smashing weekends

Well thats what i hv had the last two weekends. While the last weekend i was busy with my cousin's engagement the previous weekend i was off to Bangalore enroute to Tiruchi . Took a bus but due to some massive roadwork around Devanahalli( the new Bangalore airport) reached bang around 10.Met up with a lot of old frnds and went to a couple of nice restaurants.

IndiJoe was reserved for the evening and the other was Saheb Singh Sultan.Those are supposedly the nomenclature by which the first three locomotive engines of the Indian railways were called.See now you have restaurants saying food for thought literally.Lovely ambience with decor of a railway platform and a bogie with ticket collectors being the concierge at the restaurant . Nice images and glasswork.We ate more of the breadsticks dipped with the yummy cheese. Abs smashing me sayeth

Also was great cathcing up with frnds. Mee being the unmariied person i had to hear a lot of talk abt seven year itch, to baby talk to spousial relationships.Smashing info for a guy like me .Insights to y i shld marry and y i shdlnt.

Also went a checked the homes of a couple of these frnds.the one who was plannin to buy was aksing q's and it was interesting to look at decor and interiors as a complex thing and a work of art and effort.

Well all in all a smashing day

Left to Tiruchi by a bus.Reached early morning and went to say hi to an old mentor.Ofcourse i am talking about the Ucchi Pillayar (Lord Ganesh ) at Tiruchi. The temple has not changed for 1000 years so 3 years since college wldnt have changed it.Lovely view of Srirangam and Cauvery from atop the hill.The Siva family sits on one side of cauvery and the Vishnu family on the other. Got a grt news while i was atop.My colleague had just become the father of a baby gal.So after prayers it was back to Vasanta Bhavan an old adda 4 idli sambar.Smashing!!!

Met my would be sis-in-law and then went to college to collect my convo certificate. My college has a ritual of combining the convocations of two batches and making it a informal sort of get together for 4 batches of students.I had no chance of attending my convocation in 2004 so was attending this meet of my juniors and sub-juniors. Wore that funny gown and went and picked my convo on stage and as the batch was not mentioned my sub-sub juniors were left wondering as to who this person was!!. Eitherways we all love this .There is something about going and pciking ur certificate on a podium from a distinguished person. We did not have any hats to throw but we managed with the bows and the apparel worn on the neck.It was smashing
Now next day i was supposed to go to Chennai by train but as i found a junior pal travelling by car i joined in

Next day morning we left for Chennai in a Maruti Esteem. hardly had we crossed Tiruchi and just b4 srirangam we smashed literally. A bus from the footpath veered into the path of the car. The bus on the other side of the road also moved into our path. In an effort to move away from the first bus we moved sideways and the second bus caught the front door of the car and we were asailed with the glss pieces of the window inspite of it being rolled down. the outer side of the car door was literally pulled and dragged along with second bus for half of a kilometre. Thankfully neither of the four of us i.e Dilip, Sandeep, Arun(my juniors) and me were not hurt though we were more than shaken and stirred.We said our thanks to the above mentioned dieties and to Maruti. The large iron rod in the door had saved us from more damage.

After a lot of consulatation travelled on to Chennai and then Hyderabad by train which was rather boring journey compared to the smashing others .

Yet i should say i had never hoped or asked for such a literally smashing experience!!!

What's in a name ??

Shakespear paaji obv didnt meet any Indians.Inspite of knowing so much about emotional dramas he never understood the power and emotion assosciated with a name.

A Dwivedi is a master of two vedas. a trivedi of three. Ask Mr Vangiparipu Venkat Sai Laxman whether he knows his entire name ,he would and surely many of the cricket fanatics that India produces will aslo remember that name though we call him VVS or Laxman in short. But there are others with as many names as the average number of bogies in an Indian train and then you wonder these people remember it all.Maybe thats how our elders went about trying to improve their kids memory :-)

The other important thing is the naming phenomenon. Kabir the great poet would not be called that but for divine intervention.The Qazi did not want to give sucha name to a poor child.

The other thing is about the names.Usually most people act exactly the opposite of their names.Typically like if a person is called suraj he would not be the bright spark and energy bundle but a cynic exuding negativity:-).

But of course this craze now for exotic names is very interesting.I thought this was restricted to India whn i read that even hollywood celebrities are now trying to find out exotic names so that they can be very unique among the celebrity lot.Calling a kid Maddox because its an exotic Vietnamese name is fine but i imagine what happens when the bundles of names ends.We might soon have small pox and chicken pox as colleagues.

Lastly we in India also want old names for cities.So Calcutta has become Kolkatta. And Bangalore is soon going to bcom or has become Bengaluru(no idea when they change the names it keeps happening)By the way benga in telugu and kannada means worry and ledu is not there.But for all the business having to change the location boards and all the railway stations will now have to re-paint the name.Well this seems to be actually the government is providing jobs for so many people by just changing the name of cities.

What kinda lesser mortal was shakespeare saab to say "whats in a name"??

Focault's pendulum

Well atlast i did manage to finish this book. As i meandered around trying to figure out where the author was meandering around i almost got tired.

I am sure there are many Umberto Eco's fans who found this book amazing but for me it was a lot of crap but a great meaning at the end. Wondered y i had to read about 520 pages to understand this

What the author according to me was trying to say is essentially two important things

1) Everybody tries to build an illusion. Say like my previous post where i took a load of garbage and said it taught me philosophy .Abs crap maybe but i was trying to figure whether others would blv in this. Thankfully they didnt. Probably it was not a story well told. There are some illusions which are common. Isnt there that great story about religion being the opium of the masses . Education is the best one. We are commonly indoctrinated on many issues. Upon this base we will each build our own brand of illusions which make up our ideology and thoughts. A major part of this is our core and the problem is when others differ from us in most of our core ideoligies. We will suffer fools (bcoz they are not different from us) but we will not suffer those who are different .This is when we become fanatics. Our life is built around these illusions.Largely most of us are moderate fools but the fanatics belong to institutions like Opus Dei, Aum shrinkyo and maybe the religious bigots .I built my own story of garbage and psycho babble just to see if there could be commonality but i found more takers for romance than for garbage.

2) Each of us have one high point in life post which we keep tryin to achieve the same. Sachin had his Sharjah post which he has never been the same.Dhirubhai had his shareconference .Unlike sex this is our un super climax on which we really enjoy.There are some who realise this and then go on to thru the motions of life trying to reach minor climaxes. There are others who never realise this and go on tryin to find the pinnacle life. Our pinnacle depends on our own illusion and this illusion will determine the climax and the choices

Now after trying to go thru this psycho- babble i am just trying to figure out what this means to me . I am not sure whether this means anything but this is what i have got from reading this book.

do i sincerely blv in this .I dont think so but it probably doesnt match my illsuison. Is it a paradox like to believe or not to believe . Maybe other guys wills hed some light

duh !!

sometimes traffic and life is a quick teacher??

i was travellin on a narrow flyover with a garbage truck in front.

To avoid the smell i overtook the truck and to my surprise and found an empty stretch.


A muse in my head behind evry problem there lies a beautiful road ahead.

Just as i started zippin and racing toward the end of the flyover i reached a broken piece of the road and almost had a fall.

Muse 2- Slow & steady wins the race

Muse-3 Behind everythin nice is a speedbraker so that u dont get carried away.

Not well put but i guess u get the drift and also i wonder y this happened coincidence or part of life's learnin crash course.