random

In the middle of the night
With no one in the sight
With nothing to abhor and beauty in galore,
Stand there we four, right on the shore.
Soothing sands and tingling waters
We stand there and nothing else matters.
 Fierce waves and calm skies
Our hearts are full of nature and its praise.
In the raging tides
We see the secrets of nature’s feuds.
The sea is the owner
The land is the robber.
Oh land!! Here comes the sea
All set to conquer what belongs to thee.

Wheels On Fire...

Riding a bike in Hyderabad at a speed of 60kmph is not a big deal. But if you are driving after a good 6 months break, then IT IS!!

At 8 in the evening I set out from Kukatpally to reach my uncle’s place at Yousufguda. I sit on my Apache (the basic model, one of the worst bikes on the road) and start the bike. The bike starts with just one flip of the electric start button (quite a wonder for my bike). I rev the engine and it roars. Nice feeling this...however and whatever your bike is!! I change the gear to 1 from neutral and start. Whoa!! Looks like the bike has been serviced recently, the ride is smooth. I test the brakes at the speed of 10. All fine!! At this speed the disc brakes of Apache also work like the disc brakes of any other bike.

The confidence from good braking system and smooth ride got to my min and within 30 paces I change 4 gears to reach the 5th gear (never quite understood why this feature was added to Apache). I reach the main road while evaluating the condition of my bike. No hint of traffic. The empty roads raised my spirits to crazy levels and made me cruise at 60kmph(underline).

Need to cross the road, there is a lorry with yellow colored front whereas an auto-rickshaw was crossing the road from other side and blocking my way. I took a tentative step to cross the road but fear overtook me and I stopped. The auto-rickshaw moved ahead. The lorry also stopped to let the auto-rickshaw pass by and seized the moment to cross the road, took a deadly 45 degree turn to avoid colliding with the auto-rickshaw. Braked hard at the divider so that I don't bang into the vehicles coming on the other side of the road. Regained my composure and continued the ride. Moving towards the Kukatpally junction, I see some serious traffic there. A red color swift (1498)  is moving ahead of me and there is a light brown color esteem in diagonal left and ahead of it. Time for heroics people, I take a sharp right turn to draw level with the swift and then another sharp left to overtake the swift from the small gap between the two cars. Only to realise that I am running into another bike (Yamaha FZ - 2388). I panicked and braked. Then took a slow right to overtake the bike.

Signal time. Whats wrong with Hyderabad?? Why am I sweating like I am in Chennai??

Smooth ride till Erragadda signal. Just after the signal there is this RTC bus going ahead of me. I just followed it as there wasn't much scope for heroics here. Both the vehicles were moving at a speed of 50kmph may be. In my blind following, I did not notice the deep messy hole in the road which the bus covered as it passed over it. I land right into it and thump!! My bike's shock absorbers need to be replaced. Irritated by this, I honk continuously and overtake the stupid RTC bus.


But whats the point??? Stuck behind two cars..an Alto (9477) and an Octavia (1359). I keep to left and follow the cars as I have to take a right at the next signal. The signal is red so I decide to wait. Hoopla!!! Two bikes from behind just overtake and create a lot of chaos to take the right turn. Welcome to Hyderabad!! The bikers managed to cross the road but I am still stuck here. I wait for few bikes and other heavy vehicles (2304, 3452, 7160 etc...cant recollect which one is which vehicle) to pass by and then take the right turn. By the way signal is green now :)

Now, this road connecting ESI and Borabanda has always been a nightmare for me. One its dark and two there are a lot of holes and speed breakers in the road. Nonetheless, the mood that I am in today, I wouldn't care. I take the holes and breakers head on while my bike made ugly noises after every bump. I successfully cross the road. Now comes this pretty small road, hardly 5 meters wide and carries few of the biggest cars available in Hyderabad.

Moment of the day. I try to overtake this Indica (8371). By the time I actually overtake the vehicle I am in the middle of these cross roads and there is this car coming at a good speed from left. I noticed it just in time and dodge it by taking a nice steep right cut, only two realise that I am running into the signal post two paces away, I take another steep left cut and dodge the signal post. This stunt gave me back the confidence I needed the most. :D. Rest of the journey was smooth.

Thank you for stopping by..

By the way, the numbers in the post are authentic. I was voice recording myself while driving. The recording was too abstract to make this blog a voice blog.

Whats the big deal with religion??!!!!

This post comes straight from the bottom of my heart...

Shalimar cafe...one of the better known cafes in hyderabad for its "chai" and "samosa, mirchi dalke". Man behind the famous delicacies - Hari anna. Most customers are muslims.

Madhu, a hindu girl working in my friend's office. Is truly, deeply, madly in love with Atif, a muslim. Wears a burkha everyday to office to show respect to his religion.

Jabir bhai, my mentor and guru at work. Taught me all the technical stuff I know now, helped me out till 2 in the night though he had to come back to office early next day, browsed through his entire network for me to find out where in hyderabad do we get best air coolers.

INDIA IS A SECULAR NATION.

How proud do we feel to say this. But how small are our hearts which react to every small thing thats communal and cause unnecessary unrest. Why does a small incident in a far off land, trigger violence in our country. Aren't the lives and property lost in those incidents big enough that we lose our lives and peace fighting over them?

An incident as small as replacing flag has caused curfew for four days in a city as big as Hyderabad. What did we acheive out of this? Loss of business, loss of peace, loss of harmony and what not!! All this could have been avoided had the parties involved could have been a bit sensible. Couldn't the organisers of Hanuman Jayanti been a bit more responsible and asked the MIM before replacing the flags which were set up a month earlier during the celebration of Milad-Un-Nabi. Couldn't the MIM have been a bit more mature and reacted less aggressively considering the ongoing celebration of Hanuman Jayanti. (read the whole story here) Was so much commotion necessary to satisfy the whims and fancies of the politicos. Common sense says that, most common people in the city would have preferred the peace of their daily leaves to the four days of tension caused due to this incident. Isn't the chaos caused by the whole telangana issue enough to torment people of this city?? Just because of these religious and regional stupidity did we lose the revenue generating opportunity of conductin IPL in hyderabad. Is it worth to lose such huge economic benefits for the sake of political stupidity. The lives of students at Osmania University have been completely disrupted due to these regional and communal riots. Is it worth to put the future of young talent on such baseless premises??

For all I know, this city is a beautiful blend of various religious cultures and practices. The heritage of the city is all thanks to the Nawabs. The famous "hyderabdi dum biryani", the architectural beauty of Charminar and Golconda, the all entertaining "hyderabadi" language are gifts of the Islam culture in Hyderabad. While the beautifully built Birla Mandir on Naubat pahad, the visa god at Chilkur Balaji temple are gifts of the hindu culture to this beautiful place. Off my 10 years in Hyderabad, I did not come across a single person who did not like Hyderabad's culture, the laid back yet courteous attitude of its people.

Chalo yaaron, chodo yeh sab. Pinda, aise faltu ke dange karke kuch hota kya apna. Apan aise bindas ich mast rehte. In politician haulon ki to maikki kiri kiri...ulta latkake marna salon ku..

Whats that thing on your bodyyy!!!!!!

I really thought that I would write my next blog exactly one year after the first one. But then, things took such a strange turn that I am falling into an abyss of boredom and out of it I found a topic to blog (as you read along you will read this word as brag) about.

Sometime back I was watching this show on discovery channel about some tribes in amazon. One common thing about all the tribesmen was that their bodies were heavily loaded with body art. When I say body art I mean, body piercing, tattoos etc. Probably they did not use the latest pigments so the tattoos were not as colorful as we would see on the faces of some rock stars. But still, I found them beautiful and this spurred me to do some research (Ok..read this is as google search) on tattoos. And trust me, I did not read much as I was so impressed with some of the images that I instead started researching on the best tattoo artist in Hyderabad.

After one week of questioning and calling I finally arrived at Envy tattoos and body art. Now the question was what would be the tattoo? This triggered the thought why a tattoo? Just coz its looking beautiful now?? Dude!!! whats beautiful today may not be beautiful tomorrow. So think again. So I was thinking hard as to why people get tattooed permanently. Well, reasons vary from person to person. A Ramaiah might get tattooed coz its a custom in his village, a Rambo might get tattooed to show off his attitude, a Rocky might get tattooed to show his loyalty to someone (a band or his girlfriend), a Ram can get tattooed just for fun. So there is nothing wrong in getting tattooed for fun, but make sure that you chose a design which you are going to love for your entire lifetime.

So now I land on the expedition to find out the right design for myself. Really guys, this was no tough decision. I am such an egotist that the design was easy to arrive on. A celtic sun with an "S" at its center. I know one thing that I am going to love forever is myself, so the choice was absolutely safe. Cool!! design done, designer done. Now, Nike.

So one fine day, I call up Envy tattooes to fix an appointment. And whoa!!! there are enough people in Hyderabad who get tattooed everyday. Why do I say that? I get an appointment for 3 hours only after one week!! All the same, appointment also done.

Not caring for a mild fever, I arrive at envy tattooes on time on the D-day. I was so excited and sure about getting the tattoo done that I never bothered to find out the price. But as I walk into the office of the designer that's the top-most thing on my mind. And once all the petty details like design, size and location have been discussed and agreed upon, I ask Sameer (that's the artist's name) the price. Hold your breath (or at least I skipped one heart beat), he says, it will cost 800 bucks per square inch. And for the tattoo to look decent I need at least a 4X4 tattoo done. So that would cost me 11k. Ok, now lets not get into the sad state of my financial affairs. With a bit of bargaining and the ubiquitous EMI scheme, I go ahead with my plans.

It's not painful, believe me. But what is painful though, is to sit through the ordeal, without moving for solid 3 hours. The artist will first take a print of the design and trace it onto an oil paper. Once the design is on the oil paper, he will just imprint onto the requierd body part by applying some vaseline on the area and pasting the oil paper there. A good artist will take care that the area under construction ( :) ) is well protected throughout the process from air-borne microorganisms. I won't go further into the technicalities of the process just to keep the length of the post under control.

Now, once the tattoo is done, the artist will wrap it in a poly-ethene cover to save it from microbes. Need to keep this for at least 6 to 8 hours to keep yourself infection-free. After you take out the wrap around, you need to wash it with lukewarm water and apply any anti-microbial ointment from time to time to keep the tattooed area infection free.

All said and done,I hope at least few of you who by mistake read the whole post might have felt eager to see my tattoo. It is still healing guys, will definitely put up the photo once it is ready for public viewing. (:D ).

Thanks for stopping by and reading through....

Maid's daughter

Ok, for those of you who expected this to be a pornographic description, sorry to disappoint you, my maid's daughter is only 3 years old.

DAY 1: I was watching the replay of an old India-Australia match (Sachin at his cricketing best-I loved it) when my maid's daughter walked in. She is a 3 year old, generally sits along with her mom outside but had a stroke of malaria recently so her mom insisted that she sit inside. She came in, sat on the floor and started watching the match along with me. Enter: my nephew in his muscle tee and no chaddi avatar. Oh, by the way, he is just 18 months old. He needs to have a toy around him always else he goes insane(guess its a trait with all the kids). Now he has his helicopter in his hands, but now that he threw it on the floor so many times he himself makes the noise for it. Thanks to my nephew's excellent mimic of helicopter's sound and the designer of the toy, who made it extremely colorful, MD gets attracted to the toy. She being elder, taller, stronger (no, she does not drink complan) tries to take(or should i say snatch) the toy from my nephew. My nephew being the sharper, richer and the brat that he is, cries out at the peak of his voice(must admit he scared the hell out of me, i thought he got hurt!!!).

Enter: Elder sister, scared to death for her son. She reprimands MD, shows her the bunch of other toys lying beside the TV and gives back the helicopter to my nephew. Hmmm, I was impressed with my sister's intelligence, she handled the situation well, both the kids were happy and even I was happy, now that I could get back to my match. My sister tells me to take care of the kid and gets back to her work. Now there is a twist in the tale. MD was happy to have the heap of toys in lieu of the helicopter. She took a red color lamborghini from the heap and started playing with it. Nephew could not bear to see his toy in her hands. He slowly walks to her, takes the lamborghini as if MD did not exist there and walks back. MD does not resist why? Simple, she has a gunman to play with. She nonchalantly picks the gunman and starts playing. Nephew takes a U-turn, tries to take the gunman away as nonchalantly. He almost does it, but for a change, MD resists this time and to my horror complains to me "Bhaiyya dekho chinnu yeh bhi cheen raha hai" (Uncle, see chinnu is taking this also"). Hmmm, dicey situation, if i let my nephew take the toy then MD would cry and if i dont let him then he would cry which would bring my sister into picture and then..ahem...ahem.
What will the poor, kind-hearted Surya do now? Will he let MD keep the toy and keep the image of a kind hearted or give it to his nephew and let the poor MD cry? Will he shout at both of them and continue with his match? (hmmm..am I sounding like the anchor of one those reality shows?). Luckily, maid calls MD home and she leaves. Problem solved for day. I breathe easy.


DAY 2: MD returns. I guess she was more determined to be stubborn this time. When my nephew came into the room with his toy, she just ignored him, and started playing with one of the other toys. To my surprise, my nephew too ignored her. Hmmm, some signs of peace. While playing, MD got so comfortable that she started using the sofa. I really did not mind that. Enter: sister. She scolds MD and tell her to sit on the floor. MD, happy that she still has the toy, sat on the floor and continued playing. Again, after sometime oblivious to her surroundings, she comes onto the sofa. Guess who warns her this time, my nephew!!!! I felt he was wrong. He shouldn't have done that. I scolded him for that and asked MD to get down the sofa.

Now that's weird. I ask him not to do something and I myself did that. Hmmm, I convinced myself that I did so only because she was affected with malaria sometime back. But again it crossed me that I wouldn't sit on floor if I were affected with malaria. Then I thought she is very unclean. One look at her and you can see she is pretty clean. I felt, I did not set a good example to my nephew, so I cant correct him. And, somehow, most of us are like this, aren't we? Here was a small kid, who does not yet realise the society and its structure. She was enjoying herself. I could have told me nephew to play with her and share his toys. But, however much kind-hearted I consider myself to be, I scolded MD. I am sure I wouldn't have done the same thing if it was my neighbour's son in MD's place. Why was I discriminating? I am sure I wouldn't have done that to my neighbour's son. Even today, I do not have answer to this why? But still I still am the kind-hearted me....