The show is split in to 5 parts. Click on the following links to open them in a new window. The site needs no registration to view the videos, so enjoy!

• Part one
• Part two
• Part three
• Part four
• Part five

“What is happening? Why are they taking so long?”, his wife asked.
“C’mon dear, this is not Ontario. This is India”, he said, with the sarcasm turned a notch up! This really irked me. But the next statement was the icing on the cake.

“I thought things would have changed. They are the same and will never change over here”

When we stepped out in to the waiting lounge, I introduced myself to him and asked him casually about his native place in India.

“I am from [so &so place] in Punjab. I have been in Toronto for 1.5years now!!”, he said proudly.

1.5years?? He was out of India for just over an year and already he has started passing comments over how India won’t improve? What do we do with these kinda people around!?

[tags]chennai, india, attitude[/tags]

I saw the above car when I came out of the airport. Interesting! I have never seen this kind of car before in India (of course, it is not like I know of every car brand available in India!). It looked more like those looong limousines. The car zoomed past us and to add to the wound, my rented Tata Indigo broke down! The car sign looked like a Skoda, and it was AP (Andhra Pradesh) registration. Does Skoda make these kinda cars?

The return flight was scary! Perhaps, not as scary as the one I had from Italy to Belgium (a small Dakota kind of Lufthansa plane, shaking all the way, which practically eliminated all my fear for roller coasters :p), but the landing was terrific. Most probably the pilot misjudged the point of contact or something. Since it was around 11pm, people were sleeping or atleast in a “trance” state, but the jolt with which the plane landed, woke up everyone! First time I saw people screaming in a plane, for real, I mean The girl sitting behind me literally grabbed my hair, the person who was dozing off next to me banged his head on the front seat, woke up with a big “Aahhhh”….how I wished I had my camera with me

This happened last month (March). March 25th was a holiday (Good Friday), so I bought a KSRTC ticket to Chennai, for Thursday night (March 24th), or at least that was what I thought I did! I actually had bought a ticket for Friday night (March 25) and I did not even notice that mistake until I went there to the bus stand!

Thursday evening, I left office by 7pm, went home, packed lotsa clothes (to wash in Chennai), stuffed my camera + other valuables along with my laptop in to a shoulder bag, started merrily to Majestic bus stand! As the next day was Good Friday, KSRTC expected lotsa passengers and had arranged for many special trips to Chennai. So, my 10.15pm bus actually came in only by 11.45pm!! Feeling relieved that I had not missed the bus, I boarded it and was shocked to see another person sitting in my seat, #14.

I told him, “Hey, I have this seat booked”.

“Really?! I also have this. See…here is my ticket”

I compared all the fields, could not find any difference! I was really irritated by then. Who wouldn’t be! I took both the tickets to the driver and told him the problem. He had one look at both the things and said I had got a ticket for the next day!! Only then I noticed it. I sheepishly apologized to that #14 middle-aged man, got off the bus as quickly as possible! I could hear the driver telling me it was possible to transfer the tickets. I didn’t even turn to thank him. Since, it was already nearing 12am, the ticket controller said it was impossible to transfer the tickets. So, I was standing there, with a ticket for the next day’s night, wondering whether to go back to my house in Airport road, or to buy a ticket in some bus and reach Chennai somehow! Unfortunately, I decided on the latter.

I went outside and got a ticket in National Travels for Rs.450! The bus seemed spacious, a 2+1 seating arrangement. I was happy that at least I would have some personal seat space. The bus left Majestic by 12.15am. By that time, I was feeling very sleepy, very uncharacteristic of me as I usually go to sleep only by 1.30am or 2am after all those Miike Takashis and other East-Asian “classics”! When they reached Madiwala, the bus stopped near a petrol bunk. I learnt from my next seat person that some one, sitting next to the driver, puked and they have stopped to clean it. I went down and saw the driver instructing a cleaner what to do. I told the driver that I was going for some water and would be back in a minute.

The petrol bunk had a shop; it had lotsa items on display. I was going through all those and finally, bought a water bottle and some snacks. When I came back to the main road, I could not find the bus! The bus had apparently left with out me!

“Did you see when the bus left?” I ran back and asked the person at the cash counter.

“Illa pa, Enakku theriyathu (No, I don’t know)”

I ran back to the road, hoping to catch at least a glimpse of the bus’s wake at a distance. I could not see anything past 200 meters. I realized, only then, how silent and dark the night was. My entire luggage had gone with the bus. LAPTOP! Oh, God, my beautiful T41p was also there. With all its accessories, it costs around Rs. 1.4L. If I ever lose it or break it, I need to pay back that amount to my company. More than that, all my emails, personal and project related documents + all confidential documents were there, very much unprotected. Apart from these, my personal valuable things were there also.

For a second, it was a big void, I could not think of anything other than how to catch that bus. Looking around, I saw a call taxi waiting for someone. I ran to it, I quickly told him my problem, asked him if he would help me catch the bus. He was going home, after dropping his last customer. He agreed to come with me, of course, with the Taximeter on. Thus began the chase.

For 20 or so minutes, we did not see a single bus. The driver had already started talking about turning back if we could not find anything in 10 minutes. I was thinking more along the lines of catching the bus at any cost, but I could understand his concerns.

“What to do now? May be, I should get down, try to get in to a bus to Chennai, start searching for National travels there.” I was thinking.

“Look, a bus over there. Is this the one you were talking about?” Driver shouted.

I snapped off my trance-like state and looked up. YES, it was the same bus. Hoorah! We over took and signaled the bus driver to stop the bus. I jumped down, ran to the driver, and started shouting. I felt very mad, but inside I also felt kinda warm and relieved, a mixture of emotions. I did not even mind paying Rs.190 for the taxi, as I knew if I had not caught the bus I would have lost close to Rs. 1.7L. I got it in to the bus, patted my laptop bag, and slumped in to my seat.

I did not sleep that night !

1) First, this Science-based story by Jeyamohan. I didn’t know Jeyamohan writes these kinda stories too!! The basic story is about how different our Siddha Medicinal system is from Alopathy and how the system that we practise now is not the true Siddha. I got to know (learnt!?) a lot of things. Interesting read. But, after having read the story, I feel as if I went through a dense medical journal (“Siddha for dummies” !?)

2) When I was looking for some interesting blogs to read (as if I didn’t have enuf already!) I stumbled on Sriram Krishnan’s blog, He is a student (Wow!) in Chennai, a nerd & more importantly, has excellent coding skills! Good to see such motivated talents. He is really in to search technologies. Though, directly not related to my current work, I got kinda motivated reading all his articles. No denying that his “How to write a search engine in 16 hours” post brought back sweet memories of how I had only an evening to make our OS, which we did as our final year project, understand Tamil Good old days. I doubt I enjoyed doing anything so strenuous lately. Professional life, for sure, takes out that enthusiasm and, sometimes, that curiosity to learn more, out of you. This is my personal opinion, of course. Let’s hope Sriram doesn’t feel like me after 5 yrs of being in the field. Microsoft/Google, if you are looking for a talent, with enuf enthusiasm/motivation & technical know-how, you’ve got the right candidate here!

PS: Rama/Prem, this fellow is good, do have a look at his postings.

3) Latest *big* thing (& here’s a going-to-be-a-big-thing! ) in Gollywood: Dhanush got married to Aishwarya, super-star’s daughter.

Don’t you think Rajini looks more like one of those ADMK ministers?? I can’t believe this is the same person who attacked Jeyalalitha so ferocioulsy back in 1996!!

4) Mr. Duraipandi is strongly arguing that the number of characters alloted to Tamil in Unicode is not enough. I found this article quite interesting; Mr.Duraipandi gives a no-nonsense introduction to what makes Unicode tick, especially the Tamil part of it. He complains that if only Indian government had given a proper set of characters to be included in the Unicode, we’d have been typing much easier in Tamil. As a Tamil blogger now for close to 2 months, I have to agree! If not for the excellent software, e-kalappai, I’d have given up by now. One small grumble though: Mr.Duraipandi could’ve avoided the usual “Tamil is not given proper recognition, we are always the losers, blah blah blah” whining!

5) Saw some 10 – 12 movies since my last [movie] post here. Nowadays, I see so much *junk* that I keep forgetting the good films I see, along with those junk. Some films that I wanted to mention were “7/G Rainbow colony“, “Bose” & “Bride & Prejudice“. For those who haven’t heard about these films, the first two are Tamil films and the last one is an Hinglish film. “Bride & Prejudice” (B&P) is directed by Gurinder Chadha (Bend it like Beckham fame). This film portrays a Punjabi family, literally preparing their daughters to be given in marriage to desis & only Desis! I didn’t like the movie. Aishwarya was charming & beautiful as usual, the songs were great (except for the last duet song), some of the dialogues were good & sharp, so why I didn’t like this?! I don’t know; It simply is not the best effort by Ms.Gurinder. I have a detailed review of this ready somewhere in my HDD, might come around to post that sometime later (BTW, here are some Desi jokes). I think “7/G Rainbow colony” (7/G) is an excellent film by Selvaraghavan, director of “Thulluvatho Illamai” & “Kadhal kondaen”. If you haven’t seen this film yet, thinking that all Selvaragavan films are are always cheap and vulgar, you are missing a good movie; you have to see this film. The film was so captivating that I could not stop thinking about it for 2 days. If you think the songs are so good to hear, just see them in the movie in proper context, you will love them! I think Ravikrishna (hero) is a talented actor, but it is too early to say that. Sonia Agarwal has acted excellently. Yuvan shankar raja is fast becoming my favorite music director. I heard Karthik Raja, his brother, did the BGM for the movie, but who cares?! BGM is the backbone of this movie. It brings the emotions in every scene to life. Excellent work, again. Do not miss this movie. I read some reviews saying that only if you are/were in love, you’ll like this movie, *shrug*, probably true! “Bose”, I think, is one of those good movies that go unnoticed. It sucked for the first 15 or so minutes, but after that the screenplay really picked up pace. Srikanth copies Surya’s mannerisms to show himself as a tough commando [sic!]. Sneha is charming & beautiful, as usu…Oops, I said the same for Aishwarya, right?! quick, think of something! Ok, “As usual, Sneha is beautiful & charming” I have a biiig review written for this too. I will post it one of these days.

Some movies I have a review written and stashed (lost?!) somewhere in my HDD: “Mr. 3000″, “Beg!”, “Herold & Kumar go to White castle”, “The Forgotten”, “Office space” & some more I don’t remember now!!