Play even in pain

play even i pain
ride even in rain
be in India or in Spain
efforts wont be in vain 
dreams need not go in the drain
know that the dream is main
even if it is plain 
failures are always a gain
dont you get drained


dream is like a grain
which gets sowed in your brain
dream all you want, dont ever refrain
coz remember the dream is main 
success comes after failures, coz they are in a chain
genius is hard to contain
one day you will be acclaimed 
act as if you have been ordained
for your life, you are the chieftain


i know it is a difficult terrain
at time you might be uncertain
there will be a lot of strain
your muscles might get a sprain
you may even have a chilblain
but always remember, ingorance/laziness is your biggest villain 


You will find many who have birdbrain
to pull people down is their domain
they might think you are a crackbrain
they might even look at you in disdain
you dont have to explain
you dont have to restrain
the throne is your's to reattain


when you first try you may not obtain
on your face, let there be no tearstain
dont you complain
you may have to retrain
but you go back and try again


in order to attain
in order to sustain
you'll have to play even in pain!!!!

Bipin(Past and present)

Every depiction of the subject is totally intentional and is not just a mere coincidence. 

Bipin. Our ever so friendly friend. Never knew of anyone who had any problem with him as such. Unarguably one of the most talented muggers of our batch. But mugging is not the only quality one would attribute to him. He managed to score a 92% or something in one of the sems of the first year and due to which he could maintain 80 above aggregate till the end of engineering, the aggregate which lesser mortals like us can only dream of. All in all a good friend. Working and hating his work and NetApp now.

But the intention of this blog is to bring out the ability for a amazing makeover over a period of time. Scroll down and see the metamorphosis.

Bipin(yeLsu) then,

                            

                                            Bipin trying to threaten Manju, the maikan.

Bipin shown his place

Bipin: "Manja sorry le, kshmisbiDo"

Manja, The maikan: "Irli biDo"

Sorry, i lost track. I was talking about the metamorphosis!!!

Bipin

Two years in Bangalore

 biTTi(free) chicken and beer everyday friday

Wait for it 

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Bipin(the hunk)

Bangalorized!!!!

10 reasons* why you should blog.

Are you the kind of person who expects every social interaction to do a value add to your personality and your life? If your answer is "YES" go ahead and read the blog :-) . If the answer is a no, then we both are wasting each other's time, i would urge you to move on. 



10 reasons* why you should blog.

(*you wont find the usual sequenced bullet points but the arguements are in the form of paragraphs. I would not have made justice to the topic if i had put down 10 headings and explained one by one. The reasons that iam giving are interdependent)


Blogging requires burning some brain calories. When you sit in front of the computer to churn out a post you will think,"What shall i write about today?". The choice is endless. You can write about all the topics you like. It can be the latest you saw, the song you heard, an awesome thing that you have done/seen/heard/read and your views about it. You can work your way into into more serious issues like politics, religion, environmental, spritual and metaphysical subjects. This is the very reason why i think blogs came into picture. It is like having your own print media in your backyard which is completely owned by you and free, just that it is online. This is the biggest advantage of it, you dont really have to worry about some investment on buying printers or hiring men to do the job. You are the journalist, you are the editor, you are the proof reader and you are that person who stands next you the printing machine overseeing the printing of the papers. You can serve this copy of your editorial to all the people who can be online. You can make your views count and for that you dont have to be Rupert Murdoch(as i write this, he is busy with the burial ceremony of The News of The World).

When you sit down to write one article you are very unsure if you have enough informantion to write a paricular post. That time you need to discipline your brain. You go ahead with it and click the 'new post' button. At this point in time your brain knows that you are serious. Brain/mind is like the best slave and the worst master you can get. If you dont train it and know how to control it, you life goes for a toss and you will constantly keep finding your self blaming the situation/world/god instead that is the time when you give reprimind your mind and say, "enough is enough, it is time for me to take control now". So when you have made up your mind, your brain automatically and dutifully starts presenting with you the required/useful data. You will be surprised with the alacrity(for the people who are low on vocab, alacrity = cheerful readiness!!!) with which your mind works. You will be amazed by the way the words keep flowing out of your fingertips onto the keyboard and appearing on the monitor(iam able to see the magic as i write this aritcle). What i am trying to tell you here is that blogging is your cup of tea/coffee/cake or what every you call it. You can do it. It involves investment in time. I agree that it is a busy world and most of you may not have enough time to even sleep, but in the hearts, yours and mine, we know that where all do we unnecessarily waste our time. We can always make time if we really want to.

Blogging can be an amazing dumpster/heat sink. There are days when you feel so many emotions/feelings/thoughts, have so many experience about which you want to talk/discuss/debate at length. Blog can be that tool to do it. The two line facebook updates are never enough. Blog paves you a way for dumpig all those thoughts in one place, all of it. This very act can clear a lot of clutter in your mind and help you focus on what is ahead. From the observation that i have done over the past three years i can say that the way we interact with our friends have changed to a very large extent thanks to orkut, facebook, linkedln and what not. We are able to be in touch with many people at the same time. It surely is a great advantage but somewhere in the middle we are losing our personality which should be gaurded with all the might one has. This personality is what makes you unique, it is what makes your life unique ergo an unique experience.

These days, there is a facebook engine that runs parallelly or even above ones mind. You constanly find yourself looking for smart sounding, kick ass status for you to update. This facebook engine i am talking about takes the entire situation you are in as an input and gives out status for updates as output. You want to boast about every small thing that you did like 1st std kids. Everywhere you go you worry about the photolayak pics you can upload for other to see and admire. All said and done, we have to realize that we are unknowingly sending a wrong message-"the i have it and you dont have it". I am saying that these online socail communities are wrong, but there is a limit to use it and it serves us best when we use it limits. It can turn dangerous too.

Bloggin can be serious business, if the style of writing is good it can attract continuous traffic which can turn into a source of income too. Many sensible people out there would definitely subscribe to your style of social interaction. When is say social interaction it is not the shallow hi/bi types. I mean, when you meet that person online/offline he should be fully aware of what you are capable of, the focus you give to one subject. your critical acumen towards one topic. The good depth in your thought process is what makes people admire you or dismiss you. This can be done only by having done something. That something in this context of blogging is, blogging ofcourse. Coming up with regular posts with serious hair raising content. This is the best place to show off that 'depth of thought process' if you really think is deep enough. This wont happen all of a sudden as your mind needs sometime to accustomed to your new way of social networking. But being pursuant will definitely help you. Blog away and find yourself. If not anything, you will end up with good online diary(which most of us promise ourselves of maintaining and never get around to do it)

10 Reasons* to own a Bullet**.

10 Reasons* to own a Bullet**.
(* these are totally and 100% my personal views but iam sure whatever reasons you have to buy/own a bullet, it can be put under one of these 10)
(** when i say bullet it includes all the models of RE till date)

1. For the love of it - Everybody wants to own one
2. It is the best way to make friends - Bullet is the source of energy for almost 8 out of 10 sustaining biking clubs.
3. Teaches you life
4. For the thump/Pleasure of riding/attention it gets
5. You will be a part mechanical engineer
6. You dont want to speed, finding the thrill in riding slow(a certain someone i know might beg to differ)
7. Cut above the rest - It is my way or the wrong way.
8. Cult bike - India's Harley
9. It is 'Made in India
10. Vintage tag/Resale value        
   
            The explanation that i give further to support the 10 reasons above are interleaved.
[you can listen to this while you read :-)]     also  (forgive me for the spelling mistakes and the grammatical errors, the fact that i am getting my procrastinator ass to publish one post is in itself a big deal !!)                   




            Every bullet owner i know has his own story behind him owning a bullet and NOT a single one on them(the ones i have heard and i have heard quite a lot) goes like this,"i wanted to buy some bike to go to my office/college/shop which is light weight, 4 starer on mileage and low maintainence so i bought a bullet!!!". Never!!!
            Simply put, buying a bullet is a calculated risk one takes!!! Practically speaking, the standard 350s are probably the most inefficient bikes when it comes to mileage next only to a Yezdi(i konw it coz i own one). The fuel maintainence is as good as any diesel car's these days. People buy the bullet for the love of it and love doesn't need to be logical as long as there is enought love. Most of the guys i know dreams of owning a bullet once in their lifetime or atleast accept that they would want to ride it once and they are always in secret/open admiration of the owner.
            Making friends when you own a bullet is 100 times easier. Every other bullet owner starts looking a brother/sister(included for that one lady i know who will think i am  male chauvinist) from another mother simply because in your hearts you know what a trouble a bullet can be when it starts throwing tantrums and it does not take metaphysical knowledge that the other person also would have had to go through it. The trouble need not be a huge one like an engine seize due to over heating/speeding (like the one i had during 1A ride of BOM, thanks to all the people who were with me for the moral support they gave), but it can be as simple as a flat tyre.
           The very thought about the bike's weight drives so many people forget pushing it to a some distance to get the typres fixed. So it takes more of mental toughness than physical to own that bike. Every bullet rider is a friend of yours. Just give a smile and ask what model is his bike and there you go, you have struck a conversation and the other person wont let you until he has told the whole story of his bullet sojourns. If your bullet happens to be older than his, then you have the upper hand in the conversation. The intenerary of the talk is endless. The mechanic you go to, the petrol you put, the paint on the bike, chorme that you got done, the desing of the number plate, the club you ride for, the people you ride with, the places you have ridden to, the accidents you have had, all the shit that you have seen happening and so on and so forth which tends to infinity. Then comes the customary exchange of phone numbers. My contacts list swelled by 100 within the first three months of buying my bullet and only because of it.
            A good 50% of my 8th semester of Engg i have spent in the bullet garages/showroom. I have had situation when the mechnics of the bike have asked me politely/rudely to go away and let them do their job peacefullly. Few mechanics get irritated by the volley of questions they have to answer and some of them are nice enough to answer all your doubts. Anybody who owns a STD 350 will know which the carburetor(the heart of any bike), how to remove the tyre and sometimes even fix a puncture, spark plug cleaning, oil, decompression, gear box, air filter, chain maintainence coz not knowing these things might cost him dearly.
            No bike i know commands the time tested/sustained attention a bullet receives. It is a pleasure to the eyes and the ears. It can convert an enclosed space into a beat box. Bullet's thump can reverberate the whole of basement parking lot waking up the whole building, such is the beauty of the thump.
            Old REs in India enjoy the same status as Harley's. We can feel the essence of the cult biking at almost 10 times lower cost.
It is Made in India. The full fledged plant in Chennai, TN manufacture these bikes and is a subsidiary of Delhi based Eicher Motors(surprise surprise!!!). Every part in manufacured in India and assembled here. The desing on the tanks are hand painted!!!


(just to prove my point) + gk for you.

            Past two/three years have witnessed in the enormous increase in the the craze for the bullets. This has led to the exponential increase in the resale values of the bike. After the retirement of the flagship cast iron STD 350s in 2010 the demand has only increased multifolds and in the near future they will attain the vintage tag(although the use of the word vintage is wrong here but for the understanding sakes) buying a bullet is also a sort of an investment. Many mechanic and second dealers of bullet have prospered due to this demand boom.
            I do not really want to get into the topic of bullet rides. It is huge!!! Simply put, they are the best ever. Period.

            This article is in commemoration of completing one year's thumping on the roads of Bangalore.

Golden life

I vividly remember the time, sitting on the red soil ground of my high school during independence day or republic day(wearing white short and shirt) i would listen to the chief guest of the program deliver his speech. Most of the time the chief guest who came to our school were it's alumni. Although i dont remember every thing they said, there was one common thing no one ever missed to tell us kids, "Student life is a golden life". Sometimes the sentence  seemed hackneyed but i thought that there has to be a reason for everyone who comes has this one common thing to say. Its been more than 8 years since i got out of high school, one year since graduation and i fully realize the meaning and the gravity of those words.

The only future we had to worry about was tomorrow, the only headache - the monthly test, the only nightmare - the annual exams, when i woke up hot milk would be ready,by the time i had bath breakfast would be ready, by the time i finished breakfast school would have come to take us,  when we said bi to our friends it was only till the next day when we see them again, horlicks/complan were the only drinks, with a 2 rupee coin we used to look at ourselves as though we owned the world, Weekend meant sunday morning chitrahaar, followed by alif laila. we were happy with three pairs of new clothes a year, vehicles meant bicycle, sitting on dad's bikes and making zooming noise ourselves would give us the pleasure of 250 kmph.

Times have changed beyond expectation, with me atleast. The already nuclear family of mine seem to have been passed in the hadron collider and split into its constituent particles owing to life's speed at which is accelerating all of us. I stay 300km away from my parents. These days, i wake up cursing myself for not having kept the milk coupon last night( there goes the milk...). Read all the sad things happening to the country in the first two pages itself afte that i cant stand it anymore. Now it is time for breakfast i take full 15 mins to decide what to prepare. I choose the one which requires least efforts. Chitranna(color rice) or  mosaranna(curd rice) or puliyogare(i dont know what do they call it in inglis). After having bath i look at my cupboard and look for the least dirty shirt for the day( becasue i niether have the luxury of keeping a maid to wash my clothe nor the will to wash them myself or the means to buy a washing machine - by this you can estimate how much i get paid, you are right, peanuts(kaDle kayi)!!!). Before leaving the house i have to double check if the gas in off, geyser is off, all the switches are off( a job which my dad would do). Go to the office(do i really need to tell - not that it is something bad, but i guess most of us know how one feels, you are right again - like crap!!!!)

I come back to an empty house( now dont tell me to get married- iam better off) which has a big ass TV which i dont use but still paying for. Sit and Brainstorm as to what to eat for supper. Worry about what is happening to life, where is it going, who all went for their higher studies, who all got hikes, who all bought so called cool stuff, lauch a personal tirade against myself asking "what am i doing with my life?". In the mean time I muster enough energy to cook something, eat and sleep.

But there are some good days too. Food prepared tastes 10 times better than what it was the day before. Try out something by the help of recipe administered over phone by mom. Speaking to some chick looking girl from college whom i never spoke to when in college and knowing that she is still searching for a job. Last day of the month is the most satisfying. Paying the bills myselves. Knowing that most of us are in the same boat(full on devilish pleasure). Feeling resposible for my own life. Rides, bike repairs, tyre puncture at middle of the ring road. Friends coming over for the weekend. Drunk calls. Having a long chat with the room mates of pu or engg or someone from high school. Doing a coverage on who got hitched and who got ditched. Finally cocking up to write a blog atlast.

But coming to think of it, this is the phase of life which we all(me and my parents) incessently prepared for, for the last 20 years. Here is the time to put to use all the good things we learnt in the past. To be grateful for the our parents' and teachers'(who have taught how to teach and how not to teach) efforts (remember, we are mostly living their dream). Realizing that life is not a sprint(100m race) but a marathon(the long race where only ethiopians seem to win) but definitely not a morning walk too!!!

May be, this is a golden life too.

1 YEar at EY.

10 in the evening(in sjce hostel there are no nights) of 12th May, 2010 i get a message from from my placement secretary(gulbarga ki kali) that a company called Ernst and Young is coming for placements for tomorrow. The name rang a bell somewhere in the back of my mind. It took me little time to realize that i had read about this company when i was gearing up for Deloitte(a company which i wanted to get in). First question that people of my league will have whenever any company comes for placements is not what is the package but "what is the cut off". To my surprise and relief she texted back saying 60. Phew!!!! After a long time some company came looking for average scorers. Somehow, when i woke up the next day, calm had dawned on me. Everything went on as though it was thoroughly rehearsed. Mine was the first name to be called out. By any measure this was nothing groud shattering or breath taking but personally it answered my doubts i had.

        It is 10 25 in the night(well, it is night) and i sit here with less than 48 hours to complete one year of my arrival to Bangalore.

        I am excercising control over my urge to post about the things that i did last year, but let me keep some ammunition to fire myself up to write one more post some time soon.

        But i will definitely going to tell you tweleve awesome things(according to my own measure) that i did in 2010, one for each month.

        Watch this space for more!!!

(Forgive the spelling mistakes)

Welcome back!!!

I want to stop this series of promising to post on my blog regularly and apologies that i seek after i fail to carry out what i have promised. Lets keep it simple. This is my blog. I will post something when i feel like.

Yeah!!! thats the spirit. I already feel the freedom and the lessening of guilt to get back to my blog.

Sincere thanks to Ashwij Mayya who kept consistently asking me about my blog's status and i promised that i wil mention him in my next post which is this. At this juncture I would also like to congratulate him on his admission into IIT, Chennai for his post graduation studies in mechanical engineering. I am proud of you, boy. But this wont make me forget that you still havent bought me the full bottle of 'you know what'. You have reneged on the promise made!!!

Thanks to Pramod G Hegde who made me recall the basic reason why i had started blogging in the first place, an effort to chronicle my life which i can look back at some later point in life. Not to regret, not to boast. Just to look!!!