Diwali DHAMAKA!!!

Diwali...the festival of lights and for people like us....time to celebrate with lots of crackers....no work only party....This festival has lot of significance in India especially among the Hindu families.
I and some of my cousins went to the market to buy crackers on 8th morning....i cant resist anaars and chakrees....even in the baraats i stay for a minute or two to see the anars....it may sound kiddish but...these are the small moments of life i cherish...
The very same day...we celebrated diwali with "noiseless crackers" at office.so other than some rockets and anars there wasnt much for us to light.But the rangoli at the main gate was simply fantastic and the food included gupchup,chaat,jalebi,malpua and lots more....in one word YUMMY.

Diwali morning...had to wake up at 7 :( coz of a friend's call...get ready for the first day first show of Saawariya.On the go i denied...its too early and i cant wake up on a chutti so early...but finally i had to wake up and cant say no to friends so easily naa...

Anyways we three reached the movie hall at 8:45.I was so sleepy(Slept at 5 the previous night :) ) Unknowingly i forgot to change my slippers and reached the theatre in a pair of jeans and tshirts and chappal :) and there were ladies out there who had dressed up as if they hav come for some shaadi...dazzling dresses,matching sandals,choodi,earrings....uffff!!!!

And after lotsa introspection,the movie finally started.The only attraction of the film were the two new comers.But the director has taken all the credit of making one of the most horrible movies of the century.Mr. Bhansali fails to put emotions to his characters.They look like lifeless dolls in the movie.And in this small town,it rains one day and snows another.This movie fails to touch the heart of the audience.I am not a film critic but this is something i am writing from my own experience.I have heard people telling....Jhhom Baraabar Jhoom was better...Bhansali has gone mad etc etc

This movie is seriously one of the most horrifying movies i have ever seen.And as said by someone,"Morning shows the day"...after this morning movie,one can well imagine my diwali.I couldnt sleep the whole night,i got nightmares.

Anyways the diwali celebrations were great....the movie didnt had much of an effect on the masti.We bursted lots of crackers...with friends and cousins...
Dunno where i'll be during next diwali...

Christmas coming....

Six more days for Christmas!!!
Cakes,chocolates,gifts,Santa-Claus etc etc.
This pic of mine always reminds me of last year's christmas....cakes at office...party at mayfair.
I dont remember since when,jesus's b'day reminds me of one of my fav poems in school...

Jingle bell,jingle bell,
Jingle all teh way,
Santa Claus is coming around
Sliding on the sledge...

And the movies Home Alone1&2 also celebrate Christmas with lot of fun but in a different way :)

Anyways a MERRY CHRISTMAS to all my dear friends...

Cheers,
Munmun

Random Thoughts

Its been such a long time....i havent scribbled anything here....felt like writing down my random thoughts which come up very frequently now a days....
Since last few months....life has become so hectic....i dnt get time to meet people...friends come and go....but i dnt get time to meet anyone....coz of this hectic office schedule...come in the morning and go back in the night.....one can find my scooty in the office basement most of the time.....coz i go back late night in the cab and dats y have to come with someone or by the auto to office the next day....no time for anything.....not even for myself.....weekends are meant for sleeping only it seems....

Got this piece of nice writing from one of my friends....and i felt as if this was meant for me only...so apt to my situation...and the moment i read this....i thought of posting it here...and prior to this thanked my friend many a times....and would like to thank him again here in this post :-)

THANKS A TON!!!

And here it goes...



Celebration means......

A winter evening.
Four friends.
One barsaat.
Four glasses of chai.

(OR)

Hundred bucks of gas.
A rusty old bike.
And an open road.

(OR)

Maggie noodles.
A hostel room.
4.25 a.m.

(OR)

3 old friends.
3 separate cities.
3 coffee mugs.
1 internet messenger.

(OR)

Rain on a hot tin roof.
Pakoras deep-frying.
Neighbours dropping in.
A party.

You can spend
Hundreds on birthdays,
Thousands on festivals,
Lakhs on weddings,

But to celebrate
All you have to do is spend your Time...

Keep in touch with your loved ones........


Cheers....

Cricket Temple

A temple with Lord Ganesh idol having eleven heads (symbolizing the cricket team), another idol in batting posture and yet another in bowling posture. People of Chennai have named this temple the ‘Cricket Pillayar temple’ and is located at Annanagar in the heart of the city. Pillayar in Tamil means ‘Ganesh.’

The temple was set up six years ago by Ramakrishnan, a Ganesha devotee and cricket lover.

Don’t dismiss this as yet another display of a cricket crazy public. The temple demonstrates the freedom and flexibility that Hindu religion provides.

People often talk about 330 million Hindu deities. These people often forget the freedom that Hinduism provides to a person to create Gods or Goddesses or to modify the existing Gods or Goddesses. So there exist many more million Gods and Goddesses and even more in the minds of the devotees.

Marketing skills of a gupchup waala...

The other day I came face to face with this reality while moving (in fact walking) along the streets of Bhubaneswar during weekend for shopping… So as I was seeing a sea of human population ambling away aimlessly in a desperate effort to make their weekend a bit more interesting my eyes set sight on a gupchupwala alias golgappewaala or puchkewaala.


Normally you wouldnt have given a second glance to any gupchupwala standing on a street corner with a bulging plastic bag filled with golguppa, but this person was different. He seemed to be in the spotlight. So Mr. Gupchupwala was spotted attracting a huge crowd right in front of a newly opened Gym (coincidentally it was just in front of one of my friend’s house,so while I was at her place…I could study this person’s strategy quite well) centre that had used a lot of halogen lights to make weight concious people aware of its existence.

The sight also made me fall prey to try out his gupchups. After all the Oriyas have a strong attachment towards roadside unhygienic delicacies…without any complaints towards his exhorbitant price,I asked him to serve me. His apt hands started working on mashing the potatoes and mixing it with all the varities of masala stored infront of him making a thick mass. While his hands worked on the same his mouth did not close for even a split second. He revealed that he was from UP and that he could make 5 varities of things with his stuffs and that he was selling gupchups for the last 10 years and he went blah blah all the while finally revealing his marketing alliance.

So Mr. Phuchkawala apparently had a reason behind standing in the spotlight of this GYM!

He described that he had stuck up a marketing alliance with the owner of the gym. . He said that initially he used to stand infront of a park a few blocks away from the place where he was right now selling his stuffs when one fine day he was approaced by the owner of the gym who wanted him to sell his stuffs standing infront of the newly opened centre.The marketing alliance had paid off well for both of them as he explained. These days he was following a premium pricing model charging more for the gupchups because of the location factor.Moreover he was drawing a crowd infront of the GYM thus making it more prominent. He also told about how the entire alliance was a success and told us instances of how bulky men and women who had come to his gupchup centre had felt self concious and had landed up in the gym for a weight reduction programme.

I was spellbound by his knowledge of marketing. A query about his educational qualifications revealed that he hadnt even passed the 10th standard and incidentally in a matter of few minutes he had taught me so much of marketing…

So Mr. Smart Gupchupwaala can anyday take a class of marketing alliance the way the dabbawalas took a class on 6 sigma concepts at IIM. So next time when in doubt do not look into any book or site for examples....look around you, you would get a lot of live examples in ur own ecosystem.

Indian…tera kya hoga…

Thursday, 16th Nov 2006

Mom and Dad went to Bangalore to visit my bro.The very moment I started missing mom,dad and bhai so badly that the very same day I must have called bhai 10-12 times…and I literally started crying. So he asked me to catch the next flight and come down to Bangalore.I booked the tickets on Thursday afternoon for Friday’s 1pm’s flight.

Friday,17th Nov 2006

Next day I reached the airport before time,as usual…had ample time in my hand so I took out a magazine from my handbag and started reading that.Suddenly my eyes fell on a young girl,around 23-24,spreading a newspaper on the floor.I stopped reading the magazine and started doing something that I love to,when I’m alone….OBSERVE.

She and a couple, I thought her parents(was confirmed later),kept their bags on the chairs and sat down on the floor…read this carefully…bags on the chairs and the owners of the bags under the chair…dat too in Airport…lol!!!

Suddenly the security guard came running and after some talks with the family he was finally successful in making them understand that the chairs were meant to be seated by them.

The whole family didn’t look very sophisticated from their attires.All that they were wearing didn’t look that clean and nice…may be coz of financial constraints…

An old lady,who was sitting next to me, said”They must have won the tickets in lottery”…..i didn’t comment anything…

I met one of my friends there,so left my bag with the old aunty and was talking to her.While coming back a girl called me from my back…it was the same girl from that family.She asked me quite arrogantly that why I m loitering here n there…I asked wats the prob ma’am…

Hold ur breath to hear her reply…..

She said,”My dad said dat there are terrorists all around here…even the policemen may be involved with them…so better not to go anywhere and sit at one place and sing Hanuman Chalisa…so dat our flight doesn’t crash”

I couldn’t say anything as saying anything to her would be simply a complete waste of time…I was just praying that she doesn’t sit besides me in the flight…

The flight had arrived…I helped the old aunty with her bag and we boarded the flight and coincidentally our seats were next to each other…I got the window seat and aunty was in the side one.And the unexpected or I sud say something there in my destiny…that family was there across the aisle…

And from then onwards started the series of unfortunate events…

• The moment they boarded the flight they didn’t keep any of their baggages in the luggage cabin…but all three held them tightly…So the poor airhostess had to convince them that nobody will take their bags from the luggage cabin J…finally they agreed.
• After sometime the flight staffs asked us to fasten our seat belts…the very moment all three started saying hanuman chalisa,maha mrityunjay mantra and some more mantras.And cheese on the cake was the way they were seated…cross legs...(like doing yoga…J).The old aunty didn’t like all this so she asked the air hostess for some cotton and slept before even the take off.
• After the take off…the air hostess came to them for their specification on lunch(veg/nonveg)…all of them were amazed…nobody replied.The lady asked them thrice…then a guy came and told them “Khana..kaisa khaenge…shakahari/mansahari?” The girl was really happy with the options,as was visible from her face and was about to give her option that the father said “We don’t want anything…we’ve had our lunch”(I’m translating wat they said in oriya…it was I who translated oriya to English for the air hostess).And I could hear the father saying this to his daughter that they’ll charge us extra money for this…Somehow the airhostess understood their concern and told them that the food is complimentary.Again another person had to come to make them understand what complimentary food means … J
• Finally all of them took veg packets…mother and daughter started opening the packets but the father was dead against this,but they didn’t care and started opening the food packets.The man didn’t open his packets and continuously said this to the ladies that “U’ll realize that they’ve given you bad food to eat when u’ll die coz of the poison….everybody in the flight will die except me”.Suddenly I heard the mom saying her daughter to keep the fork,spoon and knife in the purse…disgusting….isn’t it.
• And now came the most pathetic part of this incident…the girl and her mom thought dat noone’s watching them…so lets wash our hand there only…I mean in the passage only.It was I who saw all this but cudn’t say a word…

The father tore the magazine(news papers were also there) and wrapped his food packet in that.Finally when the flight landed,without any hesitation,the guy stood up on his seat(with his footwear) and very proudly pulled out his bags.As our(and their) seats were near the doors…so the whole lot of passengers were literally enjoying this scene…but it was poor me…who was the worst sufferer L

After reaching Bro’s place,I described this to mom,dad, and bhai…and all of them started rolling with laughter…

Well lemme clarify this that I’m not poking fun on people who are poor,but I’m just trying to put my view on this that what all happened was really awkward…

But this’s life…we learn so much everyday,from everyone and literally every possible thing J

Cheers,

Munmun

The deep cut…

I still remember one of my childhood incident actually accident which left a deep cut on my face and heart as well...

When i was a kid,a storm had hit our place and lots of trees had fallen down.So my granny had called the woodcutter to cut the trees.During afternoon,when the woodcutter wasn’t there and everybody from my family was fast asleep,i and my bro(elder) went to the backyard to see the axes.He showed me how they cut the trees and while showing this somehow a piece of wood flew towards me and……i had a deep cut…between my nose and lips….Seeing the severe bleeding my bro asked me not to panic…but i was’nt worried bout myself…i was thinking that now mom will definitely punish him…so he took me to the bathroom and locked the door from outside…and he ran to dad’s clinic to get some cotton and ointment.I was sitting on top of an inverted bucket and didn’t know wat to do next…so I wiped the blood with my frock. Suddenly this idea came to my brilliant mind that how about practicing ‘sa re ga ma’ as my music teacher was supposed to cum dat day and I hadn’t practiced anything.So I started singing in a high pitch…and mom woke up.After some time,bhai opened the bathroom door,and I ran out…he shouted that dnt run….if mom sees us…then we are gone!!!i was sweating profusely…so I literally begged him dat I wnt go into the bathroom…in the meanwhile,to our utter surprise,we saw someone standing near us, and listening to our conversation… as usual mom caught hold of us…scolded both of us and when she asked me who did the mischief i took the blame on myself and bhai on himself…at that moment mom kissed us and hugged both of us…

No doubt this wound left a scar on my face but this made the bonding between the two of us quite strong…..

But from the very next day,till date we two fight…and believe it or not it still goes on till date…at times it comes to pause but hasn’t ever stopped and I can’t foresee the possibility of our fights going to a stop in the recent future.

My bro…truly speaking is a gem of a person…one of the most precious gifts of God that I’ll cherish for my whole life.I truly admire him,love him so unconditionally,can simply do anything for his happiness(few months back…..i missed him so much dat I took the next flight from bbsr and after landing in bang…directly ranged his doorbell…my bro standing amazed!!!)

He is a mentor,a great friend, a supporter of all my mischiefs, a cutie pie( he still looks like a kid)….the list goes on …No doubt time has parted the two of us in terms of distance…but still we are always there for each other...