Being Kolaverised!

It was a regular visit to Facebook and a link with the name 'Why this Kolaveri di' caught my attention.

Just opened to see what was that. Boy! That was addictive! Hilarious! And stuck to my head for whole of the day as a hard, sticky chewing gum!

Thought I would be fine the next day! But the song emerged to be the winner over my mind!

It was still running in my head, I took a bath, and was performing my regular prayer before God, my head processed a different suprabatham that day, with few remixed lines as paa paa paaan.. paa paa paan pa.. paa paa paaen pa paa.. sariya vasi..!!!  I somehow managed to finish the prayer. My sincere apologies to the almighty for my wavered concentration!

I started to office, to my surprise, my kolaveri-addicted mind didn't force me to download the song and made me save into my mobile. I was on my way.

My usual walk to the office would always be with my headphones connected to phone and phone connected to FM, however I was so much kolaverised that day, I didn't even think of putting on them, who knows even the FM channels would have been bombarded with the same kolaveri song!

Come office, my teammate was listening to something on her music machine, I thought she wouldn't have checked the song and I wanted to proudly introduce her the song and kolaverise her too, but my excitement dropped as she had already downloaded the song and had several runs of it! Yes! she was infected too, by the kolaveri virus!

Ten minutes into my work, I could hear ring tones from all corners of my work zone buzzing with 'Why this Kolaveri Kolaveri Kolaveri Di', it seemed like people have  intentionally increased their phone ringing volumes just to show off that they are also enjoying this wide-spread musical epidemic.

Then I realised, Kolaveri travels faster than light!

The day went off with some moments of surprise and awe when I found someone who hadn't heard the song yet, and they were made to feel as though they made a grave error by not being active on the social networking sites and someone would even look at them as though they were from a different planet! (Little exaggarated though! ;))

Its day five! Yet the song wins over! and I remain KOLAVERISED!!!!!!!

PS - The success of this song is a clear message to the movie-makers. I hope the SRKs and the DirtyPicture production crew would realise that sense-less promotions, excessive hype is not the way to pull in people into the theatres, its just sheer creativity and out of the box stuff that connects to people world-wide and yes at the cost of nothing!

PPS - I have seen people hitting this post to find the meaning of 'Sariya Vasi' as I have mentioned those words in one of the lines of this post. I don't want to disappoint them. The meaning of Sariya vasi would be "Is it right? Vasi" (Vasi - a tamil name, incidentally the name is the character's name that Rajnikanth played in the movie Robo).Any Tamil friends please clear me if I am wrong!

M S D, Respect.

Behind the three wooden sticks, there lies a cricketing laboratory, powered by a sharp brain and a pair of quick claws. Yes! I am talking about an agile wicket-keeper who also is an aggressive stroke-maker, and above all a calm leader that comes in a package called Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

Let me get nostalgic here, I was always fascinated with the story of King Midas as a child. As I grew up I can only associate the story to the modern Midas, MSD! The forerunner of the modern Indian cricket. Mind you, he doesn't have an MBA degree from the LBS or the IIMs. However, the decisions he take, that burgeon from his instincts, well supported by his enormous confidence produces great results.


Instincts
Be it handing over the last over of the maiden 20-20 world cup final to an unheard name in the form of Joginder Sharma, or be it promoting himself up the order in the finals of the 2011 cricket world cup, the success of MSD has been stupendously stupendous. I fall short of adjectives to describe more about his feats and his super human abilities! '

Sportsmanship
Who would recall the 'dumb' bell to the crease though his dismissal was legal according to the rules of cricket except a true sportsman like MSD, (there were some news that his decision was influenced by Tendulkar). Though this act of him was highly applauded by the cricketing greats it was equally censured by the rest of the cricketing fraternity. But with that decision he helped keep the cricketing ties between the two nations green!

A Leader
He is a true leader when it comes to sharing the credit to his team members, and at the end of the day he makes sure that each one of them gets their pie of honor, credit and respect. At the same time he backs his team and lead from front in the time of adversities. That is the reason he bats at six, and not to keep his averages thick!


Critics
However successful MSD is, there have been critics around the world who comment that his success is only because of sheer luck and not of any cricketing brilliance. To prove them wrong, here's what happened just a few days ago, India lost 4-0 in the away test series in England. And it only meant one thing - "EVEN MSD fails! ". A root cause analysis on the loss would help discover the answer - excess cricket means tired legs, tired body and a tired mind.

The loss clearly makes an understatement that luck has nothing do with the success he has achieved and the laurels he brought to the country. Only self-belief in your instincts, calmness and level-headedness means success for everyone!

PS - How ridiculous it is to compare the batting technique of MSD to number ten Ishant Sharma! Did you forget the days when you basked in the glory of  MSD's mighty sixes and the celebrations you did when he lifted the trophy which the whole country waited for nearly three decades! If you did forget here's that historic image!

PPS -

I remember reading a quote by Paul Strang of Zimbabwe ' What we[Zimbabwe] need is 10 Tendulkars'.

But I say what you really need is just one Dhoni!!


M S D, Respect!

It's October!!

<Connected/Disconnected Thoughts about October and My Birthday!!>

I get reminded of Dudley Dursley of Harry Potter or rather I behave the way he does when it comes to my birthday!! unlike the number of presents that he counts, I keep track of the number of people who wish me, and who make my day more special! :)

I remember dates, names and faces for a life-time. I have an elephant's memory when it is about these and hence I would never miss wishing a closed one on their birthday. If at all I do miss it for some reason I compensate it by wishing them on their half-birthdays!

Its no kidding if I say that the entire nation has celebrated my birthday this year. With the festival of lights coinciding with my birthday it did happen!! Thanks for firing those crackers! You guys really made my day!! A special note of thanks to MSD for inflicting a humiliating defeat on the English and for providing a sweet victory right before my birthday!

And yeah, I always loved the month of October, it all started in the school when I used to get a three week long holiday right after the Mid-term exams. With Dasara, Diwali and my birthday falling in the same month, it was always the month I longed for!!

With the emergence of facebook there has been a dip in the number of wishes through phone calls this year. Though the wishes are reached to me through a different medium, I somehow feel that a wish made through a phone call would produce more warmth compared to a message left on the wall. However, taking it in a different view, I am contradicting my own opinion that I have made in one of my previous posts - 'words written lasts forever'. Excuse my multitude of opinions please.

Another point about October, there's been a birthday or two of my friends or acquaintances on almost every day of this month. Can anyone tell me why is it so?? I am little baffled here :D

P.S - As most of my female friends got engaged/married this year, it has further accounted for a dip in the number of wishes this year. Anyways I still have time for vengeance, let me get hooked!!! ;)

P.P.S - I know this post seemed a touch childish, I guess it happens when it is the day of your birthday!!

A year of blogging!!

The love towards blogging would usually start with a friend sharing his/her blog with us, and as we keep reading the blog we develop the feeling 'Why don't I give a try and write a blog too..'

My closest encounter to blogging happened when a friend shared his blog and the blog which he follows, after several hits to their blogs, the interest within me towards writing and blogging started taking shape and after few months I did start off my first blog with the title 'Will I complete it' and the first post was about the beast.

However, I later copied the content of the blog and discarded it citing a not-so-good title and created a new blog with a catchy title and a peppy design and this incarnation was titled 'The Lubberwort' ;)

The next thing I did was to send the blog link to few of my friends and compelled them to read and demanded a feedback!!! Yes, sometimes you need to that! The initial posts clearly portray that I was a beginner and they were marked with naivete and T9 mode of spellings. I still kept them the same just to gauge how my blog evolved over time.

Thus, I made a beginning and kept posting sporadically and also inculcated blogging etiquette by reading blogs of more established bloggers and by registering to blogger communities.
  
It was all good initially, no worries of what the content of the post be, whether it appeals to everyone or not, it didn't matter to me much.

But a little worry and a responsibility surged when a good number of readers were following my blog be it by force or by unsolicited interest, and when I started receiving good responses for the posts published.

So the next time when I sit to write a post, consciously or unconscioulsy, I used to think of the audience and at times that would limit the way I express something, unlike the free-style of writing employed in the earlier posts.

However, the initial discomfort turned out to be a good sign, as it helped me being more fastidious and more purisitc than earlier. It did help me to think about more creative ways to present a content however at the expense of a little more time and a little extra effort.

Also, with the blog getting a little popular, it helps me not to keep the blog dormant for a long while, and I could avoid procrastination. Thus, not letting my dynamic thoughts go down the drain.

'The Lubberwort' is one year old now, it turned one the last september! And I hope to continue and publish at a higher frequency than before and keep the blog alive and kicking!!

Happy Anniversary 'The Lubberwort'!!!

Serendipity

A few days ago, I texted you telling what Serendipity is? Yes, meeting you turned out to be a Serendipity! I thought I would fill this coveted space of mine, about the serendipitous journey a long time back, anyways, its never too late, and this is what the journey was and still is..

The rides from the office, the stops at the frankie shop, the sulking face, the messed up iphone, the punctured tyre, the lunches at the cafeteria, the movies watched, and the one watched on the first day of its release.

The one and only comment passed about your school :( , the greeting card, a day out at Aryan's home, the training given, the training taken.

The silk challenge, the lost bet, the unheard song, the muted response, the misunderstanding, the talks on phone, the pastries at cakes n bakes, the soya milk from the super market, the not given swiss chocolate.

The argument, and the ride to the post office and a non working hair drier, the meeting with the dentist and the surprise unfurled, the movie that wasn't watched, the movie that was watched.

The worst performance and the worst response, the good performance and the better response, the SSIS packages, the queries explained. the money lent.

The wiki-explanations about the most boring topics on earth, the uninterested faces, the unanswered calls, the Google search for the meanest of the problems.

The 'ruby' online, the dialogues repeated, the laughter, the lake, the big rock, the thoughts of dumping me beneath that, the balloons on your table, the mails, the contact blocked on your communicator, the agreement reached.

The dairy milk chocolate, the IM conversations, the boost at the CCD, the Telugu dubbed English movies, the passes exchanged, queuing up for the same, the songs listened, maleyali jotheyali, engeyum kadhal, love me tender love me sweet and the new one!! .

The songs that were forced to listen, obviously the songs where I brayed, the quiz not participated, the unaccompanied lunches, the dhandiya, the photos taken, the bluetooth exchange.

The days missed, the shopping, the black shirt, the top from splash, the parallel parking of the bikes, the happy moments.

The meet after a week, the meet after two weeks, the forced read of the blogs, Vignesh, the consultancy calls, the search for the driving license, the phone forgotten at the washroom.

The missed dj night, the new year resolutions, the muted lunches, the 1473-1453 conversations, the looking out of the cubicles, the emotional mails exchanged.

The days laughed, the days fought, the adventurous days, the boring days, the days missed, the days parted off, the unsaid good-bye, the days missed, the memories, the moments, the moments, and it goes on and on and on and this list is endless. And I wish this serendipitous journey be stacked with many such beautiful moments further on!!

As they say, words spoken are forgotten, but words written last forever!! and what better day it can be than the most joyous and most important day of your life to present this!! 

A vErY hApPy BiRtHdAy!!
TaKs!! 

Cop's Saga 2

Although the under cover cop's story of Pokiri is still etched in people's minds, and the 'thokkalo meeting lenti' and 'evvadu kodithe..' dialogues are still talked and used extensively in public conversations, Dhookudu as a new bottle did attract with a different taste of the old cop's saga. It proved once again at the box office that Mahesh as cop still sells!

Mahesh does it again with a clinical performance, and carries bulk of the movie with his style and his calm, yet powerful dialogues attributed with his cool disposition.

It isn't an exaggeration if I say that he occupied around 95% of the frames of the film. However, I dint get bored looking at him even for three hours. Seriously! (I know it sounds so gay, Admiration is gender-unbiased. Isn't it? huh!!)

The movie begins with the typical Tollywood way, a grand entry, a fight and a song. The main plot of the movie makes you travel to the less seen (atleast on the Telugu Cinema) picturesque locations of Istanbul.

Coming to the title song, it was a great composition considering Thaman's monotony in terms of songs lately. Except the title song, rest of them seemed like you heard it many a times before. I somehow feel that Thaman has a fixed repertoire of songs and it isn't that vast as DSP or any other leading music directors.

Samantha looked a little different, but yes her role was simply wasted, her name should have been listed in the 'Guest Appearances' instead of the 'lead cast'.

The first half sets a good plot, however, the same intensity wasn't carried in the next half, with a predictable story-line and one starts feeling nostalgic as the plot transforms into the 'Ready' style of new characters being created on the fly. This time with the theme of a 'Reality Show'. Sreenu Vaitla seems not to leave his comfort zone of running the plot around gags and practical tricks.

Though I said Mahesh carries the entire movie, however, I must be doing gross injustice if I ignore the performance delivered by this man, Brahmanandam. To be honest, I was so engrossed in his character, I was considering him as a real reality show character (the character he plays in the movie) instead of a great comedian what he is. MS Narayana also keeps the comedy track alive and tickles your funny bone with his multiple characters. You have to watch this!! words just can't explain this.

Sreenu Vaitla did pen some nice dialogues with humor ruling all the way. Overall your time and ticket's worth is justified.

P.S - The movie watching experience at a multiplex sucks. No whistles, no loud laughter, no comments passed. That's seriously pissing off. I wonder how a movie is enjoyed by the so called 'multiplex-class-viewers'! Come. Sit. Watch. Go home. Lock the doors. Remember the dialogues and laugh!! Is it??

Image Source : Google Images

120........

'Those who have come for the test, please drink more water. The more you drink, the better the result would be' shouted the receptionist.

I was sitting at the out-patient ward, waiting for my turn. The receptionist was having a look at the patients who were waiting for the ultrasound test, I was one among them, he stopped his glance at me and asked 'Sir, did  you drink water?' Making me feel a little embarrassed. I just signaled him that I already had four glasses of water with my fingers doing the talking. But in return he said loudly 'four is not enough, have two more, for a better result!' and added insult to injury.

I got up and walked to the water dispenser, had two more glasses of water and sat back watching the test match between India and England, with M.S.D in his avatar as a medium pacer and 'The Wall' taking guard behind the stumps.

Coming to this test at the hospital, the ultrasound test had to be performed only when your bla**er is full, so that the renal calculi, in general terms, the kidney stones would be easy to detect.

The six glasses of water that I consumed started gushing inside. However I had to wait till the test is done. I self-motivated telling 'Perseverance pays my boy!' When the situation was getting out of control, I walked to the receptionist with great difficulty and asked him when was my turn, he said there were four more people in the queue,and  I had to wait for some more time.

I returned to the seat and continued watching the match, M.S.D was carrying on with his spell of bowling, there came a beautiful inswinger, went past the edge of KP's bat, loud shouts from the keeper and the bowler, the finger went up, KP was not convinced, he asked for a review. The Indian team erupted in joy and everyone started congratulating M.S.D. The replays showed that there was no edge and KP survived.

However, my survival was under threat now. I was stilling holding ON it. I was actually feeling good that I was capable enough to hold ON for that long. I dint wanna give up. The receptionist looked at me and said I was next.

I quickly walked to the lab and was standing at the door, soon the in-patient walks out and I was called in. The Doctor looked amicable, the nurse too. There was a bed,with a computer monitor beside and other paraphernalia required for the test. I was asked to lie down on the bed and was asked to lower my pan*s.

The doctor came and put the image detector with a gel applied to it's head. He started moving the detector and looked at the monitor and chuckled saying 'you managed to hold on a lot Karthik!', I felt an immediate feather in the cap with that comment and I gave a little laugh.

He moved the detector all over my torso and lower the torso and found nothing and said  'No sign of stones'. He asked me to let THAT out and come back once again so that he could find something after that. I was relieved with what he said, not that there are no stones, I am talking about the latter statement. I went to the washroom and there passed my two hours of unprecedented efforts, I could proudly say, 'Mission Accomplished!', with that, that day I learnt a new meaning for the word 'Relief'.

I walked back to the lab and the doctor performed a second trial, but the result was unchanged. I took my reports, paid the bill and returned from the hospital with a definite sense of relief and a :) and for some reason or no reason these 120 minutes deserved a space on my blog!

This part of my life is called being stupid

Yes. The title of this post is actually a dialogue from the movie 'The Pursuit of Happiness'. A walk-through of this post would definitely make sense why I made it the title.

A few days back at my office, my child-like enthusiasm coupled with a good amount of stupidity contributed for my friend's phone to go dead!

As they say, closed things attract more attention, my friend's phone did drag my attention with it's keypad being locked with a pass-code.

The moment I tried my friend's usual pass-code, it didn't open. I thought that she has changed the pass-code and fancied different permutations. It was throwing the same error message for every attempt of mine.

With this, a new thought surged in my head - 'How many times would an i-phone allow to enter the wrong pass-code?'. So the further attempts were merely of statistical importance as I was sure that I cannot crack the code, I was only interested to know the limit of the number of wrong attempts.

I thought I would count the attempts, however I lost the count as the phone was not responding anything after some x number of attempts. The phone had reached the HUNG state.

Even then I was quite undeterred thinking that it will work based on my 'Joy-stick principle'.
A principle that I learnt back in school time - whenever the joy stick of the video game stops working, I used to just leave it for a while untouched and after few hours, bingo it would again start working.

I told my friend not to worry and it will be working after some time. My friend wasn't that worried as she was occupied with her work.

Few hours passed, my joy-stick principle didn't work, and I thought it was high time to sought goddess google help.

I fed the query and it gave some y number of solutions, I tried all but still the phone displayed the same static screen.

I started to feel few angry flares and stares from my friend. With a more intense search I found out some i-phone repair shops in the city. I called up to one number and explained the repairer the cause and the current state of it. He listened to it and said 'The phone can be repaired. But no guarantee that the data remains!', like a doctor who informs the family members of an ailing patient that the person survives but no guarantee that he remembers his past.

I conveyed the same to my friend, but she wasn't willing to lose the data. An obvious and expected reaction. She said she would try connecting it to i-tunes, if not then I could get it repaired.

Her attempt dint work anyways.

So the next day I took it to the trauma centre (Jagdish Market, Abids, Mobile & Electronics Repair market), after some hours of surgery(OS re-installation), medication (apps and required updates) with several experts having a good look at it (I was redirected to four repairers as the 'case' was not in their 'scope' and finally the fifth one took it as a challenge.) its heart started beating again!

However it was a new born baby now (the data was lost :( ). I returned the phone to my friend and she looked visibly happy with her phone breathing again which in turn left me breathing. :)

Message to my i-phone friends:
This particular incident must be an eye-opener for everyone of you, and I advise you all to take regular backups of the data on your phone. Because the world is full of idiots :)

Image Source : Google Images

Why Am I Single??

Why Am I Single?? A question that is so common among the singles around us! I drilled down to unearth some reasons behind it, which I could better explain wth some cases. Below are some of those -

Case #234 He was of the first bench types in college, and ended up looking at the lecturers more than the gals in class.

Case #77 Even though he was of the 'cool' types of guys in college, he does look at gals, but out of the 15 odd gals in the class, if the count of the good-looking/compatible/friendly gals was only less than the number of fingers of one hand, and 2 of them are already 'engaged' and one is 'padaku' the other two are not of that 'type'.

Case #420 Somehow he managed to find his so called 'soulmate' in the college or outside the college through whatever means it takes, he would end up hitting on that gal, ignoring the other better prospective options around him (gals from the other branches, juniors :-) , gals in the neighborhood of his home, and the gals he met during his family outings and functions).

If the gal doesn't bitch around him, he is safe, his relationship sustains, if not he would end up receiving a wedding invite from her, and a note stating " you would get a better gal than me!" (the guy's wtf look says that he wouldn't mind she marrying some stupid, instead he is worried now to start the process again, search -> filter -> hit -> miss -> hit -> time out -> Game over!! )

Case #95/100 Being a 'good' student, he thought let me complete my studies, get placed, then will think of that. (now what the f**k, do you think those gals gonna wait for you to finish your f**king formalities, grow up dude!!).

Case#356 That's fine, I will find someone in my office. B***s.. Do you think the gals around are still single like you, and you are the cupid to attract them! Ok, there would still be a faint chance here, but still it would fail because of the below sub-cases -

Case#356a - Yeah.. the gal is a real-beauty (Her kid's name is Teddy!)

Case#356b - Macha.. I guess I could hit on her, but she is always busy (WTF.. she is busy on Gtalk, talking to her would-be husband)

Case#356c - 'Hey a new intern in our team, she looks quite cool' (Yes, her bf too, he is in the other team ;-)

Case#1000 The philosopher. Whatever happens, happens for the good . (then f**king keep waiting..!!! )

The Expectation Pie

In a relationship there are two roles played by each other, the roles being - a 'Producer' and a 'Consumer'. (Call me a male-chauvinist, will use 'He' for Producer and 'She' for Consumer ;)). Though no one would don the roles by themselves, they just happen in the course of a relationship.

These roles keep changing with time and situation. Initially the one who plays the Producer feels really happy in showcasing his love and he tries to seize every opportunity to give more than his 100% and it is equally complemented by the Consumer.

However, as time progresses, the one who was supposed to be a Producer for a longer period of time keeps doing his good work, where as the Consumer who is so used to her role now will stop rating his work, though unintentionally, and in turn, the occasional mistakes would start hogging the lime-light.

With this, a small expectation burgeons in the producer, an expectation that his efforts are to be recognised. As motivation being the driving factor for any individual, be it at the work place or be it in a relationship, no wonder why he shouldn't feel the same in a relationship.

The expectation pie gradually increases, so does the number of misunderstandings and the relationship would lose the earlier charm. However, for this situation to happen, the Consumer cannot be blamed. She is just used to her role so well that she is unaware of the expectation pie. For example, she gives 10 points for something ordinary and the same 10 points even for something that is quite extra-ordinary, which would have well-deserved double the points in the beginning.

So what matters the most is understanding the expectation pie, a higher degree of expression and approaching everyday as a new beginning which would ensure the same importance and charm to the relationship as it was in the beginning. Also, swapping the roles oftenly and complementing together will help keep the expectation pie under control and henceforth no room for misunderstandings. :)

Pinky!!

Sometimes, it could just be the name, someone could fall for.

As her two-word name meaning art and creator, she justifies it prodigiously. A budding entrepreneur, a creative mind, a great painter of the art(as known and heard), a pampered kid at home and most importantly a hard nut to crack, all these powered by a killer wit makes it hard for anyone to outsmart this demoiselle.

As all these factors led to an immediate and extreme admiration, I took a step with deep hesitation and little trepidation.

Abstruse was the first thought about her and supercilious being the second. However, its too early to judge or perceive an opinion on her right now, but for now, these are my thoughts :). The more I know further, the more I update about her in this space.

PS: Pinky is not her name though!

The pages of my diary 2010

'Well begun is half done', felt that this is quite an apt opening line for this post.

I am referring the above line to the Year 2010. Though the year started quite well with the high of the Russian drink but the same 'spirit' wasn't maintained the year long.

The first three months were only marked with monotony and that was just work at office, tv at home, meddling with the guitar on the weekends and an interesting novel in hand if I had got any more free time.

Come April, little pinch about my career and some other aligned goals lured my mind but still those thoughts were minute enough to make any difference to my routine, infact the heat of Hyderabad summer made me think more about survival than anything else. Seriously, summer at Hyd sucks!

With the auto-rickshaw journeys getting troublesome and irritating at times, I decided to pull a rickshaw myself ;). It was the 31st of May I got my beast.

The charm of my new bike spanned across June and July, and was busy taking care of it as a newly-wed bride (cleaning, washing, on-time servicing), getting the necessary documents (registration, driving license) to ensure a hassle-free ride.

In fact,I had burnt my pockets a couple of times before, as I didn't have the driving license and had to pay the cops. At times, heftily!.

The month of July ended with a trip to the college for a re-union of my college friends. It was a good time reliving those past memories. It was during this time I started writing 'The lubberwort'. :)

Moving on, the rains of August and September washed away any last hopes that were breathing within me and that marked the end of the most-combated relationship I ever had.

With the clouds getting clear, and the focus shifting towards career, I marched ahead, rather slowly and started preparing to bell the CAT, for the next year though.

Soon came December and wedding bells at home, my elder sister was getting married :) and a sense of responsibility surged in me. As the role of a brother being really important I was busy sharing the work with my Dad and doing the wedding arrangements. I realized why getting a marriage done is considered as an arduous task!

In a blink of an eye, it was a new year again, this time with a bag full of resolutions and an intent to achieve all of them and to proudly write here the next year - "Year 2011. The mission accomplished!"