Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Mere Luck!!

Hey there!

This morning, was on my way to office. Was listening to Radio Indigo 91.9 FM. Its playing some great western music. Let it continue. It was Cindu hosting the Big Breakfast. The show was good! Playing some interesting songs while she asking questions as part of some contest or something.

Well, the first question was to coin a word for a peculiar laugh, sounded like a devil. Funny words were coined. Then came another question "Who was the first Chief Minister of Karnataka?". This was part of the BQ (Bangalore Quotient) quiz.

I recollected that its a Reddy but didnt knew his first name for that moment. I messaged a guess saying "Its a reddy for sure, Must be Chengalaraaya Reddy or K.C.Reddy" to 2919. Wasn't sure of it. I was @ Maraththalli by then. She didnt disclose the participants name neither their guesses. I thought there would be many correct answers and mine would be one among them.

By 9:30 I got down when she gave a clue that the surname of the First CM begins with an 'R'. This backed up my answer but i was waiting for the result.

By 9:45, I came to office, while she put a person on air asking for the answer for that question. Dunno the name of that person. He said its Gundu Rao which was the wrong answer. There aroused a hope in my mind that i would be the only person who guessed it right to some extent atleast. Many would have answered Kengal Hanumanthiaah remembering him for building the beautiful Vidhana Soudha. Might be many answered it that way but i was sure that it was not Kengal Hanumanthiah.

I came to my cubicle and was interested in checking my answer, googled it to find my guess 100% right. By then, I messaged Cindu back once again saying "I am dame sure, it is Chengalaraaya Reddy".

Voila! she called me! Hehe! She said that she would put me on air asking for the answer. I was pretty confident about the answer and said okay. This is the second time me coming on air, the first time was on Radio Sparsha (Worldspace). That was with RJ Shruthi on a program covering the Birthday of Dr.Rajkumar. You can find a post regarding that here.

She asked me the answer n I replied back with the correct answer. She congratulated me and said that i would get details on getting my gift later. That was fine. I was proud of my BQ. Hehe!! =)

Then I did one of the foolish thing ever. She asked me when was he elected as the CM. The line wasn't clear and i had to ask the question many a times. Once i got the question, i thought, it should have been after India went republic and so i said, was it in 1950?? How foolish of me? It was right in 1947.

Well that was fine. A cool experience barring this.

Later Uththara called me asking for my address which i provided, she said that my gift which contains a shirt from Radio Indigo and a CD. Cool! Will check out what it is! Nice to get it almost free (free except the 3 + 3 Rs for the two SMSs I sent! Shouldn't matter though!!)

Well thats it for today!

Catchya some other day!!

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Mundaaysing @ the IISc

Making myself some time to blog though i've been assigned a boringly stupid task since 4 weeks.

Dont get confused looking at the title with my previous posts on IISc. This is totally different one. One much before i came to know people at IISc.

Probably this was my first time going to the Tata Book House @ IISc. It was in my 4th semester of Engineering. As few of you might know that i had topped our class in 3rd semester. The annual day was conducted in our 4th semester and we (the toppers of 3rd semester, though i hate to get recognised that way) were asked to buy books of our choice in any outlet preferrably Tata Book House(TBH). It was the idea of our then Princi Prof. Anthony Thomas to get it from TBH as he was a professor @ IISc.

Four of us were asked to get books worth Rs.500/- from our pocket and were assured to refund it back but bills were supposed to be submitted. I had to get books for another 500 more in the same scheme as i was getting 500 more from my HOD Prof. Hemavathi as I had scored the maximum marks in her subject, Logic Design. I was happy that i would be purchasing books for Rs.1000/- which would be refunded. Hehe!! First time ever.

On the eve of Annual Day, I went to TBH getting Rs.1500/- from my father. 500 extra if I found something interesting. After a long search, i finalized on four books which i remember were

1. The Complete Reference UNIX
2. Compiler Design - Aho, Ullman & Sethi
3.
4.

(Will update once i remember all)

On adding up the prices of the four it had come upto Rs.1000/- and odd (Might be 1026), I thought that was sufficient and asked them to bill it! Only then I came to know that they were offering 20% discount. After the rebate, it came down to Rs.876/-. I was even more happy that i could buy some more books to patch up the difference between 1000 and 876. I found another book, Discrete Mathematics by C.Liu and asked them to add it onto the bill. I had asked them to bill them seperately into two bills so that i can give one to Princi and the other to HOD. After adding another book to one of the bill, instead of going up, it came down to Rs.786/-. I couldn't get the thing properly. How can it get low?? Even the shop owner, a lady of say 45-50 then who added up manually asked me to get only 786 rupees. I was confused and paid her the amoun, took the books and was going out but my mind was all calculating how can this be possible???

I came home thinking the same. Took the bills and started tallying. It didnt take long for me to find that she had cut the discount price of the book rather than adding onto it. I felt triumph at that instant getting to know that i had saved a bit. I will be having some money with me after getting the thing re-imbursed. I was happy for that! I had narrated the whole story to my friends to get a pat on my back for my deed.

I got it re-imbursed and spent the money in a good way getting more books. But later, i felt bad for what happened. I didnt had the bills by then to make the correction rectified.

Was cribbing within for some days for this when i realised that i had my misfortune with somebody else some other day. That was her day of misfortune. And even she'll have a day of fortune. This is merely fortunate to experience such incidents. I then decided not to cheat somebody this way. I hadn't cheated her but had walked away in confusion. I must not give reasons says another part of my mind.

Everytime I go to TBH, i recollect this incident which is why I wrote this as I had been to TBH yesterday! Hope this brought some smile on your face or some serious thought!

Thats it for today! Have fun! \m/

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Real Independence on I-Day

Way back in 1992, the same day according to the English Calendar was a black day for the Karnataka Police. They had lost two of their eminent officers S.P Harikrishna and Shakeel Ahmed while trying to catch the notorious Veerappan in the Meenyam forest. Details can be obtained here.

What I am going to tell here is not related to it in any sense. It was the eve of Independence Day and Veerappan scalped two important wickets of Karnataka Police. The very next day, I had experienced the first ever death in my home.

August 15th 1992. I got up at my usual 8 o' clock. Came down to brush my teeth and perform my daily karma. I was in my 4th standard. Was getting ready to go to participate in the I-Day celebrations. Mohan Chikkappa was reading the days' newspaper and he was reading about the Veerappan news. He said that Harikrishna's body would be brought to the cemetary near dairy farm(Hebbal, pretty close to our house, 2.5 kms).

I went to bath. Mohan Chikkappa was going to wash his clothes. His habit is to listen to music and wash clothes. He had an apparatus which consists of a lengthy wire and a tape-recorder along with a flex box. He used to plug the wire on the flex box, carry it all over the open space where we wash clothes and keep the tape recorder there and play songs through tap or radio.

Bad day for him, the wire had un-noticingly dipped into the water tank beside and he had plugged it on. I was still taking my bath when i suddenly heard a sharp but short sound of pain. I thought somebody should have slipped. Suddenly(gracefully) the power went down after 5 minutes. But that was sufficient. His mother, my grandma came in search for him as she had called him and there was no reply from him. She saw him ducked in the water tank but was wondering what he was doing in there and why wasnt he replying. She went to him and shook him and was horrified when he came to her arms just like that!

She hurried and called everybody @ home. Everybody were panicking and nobody knew what to do. By the time i had finished my bath and was silently standing by the side of the hall watching the things happening around. Doc was called but were effortless. He was dead by then. There was a scar on his palm. A scar of 2 cm diameter and 1 cm deep i guess, made by the current passing through his body. Many methods were followed to save a dead man but in vain.

I can still recap each and every thing happened on that day. Some are worth not mentioning in this post (Dont ask about it). Our hotel was shut down and everybody were dumbstruck. All you could see were the weeping women, some men consoling our family members.

It was around 3 when post mortemed Chikkappa arrived home for the last time. It was reported that he was dead by accident in a current shock(which was obvious). Around four they took him to the cemetary, and was burnt again by "Electric Shock". They didnt allow me to go to cemetary thinking that i would get scared seeing things there. He had found independence on the Independance day.

When they were returning back, they saw Harikrishna coming to join Mohan Chikkappa.

Saturday, August 04, 2007

Shawlalli chappali suththkond hodskond prasanga!

Hehe! You guys might be interested lookin at the header!

This is what happened to me last night! I'll brief you through what happened!

After another hectic day @ office, though i had to come to office tomorrow, i was a bit happy that i can enjoy atleast one and a half day of weekend! ( Dunno why we S/W engineers are so despo about Weekends).

Left office at 9. Was walkin lazily towards the bus stand for a 1:30 hrs of journey. A kind driver had stopped on my way (not at bus stop, half way through). As he had stopped, i boarded it just to know that i heads to Maraththalli! I thought, "Okay! Lemme go to Maraththalli and catch another bus to Hebbal". But I dunno what i felt, I got down the next stop (Bellandur) and had a masalpuri. After having it and waiting for another 10 minutes, i got a bus to Hebbal. Boarding that i dint find a seat as usual though the bus was pretty vacant to stand, i stood besides a seat and was waiting for him to get down asap.

Just two seats behind, there was an elderly gentleman, who was acting as if he is going to get down. I was reluctant to get next to him as many were standing next to him. I thought he'll get down at maraththalli and i can grab that seat.

Though i was standing, my eyes were scanning faces of people in the bus looking at their various expressions. I was eagerly waitin to see someone getting down but i saw none.

Now the same gentleman was looking at me. From my experience in travelling in Bus, he was just another person who was getting down in a stop coming next.

Come Maraththalli, he didnt get up. Many stood but, people who were next to him dint get up. I had a strong belief that he was getting the next stop. I went and stood mext to him to my stupidity.

He read my mind i guess. He looked at me.

I hesitantly asked. "Ileetheera??"(Will you get down??)

He said "I get down at K.Narayanapura, where do you get down??"

I continued "Oh Okay!"

Now begins the worst part. He said, "Guess you need a seat. I can stand, you sit" and he was about to get up.

I said "No, you please sit down"

He, "No you travel a lot, you sit." he stood up.

I dint wanted to sit but if i hadnt others would have taken that seat. I took the seat.

Gets even worse, He asked "Whats yo age??"

I was dumbstruck! Couldnt open my mouth. I couldnt have told my actual age as i would get ashamed if i would have told that! I had to answer and I thought I'll lie and said "25".

He said "I'm fifty one".

I thought i would get down! Enough is enough!! But something stopped! I dunno what!! I still curb for that!

He continued, "Dont get angry with my questions. You please sit and enjoy the ride! I'll stand! Its hardly 4 stops ahead."

Aargh!! I could stand that person! I was so ashamed!! I couldnt have dont anything other than standing. Was feelin so bad about my condition.

Thought i had to divert my thinking. I took the book i had in my bag, "The Godfather" and tried reading it! Was in no mood to read! Radio was constantly playin in my ears. Was listening to "Aa kaalada haadugalu with Gramaphone guru Sachith" on Radio Mirchi and the discussion to my bad luck was about "Telling a lie on age".


What a co-incidence!! I was just listening to radio doing nothing. Couldnt read books, couldnt message! I just couldnt do anything.


Come K.Narayanapura, he threw a smile to me and said " Barla saar??" and got down! I put a deliberate smile on my face and said "Olledu swamy".

I was lost in my own world of shame.

Thinking about it now, I feel so irritated and i now have made a resolution not to look for seats in the i did yesterday!

Just thought of sharing this with you guys!!