'Extra' Innings...

Date : 13th May 09
Place:Durban,South Africa
Occasion : On field interview after an IPL match between Delhi Daredevils and Deccan Chargers
Stars: Mandira Bedi & Pradip Sangwan

DD have just beaten DC in a thrilling match. Pradeep Sangwan turned the match around with three wickets.

Now,the match is over and so is the presentation. A SET MAX guy,sitting in the studio in India suddenly jumps in his chair and shouts,"Mandira,let us have something exciting!!!!". And a couple of more jumps.

Now,I was a bit startled by his jumps and also was a bit curious about the 'exciting' stuff which madame Mandira would present...What followed was an interview with Pradeep Sangwan of DD..A few sample questions:

MB:Pradap,sorry,Pradeep Sangwan!!!!! 3 wickets!! wo bhi top order ke!! How do you feel???
PS:(doesnt know where to look...) It feels good!! And we won the match also. So its simply great..

A couple of more questions in English follow and then MB suddenly switches to Hindi!!

MB:Ab Veeru bhi vapas a gaye hai team me. Aapko kaise lag raha hai??

Now,i could digest the first question,but this question caught me completely offguard. I mean,the poor guy is being asked about his feelings about his captain's return on international television. I doubt whther even Ricky Ponting,with all his Aussie arrogance would have answered such a question in the negative..

PS:Bahut accha lag raha. Hum sab bahut khush hai. Aur hum match bhi jeet gaye. To aur bhi khushi hai.

MB:Sangwan!!! Aapki age kya hai?
(Me:?????)
PS:(?????) 18 saal
(Me:Wondering what next)
MB:Sirf 18 saal!!!! Aur aap international level pe khel rahe hai!!!! Aapko kaisa lag raha hai???
(Me:Stopped listening)

So,I don't know what poor PS said..

I still dared to watch the show. But I really could not take it when the expert panelists-Mr.L.Sivaramakrishnan and Mr.Arun Lal-started their not-so-expert comments on the game...

Mr.Sunil Gavaskar,Mr.Tony Greig (with all his hyperboles),Mr.Geoffrey Boycott (with his mother),MR.Michael Holding (with his West Indian 't's) where art thou???? I pine to hear your dulcet tones... Pls come back!!!

Purpose????

Sometimes,you start wondering what is it that you are born to do. There are occasions when you just don't know why are there on planet earth. You just drag through the day. Dont feel like doing anything.

I look around at the people and wonder what are they all doing. Everyone going through their paces. Wake up,brush,bathe,climb into the bus/local/auto,reach office,do the same work,have packed,cold lunch,finish the day,take the same mode of transport back,reach home,have tea,spend some time with 'family',have dinner and go off to sleep,only to restart the same cycle next day. Same routine day after day. I mean,why do we do all this? Just like a machine. Is it money,is it fame,is it peace of mind?? What??

They say that one has to take 7 births before being born in the human race. Why does one take so many efforts and pains? To do all this mentioned above? What is the purpose of our existence??? Pray tell me...

Would like to Quote Agent Smith and his clones from Matrix:Revolutions over here..

'But, as you well know, appearances can be deceiving, which brings me back to the reason why we're here. We're not here because we're free. We're here because we're not free. There is no escaping reason; no denying purpose. Because as we both know, without purpose, we would not exist.'

I just wanna know the purpose.. Thats all...

Much ado about nothin

I am sick of Slumdog Millionaire,Freida Pinto and Dev Patel. Actually,the last person is dragged into this only because of one of the world's most beautiful women and i feel sorry for him.

i have seen Slumdog Millionaire(pirated copy) and have liked the movie. But honestly speaking an Oscar is a bit too much. Add to it A.R.Rehman getting an Oscar for a track which is a mediocre one as compared to many of his hits. i don't want to go into detailed analysis about why this happened and how this happened and is anything wrong. I am happy for India and Indian music and cinema(though SM is 'not' an Indian film)

i was tolerating all this hype and hoopla abt the movie and its cast till now. But now it has become simply unbearable. The way the media is going ga-ga over an average actress who has a total screen time of less than 20 odd minutes and less dialogues than the protagonist's brother is too much. The most beautiful woman??? Puh-lease.. there are many women roaming the streets of Gurgaon who are much more beautiful,smart and charming than her and that too sans makeup!! ( i mentioned Gurgaon,'cos that's where i am currently located and the only source of humanity. No offence meant at all!!!)

AS if the media speculation over Freida's love life was not enough,we have her mom commenting on her daughter's status. Freida should be proud of her.

Honestly,i think we have all had enough of this crap. We are not interested in the love life and travails of life of a so called superstar.And we are tired of reading the same old stories again and again every alternate day in the newspapers.


No doubt Freida appears to be talented but she still has a long way to go. Let us give her some time to prove her mettle and then we can really call her a superstar and read about her personal life with gusto. Lets not have another Kumar Gaurav or Sania Mirza created by us...

Hardwar-Hrishikesh:Day 1

With the long weekend at our disposal and the fact that the next weekend, most of us would be busy or out of town, with our project work, we decided to go to Hardwar and Hrishikesh. The planning started with all of us planning to go and ended with 9 of us finally agreeing to go.

The day started on a not-so-auspicious note with Veena conveying her inability to come. I was apprehensive about Anuja too, but she confirmed that she would come.

We started from the Guest house at 7 am one hour behind schedule. Then followed the arduous and tortuous journey of abt 8 hours to reach Hardwar. A small debate whether to stay back or come back in the evening followed and we decided to stay back and finish it off.


Vikram and Karthik decided to have a swim and came attired with all the necessary stuff. They even got down into the water, but, seeing the flow of the water, very wisely decided against it and just took a few dips in the water. The rest of us were content with washing our feet in the water.

We had lunch in a hotel called “Asli Pracheen Chotiwala-Since 51 years”. An explanation is due I guess. Over there, most of the restaurants are named Chotiwala. We started wondering whether the choti means ‘mountain top’ or ‘pigtail’. Don’t know abt the others, but our hotel meant the latter.

We then went for the darshan of Mansa Devi and Chandi Devi. We had to take the respective ropeways to reach the temples. The view from the top was amazing. We had a panoramic view of the small town. We also had a little thrill when the power supply failed and we were hanging in the middle of the valley!!! However, the backup kicked in pretty soon and we were on our way.

At abt 7 o clock, we left the town and started towards Hrishikesh where we were supposed to put up for the night and go white water rafting the next morning. We reached the hotel in abt 1.5 hours. The rooms were not that great but were okiesh. We freshened up and went for dinner.

What followed was a disaster. We went to a place called Rajasthani Hotel which had a tagline of Ghar jaisa khana. It looked decent. However, what was served was something totally out of this world. We had a chocolate milkshake which was white in colour…The veg handi was full of cabbage, the chole were tasting like no other thing on planet earth. Even the cold drinks served were past their expiry date…

The icing on the cake came when we were given a bill of Rs.1200!! With this amount, we could have had decent food in one of the best hotels in any city. I was so frustrated and hungry that I went to a bakery and got some biscuits for us.

We came back to our hotel. Vikram and Karthik slept off immedieatley while the rest of us started a game of cards. We played till about 1 o clock and then I decided to call it a day as we had to wake up early the next day for the rafting.

Summers 09-Week 1

It has been an awesome 10 days since I landed in Gurgaon. Busy with office, market visits, truck rides, amusement parks, white water rafting... Done all that!!!!

My summers formally started last Monday i.e.6th April. The CEO of the company addressed us. More details abt this might follow later. The next couple of days were spent by us in the markets of Delhi. One day I went in Motibagh area along with the market developer. The next day we were inside a truck delivering the products!!! It was awesome fun and learning at the same time. We also visited the factory at Dasna on Thursday.

Then came our long weekend. The company had arranged a visit to an amusement park called 'Adventure Island' for us interns. We had a nice time with all the rides and had great fun.

We planned a trip to Hardwar-Hrishikesh over the weekend. And we actually executed the plan too!!! It was the best weekend of my life!! More on that later!! In fact more on all these later!!

Great Expectations(?)..

We had Personality Development sessions in our first sem. During the introduction, the faculty, being spiritual, was trying to give us some fundas. Though I was genuinely uninterested, he said something which made me sit up and take notice. He said, “The mantra for happiness is a single word-ACCEPT. The root cause of all our unhappiness is that we don't accept people the way they are but want them to be as per our specifications."

I gave it a lot of thought and came to the conclusion that he was wrong. The mantra,as per me would be "ACCEPT & DON'T EXPECT". We have so many expectations from all the people around us. We expect our parents to give us money whenever we want, we expect our friends to be around always for us & tolerate us, we expect our better halves to be always with us, and so on...

All these expectations are from our perspective without thinking about others. This leads us to disappointments when these expectations are not met,making us unhappy. We blame them for not matching up to our 'expectations’, for no fault of theirs.

If we try and reduce our expectations and accept our loved ones- in fact-all the people around us as they are, life would be much simpler. No expectations, no heartburns. Acceptance will make us forgive them even if they are wrong.

Now, though I am preaching this, I will be honest enough to admit that I am finding it difficult to practise. I have been trying it, but have been largely unsuccessful and, in some cases-quite spectacularly so.

In whatever few cases I have succeeded, it has given me peace of mind. So, I am trying hard to work on this. Only when I achieve 100% success will I be able to walk up to my Prof and tell him to modify his mantra.

Summers 09-Prologue

Landed in Delhi/Gurgaon today for my summers with HCCB. They have put us in a nice cosy guest house that reminds me of my TML guest house in Cannaught Place! Similar in all respects except they don't serve sweet dish for dinner but i dont mind. What matters is we have got a nice place to rest ourselves and food too,unlike many of my batchmates.

We have to report at 07 30 am sharp at the corporate office. Now,thats a bit too early by all standards,but have to. Again reminds me of TML when i had to catch the company bus @ 07 25.

Met a few other guys over dinner and after. Had general chat.

Looking forward to reenter the corporate life tomorrow,this time as a trainee...