Remembering Iraq

I am really angry right now.

I am a fan of Wikipedia, have contributed both in terms of content and in terms of moolah to it. But, I went back to the page on Al-Qa'im today, and was astonished to see that most of the past information had been removed. And the fuckers are complaining that the article is a stub, and that we can help by expanding it! No donation from me you moron, Jimmy Wales.

I spent 2.5 precious years of my childhood there. I still remember the person who used to give me chocolates every time he would run into me. I still remember running away from the people celebrating Holi with masalas. I still remember discussing Sridevi, and Mumbai rains, with the local grocery-shop owner. I still remember being (almost) sexually abused by an idiot who was my father's subordinate (I had the good sense of forcing myself out of his house after he emerged in his underwear and started touching me inappropriately).

No, my wiki contribution was not about these personal experiences. It was about the cement plant run by ACC that got us there and provided many local people employment. It was about how the place became a curious melting pot of Iraqis, Romanians (who were handing over the plant to ACC) and us Indians. It was about how that weird chemical plant a few kilometers away used to give us bad asthmatic attacks once in a while. It was about how I saw my first tanks and first sand-dunes.

These are bound to be hazy memories - these events occurred a lifetime ago. But, I remember seeing VP Singh's visit to Baghdad being covered on the national channel and thinking - Man, why aren't our leaders remotely as charismatic as Saddam Hussein.

There, I have said it. I wasn't very happy when Saddam was executed.

During those years in Iraq, way too young as I might have been, I had heard of the cruelty of his regime. I knew he wasn't exactly adored, even though his portraits and posters covered every street in every town I visited. But, things moved smoothly.

Cities were clean, hospitals were efficient, there was freedom (at least before the First Gulf War; that's when we came back and that's when I hear the place got more fundamentalist) and petrol was almost as cheap as mineral water.

I hated coming back to India. Not only because it robbed me of this perceived exotic identity that I had put on over the course of my stay there (and which used to come very handy when interacting with cousins here), but also because India was a shock to me. When we moved to Iraq I was a little over 6 years old, just beginning to grasp the import of stuff happening around me. When we moved back, I was a fairly worldly wise 9 year old, who had seen stuff (including, but not limited to, extremely violent movies, novels not meant for children, that man who used to touch me, and, quite amazingly, female friends who used to play Ghar-Ghar with sticks, making them lie together and do all sorts of scandalous things).

But, recovering from that major diversion, I absolutely hated coming back to India. It was humid. There were mosquitoes. Every place was filled with people. And everyone else was an Indian too. No fun.

Am watching this film called The Devil's Double. Just brought memories back. During our stay there, we once heard this story - apparently, one of Saddam's sons had killed someone. As per Islamic rules, Saddam's son (don't remember if it was Uday or someone else) could be forgiven only if forgiven by the victim's family. Saddam (apparently) agreed with the death sentence. But, (apparently) the victim's family forgave the son, out of 'natural compassion'.

Yep, so Iraq was twisted. Frankly, I don't think how they can not be unless they are all bombed out. With that much oil and those many tribes, it seems your idiotic God is having a lot of fun there.

Singapore Trip

This is my third visit to Singapore, and I am absolutely shocked by the changes from my last visit in 2008.

But, some things don't change thankfully. Had a sumptuous early dinner at Jaggi's in Little India (which according to me is the best Punjabi food joint, even if you include eateries in India) and then rushed to the Night Safari.

They seem to have changed the route a bit and added some more animals since my last visit in 2007, but it still is a fascinating experience.

Looking forward to spending time on Shenton Way tomorrow, where my ex-office is and also having lunch at Lau Pa Sat. When I went to the hotel in Little India where I had stayed during my internship the Filipino manager(ess) recognized me soon enough. I wonder if the Bong family owned stall I used to get my dinner from at Lau Pa Sat will recognize me too. Unlikely, but it feels nice to be at the only place outside India that feels like home.

Peter, my ex-boss, is back in Sydney, but would have been nice to run into him here.

More meat in Brunch now

No one does weeklies quite like the good fellows at HT Media. I have been a big fan of HT's weekend supplement Brunch and Mint's weekend supplement Lounge for a long time.

In fact, I had begun subscribing to HT on moving to Mumbai only because of Brunch, but then discontinued it because it felt wasteful as I wasn't reading the main paper at all. The column in Brunch I used to look forward to reading the most was Rude Food or its derivative columns by Vir Sanghvi. I get to read that now anyway through the link to the online version he shares every Sunday on his twitter account.

I still do read Mint, which in itself is a brilliant newspaper, and so Lounge finds itself placed on my doormat every Saturday morning, all smiling for me when I open the front-door almost the first thing after waking up.

I was in Kanpur this weekend to conduct a sci-fi quiz at IIT as part of their tech-fest TechKriti, and had resigned myself to the fact that someone would have removed my newspaper by the time I got back Sunday afternoon. And was immensely relieved on reaching my flat and finding that it was still there. There are few things more relaxing than retiring on your couch on a leisurely Sunday afternoon, after a few very hectic days, after a hot shower, with, yes, you guessed it, a mug of chilled Kingfisher beside you.

There was a short trip to Hypercity to do the grocery shopping between that return from Kanpur and retiring on the couch bits. One of the reasons I look forward to going to Hypercity every weekend is the shelves of magazines that greet you on entry into the store. I normally buy the latest edition of Tehelka, which I need to write about some time soon, and a couple of other magazines if anything else looks interesting. It usually doesn't.

But this time around a familiar name stood out from all the other India Todays and Newsweeks and Peoples on the shelves. I was surprised to see a thick edition of Brunch being sold there. Turns out the Brunch team has decided to come out with a glossier and meatier version of Brunch as a quarterly.

The inaugural edition has Karan Johar and Katrina Kaif on the cover, in case you plan to go out looking for it.

I haven't got beyond the first few pages, but the remaining content does look promising. I was slightly disappointed with the printing in the part that I have gone through - there are several words where the letters have been printed one on the other. But, hopefully just teething issues.

MnA Update

There hasn't been an update on MnA for some time now. So, I suppose a post on what we have been up to is in order.

We have been quite active lately, and if some of the current discussions bear fruit, should get even more busy in the coming weeks. It's great to get work, and get appreciated for that work, without pretty much any specific pitching or publicity till now.

And it's more heartening because we are not exactly quoting basement remuneration for our quizzes. We don't overcharge, but we put in sincere effort for every single quiz, and we ask for what we feel is reasonable for that effort, and we have been invited above people who quoted much lower than us in recent times. We must be doing something right. To not have had a single experience till date where our quiz has not been appreciated adds all that much more to the effort.

Apart from the increase in number of cities our weekly Hindustan Times quiz goes to, we have done one corporate quiz and two college quizzes in the last few weeks.

We did three quizzes based on the Tata Crucible format for Ispat Industries. It was very enjoyable, and it's always nice to associate with a leading corporate house.

The next gig was for NIT Surat - a general quiz for their technical fest, on the 2nd of October. We have been trying to expand our presence to more colleges in Western India, and it was a pleasure doing a quiz for NIT Surat, a college which has had some of the country's best college quizzers in the not so distant past.

Of course, we have to mention that because of unavoidable circumstances both Menon and I could not be there for the quiz, but we did ensure that the event went smoothly by getting one of our friends - a well known figure in the quizzing circles - to do it on our behalf.

And, finally, I was in Lucknow over the weekend to conduct an open quiz at Varchasva, IIM Lucknow's sports-cum-cultural meet. I loved the experience - the campus is beautiful and reminded me of Joka - and the response from the participants was extremely encouraging too. I have known so many people from IIM Lucknow over the years, and it was awesome to be there finally.

So, it's been a very rewarding last few weeks, not only monetarily, but also in terms of being at new places, sharing the joys of quizzing. Hoping for tons of more interesting experiences in the near future.

Missing Topi

I have been wanting to make a post on the magazines I love reading, but like everything else I want to write about I get bored midway through the post and move on to something else.

But, I chanced upon this piece by Aatish Taseer in this week's Lounge, the HT Mint supplement that I am a huge fan of, and felt like writing about it. The piece as well as the weekly.

First about Lounge. It is by far the most intelligent supplement that any newspaper has in India. Considering that Mint is by far the most intelligent newspaper in India, it might not come as a surprise, but the wide range of topics Lounge covers, and the phenomenally great columnists it has on its menu, it deserves mention several times more. If nothing else, just the fact that a mainstream paper comes out with a weekly column that very often talks, very intelligently at that, about graphic novels must be a proof of how great it is.

And now coming to the piece itself, which is about the moderate Pakistan. It took me back to the short time I had spent there in the spring of 2006. Pakistan is a beautiful country, almost as much as India, and it is one of humankind's greatest tragedies that the two countries are not together. For we could have achieved so much more if we had not wasted so much time fighting each other.

It is also a waste because we are so alike. One story I love narrating is how my friends and I were having a great time talking to people around us in Urdu till the time we crossed the border at Wagah and came to India where we could not understand anything because everyone was talking in Punjabi.

Personally, walking around in Lahore, singing obscure Hindi film songs on the bus trip to and from NWFP with other students, enjoying some random gupp-baazi after the debates on the rain-soaked stairs of Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute, even the abuse from that woman whom I accidentally dropped coke on during the bus trip back to Lahore - it all seems part of another world now. A world I miss every day, for I don't think I will ever get to go there again.

A world we are unfortunately doomed to see as foreign. When we could have been brothers.

Believe them when they tell you - 'Jine Lahore nai dekhya, o janmya nai'.

The Fat, Brown Line

Everytime I travel on a plane in India, I think this: why do we love to line up so much? I don't know if this is common to people from other countries - more well-traveled acquaintances say that it isn't, so it must be some vestige of those times when everything had to be fought for.

You must have noticed, and very strong chances are that you would have done it yourself - people in Indian airports (and I say Indian, because I have been made to believe that this occurrence is limited largely to these shores) line up the moment there is the first call for boarding to begin. They line up and keep standing diligently even if the line extends to 50-100 people. Even if there ends up being some delay in the eventual boarding process.

Even funnier is when the plane lands and stops after taxiing. Despite all pleas by the air-hostess to keep the phone switched off, people start pulling out their Blackberry Storms and Nokia N97s, the moment the plane slows down after landing, and calling people up that they have landed. I am sure their chauffeurs/cab-wallahs/relatives can survive a few more minutes before hearing their loud voices.

Even more curiously, just as they were desperate to get into the plane, now they are rubbing their heels together to dash out of the plane the moment the door opens. At the first possible instance, almost everyone stands up and lines up looking expectantly at the door, breathing in each other's exhaled air even more effectively. I think this might be some sub-conscious remnant of having been used to lining up near the train compartment door with one's luggage near the bathroom to avoid getting caught in the melee of other passengers, hawkers, coolies and general hangers-on who infest all our railway stations. Especially at those stations where the train used to stop for not more than 2-3 minutes.

I have got used to seeing people stand up and start taking out baggage from the overhead cabins the moment the plane halts momentarily during its taxiing, only to be shouted upon by some member of the crew. Watching them lose balance, or their bags, or both, when the plane starts to move again, is priceless.

What is even more priceless is them giving me dirty looks when I choose to keep sitting at my seat, reading my book, and waiting for the crowd around me to pass through. I have cultivated some looks of my own that I hope make them feel how utterly loserly their behavior is.

Bangkok Diary - I

Just got back from Thailand after a hectic four-day part-work, part-vacation trip.

The first impression, Thursday early morning, as we moved from the Suvarnabhumi International Airport towards our hotel in Bangkok was good. But it took a bit of a plunge over the next two days, only to go back up over the weekend.

So, in the end, it was a good visit. Enjoyed the place. People are extremely friendly, which is the most important thing. Staying at a fantastic hotel didn't harm either. Food is lovely, which is always a major plus in my books.

Detailed notes soon.

Looking back at Dubai

After my trip to UAE last year, I had written about my experience in Dubai. I didn't like the city at all. Even apart from the heat, there are a lot of things about the place that I absolutely disliked. Like the tons of things about the city that spell out artifical in big, bold letters everywhere. I was in Dubai for just one day, spending the rest of the time in slightly better Ras-al-Khaimah, but even that one day was enough for me to realize that Dubai would be one of the last cities in the world that I would want to work and live at.

The reason I am bringing this up almost a year after the trip again is this article I came across today. Even otherwise, I have been coming across stories of how the Dubai dream has soured for a lot of expats over the last few months. And some of the stories are quite shocking. If it doesn't go down in this downturn, at least in the long run I don't think the Dubai model is sustainable. Either its debt burden, or the bigger ecological burden, would do it apart.

Of course, in the long run, nothing is sustainable, so we probably don't need to bother.

Iraq

The comment by Pi at the previous post, and then a visit to this page at Wikipedia, made me want to write this post.

I think I have said earlier, even before the last post, that I have lived in Iraq. I generally do not say it very explicitly because I am very conscious of the fact that this was a very different experience from what most of my peers would have had. I have friends from families rich enough to have had vacations in Europe and the US and all that. But having lived for a substantial time in Iraq is not something too many Indians in my generation would have done, or would get a chance to for the next few years at least, irrespective of how much money they have. The thing is I don't want to make it apparent how much I enjoy the fact that I am one of the few people I know who has been there. A similar feeling is what I get when people talk about Pakistan. I really enjoy all the questions people ask about these two places.

One of my friends has worked in Cyprus, and I envy him for that, and I imagine, even if it doesn't actually happen, that people in some way envy me for my experiences in these two amazing countries.

I have a strong feeling of deja vu writing about my experiences in Iraq, a feeling that I have already written about it some time, but I don't have the patience to check my archives from all the blogs I have written at. So, here goes.

The wiki page has a section at the bottom called 'Cement Plant'. It's a very accurate description of the place, and unless I wrote it in a drunk condition and forgot all about it, it must have been written by one of my schoolmates at Al-Qaim. I don't think anyone outside the colony would have known so much detail.

I lived in a place called Al-Qaim, very close to the Syrian border, from early 1988 to mid-1990. We came back when the 1st Gulf War was imminent.

My father went there about 2 months before us (my mother, my sister and yours truly). I remember the last night I spent with him before he left. I wasn't as aware as I am now, but I did know that there was a war on. The war with Iran. My mom's father had been particularly worried when he heard of my dad's transfer because my mom's eldest brother was posted in Batticaloa at that time, and then another person in the family going to a disturbed area wasn't an exciting thought. I remember I started paying more attention to the images of the Iraq-Iran war once I heard of the transfer. I was scared the night he left.

I was scared till I ran to meet him at the Baghdad airport two months later. This was a little after the overnight flight in Iraqi Airways, where I managed to get locked up in the bathroom. My dad had bought loads of chocolates for me. I actually remember the mint-flavored chocolate he had bought for me. I bought the same thing returning from Dubai last year and gave it to him. We reached Baghdad early in the morning and after spending a short while in ACC's guesthouse (where I saw a bombed building for the first time and realized how close the war was - a building just stone's throw from the guest-house had been bombed the previous night), we left for Kubaisa, where ACC had one of its plants.

We spent a night or so in Kubaisa, where I experienced the terrible desert weather for the first time. I was not allowed to go out during the day and every single place indoors was air-conditioned.

I can't recall whether it was before Kubaisa or after it, but we stopped on the way at Ramadi, one of Iraq's bigger towns, to freshen up. I saw the Euphrates there. Several times after that, I was in a car that drove by Tigris and Euphrates, but I realized much later the historical significance of these rivers. Baghdad has both these rivers flowing through it, and Euphrates also used to flow by very close to where my home was.

We reached Al-Qaim pretty soon after that. We were one of the first families to get there and more kept coming in the next few weeks. I think we had around 30 families there in the colony. These were the families of people at the management level in the plant, and many married men stayed alone for the entire duration of their posting there. Which would account for all the chocolates I used to get from many of these 'bachelors' who were probably missing their children back in India.

My school started off in the homes of the teachers. Wives of employees, who had specialisation in any subject, began teaching it. Till we got a permanent place for a school, we used to move from one home to another for each subject. I had 5 other people in my class. There were classes that had just one student. My mom was our Science teacher. So, on days my first class was Science, I would get up in the morning, get ready and then go and sit in our living room waiting for the other classmates to arrive. This didn't last too long as we got a place for school, which would double up as the club in the evening, where I used to go to play carrom and table tennis.

We didn't have any proper games or sports goods there. I don't know why it was so difficult to find anything in the shops. So we started devising our own games. Collecting matchboxes, cigarette boxes, milk cartons, every damn thing and making toys with them. Inventing crazy games. Going off to places we were forbidden to go to.

There were all these Romanian people also in their own section of the colony (I am assuming you have read the Wiki article). This was the first time I was in such proximity to Whites. We somehow got into our heads that these guys were maneaters. Don't ask! So we would have bets on how close we could go to their houses without being caught (and well, barbequeued). Though I soon realized that they were pretty harmless and spoke to a few of them. But there were no Romanian kids there.

There were some Iraqi families though. We befriended some Iraqi kids, but we generally looked at them in disdain because we felt they were very dirty and didn't understand even a bit of English.

One more new thing was seeing women in swimsuits. Some Romanian women had a swimming pool for themselves, and they would cavort in broad daylight in costumes that were too scandalous for us kids. And we would try not to stare while passing by. Or at least appear not to. I wonder how they got away with it in a Middle East country.

The Chemical Fertilizer Complex that the Wiki article talks about was visible from our colony. They actually released some chemical a few times that made all us kids playing outside cough madly.

There are far too many things, far too many, which I remember almost like they happened a couple of years back. Watching all those Hindi movie video cassettes, trips to Baghdad and Habbaniyah, the three-day state holiday when the Iraq-Iran war got over and when I got burnt on our way to Baghdad in a train, getting the highest rank among all Indian Central Schools for two consecutive years, playing in the first (and only) snowfall of my life, seeing almost every adult cry when the colony's sweeper sang Chitthi Aayi Hai at a function, far too many.

But the thing I still remember most vividly is leaving our cosy home that night in early September in 1990, walking alone in the house for the last time, hoping that I would be back some day to take back all my self-made toys I was leaving behind, leaving like thieves in a bus that was not allowed to switch on the headlights, leaving Iraq like refugees, leaving my dad back, with the very strong fear that I might not get to see him again.

My dad did come back safely, though after the war began. We were staying in Navi Mumbai with my aunt and the morning my dad returned I saw my mom run out in her nightgown into the street and hug my dad. I still remember that day. That image came to me every time there was a tiff between my parents. It reminded me what they mean to each other.

I didn't go back to my home in Al-Qaim. Very soon after our return, one night in the news I saw the colony being bombed to rubble by US aircrafts.

Quizzing in Durgapur

This last weekend was spent in Durgapur, which for some reason I am really fond of. Made a couple of extremely enjoyable visits there when I was studying in Kolkata, and then there were some really nice visits from home too when my parents were staying close to it. I had never imagined a town so developed, when I made my first trip there. So, it's probably the memories.

I was there this weekend to conduct a couple of quizzes at NIT Durgapur, at their tech fest Aarohan. It was a really nice experience, not the least because of their hospitality. It actually felt like coming to a place I have a relationship with, and I hope this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

MnA has been doing quite well. We have done some good quizzes, while some other invites didn't work out because of time issues (it's difficult for us to do a quiz, on most occasions, on a weekday). The economic downturn has had both good and bad effects - people have become more cautious with money and so value our low cost-high standard quizzes more, but at some places they are so short of money that they just prefer having local quizmasters. But since this was never meant to be a money-making venture, we are happy with almost anything we get. Which has included invitations from some colleges I really wanted to go to as a quizmaster, and a weekly gig for a regional supplement of one of India's biggest English newspapers. There are some other things in the offing that might or might not work out. But the high of running a company, even if it is largely informal, is just awesome. There's this motivation that I can garner while pitching to someone or negotiating with someone that I never knew I had in me.

The trip also made me realize something I had not thought of very consciously till now. I love interacting with under-grad students. That might be a very important sub-conscious reason why I decided to make an effort to conduct quizzes instead of just being happy with my great job. There is this confidence that I have seen in so many under-grad students (though my experience has been limited to some of the best engineering colleges of the country only) that I haven't seen in anyone older. Confidence in their abilities, in the fact that they will achieve every dream they see, without any concern for the world that might be barely holding together outside their campuses. It might be foolhardiness, but what would we be without people like these?

Ahmedabad Diary

The only way I can begin to enjoy traveling because of work, and traveling with any of my colleagues/partners, is if I start staying back in the city of our visit more frequently. At least if I am visiting the place on a Friday. I did that last weekend in case of Ahmedabad.

Ahmedabad is an interesting city. Not necessarily nice or bad, just interesting, curious. It almost feels like a castrated one. It was a weird feeling when I realized around 7:30pm the first night that I can't have a can of beer even if I was willing to pay 500 bucks for it.

This feeling of something missing was added to by the fact that I was staying at a place where room-service wasn't allowed. So, unlike most other hotels I have stayed at alone in the last few years, here I could not watch TV or a movie on my comp, sipping beer and having tandoori chicken in my room.

But, I still enjoyed the visit. For one, I have not slept so much over one weekend since I joined work, except maybe the fortnight in August when I was ill. I was staying on the IIMA New Campus, at their Management Development Centre there, which is as good as a 3-Star Hotel. If one ignores that small room-service thing. My room was extremely comfortable and very cosy, unlike the general impersonal feeling one gets in most hotels. And I had a lot of time on my hands to strangle and flog and kill.

The campus itself is really beautiful. Not beautiful in the same way as IIMC's is, but in a more functional, utilitarian way. IIMC would be a great campus maybe if I was studying how to make films, but IIMA looks like a management school. As I told a friend, I am still not convinced that IIMA's students or faculty or curriculum are any better than B and C's, but it sure does kick the other schools' ass when it comes to infra. Even B, which ranks much higher than C in this regard, and probably only in this regard, pales in comparison to A.

Didn't do too much sight-seeing, partly because everyone seemed convinced that there isn't much in Ahmedabad to see. I am not completely bought on that point yet.

I was quite surprised to see that bookstores are quite popular in Ahmedabad. Somehow had never associated Gujarat with being a booklovers' haven.

The auto wallahs there were also a welcome relief from Bangalore's and Delhi's. Most of the autos have this weird meter, which I didn't even notice the first couple of times.

There were two-three other observations that I had made earlier but got to confirm this time. Gujjus seem to go out with their extended families a lot more than any other community I have seen. It's very common to see at least three generations of a family hanging out together in malls, in restaurants, near lakes (I visited two during the weekend), eating at thela-wallahs (and there are more here again than I have seen in any other city) and everywhere else.

The other thing is something, which I wasn't sure too many people notice, but the person I told this seemed to have observed this too. There's this very strong fashion trend of wearing really low-back kurtis/blouses/tops/whatever else falls in that category, across economic groups. I generally won't notice a fashion statement even if you wrote it down and made me read it, but this was really that noticeable. No judgment, just an observation.

PDA is also more common here than anywhere else I have seen. While other BJP-governed states were witnessing idiotic acts of moral policing, tens of couples were moving about holding hands, sitting together and doing a lot else, in public places without any concern from anyone.

Maybe Modi should come to power at the Centre. Everyone in Ahmedabad seems to think so, at least.

There and Back Again

With the frequency at which I had been making posts here earlier, I had never imagined there would come a time when this blog would see a gap of one month. But one thing led to another, and none of those things included an opportunity to make a post here. Finally got some time at work to write this today.

It's been an eventful one month. But writing in detail about every notable thing would take too much effort.

I had fallen seriously ill a few days after my last post and was admitted in a hospital for some time. My mother was here for two weeks, and convinced me finally to get a full time cook/servant. It has actually been a very helpful development as it has left me with a lot more time for work, leisure and socialising.

Watched Rock On. Thought of writing a long post on it, but never got down to actually doing it. Really loved the film.

Catching up on the backlog at office after having missed work for about 2 weeks took a fair bit of time. Realized that at a job like this, I just can't afford to miss work for such a long time. If not the illness, the absence from work could have been fatal.

Went to the pub quiz at Opus Thursday night couple of weeks back. Some people I know had asked me a few times and something or the other would come up every time. Managed this time, and it was really good fun. Will try to be a bit more regular.

Re-established contact with some friends from engineering college. In the last 2-3 years, I have lost touch with most people I used to spend a lot of time with during undergrad. Spoke to a senior from those times on phone and it was a great feeling.

But the best part of the month was the last week. I got a chance to visit my B-school as well as my engineering college within a span of a week. Last weekend was spent visiting the production unit of a client and meeting the promoters. The flight to the place and back was through Kolkata. On the way back, I reached the city after a tiring 5-hour road journey at 9:30 pm. Had dinner with my colleague, left him to rest at the hotel and reached my campus by around 11:00 pm. Just sitting there in my hostel night canteen, drinking beer, speaking to a few juniors, catching up on latest news and yes, eating the fried maggi after such a long time, felt brilliant. Returned at 4:00am to the hotel and left almost immediately for our flight. Hectic, but worth it. I have to go back there with my batchmates soon.

And the absolutely best thing that has happened to me in recent times was an opportunity to do the open quiz at our college's cultural fest. Balancing work and making the quiz left me with no time for anything at all and I had almost turned into a zombie by the time I left for Delhi Saturday early morning. Was staying in a hotel right opposite the IITD main gate and being so close to the campus, taking rest seemed like a stupid thing to do. So Saturday was spent moving around the Hauz Khas - Green Park area in South Delhi, visiting some of our old haunts with friends from engineering.

Sunday was even better. The quiz went well. Standing near the projection screen in the Senate Room, darkened to get a better look at the question on the screen, asking questions to the teams sitting in front of me, has been one of my most cherished experiences at IITD. And reliving it brought goose-bumps. Difficult to describe.

But what made the trip most memorable was the fact that a number of my friends turned up from across NCR, and beyond, for the quiz. And some of them stayed back even after not qualifying, and the afternoon was spent talking to them and drinking and eating with them. Even though most of them had met, heard of or seen each other earlier, having been in the quizzing circuit, or moving in the same academic-professional circles, I was the only one who knew each of them well. But everyone got along very well, helped by generous doses of beer/vodka. Those few hours at Masala Junction at Safdarjung Development Area would be one of the best birthday gifts I could receive. Thanks guys.

The Frequent Flier Program

The Rajiv Gandhi International Airport at Hyderabad has to be the best airport in India. Which is not a difficult achievement in absolute terms, considering how sad most of our airports are, but still. I would even go to the extent of saying that it is probably the only airport in India of really international standards, or it seemed like that during my short stay there. Nope, Mumbai airport, which I thought was pretty good, does not come close. They could do with a few more urinals, but that's about the only issue I could find with the airport. Even the approach to the airport is beautiful. So, if UB Group is The Bangalore Group, I am willing to give that mantle for Hyderabad to GMR.

The approach, of course, gets a little intolerable after a few km. But I was told that it could be attributed partly to the heavy rains that have lashed Andhra Pradesh in the last few days. Bad roads were, in fact, the flavor of my one-day trip to the city. Even the posh locations of Banjara and Jubilee Hills had roads in a fairly screwed up condition.

But the city is a nice place. And I would want to visit it again soon, for the food if nothing else.

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My trip to Mumbai for the weekend to meet my cousin and sister-in-law and friends was spoilt partly by the intermediate trip to Singapore that came up at the last minute, but I still had a lot of fun over the weekend. The Bangalore-Mumbai, Mumbai-Singapore, Singapore-Mumbai and Mumbai-Bangalore air-journeys have essentially put me off airline food for some time to come, but it was fun doing the kind of international trip (for a few hours, for just one meeting) that I have only known really rich or really busy men (either of which I am not) make.

I made the cab driver drive past the office I had worked at during my internship last year because my client's hotel was close by. But, I had also intended to visit the hotel near Little India that I had stayed in, but could not. My shopping was limited to the Changi duty free shops.

The feeling of nostalgia while going past those lickably clean roads was unexpected. If it had been a little less humid, Singapore would be one of the best places to stay in the world. Almost as good as Bangalore :D
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Mumbai was fun. Could not meet everyone that I had intended to, but met, and had good time with, those that I really wanted to.

Ate at the Rajdhani outlet at the Inorbit Mall in Goregaon. Nice food. Amazing service. A tad expensive, but worth it definitely. They have opened an outlet at UB City close to our office as well, and we have ordered thalis for lunch on a few occasions, but going there to eat is a completely different experience.

Watched Bachna Ae Haseeno, which starts off really bad and spoils the taste for the remaining movie. It improves a bit gradually and both Bipasha Basu and Deepika Padukone are ably used. As a friend commented, Deepika Padukone is like an Aishwarya Rai who can act. Love the music though.


The fact that I managed to lose my wallet meant that my two visits to the Landmark at Infiniti Mall in Andheri on my last day there resulted in just one purchase - Scorsese on Scorsese. But I had way too much fun getting both my cousin and his wife drunk (moderately only), going out bowling and generally wasting time doing nothing to complain. Even losing a PAN card was worth the good time I had over most of the day.

This was my first non-work visit outside Bangalore after joining work, and it made me realize how earning decently is a fantastic thing. Who was that dumb freak again who said that money can't buy happiness?

Flight Fight

I had been really looking forward to traveling by Emirates again. The last time I traveled on it, I had been floored by the friendly air-hostesses, which was some contrast to the crew on Air India and Iraqi Airways - the only other airlines I had flew in till then. I had even been given a teddy bear and a bag full of goodies (I was 8 years old then). I wasn't expecting a teddy bear this time (would not have minded it though), but was definitely expecting service of the same stature.

So, the flight from Bengaluru to Dubai was a massive letdown. The flight was 2.5 hours late, which we got to know only after we reached the airport. The seats in the plane were uncomfortable. The in-flight entertainment had terrible movies - I chose College Road Trip, because the other options seemed even worse. And CRT has to be one of the shittiest movies of the last 2-3 years. The food was disgusting. The wine was of a really bad quality. And, worst of all, the flight crew was really cold. After the great service in Singapore Airlines and, closer home, Jet Airways, this was particularly striking.

On our return journey, the plane was on time and the entertainment options were much much better - better than any I have encountered so far - but the food remained as bad as ever, and the crew sucked equally badly. They should just stop trying to serve Indian food and stick to continental stuff.

Even the Emirates ground crew is extremely impolite and makes one feel obliged for the basic service being provided by them. The fact that their flights are always over-booked does not help the case. The only thing that could have made the whole Emirates experience any worse was if my luggage would have been misplaced by them. Which thankfully did not happen.

Dubai Diary - 2

The last day of the trip was the most enjoyable for me. It began with a shared taxi ride from Ras-al-Khaimah to Ajman, followed by another taxi ride from Ajman to Dubai. The driver of this taxi was from Peshawar, and I told him about my visit a couple of years back to Topi in NWFP, which was exactly the place the driver, Zoher, belonged to.

In the next half-an-hour or so that my ride lasted, we spoke of working in UAE away from home, Hindi films, Indo-Pak relations, his family, my family, and a lot else. It is a running theme in all such interactions in Dubai, and probably in other countries with a high sub-continent population as well, wherein we talk about how even though one gets to make a lot more money working abroad than he would working in one's own country, there's something missing. Not being in one's own country, not living close to one's family and friends cannot be made up for by greater income.

This happened later the same day again when I got into a cab being driven by a Mallu guy, who had worked in Indira Nagar in Bangalore (a couple of km from my home here) before leaving for UAE 15 years back. The happiness he showed on realizing that I was from India was infectious.

Meeting a friend in Dubai, who was a wing-mate in Cal and also one of the two friends I used to hang around with in Bangalore in the first couple of months of my stay here, was the best part of the trip by far. The TGIF in Dubai does not serve alcohol so we walked about 500m in the scorching sun to the nearest Sheraton for a pint of beer each. And then, I dragged him across the city to Saravana Bhavan. A non-veg freak like me choosing to eat South Indian veg food in Dubai - that shows how badly the weather had affected my appetite.

Rest of the day went into shopping at the Mall of Emirates and Deira City Centre. After Singapore, the malls in Dubai did not feel that great though.

Saw the under-construction Burj Dubai, the Rose Tower and the Burj-al-Arab. Even without these three, the Dubai skyline is quite mind-boggling. The place is Gurgaon times 100. Everywhere you look there's construction going on, which is not a pretty sight. I would love to call it a beautiful city, and commend the fact that they have turned a desert wasteland into one of the biggest tourist destinations in the world. That too without gambling or unrestricted alcohol (which was the case with Las Vegas). But I could not find one good thing about the place that would make me want to live there. If only the sheikhs could plant a few thousand trees instead of reaching new heights, literally, in achieving their concrete dreams, the place would be a lot more liveable. A place where a child spends almost three-fourths of his life spending the entire day indoors can't be a great place to bring him up.

And the other sad thing is that unlike many other places in the world where if not the first generation, subsequent generations can become an integral part of the local population, that cannot happen in UAE. An Indian remains a second-grade citizen no matter how much sweat he puts into the development of the place.

Dubai Diary - 1

Though I had heard horror stories of the unbelievably high temperatures there at this time of the year, nothing had prepared me for the blast of hot air that hit me bang in the face as I got out of the plane at around midnight in Dubai. The temperature was 40 deg C.

Somehow, I had built up an image of the Dubai airport, based on my short stay in transit from Jordan 18 years ago, which was not lived up to by this visit. Too crowded, fairly mismanaged, and garishly colored. So, the start of the trip did not seem all that auspicious.

The trip to Ras-al-Khaimah was hot despite the AC in the coach on full force, and I just had enough stamina to reach my room at the Al Hamra resort and crash. It was 3:30 am by the time I went to sleep.

Woke up at 7:30 to really bright light coming in through the balcony, despite heavy, dark curtains. Was greeted by a view of the bluest water I have ever seen with my own eyes, from the balcony. It was, unfortunately, already too hot to stay out for long and enjoy the view.

A day of presentations went by and the night presented an option of either accompanying part of the crowd to go to a discotheque/pub in Dubai or choosing to drink in our air-conditioned rooms and taking an occasional walk by the lagoon just 10 metres away from a friend's room. The fact that I had already lost half my body fluids by the time the bus left for Dubai made me decide in favor of the latter.

The drinking session - wine, tequila, scotch, beer - was one of the high-points of the UAE trip, when people who don't drink, drank, and those who don't speak much, spoke.

The next day began with presentations and visits from local government delegates, followed by some light games, which was interrupted by news of the blasts at Bangalore. Lunch was followed by a trip to the desert.

The desert safari remained another high-point, till it literally reached a low-point, with our land-cruiser getting stuck in the trough between two sand-dunes. We had to get out of the car and stand in the burning sand for about 5 minutes. Would advise you not to eat or drink much in the 4-5 hours preceding the safari, if you ever choose to go on one of those crazy trips. Our driver, to make matters worse, was driving with only one hand on the wheel and holding his phone in the other hand and scolding someone on the other side.

The desert camp was a great effort at hospitality by our hosts, but would have preferred if it had been organized indoors, with strong air-conditioning. In the mind-numbing heat, the free-flowing booze, the kebabs, the good food and even the belly-dancing lost its charm. Well, not the belly dancing, on second thoughts.

Returned to the resort playing an impromptu quiz in the car, and completely drained out.

The next (and the last) day was reserved for Dubai. But that'll take another post. The trip was good fun, and one of the perks that comes with working in a small firm that is doing really well. Reached home in the wee hours of Sunday to the news of the blasts having reached Ahmedabad. I leave the country for 4 days, and look what you guys do to it.