Having a blast ...

We came home this evening after a visit to my wife's Infosys campus, my office,Dagdu Seth and a shopping spree @Pune central.. After an hours slumber we got up and were having tea .. 7.30 p.m or thereabouts ..

My brother was on a call when he suddenly exclaimed "there have been serial bomb blasts in Ahmedabad".I guess his friend who was on call had told him.. I was like "what da f**k ??"

I dashed for the tv remote, switched it on,tuned into ndtv news .."Breaking News .. 16 minor Blasts in Ahmedabad".. All of us were instantaneously glued to the set ..

For the next ten minutes no one spoke ..there was one fatality and several injured in the blasts .. i scanned through the remaining news channels ..CNN IBN ..India tv Star news .. trying to fathom the depth of the situation ..the next twenty minutes just saw an increase in the deaths,about 17 of them and a 100 injured.

Mixed with feelings of anger,disgust,disgrace,pity,empathy,shame I pondered about the situation of an Indian citizen ..How safe was he when he leaves his place for work,for lunch,for shopping,for buying vegetables even.Just yesterday there were 6-7 blasts in Bangalore,India's present silicon valley.And now Ahmedabad,the most sensitive city on communal grounds..From the looks and inferences,it was a meticulously planned act, some spokesperson also attributed it to be the work of an islamic students outfit SIMI.No one knows who has done it actually and I'm sure no one will find out and be convicted,as our history suggests.Besides,instead of the gardener cutting the root of the weed,hes just gonna trim the leaves and water it to ensure his job is still in place.

Whatever be the case,which world are we living in today?? a world of terror,fright, politics,inflation ...Post 2000 the graph is sky-rocketing to an inevitable implosion of human existence as a consequence of such activities by people of stained souls,lustful minds and misguided brains.Excellent examples in "Khuda ke Liye" and "Aamir".

But what do we do ? We watch the movies,debate and again get in line for the rat race on Monday mornings .. you never attempt to contribute even a nano-eth for a corrective action.Yes reactions aplenty but no further action.And then after a week or a month of the event we are all set for the weekend party.Shiny clothes,friends and alcohol..rockin music ...

Have a blast my friend ..

A beautiful day ..

"Umhhhhhh .. what the hell ??" I said .. waking up at the sound of my cell phone alarm ..6.53 a.m ..

Time to get ready for work ...

I hate working ..

I hate working in this freakin place ..

"wait..I'm not in office yet ..or am I ??" .. probably the remnant of a nightmare..

Joining both the palms of my hands I pulled them close to my eyes .This little action had been taught by my father as a gesture to remember god before the day started and thank him for another beautiful day to embrace ..

Beautiful day ?? how come anyone knows its gonna be a beautiful day ..hmm ..I wonder...

I tried to switch on the geyser to heat up the water for my bath ..checked for the red light for re-assurance .. no red light ..I realized that the ceiling fan in my room wasn't working either and I fiddled on with the switches to check if there was a power cut ...

Curses !! ... no electricity .. and we want India to be a developed nation !! How often had this happened ... every week we would have outages like these for a couple of hours ..

I came out of the bedroom and headed for the balcony..raining cats n dogs .. Raining ?? In december ?? One crazy mood of mother nature ... I suddenly remembered I had to catch a bus at 7.45 ...it was 7.05 a.m now.The thought of taking bath in cold water in this chilly december morning was enough to remind me what a start I was gonna have to this beautiful day !!

Brushing my teeth I opened the main door to check if the milkman had delivered ...I almost spit the froth out of my mouth in disgust as I found the milk packet badly mutilated and a pool of half a litre of milk lying right outside my apartment door.Gonna leave it to the sweepers to take care of the mess ..Goddamn felines ..those animals sure know how to get their food..I closed the door to realize theres gonna be no tea for me this morning before I leave for office. Ah ..what a beautiful day !!

Oh..office ..7.15 a.m ...running outta time ..having rinsed my mouth I gathered my towel and sprinted for the bathroom .. now not sure how to start with, I gathered enough guts in 5 minutes to shift the lever to the right side of the mixer for the shower to turn on .. aaaaaaarggh ... a million cold arrows hit me with full force with the only armour I had being my skin ... after an enduring 5 minutes I stepped out of the bath..

7.25 a.m .. Panic !! headed straight for my cupboard to wear something for the day .. damn ... no good t-shirts .. no good shirts either.. pick something dude, pick anything !! None of them seem to pacify me,but I had to make a choice .. a light green Arrow shirt and a dark-green Blackberry corduroy ..will do..will have to..

7.35 a.m ... The pick-up was a good ten minutes walk from my place..at least..and wow,its raining tsunamis today !! What a beautiful day ..

Next,the contact lenses ... where's my lens case ? OMG .."forget the lens,just wear the specs instead !!" the inner me lashed out .. after the "spectacle" I headed for the shoe-rack ...Damn .. dirty bitches..no time to polish them .. I know I'm gonna miss the buss today ..

7.40 a.m ... T-5 minutes to pick-up ... can't make it .. well am I forgetting something ?? Oooh, my watch,the keys and my wallet.. scram I did, dumping all of it in my bag ..

One more thing ...

I rushed to the bedroom to kiss my wife goodbye ... a peck on the cheek n she woke up..

Still sleepy, she asked "huh .. where are you going ?"

I smiled,partly in jealousy as she had the privilege of an afternoon shift and partly sadistic coz she had to face the same cold shower torture today ...and replied..

"to office... my darling" .. "Have to rush now ..u have a great day honey(with a smirk on my face) ..I'm running late,gonna miss the bus .. had no tea ..might take the car out" ..the car ?? wait.. I pondered .

There's hardly enough fuel in the car .. Goddammit !! and another sickening thought..the gas stations closed today because of the possible price hike to be decided by the ministry ..

Defeated,I started heading for the door with the inevitable thought of having to pay 100 bucks for the rick till the office and apprehensive about what else could happen to me during the rest of the day ..A beautiful day indeed ..sigh !!

"Woh .. wait a minute sweetie" said my wife ...

"Now what ??", an exasperated me ..

"Today is Saturday !!"

"Wha..??"

"I said,today is Saturday ... a holiday !! Are u okay honey ??"

A few bewildered seconds later I replied... "Oh , yes .. today is Saturday ...and oh,what a beautiful day !!"

I smiled .. 'Thank you dad, thank you god !!' ..

The Oil saga ..

As most of us know that global oil prices play an important role in our life influencing even the smallest of our decisions, I've come across a small post to view the current oil price which may help us act accordingly for whatever reasons ..

The price displayed is in d.p.b (dollars per barrel)

Cheers ...

WTI Crude Oil $61.88 ▲1.06   1.71% 2025.05.13 end-of-day

"The (What the hell's..) Happening"

Date : Saturday 14th June 2008
Place : Fame Adlabs,Inorbit Mall, Malad(W)
Time : 11.15 p.m
Reason : The much awaited Shyamalan's "The Happening".

The only reason I prefer night shows is because I enjoy a good movie with a reasonably good (silent) crowd and seldom miss any dialogues on the late shows.But for once I wished it never happened .. me booking tickets..inviting a friend of mine to watch it ... and claiming that its gonna be a good one,just to convince him to give me company for the 11.15 night show ... I truly wish it just didnt happen..

What started off with people on Central Park,NY slowing down and coming to a standstill,was enough to captivate the audience and then was expected to take them on a spine-chilling story having a dramatic end with a big-bang revelation of theories explaining why it happened and how it got resolved.But alas,for a buff like me nothing close happened and just one good scene or a coupl'a scenes aint enough to pacify me and make me applaud the director/story-writer for his work.

I guess Mark Wahlbergs character(Elliot) is totally wasted for a guy whos done movies like "Shooter","The Departed","The Italian job" and "We own the night".I dunno why the hell did he choose to play a character who has nothing to do except run throughout the movie with his wife(Alma) and his friends kiddo(Jess) finally to remain unaffected by the neurotoxin and live happily ever after.There were only 4-5 main characters in the film and they did everything except act for nuts,like the stranded army man,the botanist and his wife who had nothing to do except give Mark n company a lift with a couple of hamburgers to munch upon...The movie was abundant in cliche dialogues and even people like "my dear friend" who accompanied me(considering the fact that hes a sucker for movies) could predict some of them ...

“We lost Contact….
With whom ??…
Everyone”…..

Some scenes were fairly good,namely the one where the jeep carrying Mark's friend comes to a halt after the occupants get contaminated with the neuro-toxin and suddenly throttles towards a big tree for head-on collision.The impact shown was simply marvellous.The other being the construction workers free falling into ground-zero while their co-workers just keep watching helplessly.

All in all,I guess even Shyamalan had no idea how to conclude the story,which he thinks has been built up stupendously over a couple of "wind blowing over the trees/fields" shots,and he thus calls for a news flash with a professor from Carnegie melon to throw some spiritual/ecological explanation for the same and asking humans to be cautious with how they deal with nature.

Rest is history,and I prefer it to remain that way ...Much ado about nothing I say ....

To sum it up,thanks for spoiling the night,Mr.Night ......