It happens only in India 2

Its a rat race out here. And you are a part of it whether you want to accept it or not.

If you are a small electronics shop owner by the street, with no big brand backing you, you'd probably relate to this incident. But it simply left me speechless.

I walk into a store marked Nokia Priority Dealer, to replace my almost dead phone batteries. The man at the counter certainly knew his business and one look at my phone and he says "Battery badalna padega!!", confirming my suspicion. The Original Nokia battery replacement would come to Rs 750 he said. So then i asked for the cheapest, most basic handset that i could get and apparently i could get handsets for nearly Rs 1200.

Following my line of thought, the man said "Saab yeh handset kaafi accha hai! Aap Battery badal lo". I could get local batteries that would do the job, just for Rs 200, he said. He also went on to point me to the shop next door, where i could get the local batteries.

Thanking him for his help, I proceeded to the shop next door to see if that indeed was an option. A boy sat at the counter, and once i explained my problem to him, he said he'll be right back. A few minutes later, the man from the first store (the Nokia priority dealer, who had redirected me here) walked in. In one swift motion he slid across the counter. Without batting an eyelid, in the most solemn tone asked me "kya Problem hai sir". I was speechless. He did not even pretend that he had seen me a few minutes earlier. In his now familiar solemn voice, he went to explain that i needed a battery replacement!!.

Well!! You have to do what you have to do to survive. But this was the best i have seen. Certainly an "it happens only in india moment!!"

Weekend, Athadu and a Birthday!!!

Come weekend and Indianmasti were back in action with a Desi movie in Chinatown Cinema. The flavour of the week was Telugu.

The 'gang' had decided to accompany our 'Golti'(GB's as we TB's/MB's prefer to call them) friend Praveen to the movie. For reasons inexplicable i decided to join the 'gang' though i dont understand a single word of Telugu. Not the brightest of decisions that i have taken. But i have been happy to dismiss it away as one of my 'moments' of stupidity. We all have 'em.
Anyways we did have our share of fun.

The entire hall was filled with GB's. GB's chattering away in Telugu. GB's hooting for Mahesh Babu. GB's whistling away for Trisha. GB's laughing away at Telugu Jokes. GB's taking sly glances at the opposite sex. GB's eating spicy 'molaga bhajji's'. Man, it was a full house.

In the end, we had great fun and Babu!!! movie chaala bagundhi.
Athadu had rocked!!!

Birthday parties seem to get people's blood boiling. I suspect some even managed to do a few extra sit ups that day in preparation for the evening.
Subbu took charge of the evening, preparing a smashing dinner. Despite it being a working day the next day People came, we cut a cake and they kicked ass. We'll go anywhere to kick ass!!! Wont we?? It was a smashing evening. Thanks guys!!

And meanwhile, I managed to turn a year older. Sigh!!

Weekend Alas!!

From complete joblessness to a maximum workload, the shift happened smoothly, silently and extremely swiftly, inflicting a killer blow on all my plans, time and everything else.

So Friday was indeed very welcome, with prospects of an AZAADI night at Inflation, an indian disc. But ofcourse it took quite a while before i realised that my plans had been changed. Some issues that cropped up in our testing kept us at work till 2 AM on Saturday.
Things were just as good on Saturday, with me ending up in a theatre in the evening watching "Mangal Pandey".

The movie by no stretch of imagination seemed like a product of 15 years of research and 2 years of production. Aamir khan's splendid acting albeit the movie had little or nothing to offer. It was good in patches, but definitely did not deliver as expected. I probably raised the bar a bit too high. AR Rehman has done a good job as usual, but the songs were mostly unnecessary in the context of the movie and definitely got their timing wrong. So all in all, yet another movie where the less said the better.

Things showed no signs of improvement on Sunday, with me spending a good portion of my time in the office.

On the bright side, we did manage to get ourselves tickets for the AR Rehman show in Rod Laver Arena in September.

The Proverbial Haircut

It was every Desi’s nightmare I was told, when I landed here. But somehow I seemed to have sidestepped it. Rather, I had been amply warned to be able to avoid it. So my decent Indian haircut, albeit ancient prevailed for a few months/haircuts.

But last Monday was a day of mood swings. Monday morning, I decided I was sick and hence decided to stay at home. Was a wonderful day. Got up late. Read a book for a while. Watched some TV. Cooked. Slept. And then, it happened.

At around 4 I decided to go out for a walk. The idea was to go the the City Library. There was some talk on some obscure topic that seemed interesting at that point in time. Anyways, the fact is I never got to the library that day.

On my way there it started drizzling. And all of a sudden, I felt I had a little too much hair on my head. I guess that was when I decided it was time to visit the Barber.

I should have realized the minute I got there that things weren’t going the way they were supposed to. The sweet chick in the shop, had been replaced by some guy. I am pretty much certain that that was when I lost interest in the haircut altogether. Or may be it was the temptation to go for a haircut I wouldn’t want to have back home.

My usually lengthy explanation of the type of haircut I wanted was replaced by a just a number. I was given a choice of 1 to 4. 1 being the shortest and 4 being the longest.

I chose 4. Whats left on my head now is the remnants of my battle with number 4. :)

19th June --> Madagascar to Anniyan...

After another Saturday at work, Madagascar seemed to be just about the right way to relax. A nice light hearted animation flick.
But Madagascar does not come anywhere close to Shrek or Ice Age or some of the other animation flicks. But with a walk down Chapel Street on a Saturday night, the trip to Jam Factory was well worth it for more than one reason. The Director has got himself a few animals from a New York zoo and has no clue what to do with them. It was funny and witty in bits and pieces.

Sunday, was the day for ‘Anniyan’.

Much awaited by many, Anniyan was released in Australia just a day after its release in India (Or probably on the same day). Many cinemas in Melbourne ran special shows over the weekend.

The Chinatown Cinema on Bourke had a show at 4pm on Sunday, which we caught up with. Arriving there at around 3:30, we were absolutely amazed at seeing a mini Madras on Bourke Street. Mama’s, Mami’s, Thatha’s and paati’s seemed to have sprouted out of thin air. The air was buzzing with Tamil and all of a sudden we felt at home. Yet it was different.

The movie was expected to be a ‘superhit’ with Vikram in the lead role and Vivek being himself as usual and Harris Jayaraj providing the music.

The show began to a packed audience amidst whistles and howls. We were transported straight back to India.

To say it did not live up to the hype created around it, would be an apt way to sum it up. The music by Harris Jeyaraj, whilst being enjoyable, did not leave any lasting impression. In short, I don’t think I remember a single song in the movie. It just left you with a faint suspicion that Rehman would have done a better job any day.

Like any other B/Kollywood flick, it seems to have been targeted at the masses. But this one strives to convey a message or rather inspire them. The Director seems unsure of whether to stick to the message in the movie or to give the masses what they want. On the one hand he attempts at conveying a message and on the other he provides you with the usual masala and songs at unwanted places. Well, I would advise you to leave your brains behind if you intend to go watch this flick.
This movie has its share of laughs though, with Vivek not missing a single opportunity to entertain. The scene with Vikram singing ‘Manasa Sancharare’ in the train to woo his girl was just too good. It almost had me rolling on the floor laughing…

That brings another weekend to an end. Well almost, there’s still Aus vs Eng and the F1 to catch up with before hitting the office tomorrow.
Aussies are in for a thrashing from England. Tottering at 63/4, after a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Bangladeshis, its looking like a double whammy for them.

Queen's Birthday - 13th June

At last we had another long weekend. It’s a great concept to shift a holiday to the end of the week so that you get that well needed long break rather than a holiday right in the middle of the week. This time it was the Queen’s Birthay. I’m not sure if it was a co-incidence that the Birthday was conterminous with the weekend or whether it was conveniently shifted. Will need to look that one up. But all that mattered in the end was that it was a long weekend.

So we decided to drive. And it decided to rain.

The rain god had apparently decided to keep us company. And we couldn’t get rid of him the whole day. And when we eventually did, we did manage to find a worthy replacement.

Of course, we had no intention of reaching any place in particular. But I guess someone at somepoint decided we’d be going to bucham caves, cos that’s where we ended up.

The Bucham caves are essentially underground caves (actually they are inside a mountain and not exactly underground) formed by a river that used to flow through it. The water level in the river over the years has gone down several meters leaving the caves as they are now. The special part of the caves were the stalactites and stalagmites that were gradually filling them up. An hour of crouching, crawling, climbing, ‘clicking’( not forgetting to smile) and plenty of dry and wet stalactites and stalagmites and a little bit of geography peppered with some history got us to the exit of the caves.

The rain god was absolutely faithful.

It was then that the GPS system in the car came on its own. The next destination was to be Lakes Entrance, a 40 minute drive from Bucham Caves. But apparently it didn’t find any favour with the car’s GPS System. One and a half hours of driving , and the GPS System maintained that we needed to go another 130 kms in the same direction. And we persisted, proving once again that common sense isn’t so common after all.

Eventually we did end up asking and were advised to travel around 150kms back in the exact opposite direction. It was 6:15 PM and dark as hell.

And that was when the rain god decided to call it a day. But he soon had a replacement – Mr.Fog, who was happy to keep us company all the way back to Melbourne.

An hour’s peering and praying and also driving, got us to Lakes Entrance. And another 4 hours got us back to Melbourne.

It was 2:30 am and we had driven 949.3 Kms. And had managed to see a double rainbow. It was beautiful.