Category: arbit

Last year when people here rioted following Rajkumar’s death, the HTs* and the TDCs** cribbed about how Kannadigas are a violent and senseless community and all such. Look what’s happening now in Rajasthan and Delhi!

Anyways I was wondering what could? be the rationale behind such violent protests. i can think of only one reason. by protesting the way they are, the gujjars are trying to show themselves as being uncouth and uncivilized, and hence qualify them to be tribal! Nice funda, right?

* HT = Hindi Types
** TDC = Typical Delhi Chutiya

Orchid is an exotic plant.

Vanilla is extracted from orchids. Hence, it should be an exotic smell.

Why, pray why, then do investment bankers think vanilla is not exotic? Even worse, why do they think vanilla is the opposite of exotic?

Hearsay says that a number of bloggers are blogging about the demolition of the M G Road boulevard for purposes of construction of the Metro. The entire front page of the Deccan Herald’s “Metro Life” is dedicated to the topic. In the midst of all this I was also feeling left out, so I thought I should join in.

Continue reading “let me join in the protests”

When we met for the first time, my order of a mousse was met with a ?oh, I didn?t know you are such a high calorie person. I?m very calorie conscious you know. I?ll have tea -without milk or sugar?. I had quickly changed my order to a cup of cold coffee.

A year, after that, we didn?t meet, but talked frequently on the phone. She used to routinely call me ?fatso? and I used to retaliate by calling her anorexic. She would take jibes at my habit of a large late night glass of bournvita. That she ate not much but shoots and leaves left some room for retaliation.

Then we met for the second time.

We met again recently ? in a valiant attempt to try pick up the pieces. She looked as if four of her could fit easily into one pair of my jeans. The place we chose was not particularly known for its food, but the peace and serenity more than made up for that.

The set dosas soon arrived, complete with a small plate with a dollop of butter. I just looked at her eyes, and quietly kept the plate of butter aside, and dived straight into attacking the dosa. She picked up the butter in her little plate carefully applied it on her dosa. Another look into my eyes, and she picked up the butter from my plate too.

That, I thought, was a classic case of life coming round a full circle. And that it merits a mention in my blog.

Three desis played for England in the game against the Irish on Friday, all belonging to different religions (Bopara ? hindu; saj ? Muslim; monty ? surd) ? making England the joint most secular team of this particular world cup. Actually the title is shared by three or four teams ? England, Sri Lanka, Canada (assuming Kevin Talwinder Sandher is Surd) and maybe India (I?m not sure of Uthappa?s religion ? India is in the list if he is christian).

Continue reading “Secularism and Cricket”

So with the indian cricket team out of the world cup, many advertisers are at a loss regarding the “made for world cup” ads. Hockey is not saleable (basically Dhanraj Pillay and Gagan Ajit Singh don’t look good), and there is no other sport which has a nationwide following. So Ashwin suggests that the number one “sport” in India is (hold your breath) coding, and they should be heavily exploited by advertisers!

Continue reading “Nike and the techie”

Marriage doesn’t seem to have changed him. The same old track pants. Crumpled T-shirt. Brooding, yet determined, eyes. Silent.

Unlike the rest of us who are joking and shouting, he maintains a studied silence. His teammates are not allowed to talk, unless they are answering questions. There is a job to be done. The thumbs-up and brief applause when you come up with a good answer. The occasional exclamation of seemingly weird stuff such as “floyd” or “cow”, complete with a weird look on the face. The occasional hi-fi. A scream and a jump after he finds out he has won.

Mission accomplished, he exclaims “ROI are there”, and quickly packs up his bags and heads for the station.

Two days back I received an email from my HR informing everyone that a certain “rokini” was celebrating her birthday that day. Initially i found the name very unusual for a tam (her last name gave it away that she was tam) but then realized that it was just a “different” way of spelling “rohini”. Thankfully she didn’t spell it as “rogini”, which in sanskrit based languages means “diseased woman”.

Thing with tamil, as i have explained in my first ever blogpost, the tamil alphabet is very limited and practices polymorphism. For example, a single character represents K, Kh (as in khaana, khanna, etc.), G, Gh and some vague guttural version of n. Apart from polymorphism “along the rows”, there are some other peculiarities as well. There is no H sound in tamil, nor is there a letter to represent S or Sh, which are both represented by the “ch” sound.

What has happened is due to increased aryan influences, a number of tams have sanskrit-based names (in fact most tams I know have sanskrit names). Unfortunately, many of them can’t be accurately written in Tam, and hence get grossly mis-spelt. So you get Rokini for Rohini, and Braggasam for prakasam and gobal for gopal etc.

\begin{Update}One of the most popular bloggers in India is supposed to be Kiruba Shankar. When I first heard his name I burst out laughing because in Kannada, “kiruba” means “hyena” and whoever would have such a name! Then i realized it must be “krupashankar”. Writing “krupa” in tam and then transliterating it to english would yield “kiruba”. Strong. \end{Update}

So my dear tams, in order to prevent us from laughing at the funny ways in which you spell your names, I hereby exhort you to take on purely Dravidian names only. Listen to Periyar. Remember the dravidian movement. Chuck all the sanskrit in the names. And take on pure tam names. I’m sure you can’t misinterpret spellings with “Senthil” or “Anbazhagan” right!

Postscript Speaking of spellings, I don’t think the way I spell my name (Karthik) is accurate enough, though it is the most widely accepted spelling. Something like “kaartik” might be more accurate. However, it all depends on how you want to transliterate the Ta (as in tomato) and ta (as in pasta) into english.

So i did go to IIT Madras last week to recruit. Turned out pretty good in the end. We found around six really good candidates and it was a tough decision whittling it down to the final three to whom we have made offers. We are very happy with the entire process and also with the people we finally got, and I must say that placements at IITM are much much better than they used to be when i was there – both in terms of opportunities and organization.

Continue reading “Recruitment… Bhaaga eraDu”