MEMORIES>>>>COMIN THICK AND FAST....

Well, thats a weird me, hosting Sportscenter on ESPN [ I am looking very weird, has shaving rashes :( ]

With the fabulous, Team 18



With Ravi Shastri again


Sleepy, at 3 am still shooting..... :)


With the dazzling Ravi Shastri :) Man...he is tall :)




Last from the right, with Gautam Bimani (centre)..You ll know him if
you watch cricket :)


That's me 2nd from the left, 2nd row


Well Memories are just flooding me today, I was a part of ESPN STAR's CLINIC ALL CLEAR DREAM JOB on Star Cricket and being a part of a reality show (which very few people watched) I can safely say that I was genuinely surprised to see the warmth amongst the 18 of us......

Jatin, Lara, Medini, Vinayak, Akshobh, Sachith, Isaac, Faisal, Siddharth, Pooja, Arvind, Shirin, Hemant, Kartik, Siddharth Raman, Nishant and Emaad....You guys were fabulous.... you really were... Thank you for a wonderful time....I will never forget all of you and I will never forget those two weeks, I made it to the top five but then the experience was mind blowing...

Sigh....Memories are made of some dreamy things, I lived one of my dreams during those two weeks ..... CIAO

MEMORIES :)

This was my first work to be published in print :) HMMMM or maybe my second....I dont exactly remember, but what I do remember is that it gave me a lot of joy and pride. (It also made me richer by 2000 bucks, but then the money did n0t matter that much, it was the icing on my small cake )....Gosh ! sometimes I just have to look back and I have a treasure trove of memories to choose from :) CIAO (PS Click on the pictures to enlarge it for reading purposes )

HURRAH !!

Hurrah ! At last, part of my dream has come true. I have finished with the written manuscript for my dream project. "NONE : THE CHOSEN ONE" is very close to my heart and if god willingly it is published ( if I am lucky that is :) ) then I fancy the cover page to closely resemble this....(its horrible I know ....but still :) it is close to my dream cover) I will pre release a quotation from my book (self righteous brat that I am ) "The human brain is a receptive medium for sarcastic encouragement "

If you read the quotation carefully and read in between the lines , you will probably grasp the plot of the book.......

I will say no more :) and I shall keep my fingers crossed. I shall uncross them after August 2009 :).


My heart bleeds for the people of Assam. How horrible and my deepest sympathies are with the affected families.



Many congratulations to Vishwanathan Anand for doing us proud again :)

CIAO

What do you do when your aunty and your uncle pass away in a space of two days??? Nothing much...I am shocked and numb...cannot explain much...God Bless their souls...My bitterness has made me see some very horrible sights...I regret my mistakes...Will get back soon. My condolences to my cousins and my dad because he has lost his sister. May their souls rest in peace.

Once in a thousand years, there comes a person, who rises above the heads of ordinary men and stands up for what is right. Once in a thousand years, there comes a person, capable of taking decisions which other people fear to take. Once in a thousand years, there comes a person, who becomes an entity, a symbol of hope for the downtrodden. The world is breeding corpulent corruption and hatred and it needs someone to take a stand. Once in a thousand years, there comes a person who risks it all for the greater good. Once in a thousand years, there comes a person, who sacrifices without fear. My time has come….

SEX AND THE INDIAN CITY

When we talk about sex nowadays, we do not disappear behind our friend’s back or flip the burkha back over our faces. Sex in India today, is discussed with a lot of fervor, spice and openness. The degree to which the openness (regarding discussions on the topic of sex) has reached in the Indian metros especially Mumbai and Delhi, is alarming to see. Heck!!! Its progress :)

The one thing which irks me no end , is the manner and unsubtle way in which these topics are discussed and treated. I am no moral guardian but I firmly believe that topics like these should be discussed in a subtle manner. To give you an example and prove my point, I would like to recount an incident which took place whilst I was seated with some of my friends at Karims (A delicious Kabab joint in Delhi). A group of guys were seated in the table opposite to ours. Now at this point, in walked a beautiful girl with a nerdy boyfriend. Immediately the group of guys started off …“Hot a** man !!”,”Want her in b** with me”,” Awesome t*** man!!”. The poor girl looked at her boyfriend for support who turned blue with fear and whisked her out of the joint. Frankly…I knew that Delhi was a loud place…but then I never knew that it was this loud….

I was hanging out with one of my friends and his girlfriend ( a big mistake) when they started off on this highly embarrassing conversation. Let us name my friend A and his girlfriend B…

A: Yeah, I don’t think that I can f*** anyone after B.

B: My friends have experimented a lot, every other night , they f*** a different guy.

A: Yeah but they don’t do it like us Babe (smiling)

B: Shut up, I have a sore back from the last time.

A: But you have to admit, the first time was fun….

B: Yeah, sweet but some pain as well..

Me: Ahem….cough !!! cough !!!

B: Have you f**** anyone ??? (directed at me)

Me: (turning blood red)…Ahem…no no….

B: Whaaaat???...You mean to say you haven’t experimented???

Me: (turning violet)….Er…no no….

A: F*** man!!! You have missed out on a lot…Why don’t you catch somebody from college and sc** her (laughs)

Me: Would stop with all these f**** already???

A: ha ha ……….

B: Tell me when you are ready…I have some nice friends….

Me: (grimly) are you running a prostitute centre???

B: (nervously)…Er….no no…..

Me: Lets finish the conversation then…

Phew….I was happy to get out that place with my life, brain and virginity intact…..

I am not against sexual topics and body contours :) being discussed because people cannot be stopped :)…but all I would like to see is some subtlety…When you are discussing it with your friends, keep your voice frequency tuned down so that it is audible only to your group members. When you are commenting on body contours ( you should not be doing so in the first place but anyway ….), please say it in your mind or whisper it under your breath…because when it is loud, it is nothing better than eve teasing and harassment…it could get you into trouble as well if the boyfriend is built like Sylvester Stallone.

Now the moral guardian…thinks that is time….to sign off :) CIAO and A VERY HAPPY DIWALI TO ONE AND ALL….Best wishes and lots of luck :)

OF PORN AND P :)

This is the recounting of an incident involving me and a certain friend of mine :) I will name her P :) She reminded me of this incident yesterday when she called me up after 3 months. (Not fair P…you took so long :) ) Now this happened when I was in class XI and the number of porn movies watched per day was your status symbol amongst boys. Now on a bright sunny morning, COFAS, our school’s International Computer Olympiad was inaugurated. Being a part of the school team… I mingled with the contestants from the other schools….and then I ran into P….I still remember that I had suppressed a loud guffaw when I had first seen her. Blue eyes, a gold earring in one ear and a SILVER one in the other…. :) BLACK LIPSTICK !!!!! Gothic :) (P is going to kill me later….) She was pretty enough to look at (There you go P….. :) ) and we hit off straightaway (not just because she was pretty :) but because we were competing in the debate against one another and I always like to know my competition better :) )

There was a free for all class going on in our division. Students from any college (especially the outstation and international ones) were encouraged to pay these classes a visit. I sat down in the last row along with P. To my surprise P took out a bunch of SUPERMAN comics from her bag….This gothic girl was turning out to be a real tomboy…Later she confessed that she had harbored an infatuation for the chaddi clad superhero….Sick I say !!! He is a brilliant superhero I must confess, but then how on earth can girls fall for a guy who wears his underwear on top of his tights ??????? Anyway, soon we were immersed in the comics without paying a microgram worth of attention to the teacher Ms Khanna (whom we had labeled as an Ostrich…Sorry Maam :) ) Suddenly our peon, who always carried a kiloton of paan in his mouth and adorned the walls of the college with his post renaissance paan paintings, burst into the classroom. “Maam….we have discovered porn cds hidden in the bathroom....they were hidden in the western toilet water tank”. F**K!!! and I must have said F**K about a thousand times under my breath because P pinched me and held my hand tightly to stop my flow of F**KS. Man !!! this was bad for our college’s reputation in front of the outstation candidates. Ms Khanna had enough common sense to take the peon outside the class. After a few minutes she came back in and announced in her quivery voice “Nimish…stand up please!!!”…Now Nimish was the ultimate porn dealer of our school. His collection of porn cds and dvds was unsurpassed. Rumor has it that he had a Godrej Almirah in his room which was stuffed with carnal viewing instruments. Nobody had seen it of course :)

Now Nimish had been suspended earlier because he had been trapped by the college authorities trying to smuggle in pornware into college. The pornware was confisticated ( I have a sneaky suspicion that the college authorities struck it rich that day…..They fled with the pornware and god knows what they did at home with it :)….I may be wrong but then :) ). Our teacher asked him to step outside the classroom and calamity struck when she did so. Our class had a detachable, hanging blackboard and while Maam and Nimish were passing it, Maam’s hand accidentally hit the blackboard hard. The blackboard swung slightly to the right……HORRORS!!!! A couple of porn cds dropped to the ground unwedged from their hiding place behind the blackboard. We all rushed to have a closer look. One look at the blonde on the cover of one of the cds almost made Maam pass out. Holding Nimish’s hand firmly she stormed out of the class to interrogate him. Some students swear that Maam was muttering “Ram…Ram kitna bada paap !!! “ while she was breezing out of the class. P and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. We enjoyed a lovely two days together and I still remember that after I had won the debate, P was the only one who had run up to me and given me a big hug. She had cried a lot because she was from Ahmedabad and she had to return once the competition had ended. I gave her one of my favourite books to keep and her tears vanished instantly. Later after a month P called me up to say that she loved me, I was pleasantly surprised, but then I wanted to be a very good friend and nothing more. She took that very well and today she is one of my 4 “girl” friends (not girlfriends :) ) and is constantly giving me insights into the female brain….Thanks a ton P…..Miss you…and will never forget those two days and the black lipstick :)

FORTRESSES OF SOLITUDE.....

It has been a long time since I have been in the company of a girl or you may say that I have not been out on a date in years :). I often have wondered and dreamt about holding a soft hand, whispering into a delicate ear, smelling her lovely perfume and making her laugh. There is this lovely lake just beside my house as you may see in the picture above. It is one of my favourite places in Navi Mumbai.


I visit this place about thrice a week....The cool breeze does wonders to my mood....and lifts my spirits up a notch...but then this place also hurts me in a strange way... The most dominant forces of nature have bowed before my stubborn resistance...as a result of which I have frequented this place inspite of storms and heavy rains wrecking havoc on this lovely little fortress of solitude.


This boulevard also holds a very special place in my heart....This is the road I visit when I am extremely blue...I even got into a scuffle with a thug on this very road. The ensuing days saw me nursing a swollen eye and the thug maybe was nursing a sore pair of balls :) This path is very eerie in its location but very pleasant in a strange way because it provides blue people like me a chance to trample back and forth and shout my lungs out till my frustration is fully vented.


There is also a wasteland close to my house where I roam about in the blazing sun to calm myself down...like a ghost haunting a lonely mansion...I am mad you say ??? :) Everybody tells me that and I have stopped listening to people a long time back....

I am longing to be in the company of someone...and I am yearning for it simply because...I want to give love for once and see it appreciated...all these years my love has been kicked about and shoved into dustbins with contempt as if it was a toy :)...My love has never been cherished :)
Maybe it has got something to do with the fact that I give my heart out easily...too easily....Whenever I am scalded ....I turn to my fortresses of solitude.....they will me on to go back stronger and one day.....maybe one lucky day I will be able to do what I am posing to do below...


and say "I LOVE YOU" :) :) CIAO

MY LIFE'S CRUEL METAPHORS....

Cut open....bleeding like a stream of lava in hell............

Wounds stinging like a thousand needles pricking my hide.......

Tears fighting to burst out.....like a camp of rebels with a purpose......

Mind numb.....like a patient anesthetized for a brain transplant......

Eyes red....like a red rose with poisonous thorns........

Heart broken.....like an insect crushed underfoot.......

Feelings not in control....like a mob hell bent on killing......

Fed up of it all.....like a prisoner force fed milk through a hose.....

Scared and frightened.....like a convict awaiting the noose......

Waiting for somebody to understand.....like a mother expectant of her children.....

Betrayed.....like a lover by the one he wants the most.....

Tired and exhausted......like a labourer who builds a mausoleum all by himself.......

Confused.....like a fox who misses the camouflaged chameleon........

Angry.....like a pan full of onions on a high flame..............

Sad.....like a soldier who has not gone home in a year.......

Out of love and empathy.....like a bottle drained of its last traces...........

ON THE RUN

Once again....my scars are hurting me....once again my heart is having that sinking feeling....Sad songs give me solace and in some way fuel the sadness. It all begins when my scars start itching .....I am no Harry potter but I feel my scars hurt when danger or sadness is lurking around the corner.

Its all very choky at the moment.....Its all deja vu'.....I cannot begin to explain.....I cannot begin to reconcile..........I cannot start crying....I cannot stop grimacing..... Its a monopoly and an unfair one....I know I do not hold the cards...but I am still there at the roulette table. Something tells me that I should back off...because I am going to lose heavily...but then like every other fool who takes risks...I find myself still there. I know that at the end of the night...I am going to lose all my money.

What saddens me is the way I lose my ground. Life offers you a batter of the best sauces of sadness and happiness mixed together...mine tastes too sad and cruel.The old dreams are haunting me....I am a different man now....Drastic changes have affected me....I am moodier, gloomier, scared, looking over my shoulder for that fatal blow....I am living every minute like a convict on the run. I beg for refuge at someone's house.....

The saddest part is that....nobody understands me and gives me a place to stay.....I thought they would.....but sadly...I am an outcast now....I am on the run....not for long....My time is nearly up.