Tandoori night

Yesterday - Thursday, July 02, 2009 will be remembered as The Miraculous Day in the history of 207 Main Street. With the grace of Almighty and under the veteran guidance of a room mate Sushrut, coupled with a supreme power of world wide web; I cooked the first dish of my life -Tandoori Chicken. For those who do not think it as an extraordinary achievement for me, I will have to share some glimpses of my past.

I came to Binghamton in August 2008 and since then till yesterday I haven't cooked a single dish. I know, this is not something to be proud of but my room mates are so caring that they did not allow me to cook for last two semesters. Or if you see from other angle, they did not want to take risk of "swallowing" the food that I cooked. You see, medicines and clinical checkups are very costly here. This doesn't mean I was not helping in kitchen - but I was more of a rookie , just another guy who can "cut" vegetables, onions and anything for that matter. But now, I could be the most important person in the kitchen - someone who understands howto's of cooking. With this feather of "cook" in my hat, a sense of independence passed my mind. I felt like a free man after getting my first job, but the feeling of seeing myself as a cook was much stronger. Now that I can stand tall on my own feet, I don't have to listen to the blabbering of Sooraj, Sachin, Anurag and Rohan. No longer I will be known as a man who eats boiled eggs all (any ?) time !

I got a kind help from my room mates in this venture and also this link was really helpful in setting up the oven's temperature and adding some extra seasoning that we might have missed. This was the first time I learned that cooking is not difficult, it is more of an art than a science or a mundane task. All you need is a help of some hands, a really good recipe, and most importantly - a good heart, a huge appetite, a stomach (if you understand what I mean) and taste of a food lover ...

Looking forward to cook more ....

Appreciations, Encouragements, Teasing, What's so great in it ? like comments ... Welcome !

MS renamed MJ - Masters of Jugaad

Jugaad - an arrangement or a work around, which have to be used because of lack of resources and/or will power.

Some people here in my university have enlightened my mind with this word by their exemplary performance. A google search on Jugaad gives some positive meanings also, but here I do not intend to mean it positively. For me, it is an act of using people ( by some uncanny tricks ) for your own benefits and getting rewarded for something which you do not deserve. A person who is known for such acts is called as Jugaadu in colloquial Hindi language.

I have been observing few people are getting extremely good grades in many subjects despite of their very little participation in doing things on their own. These people make a network of similar souls and share code, assignments and everything that they could share. Needless to say, they themselves do not put in infinitesimally small amount of time / efforts in making it happen, instead they ask for help to some of their friends ( here literal meaning of friends should not be taken into consideration. Friend for them is someone who can directly share rather give his code without even worrying about the consequences - and their "friendship" could break into pieces the moment a motive is achieved). Few days back, I was extremely agitated by some incidents and wanted to write about it, but my finals were approaching so did not really get time for that. Now that I am free, I will be kicking some serious asses today.

Copying somebody's work and putting it under your name is a crime in itself but many people disagree to this point. Chalta hain, dekha jayega, sab karte hain like statements are nothing but a cowardly act of supporting your baseless points. Someone who puts in efforts and works out things must get credit for his / her work. And somebody who is copying his / her work must get punished, I know I am sounding really harsh on this point but you would think exactly same if you were in my position. The root of this problem goes right into the mentality of human. Many of us (including me) want things to be available easily and readily and do not want to take efforts in making something work. But I think, higher education has offered me a chance to disprove the above statement and I should try my level best to do so. Some people do not seem to mind this fact seriously, though. All of them want to have a very high GPA and a very high paying job, but they want it without taking any pains. A jugaadu in general will find another talented / hard working guy and will do anything to please him / her , cause he / she is the one who is obviously doing all work and our friend is least bothered about it. I am not against making good teams but think everyone should have an active participation in their work if all of them want same grades. Some people are even more worse, they themselves don't know what is going on in their project and somehow end up getting close to 'A', and preach others how easy the subject was and how stupid others are. Such flavor of jugaadu gives me nothing but aggravation.

I would be more than happy if the problem ends here. But alas, as they say one rotten apple spoils the barrel, a jugaadu advocates and attracts someone with similar characteristics. When such people find a higher position in any hierarchy, they start expanding their vicious circle until the system becomes a big, intermingled web of mess. Many deserving candidates get nothing but rejection when such people make their decisions, and that is a serious problem. After that overwhelming incident few days back, I felt some people do not deserve a master's degree - forget about a job in United States.

But one can't help this - there are always some elements in every system who are corrupted and the system is functioning properly only because of some honest people. Fortunately God has given us that much ability to decide where we want to see ourselves.

Whatever - one thing is true - MS is no more Master of Science for me, it's Master of Jugaad !

Words of wisdom

Many times one does not find wisdom in books, the pure and heavenly presence of wisdom can only be felt when you get to the state of enlightenment. Wisdom should not necessarily come from highly educated person, often some experiences of common man and quotes teach you so many things which you would never understand by reading books. To add to this argument, one does not have to use words with deep, mystic meaning. In fact, the simpler is the word, better is the effect. I always had a dream of being a truck driver since childhood, don't ask the reason but somehow I felt he understands world better than rest of us. Maybe because he has seen and explored world much more than you and me, he has a higher insight of complexities of human life.

My dream of being a truck driver shattered into pieces when I found engineers and doctors with their beautiful wives; realities of life and steep inclination towards materialistic things once again conquered the pure, pristine ambition of a child. It was going very routinely until yesterday the thought popped in my mind and I started it putting here. I would say that truck driver's contribution towards the human development is always neglected and considered inferior. I know the society is always biased towards intellects who are highly educated than the real wizards, but heck ! I will not second society on this, I have some examples which will prove that truck drivers also have equal depth of knowledge as that of the celebrated philosophers. I will be explaining meanings behind the one liners that you often find at the back of a truck, many of you mock it but I call it words of wisdom , so here it goes ( For those who do not have indic fonts installed mostly on Linux Box can install it from here ) -

चुन्नू मुन्नू दे पप्पा दी गड्डी |
- Don't laugh. It shows the earnest love of a father who is away from his family for many days because of the nature of his job. He is reviving memories of those unforgettable moments he spent with his offspring. I don't understand how come people remember those sad dialogues of A.K. Hangal in Sholay or Naseeruddin Shah's classic performance in Masoom and at the same time laugh at our driver's emotions.

दोस्ती पक्की, खर्चा अपना अपना |
- This is business buddy ! I have never seen any other better statement than this which clearly and succinctly expresses the boundaries between a friend and a parasite. If you know one, send it to me through a comment on this post.

खेतो पे किसान, सीमा पर जवान |
- I don't think there is any dispute over this line, as told in our 4th standard's social science's book , we all know Indian economy is highly dependent on it's agricultural development. And it is the truth that we have a sound sleep every night only because our jawans are trying really hard to protect our borders from intruders.

जगह मिलने पर साइड दी जायेगी |
- Many of us do not understand the simple meaning behind this line. It shows the clarity of thought and a level of maturity to understand need and urgency of others. How else a truck driver could convey his thoughts to someone who is behind him? They do not have high tech wireless radio systems to exchange words in case of urgency.

चलती है गाडी, उड़ती है धुल |
जलते हैं दुश्मन, खिलते हैं फूल ||
- Apparently, these two statements look unrelated, but as I said earlier, you need to keep your biased mind away in order to understand the hidden wisdom behind these lines. Our driver is saying that when someone makes progress, there are people who are always jealous of his / her achievements. But irrespective of their envious nature one has to keep travelling the path of glory. What a way to put things in such a simple words !

अमीरों की ज़िन्दगी बिस्कूट और केक पर |
ड्राईवर की ज़िन्दगी क्लच और ब्रेक पर ||
- I can see your laughing faces. But believe me, you need to have a heart and soul of a truck driver to understand the meanings of these lines. I am often amazed by seeing the driving skills of truck drivers and hence totally support this statement wholeheartedly.

नदी किनारे मैना बैठी, दाना खाए छल्ली दा |
तू तो राजा बन गया ड्राईवर, दिल ना लागे अकेली दा ||
- I don't know about you guys, but tears rolled on my cheeks when I first read these lines. Can you imagine the situation of driver's wife when he has to go for a long trip? Tell me, we see number of movies in which army men return to their posts on a very short notice, but why don't we apply same rule to truck drivers? Why is the approach so partial ?

पापा ना पियो शराब |
खरीद दो मुझे एक किताब ||
- Well, this is more of a self awareness kind of initiative. Yes, truck drivers are also human beings and they also need some education. And they don't want it to be told in a complicated manner. I appreciate the honesty behind these lines.

१८ के फूल, ८४ की माला |
बुरी नज़र वाले तेरा मुह काला ||
- I am a strong believer of believes, some of you guys derogatorily call it as superstitions. Since this is very close to truck driver's religious beliefs, let's not comment on it.

क्या साथ लाया है, क्या साथ ले जायेगा |
खाली हाथ आया था, खाली हाथ जायेगा ||
- See some similarity? Raksesh Roshan should be sued for stealing these lines. I think, now you people's perspective towards drivers should change significantly. If you trace the roots of these lines, you will find it in Bhagwad - Geeta.

मालिक की गाड़ी, ड्राईवर का पसीना |
चलती है रोड पर बनके हसीना ||
- This is my personal favorite. Truck driver's profession is still in demand because of these lines. See the self esteem and self respect ? Such lines make me still follow the good old dream of mine. It portrays a responsible, hard working and carefree bird like attitude of a driver which gives him the strength to walk the less traveled road. Hats off to your attitude guys !

Finally, I want to conclude - truck drivers are not like the one which we see in Hindi movies, they are normal humans like us with emotions. They also have problems and dreams like all of us. I honestly expect after reading this post, you guys will start respecting truck drivers in a same sense as you do with doctors, engineers and so called professionals.

Comments, suggestions, more words of wisdom are most welcome !

Sanjay Dutt's crap

We all know that there is a big unending chain of incapable and uncreative political leaders in India. Sanjay Dutt added himself in that league yesterday by giving his debut speech. As always, he looked unprepared for his highly celebrated 'gandhigiri' stunt, at first I thought he was on medication or "high". As expected, in his small real life appearance ( which by the way is more difficult and real than the usual cinematic appearances ) Sanjay showed his lack of understanding about issues in India. And I believe this is not his fault. How can you expect someone who has spent his life in living a lavish style understand the problems of a common man ? Wearing Samajwadi Party's ( which is going to be the next most highly desired place for actors / actresses who have pending cases against them) laal topi, Sanjay addressed a big crowd that he came here not to give speeches but to work. Instead of telling how his political ambitions are helpful to the public of India, he wasted the time by giving crap about what his father has done for the country. I understand that when you do not have any points to put on table, you seek help from "mere pitaji" like fillers, but he should know that not everyone is as dumb as those who attended the rally in Lucknow.

There has always been discussions if a party should allow a candidate of criminal background to campaign for elections but these discussions always ended with no decision. I believe, majority of people in Indian Democracy are still blind, if they are not, then they would not have gathered in such a large number. Movie / Cricket stars in India are praised to such a high level that people start thinking them as real life heroes, capable of doing anything anytime - single handedly. If we see the history of politics, southern India has given many film star come politicians who are found to be negligibly concerned about politics. Many of them actually are not even serious in attending parliamentary discussions. No wonders, why Govinda, Jaya Bachhan, Dharmendra get notices for their very low attendance in houses. Besides I seriously doubt their intellectual understanding about the issues that are discussed in meetings. You do not need to be a Ph.D. to be a member of parliament, but at least you should have experienced something in your life which will make you considerate about people's problems. Someone who has no idea of what is going on, is next to a useless creature in such discussion.

I did not see how news channels spread this news, but certainly some of them must have showed how Sanjay Dutt is close to Mahatma Gandhi ( come on, there has to be something in Sanjay's life which bears exact similarity to what happened with Gandhi, you don't know - he might have fought for prisoner's rights when he was arrested ) or how he has transformed into an actual person ( which to some sharp minds counter intuitively suggest what he WAS NOT earlier ) after his TADA case and all. Some of them might have showed Sanjay's photos feeding a beggar on streets, or donating for an orphanage. Some channels might be broadcasting this as a breaking news - Sanjay Dutt ki Gandhigiri, parde ka mahatma ab aam jindagi me . I will not be astonished to see this news some day - Sanjay Dutt elected as a MoP defeating ( someone like Ram Naik ) by 40,000 votes in loksabha elections. I would also not be surprised if Mohammad Azharuddin gets elected with similar majority. I better not comment on what will happen - some wise mind has already said it before - which aptly applies to mentality of Indian public -

विनाशकाले विपरित बुद्धी ...

Valentine's Day - What else ?

Alright, this fits quite well on a new year's eve but let me take this opportunity and say - Every valentine comes up with a new "hope". Sharp readers will certainly point out the pun intended here. I don't know about couples but I am trying to represent singles or so called lukhha community here on my blog. I took some time off to read around 2-3 newspapers today - they are almost completely filled with stories of how couples met 40-50 years ago and are still together, how did they celebrate their first valentine and all. Nobody, literally nobody wrote anything about single people. I think this is not fair and hence thought of writing something in support of singles.

Many people including those with whom I am quite acquainted and those whom I hardly know asked me a same question today - "What did you do on valentine's ?" I am damn sure many of those know the answer but they wanted to hear it from me. So here it goes -" Well, I did my assignment today - wrote a small recursive descent parser." Of course - when you are doing master's in my university and you are single then this is pretty much of what you can do ! Anyways, university and the-pain-of-being-there is a different story all together. Coming to the point of hope, every couple should try and find out their single friends and try to set them up somehow. Not to mention, they should do this while keeping in mind the mutual compatibility between both parties. That way, they can attain the real grace of cupid. Instead of cornering singles or almost denying their existence by NOT writing or mentioning anything about them on this day, they could do a real charity work. Nothing is more angelic or saintly than connecting two minds :-D

I am not saying that "It sucks to be single". There are certain advantages of being single which are already mentioned in my last year's post. But I could not see the mournful faces of some of my friends and can't stand up to the intensity of feelings that they are burying inside them. As a good friend, I owe them this post. I often hear it from people and many times see it in movies that everyone should fall in love at least once. But unfortunately, people forget that there are some living entities present on this mother Earth who are extremely eligible to be a couple one day. But they can't make it because they don't find the perfect match, this is not the lack of ability but the dearth of chance. When some gifted souls pass on the light to these (currently unfortunate ) guys, that day my friends , will be the REAL VALENTINE'S DAY for all of us.

Amen ...

Things about situation comedy

With a few notable exceptions, I never used to follow serials before. But recently I found out some things about these serials which make them popular. There is something in these serials which make you follow them. This is probably the reason why I check Project-Free-TV to see if somebody posted How I Met Your Mother‘s links or not. It all started when I saw Friends for the first time. That was the most amazing sitcom I ever saw, and when I compared it with the serials which I used to hate, I found a great difference. These are some of the points that make situation comedies (sitcoms) famous –

The hangout place – In HIMYM, there is this bar called MacLaren's where the group meets almost every day and discusses their routines which often take a hideous turn. In Friends, it used to be Central Perk, the place where these guys had fun.

Characters with unique and bizarre characteristics – This is the essence of sitcoms. Each character has some weird traits, often to make things little more interesting. Friends has a great combo of such characters which made them a real success, HIMYM is not that great as Friends, but not bad either.

Sarcasm – I am a great fan of sarcastic people and believe that sarcasm should be considered as one of the most important things that human needs in order to survive. Chandler Bing is my favorite character in Friends and Barney Stinson in HIMYM. If given a chance, I would definitely like to meet those script writers who compose their dialogues. This job is really tough and needs a high level of creativity. So to make a sitcom famous, there has to be a sarcastic person who himself need not be a great character, but someone who knows how to hit the bull’s eye.

Differences – When I saw some episodes of Scrubs, I didn’t like them much, maybe because all of these characters belong to same hospital and there is nothing new in their lives. I mean there are some good moments but I never felt like laughing my heart out anytime, which was often the case with Friends. If the serial has few characters that go to totally different work places, then there are higher chances of getting variety of experiences, which adds a lot of masala in the plot.

Bindings and Breakups are important – The show must go on. Nobody feels too bad when someone breaks up, nobody feels too good either when someone gets into relationship. In fact, more the ups and downs in a character’s life more are the chances to create funny situations. In a comedy serial, you don’t expect a relationship graph as a straight line with slope 1. This might not be true about the serials I used to like before 6 years, but now I know that ups and downs are part of life, I take them very lightly and appreciate the comic sense behind it.

Making sure that addendums are taken out from time to time – Addendums here mean the characters which are important for an episode or two. You don’t really care what the hell happened to them when they are done with those episodes. This is difficult to achieve each time, some people might like the addendum and they may feel like he / she should be a part of group, but no. If you compare this point with usual soap serials, for them following this point is next to impossible. Their life can’t just go without complications, there has to be an infinitely long chain of family relations, with at least one extra marital affair between every possible pair. Indian soap operas might rule their world for the height of pathetic creations and series of nonsense incidents. There are some serials where the main character just do not die, it’s like he / she is immortal, time never ages them, even if it, the character is so strong by will that it can survive for almost ten generations. Anyways, I can write a separate post on my take on soap operas, don’t want to eat up space here.

Showing the facts – I like this point very much. Sitcoms are very good at showing what they want to show. There is no ideology which they follow, no guidelines as such. They do not give out any social / non-social message which are similar to self help books. There is absolutely no problem when rest of characters make fun of the lead character and he / she does not always win. The main idea is the lead actor is so common that he / she could be one of us, one of the common people. The belief that he /she is amongst the aam janata creates a very positive impression on audience and hence these serials win.