Good Times..

I am not superstitious about ending numbers with 0, and this is not another one from the Series, '101 Science Tricks' , ' 101 Mystery Stories' etc from Pustak Mahal... 101 is the flat number of a small 2 Bedroom Apartment, in Koramangala, in the city of Bangalore. At the edge of the army firing range, this aparment gave a view that few apartments give in bangalore .All the stuff in the house is donated by dwellers who in the course of time, either got married or got better paying job's , and went on to live mundane live's elsewhere. Stuff includes a fish tank, a full kitchen, with all desi and videsi utensils, and a fridge too, that has cooled nothing else in its entire lifetime, but Beer, and sweet's that Jimmy and Nimmo used to bring back from home.

I dont know how the fish tank got there, but I guess some dude who used to stay there figured that girl's dig fish ( in the tank of course ) , and they dig dude's who feed the fish too. By the time we inherited the house, party's with girl's had come down to once in a few months. So usually, a day before the party there a mad rush to clean the house to give it a semblance of sanity. This included cleaning the fish tank, and running to the nearby aquarium to buy the cheapest available species of fish. One Gold fish is mandatory though. During the course of the party, each guy takes turn's to feed to get the "Oh Cho Chweet" response from the girls. I guess the fish must have felt that they have come to paradise.. Only problem is that once the girls have left, no one care's two hoots about them and they are left wondering where all those wonderful fellows went.

A permanent fixture at the house is Tommy, the faithful watchdog. Nimmo's consider's Tommy as his best friend once he is drunk.. You can hear "Mere Puttar" ... "Mere sabse acha dost" etc etc, in the corridor when Nimmo is coming back from Kamadhenu Bar.. escorted by Tommy.. Tommy faithfully waits outside the door of his master the whole night.. In the morning the door opens and Nimmo rushes out .. late for an appointment with his latest girlfriend and finds Tommy outside... "Dog... What the f*** are you doing here.. get out of my way" .. Tommy is left pondering pondering . "What a Jerk .. But he looks a lot like my master.. only thing is his hair has got some sticky stuff in it and he smells funny.... Wonder why my master does not come out during daytime" ..

Thats Nimmo for you.



101's most heavyweight ( literally ) resident was Pillai.. alias Pill's .. at 135 Kg's, Pills was in the best shape of his life when he was in 101. Most of his time was spent between the Sh** department ( that's what the toilets were affectionately called) in 101, Sleeping in the Hall, calling up insomniac American ladies from the Dell Call center. He is also the first one up and ready to go when someone says "P" of party .. Well sometimes's Pill's is out for 2 - 3 parties
at once and gets quite high .. Once Pills was coming back from one of his chain parties and I was sitting outside the house.. I went " Hi man why are you pushing the Bike" .. Pills : " Umm .. I dont know. I have been pushing for some time" Me:" You look like you fell down" Pills " Oh Yes.. Thats why I was pushing the Bike" Me : " Well you can always start the bike after you get up from the fall" .. Pills : " Oh . I figured it would be easier to push. " .. Me: " #@#$@!#@$@!#.." ...
... There are many stories with me in the Pills position, but lets not get into that ...

Pills ..



Jimmoo the The Sardar Who gets Drunk with Pepsi.. is another integral member of the house. For two years the waiters in Kamadhenu Bar tried to get Jimmy to put a drop of Rum into his pepsi ( Ya that's right, not the other way round as usual with Sardar's ;-)), but failed miserably. As 70 % of the time, Jimmy is the only sober person in the gang, we rely on him to make sure the bill's are actually correct. Probably one of the infinite reasons why we decided to suffer his absolutely revolting PJ's ...


Jimmy



Tina ... The Serious Guy of the house. elite ( sleeps on the only bed unlike other poor fellows who sleep on the floor), and aristocratic. He usually is tensed about something at office, till the time we met one of his co workers.. we asked" Hey you know Tinu who works in your group in Wipro. Does something very serious and important most of the time" .. Reply was " Oh he.. he sit's around and read's novels most of the time" .. Tinu tried to explain that those were his CCIE books and not novel's but we preferred not to believe it.. He has an amazing bike ( refer blog below ) ... Tinu has left for Dubai and the bike is still in 101. A memorial for all those day's..

Tinu ..




The next guys is Hari Puttar.. The oldest member of the house.. A die hard Osho fan, spends, most of the time in the house, reading about Osho's views on sex , While he is out, he goes around taking pic's of "Poor India ,Hungry India" .. Sometimes he get's bumped in the head by locals who dont appreciate his "art" ..

Hari Puttar





The other folks are ... Cow ( George ) Pills Junior ( Major Saab ) .. and the visiting professors, Santhu , Sachin T, Manu .. I.N.S Ramesh etc .. I will be back with their stories soon ..

statutory warning: Folks who have not studied in the High Voltage Millenium Batch in CEC will think I am nut's if they read this post. Kindly read with discretion.

In the good old days when we used to when we used to believe in Gangs and Tatoos, When a mans word was more important that reverse sign-off mails.. there used to be two gangs in our college CEC, called Bichoo and Eagles .... Actually there was only one gang,.. but whats a gang without gang rivalry.. so the gang is always referred to as Bichoo and Eagles, two fierce gangs always at war with each other.. The main agenda of the gang or gangs rather .. was "kuntrac" .. mallu college lingo for "non-stop showoff" ..

Two of the most interesting members of the gang were "shunt" and "cac" .. Shunt was from the beach town of Kollam ... His only problem in life is that he is dark as a raven, ( even after using fair and lovely every single day of his life) .. Calls himself Shunt - IAS.. (stands for Invisible After Sunset). Cac is from the land of 3 L's ( Latex, Lakes, Letter's and Liquor .. oops did that make it four.. The fourth one is unofficial i guess) .. Kottayam.. His only problem in life is that he is only 4 Ft 11" tall even in 4 inch heel shoes.. .. He usually never stands and talk's to you unless you are standing near a small platform or pavement, on which he can stand.. The reason is he likes to make eye contact while talking ( this is only possible for him if he were living in a circus ) . Incidently these two gang members were roomies too... only problem was that most of their conversation was centered around the two problems mentioned above.. a typical day walking back home would be -

Cac .. - Dei Sandhya Aayi .. Road il ninnum maari nadakke allengil Bus driver kaanathilla.. idichonde pokum ( Move over from the road man .. its night and the bus drivers wont be able to see you .. )

Shunt .. Sheri .. ninakke pinne aa prashnam illello .. ninte height businte levelilm thaazha alle.. bus mukalil koode poykkolum ( Ya sure .. you wont face that problem though .. your height is less than that of the bus's clearance.. it will go clean over you ) ..

The next great member is Jhaadu .... He claims that he is of pure Jewish blood and consider's everyone else as gentiles .. He owned one of the most amazing Bikes ever manufactured.. Actually it was a normal old Yamaha rx 100 .. but one day Jhaadu was riding back from a visit to his trusted mechanic Jayaraj and he was faced with two bikes coming together on the road .. He suddenly has an irresistable urge to be Mick Doohan and decides to go in between the bikes.... To his bad luck it turned out to be an Ambassador car... anyways after circling in the air for some time, he came down to earth .. The three bermuda's he wears beneath his jean's to enhance his rear end, saved the day for him and he escaped without many injuries.. The bike was totalled though.. In comes Jayaraj to the rescue.. He decides to transform the bike into something that could compete with the 'Choppers'. After a painful three month process of "boiling" serveral of the parts, including the piston and cylinder and god knows what.. and layers of paint from a loaned compressor, the bike was finally ready with amazing features like ... Rain Prediction .. if there was rain within 1 Km of the bike, the bike used to stop .. it used to start only after the sun came out for a few hours.. Sub Inspector Ajit Detection: The bike used to somehow go only in roads where Ajit used to come out for his traffic inspections... So most of its life was spent in chengannur police station, or jayaraj's workshop ... It was routine for Jhaadu to come running to class and ask " Aliyaa .. Give me a matchbox now" .. We used to ask " Why .. what happened ? " and he would say " I am going to burn that bike .. today too it stoped in front of the girls hostel and I had to push it from there with all the girls laughing at me ..!! " ...

The next Character in the gang is "Oommen" ... Oommen, better known as tharikida oommen.. is the heart and soul of the gang ... Was a typical Gulf baby when he landed in college.. But a few months after we raided "Panchayat" ( The doctors house where he stayed.. we thought the name fit the actual use of the place ) using PM as a trojan , Oommen became a full blown mallu .. Well, next time when his parents came to India, he went to visit them... It was late when he reached home and he went to sleep.. Early in the morning he somehow must have thought he is still at panchayat, because when the phone was ringing without anyone picking it up, he yelled " Oru Ma***num illeda phone edukkaan" .. His shocked parents came in the room and asked " Son .. where did you learn this language " ... Well Oommen had a hard time getting out of that fix ..

Balaji is one member I dont need to introduce to half of the civilised world .. and most of the uncivilised world too .. If there would be a Organisation called Entertainment Unlimited, Balaji would be the CEO.. mind you Balaji would be dead serious though.. it is his serious talk that makes us laugh ... There are so many things to say about this wonderful character that I have to dedicate an entire blog to him ..


Then we have the all powerful Chack's a.k.a Chackochie... No one knows his real name.. I dont think even he know's .. Anyways a Quentin Tarantino fan, Chackochie was the terror of the junior girls .. that is till the day he fell in love.. oops .. i think I should be stopping now regarding that .. Chackochie, Cac and Saneesh charirman of ABCL ( Thats All Blacks Corporation Ltd and not Aby Baby's Company ) were the heroes of the 2000 Arts festival.. There are many more interesting characters, and I shall return to complete this post.. till then ...

Hey let me put up a few pics of the gang



Boozing in Kodai ..







At Pillar Rocks

Chengannur..My"Naadu".. I guess home for everyone is the place they grew up. I grew up in this sleepy town in the heart of the erstwhile travancore kingdom, on the banks of the Pamba. Best known for its Bhagavathi Temple, like any other indian town, its got its own charm.

Chengannur Ambalam..

My best memories about chengannur, are associated with the Pamba river. We have played around in the river, innumerable times.. The best part is when the river floods over and we have holidays as all schools are converted to relief camp's. We go out wading into the water.. trying to catch fish with thin towels, called "thorthe"..

Another place I used to love going to was Paandavan Para.. A good viewspot, where we can get to see the town on one side, and the greenery in the nearby areas on the other.. It is also a good place to spend a lazy afternoon, sleeping in the shade of the Rocks.. There are depression's in the rocks that looks like huge footprints... its said that the Paandavas rested there during their exile, and the footprints are those of Bhima.. There is also a hollow rock which we used to bang to make sound's..... and in the center of the place, there is a small lake, which is rumoured to have a hole that reaches an underground cavern that reaches till Kanya Kumari... Goats have been rumoured to be lost there.. Apart from this, there is also a very smooth place on the rock, where you could slide down, and kids used to say Bhima urinated there.. but I dont know how true that is though..!!











Pandavan Para Temple

The Boys high school brings back memories of many cricket matches.. The ground was the Shivaji Park for many budding Tendulkars in the area... The main competition though was about, who gets to break maximum number of holes in the "Ode" tiled roof of the school by hitting sixes .. This is the school, where my father and his father studied.. I never dreamed that I too would study there, but finally I did, when it got converted to an engineering college.. But they built one of the college buildings right in the middle of the ground, which broke the hearts of a lot of cricket enthusiast;s in the area..

I stay in a place called Angadical .. Near the government ITI... My school, St Gregorious too was nearby in a place called mulakkuzha.. After my school on the way to Kidangannur, there is a place called Kuruchimuttam .. Essentally its a huge paddy field, through which the road goes.. its a lovely place, especially early in the morning, when the mist covers the paddy... I and My college mates have spent many an afternoon doing "combined study" or more appropriately, talking about anything in the world from girls to global warming, except studies..

Hi Folks, ...

Kicking off my blogging experience ..

My first impression when i heard the term "online - diary" was .. "What !!! .. my diary should be in my desk and not on the net" .. but off late i am overcome by this irressistable urge to express myself ... maybe it is the industry that is making be feel that way.. I find myself identifying with Dilbert more and more as each day goes by.. I felt like doing something more than putting my brain in the fridge every morning so that I can get to work.. quite ironical as i work in the so called knowledge industry .. :-) ..


I havent written anything since i used to send "News from bangalore" to everyone in our batch .. That was when I was cooling my heels on bench in Infy .. so all the creative evergy was flowing free ...

Now five and half years later ... and my brain cells heavily strained from the idiosyncrasies of the IT Industry .. I really dont know how much sense I will be making.. But anyways let me give it a try.

Apart from this, I would like to thank so many wonderful people i have met in my life, for all the amazing, crazy moments that we shared..

Rgds
Robby