Category Archives: Men

Wedding Bells!!! Uhh What? Where’s my BFG?

Posted on by
8

(Still wondering what a BFG is? read on…)

I was there, standing at a railway crossing. I can walk across the rails and go ahead on the road, on my way, where ever it can take me. But, No! I park my bike and start walking on the railway line. Minutes and hours pass by. I come across green meadows, houses, hills; it was a timeless journey. No thirst, no hunger, no pain, nothing. It was me, the railway line and the view. I don’t know how far i was walking. The sun was there shining high up in the sky. He never moved. I was lost in my thoughts.

It has been quite sometime that I’ve started hearing some strange sounds. It sounded like the ringing bell of an old steam-locomotive. Ting…. Ting…. Ting….

I was high on my spirits. After a long walk, i have a train to go forward. This was like the ultimate dream. Or am i dreaming? I stop to turn around. What the…. my legs are glued to the ground. I cant move!!!. I was struggling like hell to free myself. Behind me i could see the dust and smoke rising up in the horizon. What ever it may be, the dream was just about to turn ugly. My heart’s beating a 1000 beats per minute.

I look behind. I see a shining far behind. Its small, its fast and its coming my way. I’m struggling like hell. I hear the bell ringing even closer. I turn behind… What the #$#%^&^(*(&)(*_)… a pandit with neatly shaved head, big pony tail flying behind him, ringing his bell with one hand and a ‘portable’-fireplace (might be some new 21st century invention).. running towards me. What on heaven’s sake is that?

“Son”, holy crap!!! its my dad, standing to my right.

“What… How… Why…”

“Son”, jeeezzzz, its my mom, standing to my left.

“What… What are you guys doing here?”

“Tie the knot my son!!!”, they both say that with absolute precision that can even leave the most meticulously synchronized systems to shame.

“Tie what?”, i look in front of me and i almost faint. I’m holding a ‘mangalsuthru’ and there is this girl standing in front of me. I don’t know jack shit about her. Is this a right time to at least ask her name?. What am i doing …

Ting ting ting ting ting ting ting ting ting ting …….

I was still sweating and breathing heavily as i jumped out of my bed. Checked around me and all round my flat just to make sure that i didn’t really wake up after my first-night… or worse 20 years after my marriage. So why do i get the feeling that this is what is going to happen to me????

Parental-pressure is high! By parental-pressure i mean damn crazy pressure that can cause you to go sleepless for days at end. If i thought that could only be the only one which can cause unrest in my serene life, i was wrong. There was… No… there IS a far more greater pressure that will eventually get happy bachelors to get married. Its scientifically called Peer-Pressure a.k.a Friends.

Celibacy is not my way of life. But Yes, face it! Its your FRIENDS who will eventually get you married. They will all be there. They are the greatest treasure that u can have. Even long after you are gone, you will live within your friends. ‘Gone’ as in not like you are dead. ‘Gone’ as in, you go on-site and they will still talk about you as, ‘Kaminaa Saala!!! On-site se kuch nahi leke aayega. Fakeeerrrr…’. You live now, not after you’re dead.

They are there. But have you ever though about what happens when they all eventually face the running-pandit, gets run over by him, never gets a chance to wake up and lives the ‘dream’. Oops you’re in trouble.

They all get married and start their family. They no longer enjoy the jokes that you shared. Even worse they even reach a point where they tell you, “Dude don’t talk about all that, she doesn’t like all that”. Worse still, his wife hates you and more worse, her husband starts having feelings for you.

Oops! your friend will change. They all change eventually and you are left alone. You just cant go and make more friends because, the ‘make-great-friends’ list gets shorter with age. Soon you will find yourself without the great friends that you used to hand out with, no new friends and you are being treated like an adult where ever you go. And i believe the later stage is definitely not where i want to find myself at.

So now there is even more pressure on you to get married…

Whats that… Ting ting ting ting ting ting ting ting ting ting… Where is that BFG (Big Fucking Gun), i’m gonna kill that pandit…

WTF… its full platoon of relatives and friends marching towards me. Dad and Mom holding a garland each, friends with kids and its then i realize that the pandit was just a side-kick.

I just stand there like a scapegoat as they dance around me… Ting ting ting ting ting ting ting ting ting ting…

The Bad Day That I Loved…

Posted on by
11

The recipe for a perfect bad day was in place. I slept through the morning alarm, woke up at 11AM and missed the meeting at 10. To top things up, i woke up with a bad headache. Hangover from last night! 2 large vodkas with coke with 2 cubes of ice, that’s all that i had. Plus the fact that i went out on a weekday for a drive with the gang. I wasn’t home till 3 in the morning.

Well, i sat there on the bed contemplating what to do now? Obviously i had to get dressed asap and reach office. In the mean time i had to think of some real good reason to tell my manager why i was late. Cant tell him that i was working late, because the release was done and there was not much of work left. Ok, the most used and reused reason always works, ‘I wasn’t feeling well, i was having a bad headache!’. Thinking that will bail me out i had a quick shower, dressed and reached office.

As if i had a clue, work piled on me when i got my senses back. I thought about the book, “Who Moved My Cheese?” by Dr. Spencer Johnson, now i should be Haw. How can i be Haw? Screw it, let me get through the day first. Just want to get back home. Some how i managed to push myself through what was left of the day. Remember, i reached office at 12PM. Finally after managing to stage some ‘i’m feeling sick’ drama i was out of office by 5PM. Please don’t ask me how, but i managed it.

Whats next? Took my bike and was out of Embassy Golf Links, on to Intermediate Ring Road and i was headed towards K-Town. Hmmm.. none of my friends are going to be free till 7PM. Not even my jobless sweetheart, my pseudo-wife in the group, who only has time to cut her hair. Someone should tell her that at this rate she would go hairless in a month or less. The fact is that, that someone should be Mr. India, not because he can charm her into not doing it, because she is the bully of the group and we all are, to be frank, scared to tell her this. That even applies to her ‘real’ boyfriend too.

This did bring a smile on my face, which quickly faded into something like – Ooops i’m screwed again – when i realized that i jumped the signal at Sony World. Throttled to the max and even before the cowboys of Bangalore Traffic Police could jump in front of my bike, i had crossed e-zone. Hmmm where do i go next. Let me go to Forum. I’ll go to Landmark and roam around till everyone is free and its time when the ‘gang’ can meet up.

I was feeling much better compared to how i had started the day. It was returning to normalcy. 30 min in Landmark and i was bored to my karmic senses. Oh crap, let me have a coffee now. I went all the way to CCD and ordered for a Mocha with an extra espresso shot. That ought to cheer me up a bit. Waiting … waiting … waiting … looking at the chicken-tikka sandwich, thinking over what had happened till now, i lost track of my environment and was cursing me in my head when,

“What a bad a day!!!”

“Tell me about it…”, i replied.

Oops. Did i just say that out loud. With ninja-reflexes and blood rushing to my head and beads of sweat forming on my forehead, i looked to the side, to find those beautiful hazel-eyes looking quizzically at me. The ninja ran for cover, more blood rushed to my head and i was sweating so badly that i could have used a shower at that point.

Continue reading →

Love Story 2008 – High Cohesion, High Coupling !

Posted on by
6

Alluwahlia Singh, the malayali, is a born techie. He speaks a dialect of English that only an Itanium-based server can decode. He is destined to be one of the greatest programming minds of his time. At
the age of 15, he got his first computer, and ever since it was his only love. They spent sleepless nights traveling through the endless world of computers and technology.

Some say, when he snores you can actually decode it as a binary code to print Fibonacci series, infinitely. When asked, he would say even before he could ever perfect the program or rather his snore, he had to wake up. Yes, he was that kind of guy.

It was the summer of 2008, May 27th. At work, Alluwahlia was deeply lost in thought. He was about to crack the Public-Key encryption and prove it as faulty. His 7th sense (the 6th sense was used for coding, so his actual 6th sense switched to the next available slot) registered the transient state of divine matter. He was startled by the effect that it left on his senses. He felt something hard in his pants. As he checked what it was, he promptly found his lost keys. His friends were amazed at the transition. Alluwahlia couldn’t believe it. So he began backtracking the logs that he had collected.

She was never meant to be a techie. Her delicate fingers were not the best for crunching keys, nor were those hazel eyes meant to look at the monitor. She was caring, affectionate, loving and sweet. Swaroopa was made by the Gods with love. She was everything that a guy could ever ask. And they say she causes half of the traffic jams in Bangalore. Yes she can’t drive if her life depended on it!

Still in the summer of 2008, May 27th. At work, Swaroopa couldn’t take the heat from the CPU anymore. She decided to take a break. If she hadn’t decided to go out at exactly 3:55:36 pm (milisecond precision is unavailable at the time of writing this post) her life would have remained the same. But things were destined to change. On her way out, she spots something — or rather someone — all engrossed in the work. (Un)fortunately, that thing — or rather he — was the most beautiful creature she had ever seen in her life. Men at Work always turned her ‘ON’. In a second, she stopped, glanced at him, and left a sigh wishing he was her’s.

Little did she realize that the butterfly-effect of the ‘sigh’ would change the course of her life for ever.

In his abode, he scrambled through what he had. His 7th sense told him he was close. Yes there it was a message at around the same time he felt the ‘force’. It read, “I wish he was mine!”. The 6th sense went into overdrive and nearly took over his 7th sense as he figured out that it was a ‘Sigh’ and it came from — his heart skipped beats — on a trembling screen he read “S…W…A…R…O…O…P…A…SWAROOPA”. He trusted his computer and his calculation.

Jumping out of his seat, he ran out and hopped on to his blue Bajaj Enticer. Sensing the ‘master’, the bike auto starts and greets him, with a “Hello Allu!” in a female voice. Ignoring it all, he punches
something into his mobile and with the help of a divine navigational service (known to mankind and lesser mortals as Google Maps) he triangulates her position on the Vodafone network.

He was motionless as reality hit him. “What? She lives a kilometer away?”

Referring to his bike he mouths the command. “Bluey — take me to your master’s love”.

And loverboy on aforementioned Bluey sped — actually rocketed — towards NGV from Maharaja even before the cops in Bangalore could go “yenu speedu saar!”

Meanwhile, dreaming of the techno-man she saw at work, Swaroopa was lost in her own world, when she heard the roar of a bike. Looking down from her balcony, she couldn’t believe her eyes. Yes it’s Alluwahlia. She looked at him and gave a ‘sign’ that almost crashed his system. But he decoded it with the 16-bit processor from the car that was parked nearby.

The message read, “Darling without you I’m NULL. You complete my C Programs with a semi-colon. I will always return(0) when i’m with you. Never will I ever cause any segmentation faults. My Love, My CPU, please initiate the steps to de-allocate me from his 32-bit space and re-allocate me in your giga-byte heart. assert(“Please”);”

Using the advanced predictive text of his E71 phone, he scripted the perfect Perl script to get her down. That was the beginning of the most wonderful love story in the techie world.

His friends found them drunk in each others love, and also found them drunk in each other drinks, at the Legends of Rock. She was laughing non-stop and he, by her side, talking about his latest hack.

They played Wall.E and Eve in the shambles of Kanakpura Road.

Their fun was short lived. He got a call from the parent process and had to leave in a short time. With a 98% utilization of his memory, he left Swaroopa back and flew. And with memory filled of love — virtual memory inclusive — she waits indefinitely, a blocking call without a timeout, for the return invocation.

return(0);

P. S.: However, as most projects in Bangalore, by the time this blog post was scripted, Swaroopa fell for the writer. Alluwahlia self-discontinued himself and is now an obsolete, end-of-life legacy system with no interfaces or support.

(This post has been co-authored with 2s)

Single, Sex and Marriage

Posted on by
8

Of late, especially after i booked my flat, my folks are after me, pressurizing every bit inside me to get married. Well, thought you should know, i’ve been a bachelor and i had my share of heart breaks and breakings. After the last one, i just decided to settle with the drunk chicks at the pubs or rather get’em drunk. But how the hell am i supposed to know that my folks were having such plans for me. Trust me, its tough to be a single, good looking, smart dark bachelor down south (i love vanity). The nosy neighbors and relatives makes sure that the juice is sucked out of you. Damn you Suckers!!!

The hard part is, you don’t get to choose or say a word beyond telling yes/no to the girls that they parade in front of you. I consider myself lucky, some guys i *knew* never even had that.

Son! THIS IS YOUR BRIDE! Marry HER!

Yes dad!!!

I mean whats the whole pressure thing about? I’ve been a really well spoiled bachelor so far, waking up and sleeping with the timings of people half-way round the world, eating anything that i could lay my hands on – stale breads, half-cooked spicy chicken curry that cleans your food-track once a month, Domino’s pizzas that run for 2 days etc. etc.. Now i’m being even more responsible by booking a flat (i need to mention that it was again pressure from folks). Now that i have a place for myself, the next thing that i need to concentrate is my career, blogging, make some money etc etc. I’m not ready to be tied down.

What are the odds, that the girl they pick for you is not gonna make your life miserable? Dad’s got a comeback for that too, “At least both the families are there to help you out with that”. Then why cant i just find someone with whom i’m comfortable with? Facts to be laid straight, yes they did take care of you for a long time, but do they have to pick up your partner too.

Am i ready to take the responsibility? Hell no! May be i would like to get married, after i know that person a bit more. If not, then jumping into marriage is no different than having sex, with her and your parent’s consent!

As a closing note, the last conversation with my dad ended with him telling me this -

“As a bachelor, you live like a King and die like a Dog, Once married, you live like a Dog and die like a King”

No idea who put that in his head, but i sure did got it out. Even my mom was left gaping after that dialogue.