Those top 10 nostalgic moments

In this fast-paced world, I am sure every one of us, at various instances in our lives, would want to go back to our good old days, to relive those great moments of a care-free life! Though studying in a CBSE school meant you had to be on top of your books, there still was a lot of time for the joys of TV in the form of DD1 and DD2, the various comic books, special once-in-a-blue-moon restaurant visits, and the two and half months of summer vacation for planning out immense amount of activities and games! The following ten items stand out for me in terms of their experience...

1. DD1 & DD2 along with Mile Sur Mera, Ek Chidiya, 'Sorry for the interruption' and 'Over to Delhi' - The World this week by Prannoy Roy and SportsMag by Harsha Bhogle were much sought after on DD1: the former captured everyone's hearts in his calm and crystal-clear way of giving a snapshot of the world events for the past week while the latter had a superfast way of speaking English which made everyone sit up and get puzzled on who this newbie was! On DD2, Superhit Muqabla was fun to watch even if the top 10 song list never changed week after week. Of course, Mile Sur Mera starting with Bhimsen Joshi and the animated Ek Chidiya were ever popular. On the other extreme were the painful view of "Sorry for the interruption" or "Over to Delhi" just when you didn't want them!
   
2. 5 digit telephone numbers - 77438 was our house phone number. And I still remember all of my friends' numbers - since it was so easy remembering a 5 digit number! Nowadays, with the 10 digit cell phone numbers, I don't even remember my own number from a couple of years back! Even though those telephone instruments used to hurt the finger, specially if most of the numbers required a 270 degree motion of the dial, it gave you the satisfaction of talking to people instead of sending them SMS and scraps!
3. Home-made 'bakshanam' (sweets / savories) - That basically stands for uppu / vella seedai, murukku, thengozhal, ribbon, pakoda, thattai which were regularly done for many of the special occasions by my grandmas. No Grand Sweets, no Surya sweets then, to get packaged items. They were all done at home and could be consumed hot off the stove! Just the process of seeing them make it told us that there was a big occasion at home. And the festive spirit was invoked and enjoyed.
4. 'Big Fun' Bubblegum - This was a very guy thingie but collection of runs and wickets that came along with the bubblegum was such a big activity then. Exchange of those player profiles and getting those rare ones from the older guys was worth more than anything else in life! The more soiled the chits were, the greater their value! This was over and above the competition on the size of the bubble that one could blow using the bubblegum.
   
5. Hiring a cycle - At Re.1 per hour, it was a big deal then. Still, the joyous feeling going through the same roads over and over again along with friends despite the hot burning sun was sublime! Sometimes races turned ugly when one of the lot would fall down and hurt themselves. That would never deter us though from regrouping and utilizing the full value of the Re.1 spent!
6. Heman toys / Trade Games / Crazy Ball / Glow worm - Collection of Heman toys and stickers was a much sought after activity. G I Joe was another character that was popular! Long-winding trade games that went on for hours during summer holidays were widely anticipated events. To ensure we continued over multiple days, we even wrote down the exact status in our notebooks! The crazy ball that bounces in various angles and a glow worm that used to shine in the night were popular too, the latter specially amongst girls. Last but not the least, 3 - 5 hours of cricket (underarm / overarm / bowling etc.) were a standard feature every day, be it holidays or otherwise!
7. Tinkle / Tintin Comics - Those were the days of no internet and no Cartoon Network. So, Tinkle comics and Amar Chitra Katha ruled the roost. Phantom and Mandrake were also extremely popular amongst the boys. The good / bad ring and the charm of Xanadu are still not lost on me! Tintin and Asterix, borrowed for Rs. 2 from the lending library were even greater fun on account of their highly engaging stories. To this date, it is pretty expensive to own a Tintin or an Asterix comic book! The "Famous Five" and "Secret 7" were reserved for the only-English speaking dudes!
   
8. Writing with an 'ink' pen - Class 5 exposed us to an ink pen. Initially, stained fingers and shirts were painful to look at. But these signified the coming of age of us as students. We would look down on Class 4 students as if they were very junior compared to us. Ball-point pens were typically frowned upon by teachers. In this current computer age, it is sad that even writing with anything has become a such a rarity!
   
9. Camlin or Natraj Geometry box - Owning a Camlin or a Natraj geometry box, that too a fully-loaded one with Steadler pencils, a white eraser, a sharpener and all the geometry instruments shining without any rust, was a moment of pride. No one ever knew when a divider would ever be used but the compass and protracter were absolute necessities. It is another thing that Camlin was Aishwarya Rai's first ad shoot when she was in school!
10. Distributing chocolates on birthdays - This is probably an activity that continues to this day in schools, but dressing up in something outside of uniforms and distributing chocolates was a much anticipated activity, not just for the one whose birthday it was, but for the other children in school as well. The type of chocolate - whether it was an Eclairs, or a 'Try Me', or a 'Melody' typically signified social standing and willingness to incur expenditure on birthdays. Cadbury's 5 Rs. 'Dairy Milk' chocolates were reserved for the rich kids.
    

Well, writing about these does make me feel a lot younger when I visualize m. But it also makes me think I have grown so much older now since it looks like ages back when I was in school! It still is any day worth it just to think of these! We, or even our next generation, may never get to experience the same, but if only we could have a way to revisit the past, it would be fun!

Any more such moments, do add them in the comments...

Top 10 indications of the recession in your office

1. Your office toilet has extremely thin or hardly any tissue paper.
   
2. On your salary slip, the denomination is in “Paise”. And just to keep you in check now and then, the salary slip is pink in color.
   
3. People start disappearing from your office and you are told that they have taken a long sabbatical for various reasons.
4. Those remaining are asked to share seating space and computers to improve teamwork and bonding.
5. When their seating time is over, they double up as office boys and security.
6. Conference rooms are let out on rent
   
7. The smell in your office is different. It is the effect of a combo of no air-conditioning, absence of air-spray in the office and absence of deo sprays at your colleagues’ homes.
   
8. Food items in the canteen are served in ice-cream bowls, coffee is limited to 1 per person and resembles a tequila shot in size.
9. Office cabs look similar to those stunt vehicles where 20 are packed inside one Maruti car.
10. To escape the rot, you log into the top job sites and you are greeted with a perennial message “Site under maintenance”, while the business newspapers start carrying obituary and crossword puzzles instead of the jobs supplement.

Any more such signs, please feel free to add in the comments section!

Long live paunches!

It is that time of the year when everyone makes resolutions. I did too. And one of my new-year resolutions was to do away with my paunch. But coming to think of it, I am seriously reconsidering this resolution. Paunches are so in! They are a sign of prosperity, of holistic and well-rounded development in all spheres of life.

Here are 10 reasons why I think they are a man’s best friend…

1. My paunch is the first thing that I see on waking up, without having to move a muscle. Lying down, you open your eyes and there it is - like a mountain behind which the sun rises. The last thing you probably see before you sleep is also the same paunch.
2. It makes traveling in crowded buses much easier. Standing on your two feet, you can do a circular movement like that of a pencil on a drawing compass. You clear away all the people who are cramming you for space. And thus, have all the place to yourself…
3. The paunch acts as a good sensing device since it goes to all places well before you yourself do. With time, you can understand its sensing power and evade those people that you may not want to meet.
4. Big paunches are generally accompanied by reasonably big rear sides as well. However, since the paunch greets people first, it takes away their focus completely. Jokes on your front are typically more appreciated than those behind your back! (pun intended)
5. You can stuff a lot of items into your paunch for meetings without people doubting that you have done so. That chips packet, that gaming device, the music player, the small chess-board etc. that you always wanted to carry into the meeting room to keep you occupied are well within your grasp. People cannot notice a 2” difference in a 48” waist. They can, on a 32” one.
6. It acts as an adjustable pillow for your wife. Olden-days romance involved the spouse lying down on the husband’s thigh and singing a song. New-age romance calls for the husband’s paunch to be the adjustable pillow for the wife to have a comforting nap.
7. When it gets too boring, the paunch acts as your complete gaming device. You can place small objects from spinning tops to marbles and coins and watch their Brownian motion by altering the contours of your paunch. If not guided well, some may come and hit you on your face. Others may go hit you on other parts below…
8. The paunch is a great percussion instrument for an orchestra. The bigger it is, the better the sounds that it emanates on tapping it at its various locations. There are some paunches that can generate even more variations than a ghatam or a tabla!
9. Mosquitoes get completely fooled. They think that they can attack you but the multiple layers of padding make it far tougher for them to penetrate through. In desperation, they typically fly away for leaner and greener pastures!
10. Last but not the least, if you are ever in a soup with the traffic police or the police, you can escape scot-free. They would consider you one of their kind. The paunch is the great unifying factor. So you can rest easy in life.

More instances where the paunch acts as a great friend for mankind are appreciated in the comments section of this post!

(Disclaimer: It may not be in the best interests of your health unfortunately :( )

a very happy 2009

another year went past really fast,
some events aghast while some do well to last.
mumbai attack pix terror and daily life mix.
lehman goes for a six congress left in a fix.
kumble and ganguly down dhoni got the crown,
obama made america his own india got the ifone.
lets forget the old wine, let the new year shine
to you and your family all things fine, a very happy 2009!

Thank you Anil Kumble...

One of the legends of the game retired today. Anil Kumble, take a bow! You truly are one of Indian cricket's gems. For the last 18 years, you have been instrumental in providing some of India's finest moments in cricket. You will certainly be missed a lot... Having watched you for a good part of the last two decades, I just thought I should thank you in the only way I could think of - on my blog! And not without reason...

• You made millions of Indians get back the faith that their team could win. Right from the time the demoralized team came back home in 1992-93' to face England, you have injected the team with the necessary confidence to win. The thumping series win against England was just the start of many series wins at home... In ODIs as well as tests...
• You were one of the key reasons why India became a tiger at home! Sure, the 4 batting stalwarts of India scored tons of runs. But we needed someone to take 10 wickets every inning. And 20 wickets in the match. And you sure took the first statement to heart, when you bagged all ten against Pakistan in the same venue that would become your last as well... Not one in the 10 test playing nations has been spared of your tremendous effect...
• You have infused terror in the minds of many an opponent batsman. And made them sit up and take notice of a thin tall bespectacled man who could only bowl straight balls without an iota of turn. Yes, so many were apprehensive on how long you would last with that one delivery. But you put paid to all their doubts by sending back batsmen 600 times in test cricket with literally that one single type of ball...
• Your amazing energy to bowl at the stumps even in your fiftieth over in the inning is just awesome - as Steve Waugh once famously said, the batsman can never rest when you are bowling to them because they know if they miss, you hit the stump or the pad...We sure knew we could expect you to always be tight and bowl a deadly line and length at any point in the match.
• Your child-like glee when you get someone out with your rare googly, or when you specially position VVS in a second wide slip for that leading edge to be caught, made the layman viewer emotionally attached to your every single move on the field.
• You gave us the lighter moments too. We know you don't like fielding as much as your bowling. (But for that matter, just one or two people in the Indian team ever took to fielding properly!) The way you dived at the ball only to let it always pass, or the way you run towards the ball only to raise your hand to warn the fielder in the deep that it is inevitably coming to him... These are mannerisms that have sure lightened our cricket watching!
• But you were a lot more adept at batting to save India the blushes quite a few times! With an exaggerated forward movement even to the fastest of bowlers... Specially when you made that fighting half century against South Africa in Eden Gardens along with Azhar, or when you stuck around with Srinath to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat against Australia in the tri-nation prelims, or the time you struck your first hundred against England last year... Or even the fighting 40 to take India past 600 in your last test match...
• Not resting on your laurels at home, you finally proved your detractors wrong by wrecking havoc overseas as well. You were instrumental in our away wins too, and thus kicked all your detractors in the butt! Though Dravid did get the most of the honours for the wins deservedly, somewhere unsung were your contributions to that series win in Windies, or the great Adelaide win in Australia or even the last test series win in England.
• Your passion for cricket, and your unflinching resolve to try and take wickets probably of every ball. More importantly, every time you had the ball in your hand, you made India believe you could get a wicket, no matter what the match situation was... Or who the batsman was... Just that impending feeling of the opponents getting out caught to Dravid at silly point or getting plumb in front or seeing their middle stump knocked off, gave sheer delight to the millions of Indian cricket fans...
• Your never say die spirit needs to be embodied in every single Indian cricketer. With a bandaged jaw, you came back and took Brian Lara's wicket in a test at West Indies. And even in the last test match, with 11 stitches on your left hand and visible pain on your face, you ran back all the way to take a fantastic catch to dismiss the last man... These are qualities that Indians don't normally see even in the other great cricketers of this era who prefer to sit inside the dressing room with the slightest of injuries.
• Above all, you have been a gentleman in this era of the over-the-top Harbhajans and the perennially vocal Australians. A gentleman, and a thorough professional. Be it when you were a player, or when you were the captain. And the game of cricket needed people like you to balance out the ruffians in the game...

Hats off to you Kumble, please do take a well deserved rest now. And let all of us hope the next generation of spinners has at least one of your kind... Some day maybe...