Good Times..

This post is under editing .. So pls read with discretion .. or read later.. everything is arranged in the order it came to my head..

On August 20th 2000, Nine of us batchmates stepped onto theMadras Central Railway station platform. Balaji a.k.a Banni was coming back to his home town and the remaining eight were scheduled to join our first job, the very next day...

After seeing Alaipayuthey ( Saathiya's Tamil original ) in Bangalore, a few month's ago , I was very much looking forward to get on the metro .. and experience the magic of suburban train travel in India. We took the train from Chennai Central to Pallavaram where Banni's sprawling house was. The ride was good and I was hanging out of the door all the time. The next day we did not get lucky to get on the train, and had to take the bus to office. There we discovered that our dear HR manager who had hired us had completely forgotten about us arriving and had left for Malaysia. The backup manager was a Mallu and was like " I have no interest interest in getting you in till LP is back, but anyways since you have come, you can go and fill those form's. I will check up with her in between"..

We got into the job during the course of the week and I found that suburban train travel during weekday's was not like it was shown in Alaipayuthey ( Saathiya ) .. Probably they shot during the weekend's. But it was exciting neverthless. The number of people being transported using the system was mind boggling. And you dont have to go to Disneyland to experience fantastic thrill's. Anyway's a week went by and we were playing card's till the wee hours of the morning every day. By friday, we decided that we should find a house before Banni's Mom kick's us out ( Aunty with her hospitality told us that we could stay on if we needed though) . Searching for a house, we quickly discovered that a group of 8 Bachelor's are untouchable's in Chennai. You stay touchable till you are max a group of 3 -4 . House owner's used to go

" Ayoo Ette Bachelor's a .. Aandavaa .. illa veedu kodukke maatte.. Maximum Moonne pere " ..


" Eight Bachelor's .. My god.. no chance.. maximum three guy's "

after a lot of searching we finally met up with M, whom I would descibe as a bachelor tenant's dream.. Me and Manu had gone to meet her for the first time in a posh residential area near Mylapore.

Us: "Aunty there are eight of us. Is that a problem."
M: "I dont care if there are fifty of you there as long as you guy's can adjust. "
Us: "What's would be the deposit.."
M: "One Month's rent. I dont know why these houseowner's fleece their tenant's by taking 10 month's rent."

This was especially a relief for us as there were country fellow's like Thakidi with us who came with 500 bucks for house rent, house deposit and one month's food and stay in chennai.

Us: "Can we see the place."
M : "Sure .. here is the key .. its in Adyar, next to the signal. Its in Dev Apartments. Opposite to the Traffic Jam Restaurant. You cant miss it. If you like it, stay on. Just send me the rent. I have a son your age too , so i know how bachelor's can be. Pls do not make too much noise and have the neighbours call me. I hope I can trust you guy's"

Thus we found Dev Apartments, our abode for the next few months. After getting our house, work at office got into full swing. Our job was to give broadband internet connection's at home's and corporates. With the Dot com boom our schedules were always full and our target's were ever increasing. We went to all corner's of chennai, from the posh residential area's of Alwarpet and Annanagar, to shady places near the Chennai Port. Many incidences happened during these times :-) ..

I specially remember me and SK walking near Stella Maris college to a client's place, with cable in our hand's. One girl come's up and ask's us " Hey are you from the cable company. I am not able to get any channel's in my house ( next to the college )" .. Me and SK looked at each other. " Cable repairmen ?? " we are electronic's engineer's .. SK had a full bottle of rum that day. " I didnt study four years of engineering to become a cable guy" ... The news of our batchmates getting campus training in Infy , Wipro and Satyam amongst Golf courses, and five star treatment, didnt do our ego's any good. We consoled ourselves saying that the beginning of all big thing's are small.


Apart from the small downfall's life was made better by some great character's in office. I truly felt like Dilbert. There was Gun's .. the V.P, with his dumber than a blonde secretary Dolly .. Every day he used to come out of his cabin at precisely 11 A.M with a fantastic unrealistic idea to solve all our problems ,

Gun's " Guys .. I have a great idea to solve all operation's problem's. Let's have G Shiva head the Hub Operations and do some restructuring"

Manager Mr Joshi:" Sir there is a small
problem there. If you havent noticed, G Shiva left the company last week"

Gun's: " Ohh .. I didnt know that .. "

and he used to go back to his cabin .. in hibernation till next morning, for the next crackpot idea.


The funniest part used to be in the basement with customer support.. Thats where I met Ranjith, a.k.a killsbylook. I know only one guy who can talk on four different phone's , chat to 10 guys' and also chit chat with you at the same time. Some of the customer call's were quite hilarious. There were also the two girl's from Palakkad Engg College, S & S.. Also there was Manish from Sale's .. All of us used to have a pretty good time...


Evening's used to be at the Besantnagar beach taking in the cool breeze, and walking back in the night to our apartment. I remember, after a month of work, we got our first salary and ATM card's. No one knew how to use them, and we didnt want to make ourselve's look like fools in the already crowded HDFC ATM counter's. There were only a handful those at that time. Me and SK volunteered and took the bike at 12 in the night to the ATM in Besantnagar. after half an hour of experimenting, we figured out the process of withdrawing money from the ATM and went home with instruction's for other's and crisp hundred rupee note's from our first salary. We felt so proud of ourselves.

During this time, Banni used to be a source of unlimited entertainment. His joining date in Wipro was in november and he was in chennai. He used to come in with his Nokia a.k.a "Nokio" ( Means "have you seen" in mallu ) .. in those times when cell phone's were a rarity. We have never seen him use the phone for anything other than play snake. Bikku and Reju too joined us after some time . There was a good looking girl in the apartment complex next to us, and she used to "give the look" .. and everyone used to fall over each other trying to impress her in one way or ther other.

One person who joined us later, of whom we were fairy skeptical, but later came to know as a wonderful person , and who became a very good friend of mine is Zach. Zach had his unique flavour of Tamil which only he understood. For example for getting directions

Zach " Annaaa Santhome Enge Ponge "
Chennai Guy: " Nee Enne pesrathe .. poriyaathe "
Me : " Anna Santhome pokathake vazhi enna enne chodikkare "
Chennai Guy:" Okk .. ithe cathedral road, straight aa poyidungo marina beach varathe. ange nne right eduthe straught aa poyidungo .. Santhome ange thaane"
Zach: after we left " Edaa , ee Enge Ponge enne vechaal evide pokunne enne alle" ( Doesnt Enge Ponge Mean how to get there )
Me: " Athe nee avidoonne padhichu" ( Where did you learn that from)
Zach:" Njan ange assume cheythe" ( I assumed it )
Me:" Nee aaneda engineer.. Ellaam assume cheythonam" ( Now you are a true engineer. Keep assuming everything )

Zach used to be a tip top in his dressing and mannerism's most of the time, bordering on being snooty. A typical Thiruvalla achayan, he used to only eat from the best restaurants. But after a few week's, financial burden's caused him too to come down to our position. Me and Zach went to the thattu kada opposite our house. What ensued was one of the funniest episodes i have ever seen in my life, which has to seen get it completely. Zach wanted a Bull's Eye Egg, and the thattu kada guy had never heard of Bull's eye.. after fifteen minutes of a formally dressed Zach, showing all antic's possible to demonstrate, how a bull's eye is prepared, the thattu kada guy finally say's "Ooooo .. Aaaa Boi .. sheri no problem".. we were left wondering what is he going to make... it took 15 more minutes for us to discover that what the guys means by "Aaa Boi " is actually "Half Boil" , which is in fact Bull's Eye .. That was when Zach heaved a sigh of relief.

Major Saab also used to stay with us at that time had is to-be Biwi in Chennai. She was studying in the NIIT Next door to us. So from office, any customer visit's to adyar used to be handled by him for a while. And he used to go to her cousins place in chennai to have good food, and then gloat about it when he was back.

That was a time when we discovered the virtues of Yahoo chat.. all of us used to login from different hub's in the city, and conf .. Food was mainly from Traffic Jam, SaravanaBhavan, or Run's in Adyar. Once in a while we used to treat ourselves to the delicious Pizza at Adyar Bakery

Those time's were pretty fun..

I dont know whether to categorise this post as a Good Times Post.. but looking back I can definitely say that these event's have helped me see life in a better perspective. So I would like to share this here though I mostly put fun stuff in this blog. This post triggered off when I recently saw Mahesh Bhat's movie "Woh Lamhe" where he put his real life affair with a paranoid schizophrenic Parveen Babi on celluliod.

Q is a person very close to me. She has schizophrenia. Initially I found it very difficult to accept that Q , a personI knew as cheerful and lively, to have "voices in her head". Doctor's usually say that in the case of Schizophrenia, more treatment is given to people around the patient rather than the patient herself. This process is very difficult for the people around the patient because you have to accept a reality which all your senses dont conform to. After a long period of gong through this, I ended up facing a question of what is reality anyways?? . Do we have a right to tell that a person is nut's, when the person can hear a voice as clear as we do when we heard Martin Luther King go " I have a dream .. " .. Does the collective reality of the so called sane world supersede the individual reality of a person.. Now let me come to the next important thing when we talk about schizophrenia.. What is love People talk about love all day long, and say that love is about caring, understanding etc etc . Ask Karan Johar and you will get so many definitions of love than you can't handle. But my experience has made me understand that there is a love that even trancend's different world's and realities and is probably the only cure for Schizophrenia.

Ok, I am being mysterious here. so let me give an example. Supose you love someone very dearly. When you say that you love that person. what do you mean. Is it the way the person looks, act's , care's etc etc .. Well I will completely agree with you. That is also part of love.. Only a idiot would state love as some hazy cloud in the middle of Utopia, which is ununderstandable and mysterious..... But let's get deeper. Suppose the person you love the most in the world, comes and tell's you that in the morning that she can see the GoldenGate bridge while looking out of the window, and when you check, its the same old lawn. Hmmm .. When she persist's that she can see the bridge, you would obviously take her to a Psychiatrist because that's where you take people who talk about stuff that arent there.. ( In that case all the politician's should be in a mental asylum i guess ) ... . The Psychiatrist invariably, gives her thought control pill's that reduces her perception of the "other world" but unfortunately of also of this world!! .. Ya thats the best all thosed blood sucking Pharma companies could do so far.. You realise over some time that with these drug's, thougt you have reduced the symptom's of the so called insanity and releived you of a lot of inconvenience in front of the public, you have also partially killed the person you knew and loved.. You consult with the Doc again and if the Doc is good, he will tell you reality.. " Dear R .. This is incurable.. This lady can hear what she is saying as clearly as you can hear me" .. What would you do .. show more doctor's .. ?? .. you can do that for year's and keep telling yourself that there is hope.. This is the moment of truth. You have to decide whether you love this person or not... You can choose to keep this person as a vegetable with you out of sight of the world for the rest of the person's life.. I have seen love reach out to see the other person's world.. Ultimately if you want the person you love back, you will have to see that person's reality too.. That's the only thing that will allow the loved one to cope up with two realities and ignore the one that she know's you are seeing just for her. Life wont be easy, but I can tell you that taking the tough route always makes you realise that it was a better choice in the end. If God forbid something like this happen's to your loved one, do not reject the person or try to violently fight it. The best way is to reach out and accept the other person's reality too.

Rgds
Robs

This is about the time when Cathy came to the Garden City. . Much like the character in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Height's, Cathy is elegant and inspiring, and it was a pretty nice time with me Cathy and P.

In the initial meeting's I was trying to impress Cathy and took the " I Love animal's .... " line ..

Me: " Animal's are real cute.. In my Mom's house there are so many animal's .. There are Cats, Dog's, Cow's, Goats, Goose, Turkey's, Pigeon's, Rabbit's Hare's .. etc etc (Thats true for the record ) ... When I settle down, I will have at least a nice cute little goat in my house along with my dog.. I adore Aattinkuttikal ( kid goat ) "

Cathy: " That sounds nice .. I hope you do .. "

Well things would have been fine, and we went on to other "Blah Blah Blah " .. In the evening I took Cathy out to dinner and of all the things on the menu, without thinking I ordered Lamb Chops.. Cathy patiently waited till half way into her vegan meal, and then said..

Cathy : "Now I know why you need a nice cute little goat in your house when you settle .. So that you eat the poor thing when you want.. You A$$#@!# .. Now dont give me any crap about animal's "

I actually liked goat's, but didnt do too much of introspection of my liking. I was probably talking more that I actually felt inside... But I knew Cathy would have none of that .. That day i learnt an invaluable lesson .. When in doubt, or otherwise, speak the truth .. Dont even exaggerate.. If you cant speak the truth, dont speak..... But .. I didnt know that my next lesson would come very soon...

We were driving in my car on the ring road, Cathy was telling me that she used to drive. I took out my standard line of .. "Drive my car .. be my guest " .. I was pretty certain that she would chicken out as I had seen other's, when they sat behind the wheel and saw Bangalore's frightening traffic. I parked on the side and she took the wheel .. For the next 30 minute's I prayed the most passionate prayer ever in my life.. Cathy didnt know too much how to drive, but was determined to at least die trying on the Outer Ring road .. I was just collateral damage i guess.... Anyways after a lot of pleading she stopped the car and I had already learnt the next lesson.. Never challenge girl's without thinking. They might actually do what they say no matter what.

It was colorful time hanging around the DTP center, Wimpy's and the disc's with P and T. P used to dance pretty well and used to set the pace of the leg shaking.. Listening to Air Supply and looking at the star's were some crazy activities, which now seem's straight out of Karan Johar's Junkyard .. Cathy used to like the movie What Dream's may come which I saw recently.. A very colorful movie .. One line I particularly like in the movie is when Dr Chris Nielsen (Robin Williams ) says " Its not about understanding. Its about not giving up .. ".. if you believe in a soulmate this is a movie for you... I have the movie on my laptop... .. Dude's, should see it sometime.

What Dream's may come...