soum21

Love in Rourkela

2011-08-19T08:20:00.000-07:00

When was the first time I fell in love? Interesting question as I always get confused between love and infatuation.

But if I can remember properly, the first time I got anywhere near that feeling with anybody was in the summer of 1995. I was attending my cousin's marriage in Rourkela.

The spirit of marital celebrations was all around. And as luck would have it, my cousin's neighbor's daughter was a cute little fair girl named Sundari. The moment I set my eyes upon her, I was mesmerized. I could hear my heart beating as if ten elephants were jumping on a huge trampoline, my palms were sweating. Suddenly I wanted to look all grown up and important. From that day onwards, I swore to wear only full pants.

While I was doing all my stealth research on the beautiful damsel, I came to know that she studied in the 6th standard. (I was in the 7th standard). Hallelujah! Even the Gods were with me.

At first she didn't notice me, I was aghast. What could a smitten boy like me do to get her attention?

While she was happily mingling with my cousin's and other girls, and playing antakshiri, I went and sat with the whole group. The only boy among a whole bunch of girls. It sounds tempting right now but trust me, at that time, I was paralyzed with fear.I gazed at her from side way's hoping against hope that she would notice. Just when I was losing all hope, my cousin asked me to sing a song. I thought, great, now I had no chance whatsoever. I wanted to declare a personal jehad against my stupid cousin. As I was in a catch 22 situation, I decided to be brave and sing. Mind it, I was not even the famous bathroom singer at that time.(well now I am at least a decent bathroom singer, you can even ask for a demo).

The letter was A. The only song which came to my mind was ankhon hi ankhon mein ishara ho gaya (all the gestures have been through eyes).

While singing the song I was directly staring at her, I couldn't help it. Even if a person didn't know about my intentions, it was in-your-face. Suddenly everybody started to make fun of me and her. I still can't understand what joy did these adults get by making my life so miserable. I don't know about her but I was blushing and my color turned into deep beetroot. She got up and ran away. Disaster of mammoth proportions.

The next day was the marriage. Like all kids of the family I was bestowed with the duty of taking care of guests. The moment I saw Sundari entering with her parents, I went ahead with 200% more enthusiasm and greeted them like a long lost family. I had to impress her, it was now or never. After ensuring that they got the cold drinks and snacks I left my post and stayed near them. All this time I was looking at her for a few seconds and then looking somewhere else and she was also doing the same. Once I saw that she was alone, I went ahead with all the courage and spoke to her for the first time.

I said hi! she didn't say anything. She was looking down. After a prolonged silence I said... Hi..... again, now with more confidence. In a very low voice she said hi. Oh! What a voice, it was like 1000 angels singing a love song. I looked into her eyes and told her "I err...hmmm... LIKE YOU". As I was eagerly awaiting for her reply, I was called by my wretched cousin. I said I will be right back. But by the time I returned she was gone. Was she angry?, did she think of me as a low grade rascal?, did she even know the meaning of rascal?, what if she told her rowdy father about our little randevouze? and the most important thing, did she at least like me? That was the longest night of my life. I was terrified and couldn't sleep at all.

I was leaving the next day. I wanted to write a note for her with my phone number and address, but then I remembered her dad's gigantic figure and dark mustaches, and dropped the idea. With a heavy heart I was leaving for the bus stand and it was at that moment that I saw her standing near her gate and waving at me. She was smiling.

That was the last time I saw her. When I visited Rourkela again after 6 months, their family had moved out. I don't know whether it was my first love or first infatuation, but her soft voice saying hi, still remains in my vivd memory.

Vinay the con master...

2010-07-20T11:36:00.000-07:00

When I was in Lowe, I had an opportunity to meet up with one of the most cunning fellow's in the whole wide world. He was our office boy Vinay.

He has been here since eternity and if you want to learn how to con people then he is your man. He can easily be the dean of the prestigious University of Con.

People in the agency who have never ever used an excel sheet in their life are experts now, thanks to Vinay because if they dont keep a tally on it then trust me, their salary is going to get over much before its usual time. But even then after taking all these precautions, we ended up being coned.

There are a lot of stories, the most famous is the Biryani one, Every now and then Vinay offers chicken biryani to us. On those days half of the population of crows of Basavangudi goes missing.

In advertising, we hardly get time to eat, so it becomes difficult for us to have a rain check on our lunch timings.

Vinay saw this opportunity and started to provide thali's in our office. The thali usually consisted of a portion of rice, one sabji, pampad, curd and sambar. He used to get the food from the local restaurant and serve them to everybody. By special request he would also get other items such as biryani from koshy's or Chinese from chung wah. As alway's in an ad agency, the creative floor gets the food first, followed by finance department and last but not the least the servicing, planning guys usually are treated indifferently as there were very few of us. yes yes however I hate to say this, we are at the bottom of the pyramid.

Now if for any reason a person in the servicing team annoyed dear Vinay, he made sure that the person would be the last one to get the thali without any pampad and sabji, in fact he would be lucky to get sambar. It was no point shouting at him because he would just listen to you and put your name in his infamous diary. From that day onwards you will be in his list of specials. He will take extra care to extract as much dough as possible from you. You keep on fighting, shouting and doing whatever you want, he wont budge.

Vinay had a trusted team of lieutenants. Some times due to unimaginable requirements by our clients, we are required to send them creative proofs at unholy hours. Obviously the office boys saw an amazing opportunity and always demanded extra money to take the stuff. The protocol was the auto fare along with food/quarter if it is after 9 pm. Only cash was exchanged so it was necessary for all the servicing people to ensure that they always had the proper amount of cash with them. It is said that Vinay was the master mind behind this extortions by the office carrier boys. I am pretty sure that he gets a cut out of it.

I had a client named Rohit, he was the brand manager for Nutrichoice in Britannia. A very sweet and dedicated person who always had his own creative input on everything which we presented (which annoyed my creative team). One day he was driving back from a party with a little bit of booze running through his bloodstreams and unfortunately got caught by the cops. His licence was taken from him and he was asked to collect it from the court with a heavy fine. I don't know how but Vinay got hold of him and promised to get back his license. From then on Rohit was on a rollercoster ride. Vinay took some money from him to get the job done and he didn't do anything for the next 5 day's, Rohit called him in vain and Vinay true to his legendary style never picked up his phone. Rohit panicked and called me and asked me to intervene. Now I was in a catch 22 situation, I didn't want to upset Vinay and lose one decent meal of the day and on the other hand didn't want to upset my client and get kicked out of the agency, so I went to Vinay and spoke to him in my most polite manner. He said its happening, I asked when?, he said wait da, don't worry macha, but if you want me to do it faster then you have to pay me some pocket money or a quarter. Trust me I didn't mind paying the money but I needed a guarantee. So I promised him that I would give him a quarter if he got the job done in the next day and miraculously Rohit's licence was on his desk at 9 am in the morning.

I am sure that all the people in the agency must be having similar experiences with Vinay. The only person whom Vinay fears in the agency is Krishna, our beloved HR manager. Only he knows how to handle him. All the new people who join the agency are cautioned and still they become victims of Vinay's cunning. But when I think of it, I have to thank Vinay because had it not been for him, I would have never learn excel.
Although he seems to be a complete villain, he is actually not a bad person, he is just cunning and he knows how to maximize and utilize situations, which actually proves that he is smart. For him making a living and supporting his family is not easy through just a simple job and I salute his spirit , all said and done Lowe will never be the same without him.

Hi I am Facebook !

2010-07-07T22:39:00.000-07:00

What if Facebook was a person?

Hi, I am facebook, and I don’t have to give any introduction, you see more people are aware of me than being aware of where Honduras is. But still I would like to introduce myself in a totally new perspective.

- I am a young American man from California and I was born in Harvard. I was born on Feb 4^th, 2004, but trust me in this digital age I can be considered a veteran.
- I want to be modest but I can't. I am famous. There's a movie called The social Network based on me. I am a part of pop culture as I have been mentioned in various popular show's like south park and there are songs written on me. yippeeeee.

- I like to wear casual cloths and my favourite colour is blue. Don’t ask me about my relationship status because it’s always complicated.

- I am a very amiable person and I love to make new friends, in fact my motto in life is to make as many friends as possible, I just want to show that I am way cooler than MySpace and orcut put together. Although there is a new tweet buzzing around and I am a little sceptical about it (It has fewer features than me and is still preferred by celebrities during their movie or concert releases, Blah!).

- I am a very simple person but people think that I am complicated. They say that I come up with a new personality trait every week and confuse the shit out of them. (In my defence I just want to make things easy).

- Rejection is not my cup of tea, that’s why I don’t have a dislike button.

- I have a confession to make, I am a voyeur, I like to peep into other people’s lives. I usually check out all the interesting and cool looking people on my friend’s lists.

- My main source of income is selling information of my friends to the multinationals.

- Everybody loves a little attention; the problem with me is that I love a LOT of attention, even for my tiniest achievements. I want the whole world to know about them and also to be constantly congratulated.

- Google is the inspiration behind all the quotes on my wall.

- I know a lot of languages; I can even say F**k in Nepali, Spanish, German etc.

- What is Farmville, Treasure Island, cafe world etc? Well these are my trusted lieutenants who help me in attaining more and more people. Some people solely joined my network because of them only.

- Well here’s a little secret, BEWARE of me because I am a friend of your sister, brother, mother, dad, aunty, uncle, boss, junior, senior, ex, present, probable future, grand dad, grand mom in fact anybody with an access to internet and access to me. Beware because there is a saying that your best friend is your worst enemy.....! Relax I am just joking....or Am I?

- Recently my entry has been banned in a lot of institutions and office premises, but I am not disheartened as I get access to all these places through my secret agent friends known as proxy’s.

- I love cocktails, ice creams, lemonades, caps, flowers and encourage my friends to distribute them to each other. I also expect them to be returned.

- He he.... poking is one of my side businesses and I love doing it.

- I am a photo whore and I love to be pictured. I also hope that only my good pictures are tagged by my friends but that never happensL.

- LOL! and Lmao! are some of the main words in my vocabulary.

- People have seen more music videos, clips, ads, news , movie trailers and what not through me than any other person in category. (Special thanks to www.youtube.com for providing the source).

- As I am an attention seeker, I get emotionally depressed if people don't reply to my posts and pictures. So next time be aware of my conditions and reply to whatever I post, just make it optimistic.

I hope you got an idea about my personality. Be in touch because I am here to stay J.

Valentine's day....

2010-02-07T05:44:00.000-08:00

Well its that time of the year when there will be love life on display, confusions, heartbreaks, matings, complications, disasters, anger and romance.

There will be proposals, rejections and acceptance. Couples will check their bank balances and pocket money for buying gifts and hoping to receive one.

One of the busiest seasons for Shiv sena. Lovers must thank Sharukh Khan and Rahul Gandhi for distracting the Shiv sainiks attention for some time but I am sure that by 14th they will be back at doing what they are good at, getting couples married at the spot. You see for one day they become the marriage bureau and not a political party. In fact its a wonderful opportunity for all those couples whose parents don't approve of their marriage. Just go near Shiv saina's headquarter and do your thingie. Within no time you'll be married and your parents won't be able to stop it. trust me its a full proof plan.

The sales of love and mushy songs will double. The sales of songs related to heart break and pain will triple.

Red roses will regain their popularity and it wont be considered corny to gift them.

A slew of romantic movies will be released to cash on the occasion. This season its valentine's day and Dear John.

Movies like Notebook, A walk to remember, Notting Hill, PS I Love you, Holiday, sleepless in Seattle, when harry met sally, Dirty dancing, Love actually, Wall E and Dracula (hey thats a love story too) will be on the must watch list.

Valentine's cards will be sent. Some people will receive them from their friends, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters and grand parents, but majority will receive them from their lovers and stalkers.

Every shop round the corner will be decorated in pink color with heart shaped balloons and red roses...yukkkkk........, (Am I the only one who hates it?)

Restaurants and hotels will have special packaged deals for couples. A weekend retreat or a special valentine's day menu consisting of French dishes and wines which I can never pronounce.

Petrol consumption will also increase as most of the couples will be going on long drives and enjoying their time in solitude.

"I Love You" will be the most abused word in the world on Feb 14th.

Ferrero rocher chocolate will be one of the most popular and celebrated gifts along with teddy bears.

Newspapers will have special spaces for lovers to write their messages and radio stations will ask listeners to dedicate songs to their better halves.

Public display of love will be rampant and unapologetic especially outside Maharashtra, UP and wherever Shiv Sena is absent. Parks will be booked in advance.

The bookings at saloons and beauty parlors will alarmingly increase.

Maximum people will get married on this particular day, and that's not all there will be community and group marriages with hundreds of couples saying the same pledges. I wonder how long their relationships will last.

Single people like me will try hard to find some other ways to amuse and get distracted from all the circus happening around. Best way will be to get pissed drunk, play call of duty and remember all the good things about being single like appreciating independence, gaining weight without fear, flirting with anyone without a pang of guilt and being spontaneous.

Well there has been a debate about this particular day dedicated to Love. Some people say that Valentine's day has nothing to do with love and everything to do with money. Its a way to milk cash from people who are in love. and some feel that its better to have one day dedicated to love rather than none.

Whatever said and done its one day to ignore reality and be a part of the hype.

So Happy Valentine's Day to all.

Just a flirt story

2010-01-28T20:22:00.000-08:00

Warning

All characters are real but the story is fictional.

So don't blame me if you find it boring.

Me – Look at the babe man.........yeh firang itni hot kyon hoti hai ?

Saurabh – Dude......, you are so right, they are just irresistible.

This was my first night out in United Kingdom and I wanted to have as much fun as possible. I was super excited; I had never seen so many sexy foreign babes at one place in my life.

I know, you must be wondering about my fixation with the firangs, well, to be very frank I never distinguished between races and I was never racial, but trust me, the moment I entered the party I was gone, I became racial and I started to distinguish every person and I was not alone, almost all my Indian friends had the same kind of feelings. It was after all the fresher’s week, an opportunity to mingle with the foreign and local freshers.

Saurabh came to me and said in his famous monotone voice with billions of expressions, "dude, I don't know about you but I am going to fish". I looked at him and said “ sale, If you go and get any firang girls phone number , I'll buy you a drink", I love to challenge my friends and make them do interesting stuff, just like Narad muni. He looked at me for exactly 10 seconds, smiled, winked, and went away.

At that moment I saw her, she was a red head, 9/10 (well the highest which I gave to any girl after Megan Fox). She was alone with her drink, staring boringly at people around her. I saw a guy approach her.

Guy - Hi, you look lovely tonight.

9/10 girl - Tell me something I don’t know

Guy - Umm, well, can I buy you a drink?

9/10 girl - I though you'll first buy it and then tell me. She looked at him for the first time.

Guy buys her a drink (vodka with coke).

Guy - Well ...would you like to dance with me?

9/10 girl - No, I am too bored and you are not my type.

She said that and walked away to a group of people. I could hear the guy’s heart break into thousand pieces and I said to myself “what a jackass”.

I also thought, “what a bitch”. I am sure she must be having a boyfriend. Just then I saw Saurabh approach the group. The first thing which came to my mind was, "God, now he is going to lose his dignity and I am going to get a free drink, and it’s going to be fun".

I approached the group from a distance to see how Saurabh was going to get thrown out.

I saw Vaishu & Anjali and called them. Vaishu is from Chennai, a diehard tamil film enthusiast who doesn’t understand Hindi and every time I irritate her say’s poda. She is also unlike any Tamil girl I have ever seen, she is extremely fair and doesn’t have a bust line, I mean she is tiny, skinny and pesky, that’s why we call her mosquito, and whenever she irritates me I just switch on goodnight matt (okei its a bad joke but I am still keeping it). Anjali is a mallyali girl without an attitude; she loves English music (which I pretend to understand), occasionally watches Malyalam movies to feel at home, and loves dancing. She also makes amazing salads and changes into a completely different person once she gets high. (I guess I'll write their story some other day, this time its about guys)

I told them about our bet and they were not amused, you see, Saurabh is reasonably handsome and almost every girl is interested in him, they find him irresistible. He is from Delhi and does not carry any attributes whatsoever to a person coming from that place. In other words he is not a show off. His pet dialogue is “bhains ki aankh”.

There was 1 guy and 2 girls in the group. Saurabh approached the group and asked one of the girls (not 9/10), "I just need a quick opinion. I have to leave in 2 minutes, you see that guy", he points out at Nitish, "Well his girlfriend doesn't like him to be in touch with his ex. But the problem is that they are still good friends, what do you think he should do”. During the whole conversation, he didn’t even look at the 9/10 girl.

Instead, he looked at the guy for an answer and the guy replied, “Mate, he should leave his ex alone, he should concentrate on the one with whom he is having sex”. The girl’s gasped and said “nooooo....,” one of the girls said (not 9/10), a 7/10, “if they are good friends then he should continue his friendship”. Saurabh looked at the girl and said “the reason I am asking this is that if he stops talking to her then he will resent his girlfriend. But if he keeps talking to her, his girlfriend will resent him”. The 9/10 girl whispered “even I was in a same situation”, Saurabh didn’t pay much attention to her. As he interacted with the group, he paid special attention to the guy who seemed more likely to shut him up – the jealous man – over protective friend. He made him feel good as he interacted with the girls. At that moment the guy left to buy drinks for the girls.

Saurabh told the girls that he could find out whether they were best friends. He asked them whether they knew what shampoo the other girl used, the girls looked at each other and said “Dove”!!, Saurabh smiled and explained that the answer was not important; “I already know that you are good friends because the moment I asked you the question you looked at each other, as if there was a bond between you gals”. (I know it sounded total crap but somehow it got them interested).

Suddenly they didn’t want him to leave. He started to make fun of the 9/10 girl, he was teasing her by saying that she reminded him of mini Britney spears. After a couple of minutes the 9/10 girl was standing alone with him as the other girl interacted with another guy.

He was mesmerizing, and it was time for me to get into action, by that time Vaishu and Anjali were also gone after seeing his success story. But before leaving they made ample fun of me and told me to keep his drink ready. What losers.

As I was watching the whole proceeding, I got a tap on my back. It was one of the Indian guy named Rajneesh, I was in touch with him through facebook before coming to the University. He is from Kashmir, totally loyal to his girlfriend and dying to flirt with firangs.

Rajneesh – Let me introduce you to my friends.

There were two Indian guys and one cute European babe. They were studying in his class.

I said Hi to the two Indian guys (actually, without much interest) but my sole concentration was bestowed upon the babe. She was a hottie, another 9/10, well what the hell a 9.2/10 (in my eyes this babe was hotter than Saurabh's). She was blonde, petite and had a killer figure . She also had this exotic accent.

Me – Hey, nice to meet you, what’s your name?

Babe – Barbie

Me – I looked into her eyes and said, “Barbie, nice name, can I play with you?"

She almost dropped her drink; the other 3 guys were watching me with shock.

Rajneesh – Dude, did you actually say that right now?

Babe – (after gaining composure), well are you Ken? (Barbie doll’s boyfriend)

Me – Do you have any doubts darling?

Babe – Lol, wow, I was just kidding, where were you all this time. (She winked at me)

Me - Well, I was here only love, looking for you.

As we were flirting with each other, I grabbed her hand and took her to a corner, we were having a good time, she was laughing at my silliest jokes (and trust me almost most of the times they are SILLY).

After some time I asked her, “Do you want to kiss me”? She said “I am not sure”. I leaned over and kissed her anyway, she didn’t resist.

Later that night while we were returning back to our hostel, Anjali was in a foul mood so I asked her:-
Me – What happened, why are you in such a sadoo mood?

Anjali - Arre, I was sitting in one corner waiting for Vaishu, an Indian fellow came and sat beside me. He started chatting; I was also interacting with him normally. Vaishu came back and I talked to her for a while. After some time, the guy stands up, looks at me and says with attitude, ok, let’s be ‘just friends’ only and walks away. I just don’t understand what all goes inside your minds.

Me – Whoa, don’t stereotype us macha. It’s alright, must be some despo guy, forget about him.

Vaishu was talking to her boyfriend on phone. For some reason she calls him Dhandam, I wonder what it means.

As I was remembering the proceedings of this wonderful evening, Saurabh came and showed me three phone numbers.

Saurabh – Now you owe me 3 drinks bhains ki aankh.

Me - Dude, if every party turns out like this, I won’t complain, by the way I still don’t get it ki yeh firang itni hot kyon hoti hai?

- Inspired by The Game, by Neil Strauss

Memoirs of Moscow -1

2008-12-07T10:17:00.000-08:00

1) Summer camp (5 years old)
I still remember the day when I was sent for a 1 month summer camp. It was the first time that I went somewhere without my family. Among all the students I was the most unique one. Why? because nobody else was brown in colour with black hair and brown eyes, and contrary to my present looks, I was damn cute and a darling of all Russian teachers. Even today I feel that I was given special treatment by my teachers. We used to sleep in a dormitory. As soon as the lights were switched off and the door closed, the room used to change into a war zone. pillow fights, jumping from one bed to another was the norm of the night, but all this was done without making much noise.(These Russian kids are born with these qualities, no wonder they end up being good spies)
We used to get up early in the morning and exercise for 1 hour.(don't remember the exercises though). After that we used to go for the swimming classes. Two groups were made, one was the boys group and the other was girls group. Obviously the changing rooms were also different.
On the first day I accidentally entered the girls changing room. All hell broke lose, the shouts were ear shattering. I froze there while all the girls were running helter shelter, imagine a brown boy in his under wear at 12-14 white girls. After a few moments which felt like an eternity, I ran from there to the boys changing room, trust me I became a kind of a hero among all the other boys. Somehow I convinced the teachers that it was all an accident and it was I who was more embarrassed than those girls. Luckily by the time the camp got over, this small incident was forgotten.

10 ways to lose friends

2008-11-28T09:41:00.000-08:00

How to make friends and influence people, The monk who sold his Ferrari, Who moved my cheese and many more are some of the self help books which have seldom helped anybody apart from wasting the readers valuable money and time.
How boring, why doesn't anybody write a book on how not to make friends and not influence people or who ate my cheese and farted?? Now I really want to find out how to lose friends. Some thoughts have come into my impaired mind which I would love to share with all of you.

Tell me, how many so called friends have you encountered who time and again sent you stupid SMS's, called you without any reason, and worst of all asked for money? I am sure if you are normal, then it would have happened to you in plenty. Now I have tried to find out a way to get rid of this problem, here are some valuable insights and solutions.

1) The best way to influence a person is to remember his/her name correctly. Now if you want to get rid of a friend then get his/her name wrong each and every time you call, and try to call them by a name which irritates them. I am sure nobody will like to be called by a wrong name.

2) Every time you see your friend, ask for money, ask for booze, ask for cigarettes, ask for a party, free dinner, go to a pub and drink till you pass out and make sure that you don't pay for it, believe me it works.

3) SMS the crappiest of message, and send chain mails to so called friends saying that if you don't forward it to 50 people then you will lose your hair.

4) Tell your friends parents about their boozing, smoking habits. Also tell them about all the naughty things they do when they are drunk.

5) If you want to get rid of your roomie, then start walking naked around him/her. (Obviously inside the house, but if you want to embarrass them outside then please be my guest)

6) Force your friend to watch the crappiest movie with you and make sure that he/she pays for it. After the movie tell that it was the worst experience of your life and that your friend was the most boring person to watch the movie with.

7) We hang out with friends because we find them interesting, so the best way to get rid of them is to bore them to death.(I still have to learn this art though).

8) Start embarrassing your friend whenever he/she is in front of their colleagues, ex-Start making animal mating noises and also enact it if you can.

9) Start hitting on your friends boyfriend/girlfriend in a very obvious way, say very dirty things about them.

10) Whenever you are in a crowded place, make a farting noice and close your nose in disgust and then point the finger at your friend and shout disgusting. Do that continuously for 3 times in the most unexpected places.

If at the end of all these exercises, you dont lose the friend then kindly send him/her to the nearest mental hospital.