Yorkers. Another One

Another One. Another One. Another One.AADITYA SRIRAM·SUNDAY, JUNE 16, 2019In the words of the legendary DJ Khaled “Another One”! That seems to be the mantra for the Yorkers this season, victory after victory! They don’t seems to get enough and all they want is “Another One”! Yorkers chased down the target of 89 with 1 ball to spare after a splendid comeback by Hattrickers following a top order collapse to post a good 88 in their 20 overs.

While the world was fixated on a blockbuster encounter in Manchester between India and Pakistan but if there was ever a close 2nd to the entertainer that game was it had to be Yorkers vs Hattrickers, at least that is how the 22 charged up players felt about the game at hand. Hattrickers are amongst the best teams out there and the Yorkers were well aware of it and came prepared for the day’s extravaganza. Yorkers have been on a splendid run winning 5 in a row and they were looking at extending the magical run and get ahead in the race to the top of the table. Yorkers won the toss and chose to bowl, much to the amusement of the Yorkers who really wanted to watch the match between India and Pakistan, while the opposition toiled on the field. Yorkers were missing two of their main bowlers, Niraj and Saurabh so it was upto Tushar to take charge on his comeback game and Kumaresh to back him up.

Yorkers were given a brilliant start by Tushar who sent the opener packing without troubling the scoreboard, a miscued shot that was easily nabbed by Aaditya at mid on. A deluge of left handed batsmen were to follow which gave the Yorkers some amount of discomfort with where to place the fielders but the bowlers made sure that did not matter, a tight line and length kept the scoring rate low. There was as flash of brilliance from Puneet who dispatched three big hits into the deep square leg region which was unfortunately in the declared scoring region and they fetched him and his team just 6 runs in total. He was soon bowled out by a ripper by Yorkers captain Aman. This started a mini collapse for the Hattrickers who went on to lose 2 more wickets in quick succession to some great bowling backed up a by an excellent catch by Sudheer at deep midwicket off what can be described as an idea ball by Tushar, this was followed by an absolute peach of a delivery by Kumaresh who had the stumps blow into pieces behind a clueless Shubham, this was also wicket number 100 for the cricbay veteran. Any other team would have started to bundle out following this incredible start by the bowling team, but true class and quality of the Hattrickers is what helped them build from this situation and post a hefty total for the Yorkers to achieve. Rahul and captain Harshad displayed incredible discipline, not letting their guard down and building a solid stand, the run rate was dipping but they were able to get out the danger bowlers and make sure they did not lose any more wickets at the 10 over mark. At 26/4 things did not look rosy for the Hattrickers, what made things even worse was a blinder behind the stumps by Sagar off Surendiran’s delivery, Sagar can only be called flash for catching the ball that zoomed off the surface and took a thick edge on its way to the gloves of the vice captain, Rahul’s watch had ended. This was a huge turning point for the Hattrickers, their secret weapon, their prized Talisman, Mandar was at the crease, he took the first 10 balls to get accustomed to the effervescent Yorkers on the field but then unleased pure class beating the bowlers all over the park and taking full advantage of the batting power play overs, things were not working for the Yorkers who dropped 3 catches in a span of 5 deliveries, heads were beginning to hang low. Mandar continued the onslaught with beautiful lofted hits to the boundary and sixes on a couple of occasions! This was a comeback of champions, only teams with experience can do this! The yorkers saw the game slowly slipping away from them, this is when the player of the match from the last game Vaibhav pulled a stunner back for the team, getting Mandar run out, this was off his own bowling follow through! Mandar was caught in no man’s land, beaten, injured but he was no longer a threat for the Yorkers. An excellent innings filled with shots of a champion and heart of a warrior had ended, the Yorkers acknowledged his knock, a true show of sportsmanship amongst the teams. The damage had been done, the Hattrickers were poised for a good respectable total thanks to the 29 runs in the 3 power play overs and another 8 in the 19th over. Thanks to a good disciplined final over by Suren, the Hattrickers were restricted to 88 in their 20 overs.89 was a reasonable target to chase, the pitch was true to its bounce and all the Yorkers had to do was keep the wickets in hand and just rotate the strike without playing any risky shots. The break time saw both team drown in their smartphones trying to catch what was left of the India Pakistan showdown. Refreshed and energized, both teams got back on the field! It was going to be a close one, the Yorkers were confident to chase the total while the Hattrickers trusted the caliber of their bowling attack, one that had a good mix of left and right handed bowlers.

Aniket and Sagar, the tried and tested opening pair for the Yorkers took the field and both of them got off the mark of the very first delivery they faced respectively. Sagar unfortunately played a ball that was away from his body, and misjudged the pace to give an easy catch to the wicketkeeper Mandar who made no mistake in nabbing it. Kumaresh who was incidentally also playing his 100th game for cricbay came into slow things down and build a solid foundation. Kumaresh and Aniket steadied ship and tried to just rotate strike as much as possible but some excellent bowling and perfect field placement kept the number of dot balls just ticking along, the runs were hard to come by but Kumaresh did give the occasional swing at the ball, lucky for him they always went to a safe spot on the declared runs region, Aniket on the other hand was extremely measured. After some initial jitters, Kumaresh unleashed some beautiful cover drives and a couple of lofted shots over short leg, they all yielded some crucial doubles for the Yorkers. Things were chugging along until Aniket handed a sitter to Parth off a good ball by Vishal. The bowling from the Hattrickers was supremely balanced and sensible, we had a match in our hands. Captain Aman who was also playing his 100th game joined the other milestone achiever. At the end of 10, the Yorkers were at 33 having lost 2 wickets! The equation was set at 56 of 60! Achievable, but they had to get that run rate ticking. Having scored at 3.3 per over until now, the Yorkers had to up the ante, 5.6 was the required run rate. A challenging by achievable total. Aman and Kumaresh went back onto the field and decided against taking the power play overs, a couple of good shots from Aman but soon he lost his wicket courtesy a really good catch by Mandar behind the stumps off a quick one by Bhuvesh. Sudhir was up with a challenge, one that required him to make runs quick and safely. He was the last recognized batsman on the team, the pressure was real! He seemed to handle it well, Kumaresh and Sudhir were steadily making runs. The equation, 47 off 36! The Yorkers were once again plagued by run outs at this stage! The first to go was Sudhir, followed by a risky call by Aaditya to Kumaresh that say Kumaresh perish as well. The Yorkers at this stage opted for their power play overs, 4 overs 36 to win! A quick flurry of shots by Aaditya hitting 13 off 7 got the Yorkers a little closer but the battle was still a long way from ending, another risky call saw Aaditya run out as well. Runs and wickets were both flowing at an alarming rate, the Yorkers preferred the runs while the Hattrickers liked that the wickets were going down on their own. Lusty blows by Vaibhav that saw the ball clear the rope twice in 3 balls got the Yorkers within the jaws of victory! An innings that can only be played a person with nerves of steel! Vaibhav had his chance to be the man of the hour and boy was he! 9 off 12, easy right? Not really, a beautiful over by VP who was miserly and gave away only 2 runs making the equation go in the favor of the fielding team yet again, 7 off 6. Vaibhav once again showed who was boss, hitting 5 off 3 from the last over and getting the equation down to 1 off 1! Gaurav was on strike for the last ball, new to the crease and a herculean task on his shoulders! Showing tremendous amount of grit, he let one go down the leg side, not the prettiest victory but a wide got the Yorkers took them over the line with a ball to spare!

The Yorkers had done enough to overcome the amazing Hattrickers. A game for the memory books. One where the whole team pulled together. Top of the table for the champions of this encounter! Vaibhav got his 2nd consecutive player of the match award, to think he got his first ever only last game, was he showing his true class? Lets hope so as the Yorkers do their best to remain on the top and get back into Platinum league. This game was also the 101st game for Sagar, and special mention for his absolutely stunning wicket keeping, fast balls, wild throws by fields, crazy catches summed up a very positive innings for him on this landmark career achievement for him.

Learn to be a tourist

I am an Indian and I am proud to be an Indian, the reason i’m posting this as the first line is because the rest of this blog post is a rant. Sorry. OK. Please.

I’ve never gone sightseeing alone, in fact if I don’t find someone to hang out with I just end up sleeping in my hotel room when I am traveling. As of writing this I have spent 15 days in London, although I came here for ‘Business Meetings’ I did explore quite a bit and it was all alone! New experiences, few parts I liked and others I did not. Part of this new experience was to do guided tours, I wasn’t sure i’d do anything unless I went on one of those tours where a shepherd guides sheep from all over the world. So rant begins, Indians, we love to tell everyone that we know more than them! We love talking when we aren’t supposed to and of course we don’t know that keeping quiet when the guide is speaking is something one should always follow. What is worse than one Indian you ask? Two, yes two Indians babbling around like the winner would get candy from mommy. I’ve two experiences to share, one was at the ‘Home of Cricket’ Lord’s cricket ground and the other during a trip to Stonehenge.

Lord’s, the mecca of cricket, the one place that will give every cricket fan goosebumps! Here we are the early birds roaming around in the museum, waiting for our guide to show up at 10 am and holler at us. In a group of twenty people here, there were six Indians, me included. There was an Indian family featuring two women, an over enthusiastic kid and the dad of said kid, the first hero of our story and another Indian dude, hero number two, who was there alone and I can only imagine why. The two heroes make eye contact and chaos was sure to follow! The guide shows up at exactly 10 and says, ladies and gentlemen please gather around, don’t be shy, lets begin the tour! The guide looks around and asks who is from India, sure enough the two heroes tried to be louder than each other and screamed here! Hero number one, lets call him Ram, shouts Virat Kohli, why you ask? I’ve got no answer! So hero number two, lets call him Shyam, shouts Sachin Tendulkar. No answers yet, the guide as confused as the rest of the crowd. The kid at this point is thinking about running away or at least trying to disown his dad. 1 Australian, 5 South Africans later we started the tour! The guide shows us the original urn that gave ‘The Ashes’ its name, and here we have Ram giving his son a private lesson that is unfortunately heard by Shyam who decided to chime in and now the rest of the tour group is trying to hear the guide. The story behind the ashes finally takes center stage and everyone is hearing it with utmost interest. You’d think these over enthusiastic Ram and Shyam know a thing or two about cricket, lo behold, they don’t have the slightest knowledge. They kinda reminded me of some of my under grad teachers who had no clue about any of the subjects they taught but still spoke out with confidence. Ram asks the guide why the Ashes are never in India, at this point i’m searching for cyanide because i’m done with life, Shyam laughs out loud! He then proceeds to say that the Ashes happens once in 3 years, I am tempted at this point to correct Shyam but you know what fuck it, the guide will do it, he does thankfully. As for Ram’s question about why the Ashes isn’t in India, each pairs of countries have a different name for the trophy they fight for when they play a test series (Border-Gavaskar trophy for India-Australia and the Pataudi trophy for India-England). The tour goes on and the guide says explicitly, no photographs in the pavilion. Ram and Shyam are busy wondering what they should do next to show their supremacy, the first thing that comes to their mind? Take out the phone and take a photo when in the pavilion, this old gentleman who is our guide loses his shit, asks them to put their phones away and now he has forgotten what he wanted to say 😦 From then on, it was a constant battle of the 3 guides, the one we paid for and the nincompoops Ram and Shyam, the blithering stars of the day. Every time the guide spoke about something Ram and Shyam said something to interrupt him and draw the ire of the tour group. The guide also made it pretty clear that he did not want people loitering around and breaking away from the group, he made it doubly clear to Ram and Shyam who had this tendency to walk all over the place and slow down the group. The guide explicitly called out to them multiple times over the course of the tour either asking them to shut up or stop loitering.

You may think i’m basing my opinion from just this one experience, let me explain. I’ve seen this happen multiple times but this was the first time i’d done group tours and experienced this first hand that it really irritated me and forced me to write about it. I did two group tours and I had similar experiences in both.

This other experience is a variant of the first story, TL;DR is the group was annoyed. This was a day long tour called ‘England in a day’ which is bull shit because they make it sound like England can be seen in a day! Absolutely not, its a beautiful country and I could spend days just exploring London. Here we are at this super busy station called Victoria Coach station, the guide announces that the bus will leave in 10 minutes and if anyone had to use the toilets then they should do so now or manage to hold on until we reach Stonehenge. Nine minutes go by, all of a sudden this lady (of course she is from my motherland, India) gets up and goes to the restroom, i’m not complaining yet, she needs to go if she needs to go except the guide doesn’t see this and she comes into the bus and says lets go! The lady’s husband doesn’t say a word that his wife has gone to the toilet, instead the guide decides to do a count and realizes one person is missing. We see this lady now, walking slower than ever from the restroom with no sense of urgency or respect for time, the bus is waiting for her highness. Finally we get going and reach Stonehenge, the guide says please be here by 11:50, we need to leave on time to make sure we see all the sights on the planned itinerary, repeats at least four times. The crowd disperses and we all start moving towards the world heritage site. You take a bus that ferries tourists from the welcome center to the location of Stonehenge and back, there is also an option to walk and a walking path provided on the side of the road. There was decent pileup on this private road and I was like how can you have a traffic jam on a private road that is big enough for two buses to pass side by side. The answer of course lies in India, this couple decides to walk on the other side of the road which does not have a walking path and now the buses have to wait and pass each other more carefully! You’d think the couple would see this commotion and move aside or go to the right side but nope, as oblivious as a computer science student in biology class. I go around the beautiful Stonehenge, lost in thought and time and I suddenly realize i’ve only twelve minutes left of the stipulated time and start heading back, the bus ride takes five minutes and I needed to use the restroom but overall I knew i’d make it back to the tour bus with a minute to spare. I made it on time, we then waited for over ten minutes for this Indian couple who I mentioned earlier (the one where the husband did not give two shits about leaving his wife behind). I’m disgusted at this moment, there is a lady from Wisconsin sitting next to me and we started talking about tourism with guided tours and she told me there is always this one couple or one person who will hold back the group (she wasn’t racist like me, she just said couple in general). I want to write more about the trip but the theme of the situations where I was embarrassed by the behavior of my fellow countrymen were similar.

I’d like to reiterate, I love my country and I love and respect those from my country that respect others. I may be wrong in multiple way without knowing it but I make an honest effort to fit into the newer cultures that i’m mingling with!

Revisiting Home

I’ve been outside India for 3 years now, no reason for me to suddenly find faults with my city, though I found it really hard to cope with a lot of things. Traveling in Bangalore has been like playing Pokèmon in real life, while I kept running into Ratatas in the game every time I started walking, in Bangalore this is the case,

Bangalore has exploded beyond its capacity and my only fear is its going to end up like San Francisco, a city where everyone wants to be but very few can afford! I kept complaining about a lot of things and my friends thought I was being an ass and a typical ‘America Return’ snob but it was more about feeling bad about losing my city to these radical changes.

I decided I wouldn’t ride or drive this time, two reasons for that, one the fact that my Indian license was now in shreds and secondly I had no plans of getting back to shouting on the road. I’ve been on a transformational path where anger is my last resort to things that annoy me, and I did not want a 3 week holiday to be the point of relapse! For most part being driven around by friends is amazing, and when nobody is around I just end up taking an Über and paying at most $5 for a really long trip during peak hours! Talking about converting my expenses to USD, its the exact reversal of what I did back when I moved to the US where every expense triggered a calculation in my head and then freaked me out when the calculation completed and I was paying 300 Indian rupees for a coffee. I digress. One day three friends and I were on one of the busiest roads in Bangalore downtown, in the US downtown has been the place with the tall buildings but in Bangalore its just the oldest cool part of the city I know of, we were trying to cross at a signal and lo behold four guys who thought they were the Beatles crossing Abbey road who don’t give a rats fart about the pedestrian crossing signal that said ‘Stay the f*** out’ of here till the vehicles stop moving amble across taking their sweet time and make direct eye contact with you and act like its all cool.

I think the funniest thing that happened was when a biker going down the wrong way of a road almost got knocked down by one of the wild autos and ended up shouting at the auto driver for not keeping an eye out for nincompoops like him on the road! Its great that wrong side drivers don’t cause pileups and crazy accidents like the ones that happen in other countries. I’ve always been someone who follows traffic laws and have earned the wrath of the people I share the road with and the people who are in the vehicle that i’m driving. My complaints aren’t something that i’m talking about because I don’t live here anymore! Just the other day, my friend rides her bike on the pavement to avoid riding her bike on the wrong side of the road and I had to explain to her why that was no better than just being on the road! One other incident there were two people on bikes who decided to have a friendly chat in the middle of the road, with their bikes facing opposite directions! The only thing missing was a table, cards and some whiskey, they could have had the perfect guys night out. The popular quote ‘Haters gonna hate’ can be modified to be ‘Honkers gonna honk’, and you are fine doing whatever you want and disrupting the traffic.

One thing the country does right for sure is water in the toilets! Here napkins and tissues are both terms used for the paper towels used to dry your hand, a lot of confusion has ensued after either my friends or I have asked for tissue at a restaurant in the US! A few of my friends are leaving to Australia and I’ve been educating them on the cultural and social mistakes I made that put me in an awkward situation when I first moved to the US, my first rule was to always say it’s nice to meet you the moment you meet someone and exchange names, regardless of not knowing a single thing about this person who could be a genuinely nice person, a thug, a trump supporter or a League of Legends player! You just have to say nice to meet you! Back home I know all my neighbors but in the US i’ve never interacted with any of my neighbors! Sometimes i’m in the elevator with them but its pretty clear everyone is avoiding eye contact, because eye contact is the worst thing one can do when trying to avoid talking to someone. At home if we run out of sugar or salt or anything else, all we need to do is go to the neighbor and you have a thirty minute conversation and the condiment that you were looking for! While back in the US, I just end up ordering food for the night and buying groceries the next day on my way back from work. There is a sense of belonging to the neighborhood that i’m enjoying during the break here.

Every time I come back home the only friends that I immediately end up meeting are my buddies from kindergarten to high school! It’s always a great experience to catch up with buddies who grew up with you, who got punished in school with you, who enjoyed success with you! Every time we meet its a laugh riot and to relive the stupid things we did as kids is such a blast and when we discover that not much has changed since then is a soothing feeling that makes you feel comfortable amidst the maddening changes around. This trip saw a couple of friends change their marital status to sedated, I mean married and I can only imagine that the next trip is going to see more people stare down the wedding well and I guess some even with kids that are going to call me uncle! To the journey ahead and to more trips back home I say, bring it on! This trip back home has been one of change, a better future, a trip where I could forget my work life completely and focus on what is most important, family and friends. I started writing this with just one thought on my head, what the hell is happening in this city but midway I realized I love Bangalore way too much to give it up for anything in this world, I hope someday I can be back home working in this beautiful city that saw me transform from a pre schooler to an engineer to a professional and someday a home owner.

 

Google Play : Changing country

For a company like Google, i certainly expected them to have an easy switch option to change my country and then verify the new country using my IP or my last few google sign in locations! But no, this task is not straightforward at all! I just moved to the US from India and signed into my new android device using the ID i had created back home, only to realise that it would default to the Indian play store and there was absolutely no setting to change this to USA. I figured it was because of the payments methods I had set up, I went ahead and removed all the payment methods saved on my account! Next I changed all the addresses to the new address in US, cleared cache and data. No use, the play store still wouldn’t update to US!

   Lots of searching online and trying multiple funny things turned out to be useless, the play store just wouldn’t budge! Finally I figured what it needed! So for all the peeps moving to a new country, this might help. Follow these steps

 

1. Remove all payment systems from your google wallet account [if they are bound to your previous country]
2. Change all addresses [physical addresses] to a location in the new country.
3. Open Play Store, open any paid app and click on buy!
4. On the add payment page, close the app store.
5. Open play.google.com on your computer, and move to an app you know is available only in your new country
6. It will magically be compatible
7. Now open play store on your phone, it would have updated

I am not kidding! You don’t need to add a new card, nor do you have to purchase anything! Just follow the steps given above and you will be good to go!

For example, google wallet is not available in India, but it is in USA.

The Curious Case Of The Surname

It is always exciting when you know your passport is going to get stamped with a visa! At least for someone like me who had the first flight well into engineering, a visa is like the chocolate that I never had. I submitted my passport details and a person called me up, let us refer to her as Julia Roberts for the sake of having a name!

Julia : Hello Mr Sriram, I just went through your passport and see that you do not have a surname!

Me : Oh I do not have a surname.

Julia : So is your first name ‘Aaditya Sriram’

Me : Nope

Julia : Ok I am confused now!

Me : My First Name is Aaditya and Last Name is Sriram

Julia : Alright, are last name and surname the same thing?

Me : Hold on, let me google it

****** 3 minutes ********

Me : Well according to this  Yahoo! Last name and surname is the same!

Julia : Well I think you need to get your passport corrected then!

Me : Na na, its ok I dont want a surname I’ll live with Aaditya Sriram as firstname.

Julia : You will have a lot of issues with government organizations if you do not have a surname!

Me : I’ll manage 🙂 Thanks

This conversation actually threw me off gear and I ended up doing a lot of searching online about the case of the missing surname and figured life would be really hard without a surname in many countries! So then I called her back and

Me : Hello Julia! How you doing?

Julia : I am good Adeeetya! Whatsup?

Me : I decided i’d get the name on my passport changed!

Julia : I am glad you changed your mind, good luck with that

I’m sure she laughed out and made fun of me after that! Well so I freaked out and prior to this had a  very bad idea about how governmental organizations worked and how inefficient they are. My only silver lining was the fact that more than 50% of South Indians do not have a surname on their passport and they all get it corrected once they realise how this could bite their rear! Went through a million blogs and they all made it sound like a ridiculously easy process, i begged to defer and thought the only way to find out the truth is by going through the ordeal myself! My dad suggested I go through a Passport agent, but I wanted to give the Passport organization a chance to prove their organizational capabilities.

The following are the steps to get it changed, the online part of the process is mentioned on this post, as I’ve my passport office appointment in the future as of writing this post.

1. Go to Passport Seva
2. Click on Register in case you do not have an account already, else click on login. You know the charade!
3. Once logged in, click on the tab that says “Apply for Fresh Passport/Reissue of Passport”
4. It will give you a link to download a form, download it and fill it!
5. While filling form, in the reason for reissue choose OTHER and type “NAME BIFURCATION”
6. Fill up other details and save, it will generate a XML file.
7. Upload XML file from the page whose link you can find on the login page
8. It will create a ARN for you, now click on “View Saved/Submitted Applications”
9. Choose the current upload and book an appointment

I went in for a tatkaal appointment as mentioned before and got my passport in 24 hours of the passport office appointment! It actually works when it is just name bifurcation, but again in my case I had no other change! It was the same address.

Carry the following with you for proofs:

• Old Passport
• Copies of the first two and last two pages of old passport
• 10th Marks card [in case ECR stamp is on your old passport]
• Address proof [in case of address change]
• Yourself [yep you need to go]

It is a long wait inside the passport office though! So take a day off and spend it there! Do not go early do not go late! Be on time 🙂 Good luck to everyone! Get your passport on time and enjoy your study/work adventure in the US!

The Crayon Head

Crayons! A single word to describe the imaginative powers of Indians when there is commotion! Everyday on my way to and from office I go past at least one crowded spot where I just see people standing around something which I presumed to be really interesting. I never really had the chance to go see what was happening until recently, this one experience cleared all doubts that had accumulated over the last 24 years of mine on this earth. We love commotion! We love drama! We love drama and commotion with a dash of lime and lemon, in fact it is our favorite cocktail! It gets us high, it gets us involved in others business and sometime lands us in a pool of junk. What am I talking about? You know what I am talking about! Last week, I was at this car workshop getting my seat covers changed and some stickering done for my drive, KABOOOOOM! A loud thud and some screaming is all it took for all heads in a radius of 500m to look in the direction of the sound, such a response is only natural I guess. I saw a guy lying on the road and next to him was his bike, my Dad and I went upto him and helped him up and took the bike to the side. He had been hit by a car, a Mahindra XUV500 [retarded car] and a man with a shiny bald head driving it freaked out and just sat inside the car that was in the middle of the road! I asked him to move back and park to the side of the road, he did that. The guy who got hit was fine, atleast on the outset so my Dad and I decided to leave the place to let the guy handle the situation with the car guy. We had walked like 10m and when we turned back there was the huge familiar crowd, staring at the two gentlemen, the hitter and the ‘hitted’ 😛 [halli english on purpose] fighting a battle of words, it reminded me of this clip !

There were at least 20 people watching the drama unfold and my dad and I were watching the crowd watch, I guess that made us meta crowd! What started off as a two man battle just like the video ended up in a band wagon of peole arguing, few taking the side of the biker and few the car guy! Finally the car guy stepped back and let the volunteers carry on for him! The bike guy wasn’t hurt and he tried asking for money before the guy who was driving the car said this

I am a lawyer, if you want a settlement lets go to the court and decide!

The bike guy freaked out and said this

Atleast take me to the hospital and let me have my foot checked!

At this point I felt pretty sad for the bike guy, he was unnerved by what he had just heard! His bike was definitely broken, but I guess he did not have the right to ask for repair money but the hospital request was fair enough.  The car guy took him to the hospital and all of a sudden the crowd had lost their entertainment piece! After some awkward stares, they started speculating what had happened and then one guy blamed the biker and the other the car guy. There interesting insights into the physics of accidents too by the onlookers! Pretty fascinating! Seeing the crowd a guy on an evening walk stopped and tried to find out what had happened only to realise it was the after party that he had arrived late to.

At times I just feel everyone is looking for some weird stuff to happen to people around them just so that there is a entertainment! A similar thing happened around 5 months back, I guess my first paragraph is now contradictory! It is my second huddle moment on the Indian roads this. A lady had fainted and people were looking and discussing what could have happened, one guy said a car hit her and sped away, another lady said a bike had hit this woman while yet another claimed she just fainted [turned out this was the truth]. Seeing this I asked the crowd to help the lady into my car and I asked another lady to accompany me to the hospital where I admitted the lady. The weird part of this was that a Cop saw the lady had fainted and when I offered to help he ran away, what are public servants for? Welfare of people? I might have to read the fine print of human conscience to understand this kind of behavior from humans. The story doesnt end here, when I went back home from the hospital I got a sound hearing from my house help in front of my parents! We all looked on in shock, finally she told me I could land in a lot of trouble for helping unknown people falled on the road. A shiver and chill down my spine and I gathered myself to ask her what she was blabbering only to hear that she is saying this only for my good and she means only the best for me. This tale followed as a supporting argument

A lady was on the side walk of the road, in good clothes and dairly well groomed, a crowd had gathered and one guy said she should be taken to the hospital and an auto came by right then. This guy took the lady in the auto, on way the lady took out a knife and along with the auto guy robbed him.

I did not know what to say! Awestruck, I thought  this was a pretty good reason for people to just crowd around victims of accidents or incidents. Just to make it sensational they tend to use their colorful imagination to make the story more like an Ekta Kapoor soap! Stories are intriguing, the whole world runs on morals taught using stories, except the stories now are just murky and pure evil! I won’t deny, most of the stories are interesting and keep my head engaged in thought for a while but there should be a way innocent people get help when needed!

Trainfic India!

Trains have always been a source of fascination! How do they move from one track to the other without jumping out? How do so many trains travel on the same track but different directions and still manage to stay clear of going kaboom? The whole Indian railways is a world wonder, just for the sheer size and volume of the rail system! My love for trains began with the famous cutlet, there was something special in the cutlet you get in trains! I don’t know if it was because the potatoes were mashed on the floor by bare footed cooks by feet in the oily dirty pantry car or because it was fried potato and the only deep fried item other than the vada on these long journey!

   I regularly go to sabarimala, but the travel has generally been normal with no crazy ass bloggable adventures, but the one I am still on (yes I’m blogging from the kerala express enroute coimbatore) although not bat shit crazy, it’s got a few first times for me. I finished the whole pilgrimage from kottayam to Pamba by cab and then by foot to sabarimala and back to kottayam. I’m waiting at the railway station, half sleepy in this very noisy station. All I remember is that my train the one that goes from trivandrum to new Delhi.

I buy myself a copy of digit, start reading it to stay awake, it works pretty well except I’m not listening to the announcements. A train chugs into the station, u suddenly look towards to train and see the board reading Trivandrum to New Delhi and back. My train was scheduled to arrive at 2:05, the time right now was 2:05! I was surprised the train was on time in a state where well it never comes on time! I take my bags along,  my uncle follows and we realise the train is moving in the wrong direction as it came to a screeching halt. We thought the travel made us get mixed up with directions and proceeded to enter the train. In kerala I believe it is normal for reserved coaches between trivandrum and cochin to be used as passenger trains, in other words like a local train where any number of people can jump in and squeeze the life out of everyone. We got in, S9 coach check, seat numbers 65 and 66 check! Phew, but wait there was someone  on our seats already! To be honest, there were 6 people sitting on a seat that was meant for 3. Yeah, this is cool, I now have to drive out 6 people to reclaim my seats. I ask the ladies in a cool and calm manner, to get up and give us our seats as this is a reserved compartment. They go on and act like they can’t hear us, one of the guys there starts talking in Hindi asking what I want! I said in my Butler Hindi,

Yeh hamara seat hain, anghhhhhh (captain style)

My uncle by then asks someone if this is the kerala express, that guy said yes. Is it going to coimbatore? Umm, no this is going towards trivandrum! Holy shit, we were in the wrong train, actually wait right train but wrong direction! The train was already moving out of the station, and we decided to jump out. My uncle seems to have done this before and he jumps out all pro like. I go to the door and my legs freeze, I’ve never done this before! What am I supposed to do now? Like just jump and sit on my butt? Or fly away as far as I can from the train? The platform was going to end and the train was pretty fast now, I had to think quick but act faster! So I acted, yes like a fool, and jumped and landed on two legs, surprisingly I did not fall. There is a cop left next to me! I was like Erm

Peace out?

He gave me a disgusted look and asked me if I was deaf and couldn’t hear the announcements about the train! He said the following in malayalam

This is the trivandrum bound train, it is 3 hours late! Your train is at 2:05, (I was like gotcha, now what will you scold me for,  but here goes)  have you ever seen trains come on time? Fool, go and sit there, your train is 30 minutes late!

I was like, whaaaattt? (the way Phil Dunphy from modern family says it), and then meekly ran to the nearest bench and sat down to a bunch of guys laughing at me. It’s cool, I now know that even if the train start and end locations are the same and it is at your platform at the scheduled time it Is not your train! This reminds me of the following

All that you hear and all that you see are false.

My uncle and I shared a good laugh, then we had some coffee and sat down for the right train to come. The train finally came, we checked it was indeed the train to get into and finally got in.

   Empty Seat? No sir, there is a freaking family tree here! My seat? Lol they said,

Are you an idiot to get into a train with a confirmed ticket and expect a seat?

They gave me and my uncle our seats but people crammed in on the remaining space and eventually squishing us too. My uncle and I could do nothing more than laugh at our situation. The guys around have been good though, no fuss, and they are not making noise either, giving me space to think clearly and blog in a moving train. The first time I’ve done that! On a positive note, I shall not be thankful for every train journey I have with a berth that is mine and only mine!

  So what did I learn today?
1) my uncle has jumped from a moving train before this
2) I am lucky i did not break my teeth when I jumped onto the platform like I was catching the golden snitch.
3) how to blog from a train

to

Apple Says ……..

Apple says, read that with the tone our teachers used when we all played Simon Says! This was a post I wrote long back when Apple maps first started drowning people, found it while sanitizing my hard drive! I don’t know how relevant it is now, but back then I had fun writing it!

 

Indian Government Bans Apple Maps

 

After months of repeated complaints from the general public about people drowning in rivers and falling of cliffs due to faulty directions from Apple Maps the government has finally decided to stop the use of the brilliantly engineered solution for killing ones near and dear to us. This has come as an early New Year gift to many, although we are yet to confirm if there was any inside pressure from a different reason for the same outcome.

The hype created over the amazing capabilities of the new version of the famous IOS and the new device capabilities back in May last year prompted the assembly to get iPhone and iPad for each and every legislative member to help them be more productive. The members were really happy with their gifts back then, as now they had a new reason for not being present at the parliament during sessions. One might wonder how this was possible? Given the bleak attendance of the members at the session, one may say they might not possibly know the route back and forth to the venue. One of the members under the promise of anonymity on paper said this to Faking News exclusively,  “One day I got up at 4:00 in the morning and got ready for the parliament session at 10:00 later that day but then I used Apple Maps and ended up in Lahore instead of the parliament”, he added that, he actually thanks Maps for its failure as he got to meet Pakistan’s home minister instead and shared a good evening with tea and biscuits.

Many incidents were reported all across India, mostly involving cars trying to climb buildings in reverse gear and people trying to play cricket on a stadium, which was a lake! The Sri Lankan cricket team, which toured India late last year was disgusted with its experience in Kolkata after the driver of the bus to the stadium used Apple Maps and ended up reaching Sourav Ganguly’s house instead where he was valiantly swinging clothes, which was later explained as Ganguly’s daily task allotted to him by his wife! After a good laugh at his plight and being eye tortured of seeing him without clothes the team left for the stadium and used Google Maps on its way instead.

One couple from Bangalore reported that their Apple Maps was the God for them as it got them together! The story behind this was quite unique, the man was searching for Satan after he had lost his job and lost his faith on god and the woman was searching for a pastime, as she was a housewife! One day the man had gotten so frustrated that he tried searching for Satan on his iPhone that he had robbed from his boss before being thrown out and it showed him to the woman’s house where they shared a moment of silence in deep eye connection and instantly fell in love. The couple had then eloped and left a note to the husband that they were going to Hyderabad and that the woman was truly sorry for leaving him. Till date the husband (from Lithuania) has been trying to get to Hyderabad using the same Apple Maps! Well we know how that search is going to end up.

What was surprising about this ban is that, this was the only software that could make our honorable prime minister speak! It used to irritate him so much; he used to swear at it all the time! Rumor has it that he once searched for “Silent Valley” on his swanky new iPhone 5 and it guided him to Voice Training Institute! Given it made the most silent people come out of their shells and VOICE out their concerns, this ban should not have been made.

 

Cheers!

Your Funny Reporter

Rich Stupidity

To be rich is achievable, to not be stupid when rich is a talent — Anonymous

These words ring the bell and horn in my mind everytime I hear it or read it! Bangalore has a lot of rich people, people with a 5 storey houses and people who have 5 different stories to explain how they became rich (the hidden truth mostly involves inheritance or bribes). Along with the number of rich people, the number of cars and ultimately the number of idiots driving cars on the road has increased 10 fold since the inception of Electronic City and ITPL [the local dumping zone for engineers in India].  From the din chik of the loud cars to the almost unheard bell of a cycle, Bangalore traffic has a lot of variety and entertainment for the daily commuter.

One fine day, I decided to head back home a little late and my colleague who has also been my childhood friend offered to drop me, alright I asked him to drop me! Happy? He agreed to drop me and we left for home from work at around 6:00 PM. There is this epic place called tin factory in between our respective residence and office, the jam over here demands 10 loafs of bread! It takes around 30 minutes to cross 200m. So we were stuck here, my friend promptly switches off his car owing to his green attitude which I believe every Indian needs! Having  a light conversation, it was a cool and calm evening sky and it looked beautiful. We were surrounded by vehicles in all directions, left right front back below, you name it! There was a Toyota Etios up ahead, a goods carrying auto rickshaw to the left, what was to the right is not important here. In front of that auto was an Maruti Suzuki Esteem, Silver color. Suddenly the car started moving behind, agonizingly close to the auto behind when the auto guy jammed the horn to wake up the driver of the esteem! This is a usual scene in Bangalore where there are signals in slopey areas, yes most Bangalores let the wheels roll in the wrong direction when its supposed to stand still. Generally this is what happens,

1) Car moves back

2) It comes too close and the driver of the vehicle behind jams the horn

3) The driver rolling suddenly hits the brake hard

4) Looks out of the window

5) The driver behind showers a few praises

6) The driver in front drives ahead once the traffic clears

But, here is what actually happened with the esteem and the goods auto

1) Car moves back

2) It comes too close and the auto driver jams the horn

3) The driver rolling suddenly hits the brake hard

4) Gets out of the car

5) Showers praises to the auto driver

6) Asks the auto driver if he is mad for honking when the signal is closed

7) Auto driver says you came to close

8) Car driver says there is so much distance in between (it was hardly 3 inches)

9) People around look at the driver in disgust

10) Drivers gets back into car and auto guy and people around signal that guy is mad and have a good laugh

Was the car driver trying to show his dominance because he is more rich than the auto driver? To be honest this auto driver has to be praised for his calm behavior when the lunatic was screaming! Any other auto driver, as I shall have to remind myself of incidents i’ve been part of abuse you to the extent that you feel cheap and violated! This auto guy realized something was wrong with the car driver and let go. If the car driver had hit the auto, the auto guy would have started a fight and asked for 5000 bucks for a scratch that is invisible and halted the traffic behind for at least an hour before a traffic cop would intervene.

Nevertheless, this is not a rare occurrence in a city where people are judged by their cars and not their character, everyone is in a hurry! So am I! Arrogance is not!

To finish off the post with a nice pic I found recently depicting the situation with Bangalore traffic

Bangalore Traffic!

The Green Bangalore Plan

I wrote this article and sent it to unreal times, but then i spoke to an editor there and figured it would take a while before this post might make it to the page! Given the mayor of Bangalore has promised to close up the potholes after the monsoon, I decided i’d put the post here. This post is purely for poor humor purposes and its mostly nonsense

        Recent rains and inclement weather have rendered Bangalore’s roads untenable, most of the roads have been washed away and the growing traffic is just adding to the mess. When Karnataka Chief Minister Mr Siddaramiah was asked how he was going to react in the current situation, he seemed shocked that we even questioned and complained about the bad state of the roads. This response in turn shocked all the journalists at the venue and the Chief Minister stormed out of the room in disgust.

         In an exclusive interview to Unreal Times post his fury exit from the press meet, Mr Siddaramiah seemed a cool different man, he agreed to explain his behavior and wanted to apologize for his bhavior in front of the “Dumb” news crew. When asked to explain himself, he said that The bangalore roads are in a situation which was planned 4 years ago even before he became Chief Minister. He said,  “We are actually happy on how fast we have met the goal, we expected the roads to be in this condition in 2017 only, but I guess things have been good and we are way ahead of schedule.” This was an initiative to make Bangalore green he said, the pot holes on the roads were left to grow on purpose, they can now plant trees or small colorful plants based on the size and shape of the pothole. When asked what his agenda was for the “Stock Check” he was intending to make later today he said, it was basically to count the number of plants to import from France and Germany. He added that the plant imports were necessary to give a variation from the plants we find in India. Smaller pot holes would get Boganvilla, Jasmine and other flowering plants and trees, while the large holes would get a Banyan Tree sapling or a Neem tree to increase the fresh air flow when people are stuck in traffic jams. He adds that trees are the need for the hour and he wishes to give back to Bangaloreans what they once had, peace, calm and greenery!

       He went on to say that he has also made plans for making few more potholes in the road side so that they can fill up with water and everytime a motorist goes in it, the water would splash and water the nearby potholes with plants. This he says is his own genius at work and it would remove the need for water tankers to go around the city watering the plants. He feels that he needs to keep doing different things like this to remain the most favorite eleced leader of all time in Karnataka.

      Mr Siddaramiah is attending the global ecological changes summit in Davengere next week and has confirmed that the next regions in Karnataka to undergo what he calls the “Hole and Tree” concept of rejuvenating cities in the state would be Mysore, Mangalore and Whitefiled. His agenda would be to educate the rest of the country and eventually the world to adopt this technique at the convention. Major B-Schools of India including IIM-B and IIM-A have now added “Hole and Tree” as a management expertise and are offering PGD in this field. Not everyone is happy though, following the announcement by IIM-B the Dean of the school Mr Pankaj Chandra has stepped down.

      Cities like Mumbai and Delhi are planning to try this technique in a controlled locality to see how it works out for them. This might be the last yet most powerful move by Congress to continue their regime in India. Only time would say how “Green” thier prospect is in this country.