Whatever.

This is not really a post about nostalgia. This is a post about things I miss.

Things everyone misses, I suppose.

School days. Videogames. College days. Not having such a critical outlook about everything. Not being dissatisfied with just about everything. Movies I enjoyed in the past somehow seem not to be as good when I watch them now. Things fall flat. Everything is imperfect, and that’s beginning to bother me more and more.

And try as I might, I can’t seem to put my finger on what’s causing it.

RAMBLE ALERT! I want my car.

~fin

This post was originally published on my blog, Thought Overflow | For poetry and more of my writing, check out my website at Gurdit.com.

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Is it just me or does Media Player 12 (bundled with Windows 7) really not have equaliser or other sound enhancement options? What kind of self-respecting media player doesn’t allow the listener to improve the bass or treble, at the very least? Makes me miss Quintessential all the more.

That being said, I’m glad I’ve transferred my entire music library to my work laptop. It feels awesome to listen to songs I haven’t heard in ages, despite Media Player 12’s best efforts to detract from the experience.

Smile. Seriously.

Ok, this is going to be extremely cheesy and very cliché. But it’s seriously amazing how much different a smile can make. When I was walking into the aircraft, the air-hostess was a little busy attending to the captain. While I waited a couple of seconds for the line to move ahead, she suddenly turned around and flashed her brightest smile at me. The pleasantness of her greeting immediately put me in a good mood.

I’ve noticed over the last few days that I don’t really care too much about how pretty the air-hostesses are. What I would prefer more strongly is that they smile and look pleasant.

Airports

There’s a lot of hype about this airport – Indira Gandhi International Airport Terminal 3, New Delhi. It’s impressive. It’s huge. It’s also quite annoying. We spent at least 10 minutes walking from the gate to the baggage claim area. Apparently, all big international airports have such long walking areas. Meh. Don’t care. I’d much rather land at Hyderabad and get out faster. As for the Bangalore Airport, I reckon  that’s probably a misnomer. It should be called “The International Airport that’s closest to Bangalore, but nowhere near the actual city itself”. Another meh.

This post was originally published on my blog, Thought Overflow | For poetry and more of my writing, check out my website at Gurdit.com.

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Last year’s Bombay was convenient, a short and passionate love affair. It involved a quiet walk early morning from the Wilson College hostel to the near-by Charni Road station (or a minimum fare taxi ride…and taxis weren’t difficult to find at all). Then, there was a 40 minute train ride which flew by as I listened to music off my mp3. And finally, just outside the Bandra station, I’d be picked up by the company’s shuttle service. In the evening, the shuttle would drop me at Bandra Station, leaving me once again in the company of my favourite musicians (that’s when I discovered the irresistible charms of Wolfmother) on the train while it turned dark outside. Finally, the walk from the Charni Road station to Wilson college—that was the highlight of the day…walking along the Marine Drive road, the sea-wind blowing in my face.

A view of the Marine Drive after dark, Mumbai

In those 2 months, I was surrounded by friends, had very good food thrice a day, and even better food during the weekends. The auto-rickshaw drivers were not snobbish, the trains were empty (I always travelled against the flow of traffic) and most importantly, it hadn’t started raining yet!

This year, though, it’s all going wrong. I’ve finally found a house, and I really like it. But that’s pretty much where the good news ends. I’m beginning to find the people here coarse and hard (especially compared to the exalted status we shared as XLers in Jamshedpur). The rickshaws almost never want to go the same place you do. And to cap it off…it rains here like God’s moody and pissed off.

Yesterday, I caught a glimpse of both Bombays. The plan was to go to Phoenix Mills to watch a play called Vagina Monologues. As soon as I left from home and got into a rickshaw (thankfully, they agreed to take me to Andheri station), it started pouring like hell. No surprise. Unhurt and dry, I made it to the station and got into the train, worrying about traffic jams, rains and stolen umbrellas. I was worried about being late. Thankfully, I wasn’t. The play was good. We shopped a bit as well.

Then it was time to go back.

I had to walk a bit on the bridge that leads to the Elphinstone Road station. But by now, it was dark and I whipped out my mp3 player. Joy. Walking under the wet night sky and the twinkling stars, I got to the station, waited a bit for the right train and got one within a couple of minutes. It was a little more crowded than the trains used to be last year, when I was returning home from Citibank. Yet, I found myself nostalgic and reminiscing about the empty trains, the walk back from Charni Road to Wilson College. I’d pass by the overrated milkshake/ ice-cream stand, the 10-rupee sweet-paan wala, the multi-flavoured kulfi stand. And then I’d get home to a tiny room shared with a batchmate, to an old bathroom where I’d wash my face, and then to dinner with friends.

I want to go back to that Bombay.

This post was originally published on my blog, Thought Overflow | For poetry and more of my writing, check out my website at Gurdit.com.

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I wish.

This is life:

I step out of the cab, still groggy from the ride. I take the elevator up two floors, swipe a card and enter a lifeless room. I barely notice the wood paneling and walk straight to the bed. I toss the laptop on it, then I toss myself. I take off my shoes, drink some water, walk around and come back to sit on the bed. I miss my speakers, I miss my music. I turn on the TV. I turn on the laptop. Today moves slowly forward. I wait for tomorrow. I fall asleep.

This post was originally published on my blog, Thought Overflow | For poetry and more of my writing, check out my website at Gurdit.com.

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I have a bit of flair for the dramatic; bear with me.

In about twenty-four hours, the plane will take off from the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, Hyderabad, and land at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Airport in Bombay, where I’m going to start the first phase of my work life (not counting last year’s summer internship).

So far, it hasn’t sunk in. So far, professional life’s been a holiday, a romance called education. Go to school in the morning, come back in the afternoon. Go to college in the morning, come back in the evening. Go to post-grad college, come back home for the vacations. And now, finally…go to another city to work, and no idea when I’ll be back home again.

Not that it’s not been on my mind at all. It’s just mostly been about the trivial things. What kind of place will I find to live in? How much will I have to spend on furnishing the basics? HOLY COW! IS THE HOUSE RENT IN MUMBAI REALLY THAT HIGH?

But today, for the first time, my thoughts are more about “home” — the one I’m leaving behind and the one I’m going to make in the near future.

Home.

This post was originally published on my blog, Thought Overflow | For poetry and more of my writing, check out my website at Gurdit.com.

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• Day 1: Spent in Calcutta
• Days 2-5: Spent in Sikkim (Gangtok, Lachen and Lachung)
• Day 6: Back to XLRI

And now, the log:

Day 1:

Reached Calcutta without major incident. Took ferry across the river, saw the Howrah Bridge (beautiful). Went to Park Street, ate beef steak (really tasty) at shady place – “Olypub”. Walked around for a bit. Went to South City Mall. Watched a movie – Chronicles of Narnia in 3D (pretty good). Went for dinner to a Chinese place – “Kimli”. Got to station with plenty of time to spare. Slept.

Day 2:

Reached NJP (New Jalpaiguri). Started negotiating for cab and tour (to take us to Gangtok and beyond). After a lot of negotiating, talks break down. All travel agencies running a scam forcing tourists to take cab and packaged deal together. Finally found a cab driven by a total lunatic called “Anil Kapoor”. Drive to Gangtok mostly without incident. Ate raw Wai-Wai noodles on the way on Anupam’s recommendation. Reached Gangtok, checked into hotel – fairly comfortable. Shower and momos (veg and pork). Went to MG Marg – very pretty place. Bought gloves and a muffler (nice!). Dinner at Cafe Live & Loud – live band and free wifi! Bit of booze for everyone. Back to hotel. Sleep.

Day 3:

Woke up, showered, had breakfast, left for Lachen. Stopped at “Seven Sisters” Waterfalls. Gupta lost his shoe, almost. Met Mohsin, Rajiv and Sid (who was well-packed in warm clothes) (other XLers) at the falls. Stopped for lunch shortly after. Restarted journey and reached Lachen around 7 pm. Pretty cold. Had drinks to warm up. Ate dinner. Sleeping early to wake up early, have to leave at 3.30 am. Sleeping in MULTIPLE layers of clothing. Dinner and lunch were both sort of home-made-food-like. Good night.

Day 4:

Woke up hell early (3 am). Left for Gurudongmar Lake (Frozen Lake) at around 4. Pitch dark outside. Did not take Avomine. Spotted ice on the way on the side of the road. Got to a small village for breakfast. FREAKING COLD! Toes were between hellish pain and numbness. Breakfast was tea and soft, fresh bread. Bought second pair of gloves and thick socks. Restarted journey. Had a bit of an obstruction at slushy (icy) road. Gupta and Adwaith have a small military adventure. Finally reached lake. Height 17100 feet. Had gurudwara too. Thin air made breathing difficult. Felt sick and had headache all the way back. Got back to hotel, had a late lunch. Left for Lachung. Ride to Lachung mostly without incident. Reached hotel/guesthouse. Cute little rooms with wooden panelling. Scheduled to leave tomorrow again at 5.30 am. Today’s recurring theme: diesel exhaust fumes from vehicles all around us, all along the way.

Day 5:

Woke up early again to go to Yumthang Valley. Relatively short ride. Valley was beautiful. Area near the river VERY cold. Got sort of Adam-teased (:P). Had hot, soft bread with butter and marmalade (yum!) for breakfast. Plus Maggi. Started for Gangtok almost immediately after return from Yumthang. Ride to Gangtok rather uneventful. Back to same old hotel. Showered with very lukewarm water. Went out for shopping and had authentic Tibetan food for dinner. Was awesome (and heavy). Sleeping kinda early to wake early to go to Rumtek Monastery.

Day 6:

Woke early, got ready early. Went to Rumtek Monastery. Quite a pretty place, kinda peaceful. Lots of armed guards around. Others found it too commercialised. Had questionable breakfast – weird (but kinda tasty) cooked Wai-Wai and pretty horrible “chowmin”. Left for Gangtok immediately after. Faced couple of long traffic jams on the way. Reached NJP with couple of hours to spare. Had lunch at the station food court. “Teesta-Torsa Express” delayed by 45 mins already (NJP being second stop)! Finally, train arrived…got in, exchanged seats (all 7 of us in same coupe). Finally underway. Realised by nightfall that train is running about 2.5 hours late. Would miss Janshatabdi from Howrah to Jampot at this rate. Made a new plan. Get down at Bandel (2 stops before Sealdah, which was the actual destination). Take local to Howrah. Race against time to catch Janshatabdi from Howrah. Slept fitfully.

Day 6:

Woke up at 3.30 am to figure out train’s running pattern – approx 1.5 hours late. Decide to disembark at Bandel. Do so at around 4.50 am. Run to other platform to catch 5.09 am local to Howrah (scheduled to arrive at Howrah at 6.10 am). Our train (Janshatabdi) scheduled to depart from Howrah at 6.20 am. New plan: get off local at Howrah, run like madmen from the “old station” (for local trains, i.e. platforms 1-6) to “new station” (for out-of-city trains, i.e. platforms 16-22 or so), and somehow get into Janshatabdi before it leaves. Mentally prepared for the dash. Local train sort of running on schedule. Arrives outside Howrah station by 6.05 am. Everything going according to plan. Then…horror! Train gets red signal. Stands outside Howrah station for next 10 minutes. Finally pulls in to Howrah at 6.20 am on Platform 1. We realise Janshatabdi’s on Platform 21. Get off the train while impatient idiots are trying to get INTO the train. Run. Run. Run like madmen. Run like life depends on it. Run from platform 1 to platform 21 with luggage in hands. Run through crowded platforms. Run over narrow overbridges. Run into people, ram into luggage boxes, apologise, keep running, panting. Finally, out of breath, sweat-covered, reach platform 21 at 6.26 am. Heartbreak: no train on platform. Missed by 5 minutes. Recover. Get tickets and get into general compartment of Ispat Express. Leave Howrah at 7 am (scheduled departure: 6.55 am…just our luck: wrong train left 5 minutes late). Pile luggage against one of the doors. Sit on the floor, buy a book, have breakfast, pass time somehow. Finally reach Tatanagar (Jampot) at 10.40 am. Traffic jam outside station (some drivers = pure idiots). Reach XLRI (hallowed portals). Get out of auto, get into elevator. See sticker “137″ on the door. Home, sweet home.

* * *

Awesome trip. Thank you to Anupam Agarwal, Aditya Gadre, Aditya Gupta, Abhishek Joshi, Adwaith Naimpally and Soumya De for making this an awesome experience. Let’s do it again!

And to end the post, I’d just like to mention (like I have many, many times before) that I love my speakers.

This post was originally published on my blog, Thought Overflow | For poetry and more of my writing, check out my website at Gurdit.com.

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Gangtok, Sikkim.

According to schedule, we’ll be there on 6 December, in time for lunch. Sounds like fun, a hell of a lot of fun!

Also sounds intimidating, particularly when you see the following screenshot:

This may not look particularly scary, but in the morning when I checked, it was -7°C. And if that’s not intimidating enough, then have a look at the last few days’ observed Maximum and Minimum temperatures:

That’s -12°C (lowest temperature) for the last 3 days straight!

Sounds like it’s going to be one heck of a trip!

@Gadre, Gupta, Joshi, Anupam, Adwaith and Soumya: bring it on, yeah!

PS: Posted with permission from Ms G.

This post was originally published on my blog, Thought Overflow | For poetry and more of my writing, check out my website at Gurdit.com.

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Too many B-schools advocate “academic rigour”. A 30-hour contact course in XLRI supposedly requires 70 hours of work outside the classroom. We have 7.5 courses this term (one of them is a 4.5-credit course as opposed to an ordinary 3-credit course).

Contact hours = 225 (7.5 x 30)
Outside classroom work expected = 525 (7.5 x 70)

Total hours to be dedicated to coursework = 750 hours

750 hours = 31.25 days, if we work continuously without taking breaks for food, water or anything else.

The fourth term here is approximately 70 days in duration. Also, don’t forget all the extra-curricular work that is expected of us.

Thanks to your rigour, what suffers is quality. If we have to do a project that I would ideally have liked to dedicate a week to, but have to finish in one night, you know that there’s not going to be enough research, and it’s all just going to be information that’s available on the surface. Is this what we’re supposed to learn in MBA? The art of fluffing, of using jargon and stellar presentations to impress your audience and hope that no probing questions are asked?

This post was originally published on my blog, Thought Overflow | For poetry and more of my writing, check out my website at Gurdit.com.

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I’m sitting in a straight-back, albeit moderately comfortable chair, listening to music pour out of the speakers, while the sub-woofer on the floor gently makes my wooden work-area vibrate gently with the rising bass. The fan is running at optimum speed, blowing a gentle wind on my neck and shoulders.

It’s as close to bliss as you can get in summer in XLRI (unless you find bliss in the air-conditioned classrooms, with the lecture going on).

What strikes me is how comfortable I am, alone in my room. How nice this all is, no rules or restrictions. This is my space, my home. Yes, it’s small (it’s only one room, after all), but it’s still all mine.

And maybe that has a deeper meaning. The loneliness of my room is all pervasive. It’s as much a part of our lives as our own skin is. We were alone in birth (not counting twins, I suppose) and will be alone in death and whatever lies beyond as well, probably. The only thing debatable is the in-between.

Here’s my opinion. No matter what you think, no matter what you say, you are and will always be, to a certain extent, alone. No one can read your mind, think like you do or form your opinions for you. No one can help you if you don’t want to be helped, or depress you if you don’t want to be saddened. I understand that it’s much easier to simplistically and generally make a global statement like I just did, but like I said, it’s merely an opinion. Maybe it’s something to ponder over, a fountainhead to set your own thoughts in motion.

This post was originally published on my blog, Thought Overflow | For poetry and more of my writing, check out my website at Gurdit.com.

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Today, we attended a play called “Me Kash and Cruise”, a play that panned various genres including drama and comedy. Directed by Rahul da Cunha, it featured the extremely versatile Rajit Kapoor in a bunch of cameo roles. The play is narrated by one of the characters, a female of bubbly demeanour and a voice full of inflection and emotion, which somehow I felt doesn’t lend itself well  to narration, particularly when the narration involves a dark undertone which should have resonated with the audience by virtue of the voice rather than melodramatic emotional appeal. The first half of the play was mediocre, but the second half was simply brilliant. Rajit Kapoor, underutilised in the first half, took the play to a completely different level in the second half, playing all his various sub-roles to perfection and beyond. The best parts of the play were the lighter moments, the jokes that evoked much laughter and tongue-in-cheek remarks that regularly brought forth applause from the audience. Where it seemed to fall flat, I felt, was when they tried to become dramatic, serious, raise issues. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against using theatre to promote issues that plague our society, but I think it has to be done just right. The right atmosphere has to be created and the actors have to get it spot on. The end of the play, however, did manage to raise the audience to its feet for a standing ovation. For portions of the play, it was fully deserved.

At this point, if I had to compare the two plays, I’d say that Love on the Brink featured fantastic actors who played their roles to perfection. What let the play down, in my opinion, was the play itself. On the other hand, here in Me Kash and Cruise, we had a good enough story and a good enough play, but the actors (apart from Rajit Kapoor, who was simply brilliant, and Amit Mistry, who played the affable character of Cruise) were not the kind that you could praise for carrying the play on their shoulders alone. Maybe the characterisation was a little flawed and one-dimensional, though. I’m only a 2-play old theatre critic, so I should be cut some slack while writing these reviews, methinks.  Also, Love on the Brink gave us the programme beforehand, which introduced us to the cast and storyline and duration of the play, so that we were at least somewhat prepared what to expect. Today, the programme was missing, and there was no way of knowing that the play would feature strong language, such that a family or two was forced to walk out in the middle of the play. As one of my friends later remarked, there was no rating on the play posters either. Something that future theatre producers should bear in mind, I think.

After the play, we went and had dinner in this overpriced restaurant called Ruby Tuesdays. I ordered a Caesar Salad with chicken, which turned out to be much heavier than I wanted it to be, and it didn’t really go along too well with my Foster’s, but it was ok nonetheless. No review on the restaurant, though, sorry.

After dinner, we spent a few minutes on Marine Drive, discussing plays and other things, before heading home.

And now, bed-time.

This post was originally published on my blog, Thought Overflow | For poetry and more of my writing, check out my website at Gurdit.com.

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