and that is how he comes to India often. We hope to catch him when he comes to Varanasi in July. But what's most striking is that he's of my age and has done so much more. I'm sure the world will hear lot about him in the coming days, and not just from me!

Photos from Pondicherry.

1.The beach


3.Random Shots