Category: arbit

There’s something about this road that makes me cry. I’m talking about the outer ring road. The stretch between Bannerghatta road and Kamakhya theater. I know you guys are going to slam me for still being so hung-up over my life at IIMB. Somehow, I’m unable to get it out of my head. It doesn’t happen when I take this road the other way. It doesn’t happen when I’m actually in campus, quizzing or having a general chat session or whatever. I’ve visited my room on campus once after graduating and it hasn’t happened then.

Continue reading “There’s something about this road…”

Of late, I’ve been trying to understand baseball. Understand how it’s played. The rules. And so forth. The more i think about it, the more similar I find it to our good old gully cricket. Here are a few:

• Throw – you throw the ball, don’t bowl it
• No stumps. How often have you played gully cricket where you have three stones for stumps, and a bowled is almost as complicated as a LBW!
• Strike out – in cases as mentioned above, sometimes you dispense with the bowled (too hard to judge) and put in the rule that if the batsman gets beaten thrice (or in some cases, twice in consecutive balls) he is out.
• Current stumping. So how do you run someone out in gully cricket when you don’t have the stumps? You do what is called a current stumping. One foot on one of the stones representing the stumps, and you need to catch the ball cleanly. Isn’t this what always happens in baseball?
• (my personal favorite) No back runs – when you are playing with a limited number of fielders, you “make it fairer” by eliminating back runs. You have to score in front of the wicket. It’s worse in baseball. You have to hit it between extra cover and midwicket.
• Deflected catches – in some versions of gully cricket (not all), a batsman is out if the ball bounces off some “externality” such as a tree or a wall. Similarly, in baseball, catches taken off the boundary wall are legal.
• (ok this is total fraud) Catching with one hand. I must admit this isn’t exactly similar. In baseball you always catch with one hand. In some versions of gully cricket you have the “one pitch one hand out”. If you can catch the ball clean with one hand after it has bounced once, the batsman is out. This rule is usually used in order to make the game fairer for the bowlers.
• Running without the bat – Typically there is only one bat so the non-striker doesn’t have one. And in order to save time in handing over the bat after a run, the batsman sometimes drops the bat and runs. Just like in baseball. And I’ve always wondered if it’s a rule in baseball. Why don’t the batsmen run with the bat and try ground it in?
• No concept of overs – in a large number of instances of gully cricket, there is no concept of overs. And the bowler bowls as long as he pleases and you have to actually fight with him to allow you to bowl.

Of course there are a large number of differences – you don’t run around in circles in gully cricket (you run straight or not at all), the other rules are largely simple and so forth. Still, I believe baseball is only a glorified version of our street cricket!

One last rule I’d like to see in baseball – batting aad takshaNa bowling illa? (no bowling immediately after batting) – the ultimate rule of Bangalore individual gully cricket where you can’t bowl immediately after you’ve gotten out. And oh yes, Bombay numbers to determine the batting order would be good too! ?

Driving to the gym yesterday evening, I happened to switch on the radio. Radio city 91.1. A song had just ended and I was cursing myself that I’d have to listen to their woresht ads. And then

Welcome to colloquial claaass brought to you by Miss Lingo Leela. SSLC poss currently unemplaayed.

Ever since it started way back in 2001, the best thing about radio city has been Miss Lingo Leela. One heavily accented woman takes lessons on “slonguague” or “slang language”. Every day she introduces a new word, and proceeds to explain it. Initially, the Lingo Leela act used to be done by RJ Priya Ganapathy. However, after she left, there was no one to do it and it was sadly discontinued.

Then sometime in 2003 or so, Radio City decided to standardize programs across locations, and flooded Bangalore with HT stuff. Hindi speaking RJs came in. All the English stuff went out. The best RJs left. Lack of competition was clearly showing. Anyways, by the time I started listening to radio again (about a year back), Radio City was back to its best. They had got in some good RJs (especially Vasanthi), localized the content, brought back the english stuff, even introduced some Kannada stuff. The ads were a little bad but it’s ok,. And then, a few months bak, Lingo Leela made a comeback. Yesterday, she continued.

Today’s word of the day is Gotak. This is a word used in infaarmal usage to signify death. It is like saying that someone croaked.

Gotak being a word that I use very often, I was thrilled. As I had explained earlier, there is no one single Kannada slang. It varies from household to household. And now the word of the day was something that is used a lot in our house. Such joy.

For exomple, if someone says “ivattu yaaro leader gotak andirabeku. adakke ivattu raja” it means “today some leader must have kicked the bucket. so it is a haliday”.

Now, this was too good to be true. I had used the exact sentence to explain the meaning of the word gotak to someone.

This word is the humble cantribution of Corthik Yuss from Byaangaloor. Tomorrow we will learn more. Let us join hands in this noble endeavor of slonguage improvement.

It then struck me. It all fit in. Long ago, when Lingo Leela first made her “appearance” (hearing rather), there was an email id that was given where we could send our cantributions. I must have sent this work to them ages back. At least 4-5 years ago. And it got played now! Such joy! Such joy! Ended up doing an extra 5 minutes on the treadmill yesterday!

I spent a part of this lazy sunday morning plucking lemons out of our lemon tree. Despite harvesting more than a hundred lemons a couple of weeks back, there were enough on the tree to merit yet another plucking session. Green lemons, about to turn yellow, hiding behind the leaves, and with the random thorn here and there. At the perfect stage,? I think, to make pickle.

Continue reading “Lemon tree”

It was past midnight on Friday night (so technically it was Saturday morning) when the lights went out. It was pitch dark all around, though the streetlights were burning. There were no signs of the lights coming back on, so we decided to call it a night (later it would turn out that the problem was with our power connection which had tripped. so the power cut was only in our house).

Continue reading “When I called in the cops”

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.