Evil Eyes ..

Evil eyes won and I now spend 150+ minutes travelling to work as compared to 10-15 minutes. Since every single experience / knowledge has to be facebook-ed, I am also doing the same, here are some travel tips from me.

Bannerghatta to Malleswaram travel tips (applicable to other routes as well J ) 

• If you are a heavy drinker like me (I drink 1-2 litres of water every morning) then ensure you drain it out before you begin your travel. Bannerghatta road to Malleswaram has very few public toilets and they are situated at strategic locations (pun intended) where you cannot stop your car (it might be towed away)
• Do not spend too much time looking at what other travelers do, I realized Bangalore is full of hardcore nose diggers (Government Buses, Indica or luxury cars, does not matter). I guess with the tinted glass being banned, this private affair has now become public
• Do spend time looking at the various retail shops…lot of interesting advertising material, there is one ad that I remember, the image was : “Burger being served in a Plantain leaf with Filter coffee”, the tag line was something which meant “We are new but the tradition is intact”.  Also, I notice that South-India is probably the only place where many male models sans any jewellery are used for Jewellery ads (Madhavan, Vijay, Mammoty, Puneet Raj kumar, etc all sell gold ornaments), not sure why ?
•  If you are not driving then apart from the regular conference calls or office work etc, you can read a lot during your 20+ km travel in Bangalore (thanks to the traffic), you can finish reading all emails and then TOI, Bangalore Times, Economic Times and still find time for more. Having a magazine or a book or a iPad/Kindle is not a bad idea  
• Retrospect !! you never know you might get some tangible output. BTW, spending time in office as a PM has its side effects. During one of my retrospect sessions, I created  a action plan  to organize my closet, I go home and the closet was already organized by my spouse. I was again reminded that planning is over-rated (!!!), it is many a times better to just do it…
• If you are driving, explore different routes on your way back, it is sometimes fun to get lost and find your way home, it gives a sense of victory (anyway we lose all other battles at home, so some sense of victory is good for your ego ). By the way Bangalore GPS, the guys whom we ask for directions are quite funny, they always ask you to take a right / left from some dead end : Dead end-u Right-u or Left-u !!  When I shared this joke with my wife she didn’t understand the joke and thought there was nothing wrong, she is now a true Bangalorean J
• Once in a while strike a conversation with your driver, most of them have some interesting quotes or some insights on life. One day – 
• Naresh (Taxi driver) asked me – Sir are you buying a property?
• Me – yes, kind of
• Naresh – Will you be taking Loan sir ?
• Me – Yes of course
• Naresh –You take a housing loan assuming you will live for 20 yrs and then you buy an life-cover fearing death ! Funny right ?
• Me – Life is all about hope yaar. May be this investment will help my family. You must also invest
• Naresh – if life offers you a chance to use this money to chase your dreams instead of investing on a piece of land, what will you do ? If you realize that death can happen any time, would you give up your dreams for a false sense of security ? Don’t you think we should show our true colors to the world before we die ?
• Me ( Not answering any of his questions, I asked him) - have you tried life coaching as a profession ? people earn millions by talking like you, you might just want to add some breathing techniques as part of your course offering. You never know you might soon be - “Naru the Guru”
• Naresh – why are you joking sir ? I need to feed my family of 4, I am happy driving my taxi
• we laughed !

Enough of tips from me.  I am still trying to figure out the cure for evil eye, may be a road side parrot or a celebrity tarot reader (are they different ?) can offer a solution ….

Surprise Me..

Many a times we feel like stopping this world and jump into some other planet. Valentines day is one such dreadful day because your wife/girl friend is waiting for some surprise but as usual you don't even remember about this day. BTW, do we really need a set date to celebrate Love? My boss (that is what I call my wife) believes that, by doing special things on special occasions the day will remain etched in our memory forever and will make our life worth living. Also these set dates give us a reason to pause and celebrate an occasion in a otherwise monotonous life. Whatever be her philosophy and whether I like it or not, I have no choice but to follow it. So in my case, ever since the courtship days I have managed to spend most of the valentine days with my girl. Over the years, we have had dinner by Thames river, lunches in some good restaurants/pubs near the gateway of India, roamed around in Atlantic city, camped in coorg, used sulekha.com to send gifts when I was out of India without her, and during my initial work years I religiously travelled to Mumbai from Mangalore around v-day to be with my boss. Of all the days, the memories from my first V-day still remains quite fresh ..

Expressing love never came naturally to me, probably due to my family's culture but my boss is opposite of that. For our first valentines day, the request from my boss was "Surprise me" and given my background I had no clue what it meant. But one thing I knew is, i would definitely need some additional cash. So for over 2 to 3 weeks I started saving my pocket money (rather saving my father's hard earned money), cut down on Kunjvihar VadaPav, government buses took precedence over Auto rickshaw, sacrificed old monk and cannon 10K, stopped visiting pool/snooker parlors, and religiously took my lunch box to college. Financially I was all set. The only good shop in my locality was Archies, I picked up a teddy bear and few other mushy stuff from there, and was on the way to railway station. On the way, there were quite a few vendors selling heart shaped red balloons and  roses. I picked up both and jumped into the first class coach of a Mumbai CST bound local train. Within few minutes in the train, I realized I looked like pakka idiot, imagine me with red roses + teddy bear in one hand and heart shaped balloon in the other and that too in a crowded train. I came back to my senses and let the balloons fly off and dumped the teddy bear + red roses into my shoulder bag. Anyway, reached the destination, met her, we exchanged whatever we got for each other, spent almost the whole time in a pub cum restaurant, and roamed around for sometime before we went back to our respective homes. The day was not as boring as my writing, I didn't do anything special to surprise my boss but it was still fun and a lovely day

Now a days my boss does not say "Surprise Me", if i ask her "what do you want Honey", the answer is usually "Nothing". Thanks to all the forwarded emails about women, by now I know that "Nothing" means something and it is not just the "normal" something, it means I need to be on my toes and ensure i do something different. Finally, it still means "Surprise Me" ...:-)

a true story..

25 Jan 2012 7:10 AM, me and son in my Apartment balcony

Son : Why is that uncle sitting in the balcony and sleeping ?

Me : He is not sleeping, he is meditating

Son : what is meditating ?

Me : it helps you calm down and it cleans your body from inside. Just by using proper breathing techniques you can ensure your mind and body is full of energy . (I was tempted to say Meditation is “Calm”Sutra but decided to mind my language)

Son : Just by doing proper breathing, uncle's body gets clean from inside? he doesn't have to do any potty ???

Me : Noooo, you didn't understand

Son : then explain me again

Me : look you have to get ready for school, we will talk when you are back

25 Jan 2012  1:30 PM , me in office , Phone rings

Son: Appa i am back, my teacher says - Meditation is sleeping with open mind

Me : Brilliant !!! so you got your answer

Son : No… how do you sleep with open mind ? What is mind ?

Me : do I look like Sri Sri Ravishankar by any chance?

Son : what ?

Me : Nothing !! how was your school ?

Son : i got 3 stars in my english dictation (cent percent marks) and tomorrow is republic day, you have to take me to Amoeba for games and also some toys from decathlon

Me : Done, now keep the phone, i will see you in the evening ..Phew (thanking my stars that he forgot about the mind question)

25 Jan 2012 3:30 pm, me in office , Phone rings

Son : Appa, There is some new game on Active Sports. it is called Sky Kity, i won some Zeetos after playing that.

Me : ok good, but it is not Sky Kity, it is Sky City

Son : No it is Kity, "C" - "I" - "T" - "Y", Kity

Me : No , "C" - "I" - "T" - "Y" is city

Son : then why "C" - "A" - "T" is CAT and not CEEAT ?

Me : Look you have Phonetics classes in school right, you will get it in few days

Son : what is the spelling of Phonetics?

Me : P H O N E T I C S

Son : No it should be F O N E T I C S

Me :  it is just like the spelling of PHONE my son

Son : PHONE spelling is F O N E, check “Vodafone “

Me : I have to get into some call, will explain when i am back

25 Jan 2012 4:00 pm, me in office

I am scared to go home

Happy Republic Day friends ! Enjoy with your kid(s) ...