Sania - Mirza? Malik?

“Love is blind and lovers cannot see the pretty follies they themselves commit.” Too bad the rest of us can!

The recent ‘Sania-Malik wedding announcement’ and the controversy that ensued is flooding the news and is indeed getting spicier by the day.

Ms Mirza, the 23 year old tennis sensation of India, in her search for the perfect groom seems to have abandoned the game.

Can’t blame her. She has been busy all year with engagements and breakups happening one after the other. Her six month engagement with childhood friend Sohrab Mirza ended citing incompatibility as the reason. And her wedding with Shoaib Malik was announced two months later. All was well until a Hyderabadi woman Ayesha Siddiqui claimed to be Malik’s first wife.

The poor guy says he was cheated by the lady (who he had never seen) with whom he had a 'telephonic' relation. It seems she sent him pictures of a slim, beautiful woman claiming it is hers and he fell for it. To add to the fun, he even signed a blank ‘Nikah Nama’ for her.

I can’t seem to judge Malik’s credibility but I’m glad Sania supports her lover and is looking forward to the wedding on April 15th.

To dodge Ayesha’s father who has been asking for a divorce for his daughter, the couple shifted the venue of the wedding from Hyderabad to Dubai.

Lets wait and watch as this media drama unfolds.

Ayesha? Sania?

May the best man.. err.. woman win!

Big Bazaar Bonanza

Guess what the talk of the town is– the new offer big bazaar (Trivandrum) has come up with.

I visited big bazaar yesterday and the offer goes like this. You can take any kind of junk there and get it exchanged for discount coupons!

I have seen a couple of stores do this before for promoting their sales but this one was particularly interesting. Generally the ‘conditions apply’ clause along with these kinds of promotions would be severe but in this case, it was very relaxed. They would take anything and when I say ‘anything’, I’m not joking. They take ANYthing!

I was pretty amazed by the number of people flocking the store with loads of junk from their homes – pretty much like a ‘spring cleaning’ season here in Trivandrum. By the time this offer gets over, Trivandrum is going to have some really clean homes!

But another interesting thing I noticed was that it’s probably not just the homes that might get cleaner, it’s the roads too. I saw a man picking up a scrappy piece of mudguard lying on the road and giving it to the store along with a sack full of other stuff (from his home I presume). This offer might just turn this place into the ‘green, clean’ city we’ve just talking about for years now.

A very intelligent guy even brought a broken toilet to get it exchanged for coupons. (No exaggeration here. I saw it with my own eyes!). People are bringing in heavy stuff like toilets and old computer monitors because they give coupons based on the weight of the stuff exchanged! Oh yes I couldn’t even think of lifting the first monitor we had bought. We should’ve kept it to get it exchanged for coupons!

But this offer has turned big bazaar into a big, noisy market place. There are huge queues in all counters and people are continuously shouting out offers over the PA system which kind of rings in your ears after a while and it made my shopping experience miserable. It was like they were desperate to sell their stuff! “I don’t want your buy 2 and get 2 free” offer, “I don’t want a split ac and get my second one discounted”.

I just wanted to finally get out and as I was waiting to pay the bill, I heard someone ringing a bell continuously and the orange-blue uniformed big bazaar employees shouting out loud “orange rupees twenty a kilo”. A maketing strategy straight from the ‘Palayam Market’ here in Trivandrum. It should work inside Big Bazaar too. In fact it did, as soon as the bell started ringing, a bunch of people rushed to the spot to get their oranges cheap.

But that was it! All that noise made me sick and it was like my turn to pay the bill would never come!

Finally, after paying the bill and getting out of that place, I heaved a sigh of relief, took in some fresh air and vowed to myself not to go back in there ever again!

Is se sasta or achha kahin nahi?? Makes me think. Does it really matter??

Goodbye Chennai

I can’t believe that my stay in Chennai has come to an end. Two and a half years in this big city has definitely been a wonderful experience. Ok, not all of it was wonderful but yes most of it.

I’ll miss this place and probably the little joys that I found here.

Chennai is definitely a nice place to be. People complain about the extreme climate here but you get used to it after a year :)
I’d love to write more about Chennai but I definitely need to get packing.

Can’t wait to see what Bangalore holds for me.

Change is inevitable. Places change. Things change. People change.

Change is good.

A dumb experience with a 'Smart Card'

Recently I was travelling from my native back to Chennai when I happened to meet my onsite coordinator from my previous project who was going back to Chennai in the same train as mine. I had not seen him in person before (Oh well he was in the US busy outsourcing work to us) but I recognized him from a team pic I’d seen sometime back.

Talking about onsite coordinators in the IT field, they’re these special people at work whom we would’ve never seen but interestingly spend hours talking to- about some client requirement of course. But yes, a software engineer on an average spends a minimum of 5-6 hours a week talking to his/her onsite coordinator. It is sometimes interesting to think that you can actually argue, fight and make up with someone you have never ever seen. Yeah, interesting role these onsite coordinators play in our lives! :p

Now, coming to my story, I met my onsite coordinator SK at the station, talked for five minutes there, boarded the train and reached our destination and got off at the Chennai Central station on a Monday morning. We did not see each other while getting off the train (we happened to travel in different compartments) and I just made my way to the local metro station right across the road to catch my train to work. The Chennai metro let me tell you is incredibly efficient and you got trains coming in every 10-15 minutes to take you anywhere in Chennai. But I must say the ticket queues can be pretty frustrating at times. There have been times when I’ve had to strain real hard to find out where the queue ends (Ya ok. Go ahead and blame my height for that! But it is indeed a tedious task to get the ticket!)

To provide some relief to the people waiting in long queues, they introduced train ticket vending machines in important stations and my station had two of them. You get these magnetic cards called ‘Smart Cards’ which you can recharge and use to vend tickets from it. Generally, there won’t be huge queues in front of these vending machines. So I decided to vend my ticket from the machine as I sneered past all those people who did not have ‘smart’ cards and were waiting in the long queue for their tickets. As I walked towards the machine, I found SK there waiting in the queue. Out of courtesy I waved my smart card at him and said I’ll help him get his ticket too. He happily got off the queue and we walked up to the vending machine. I noticed one of those machines was not working. Giving SK a confident smile, I used my card in its twin and the worst happened! It gave me a message in red saying ‘Sorry this machine is out of order’.

To me, it read ‘You really look like a jackass now!’ I gave SK a sheepish smile. He seemed a bit annoyed at me. He had almost reached the ticket counter when I deterred him from his mission and steered him into attaining absolutely nothing! Oh yes I would be surprised he wasn’t pissed at me for that!

Yet again, I suggested to him that we go and join the queue which had by then increased kilometers-fold. I guess he wasn’t open to any more of my suggestions. He said he was gonna take a bus back home, trying to hide all his irritation. I picked up my backpack and sadly walked to the end of the queue trying my best not to look at a single person whom I had sneered at before.

Things never work when you really really want them to. I have experienced this kind of a thing many a times before and this incident was just a repetition.

Smart cards they call it!

Ha! I don’t think so.

Or why blame the card. They should make smarter machines to use them I guess!!!!