A Trip To Nowhere !

Once upon a time there was a class. A class of Mechanical Engineering . This class was very unique. Though ‘unique’ is a right word in a way, I rather use ‘different’ . Different because  the students in the class were so indifferent (to each other) :- )  . There are many instances to write about their ‘being different’ .. let’s check out one .

In all the engg colleges and in my college too (jntu campus,hyd), the students  from every department would go to the Industrial tour in the  final year of their engineering ! . Though students plan to visit  a couple of industries, I guess, the prime motive of the tour would be visiting new places and having a blast with friends . The fun, the picture-taking, the chat-in-the-bus ,the laughter riot, simple shopping, buying souvenirs, and even some expressing their love , etcetera et cetera .

But our class was an exception. A inconceivable, hard nut to crack is OUR CLASS.  Let me take you to those days of our  tour-planning .

First..our class was never a “ UNITED” one. One could find as many “DIVISIONS “ as one wished. There were no groups among students but they were not CONNECTED .I can put it like ‘ they were like  were disjointed circles with little or no intersection area  enclosed in one big super circle ‘ :-) .

Primarily, the students  fall into these  circles .

1.       Circle of the hostellers

2.       Circle of day-scholars

3.       Circle of both hostellers & day scholars who were friends

4.       Circle of girls (some were friends with boys and some not)

5.       Circle of day-scholars who hate girls

6.       ?

Here you should get a doubt.. Wasn’t there any circle of hostellers who hate girls  ? if you got that doubt then I would say “ dude…you asked a complete irrelevant and wrong question” :-) . Not knowing how to define their circle I left it as blank :-) .I will get to this topic a few min later. Let me dive and  delve into the circles  mentioned above.

The major circles were Hostellers and Day-scholars. They  don’t like each other that much. This disinclination for each other began for no apparent reason. Moreover, in our campus, the tag “hostellers”  carried with it some “unwelcomeness” and a lot of  negativity. This whole thing was predefined and was already there. Day-scholars would think about hostlers as uncouth, unfriendly, menacing  Hostlers would assume day scholars as arrogant, unfriendly, self-centric :-)  . Let alone friendship, no one tried to know about the other person in the opposite group . . I think this was a tradition passed on to us inherently by seniors of our own department. we heard it was like that before too.  when we came to this college we  just fell into those pits  unknowingly.

Some day-scholars used to detest girls. I never understood why. I don’t know whether they were just faking it or for real :-)

There was this very small circle which consisted of the guys from both the groups . They were friends. But, this was a very tiny circle indeed.

And coming to the point whether hostellers hated girls..haha… that’s so ridiculous. Let alone ‘hating’ , most of the hostellers never even talked to the girls in their class , except in  very rare destiny-decided-situations. For them ….. girls, in their class, never existed. This is the circle I wanted to place at point no. 6 :-)  . A good number of  day scholars too would fall into this circle.

Ha-ha. Do not get into any kind of assumption that girls tried to talk  .For them, most of the boys  were aliens from some unknown planet. We never ever exchanged a simple friendly ‘hi’ :-)

In a nutshell, barring two or three,  hostellers were not really friends with day scholars  and vice versa ….. and most of the boys in the class were not friends with their class girls.

So when this whole idea of IT tour came up…. Quite expectedly, majority in the class said NO.I don’t know about the others’ reasons for not coming but I know  about the fantastic four i.e., obviously Sreedhar, Kishan, ramesh and kranthi (it’s me :-) ).

We 4 stayed in hostel and so we would come under the tag “hostellers” :-) . if there were a poll to find guys with high IQ we four would win that poll . Before you assume IQ stands for Intelligence quotient, I would better clarify … IQ  here is Inferiority-complex Quotient. We had high IQ whenever we were in the classroom and once we were out from the classroom  back into our accustomed circles and environment we were THE most ‘friendly’ guys :- ) . 

So, when there was this turbulence about the tour started in the class..we 4  were like “No, we aren’t goin” except Ramesh.  Ramesh was so enthusiastic .he absolutely wanted to go and enjoy. But he couldn’t go without us as he also never got along well with the day scholars . He requested us earnestly to come. Though Sreedhar and I cited money as problem  we were not that excited by this whole tour thing. I don’t remember Kishans reason, but he didn’t want to go either.

The discussion caught on like fire in the classroom. One day, even our  Associate Professor Mr.Bala Nayak, who was always reclusive, standing on dais in the classroom briefed us about the advantages of the tour  and showed a virtual reel of happiness for a minute. In fact, the speaker Mr. bala nayak seemed more ecstatic than his audience :-)

Okay…. After much thought-process, 2 route plans were made by some. Each plan covered some exotic places. We had to zero in on one plan. Some started convincing their friends to come. But no one responded.

One afternoon, We four were standing in front of the classroom talking when we saw deepa and divya kannan  coming towards us. I always thought they were best friends. It’s a combination of contrasts. Divya - tall and Deepa - short. Many a time we heard them talking in tamil . And one of my friends Karthik would always talk to Divya in tamil :- )

Ok..back to scene…they both  approached us .   Ramesh was the first one to have encounter with them. Deepa asked  ramesh ” why won’t you come? ‘ ..ramesh who also never spoke to girls got a bit embarrassed ,smiled nervously  and answered “ I……I….I’m interested..ask these guys” pointing towards me . And they asked the same question” why don’t u come…we all can have fun” . I was double embarrassed and not finding any words to say, I mumbled ‘ No. i can’t ‘ and ended the conversation. Then, I think ,they proceeded  towards sreedhar and kishan.

I think the group “ boys who hate girls” were also not interested to come. Or may be they were interested. I don’t remember.  Everybody was saying some reason. Though the organizing team put every sincere effort to convince, one thing was sure that nobody gave much  thought about that. The guy who lead the team  to convince others was Mr. cool ..Sharathchandra. he was the only guy who could be approached by all the groups :-) . No ego. No tantrums. He would talk to everybody in the class. He was the intersection area of all the circles.

We were hearing lot of  things about the success  of the other departments’ tours. Our ears were getting deafened by all the high-decibel stories of their fun filled tours. Ramesh was so jealous of them and equally angry at us :-)

One evening I went to my uncles place. When we were talking …this tour discussion came up. When I said it would cost a lot he was just furious. He said” don’t lose this …. … this would be one last opportunity to  interact and enjoy  with your classmates ..go..have fun …”  .Wow that really made me feel guilty and  served as an  eye-opener.  I knew Money wasn’t the only reason stopping me and though money was a crucial factor I wouldn’t think that my parents  would say NO . So I rushed back to the hostel to tell  sreedhar about this. I think he initiated his  thought-process  before I told this my discussion with my uncle. And when we discussed , he was all ready. ramesh was so upbeat and his happiness knew no bounds. I think kishan also  said Yes. Because, we  couldn’t  leave  Kishan . we were a team. Fianlly, we went and told to sharath. He was happy too.

 Plans were being made. Ramesh was dreaming about the tour and what he could do on the train :- )

A  few days passed .everything seemed rosy. And then it happened.

Unbeknownst to four of  us, 95% of the students who said they were more than willing to come actually withdrew from the tour. Nobody was coming. I don’t know the reason . The remaining 5% included  Sreedhar, Kishan, Ramesh, sharath and Me  . That’s it. That’s what I remember. what an irony?  Four guys who were so critical about the tour initially were the only  ones left.  Ramesh’s dreams were shattered . I was disappointed and didn’t want to go and so was kishan. But Sreedhar was still saying yes and even sharath wanted us to go. He was unfazed and didn’t want to step back now .

Everybody’s guess….Finally, the whole tour idea got shelved. I remember Ramesh’s  disconcert and dismay :- ) he could not digest the fact that such catastrophe could happen to his dreams :-) .

That’s how the IT tour saga went on  in our class. We were a bit sad but not too sad because of the cancellation. It’s not that we didn’t want the tour to happen … we wanted it.. we dreamt about something good to happen but none bothered much when it ended finally. Because.. that’s the way  we were, our class was ! :-)

adios

Kranthi :-)

P.S : Just a funny recollection ! dont mind !

How I Met My Friends :-)

The latest one to catch a plane leaving india was Ramesh. All three of my engineering friends Kishan , Sreedhar and now Ramesh are at distant shores . wow. quite far !!

No way..the idea of friendship never crossed my/our minds when we met for the first time in jntu campus,hyd .People say "first impression is the best impression".But ,may be, "first impression" is not always formed in the first meeting itself. (Ouch!!! waht is this!! such a profound thought!!! :P jus kiddin... did that line make any sense? :-) ) Our friendship took almost one year to flourish. Actually,it may sound strange now if i say that we never atleast talked with each other in a friendly manner in the initial days.

For the past many days, i had been thinking to write a post on my initial encounters with them.

Okay.... finally.....Here i am narrating my first imp encounter with each of them which created a deep impact. :-) . Donot expect any thrilling moments in my encounters with them ...no way...those were just simple moments with a single or no dialogue exchanged.

Sreedhar: ( In USA now)

Among the three ..sreedhar was the first one i met with.

That evening ,i came back from college to the hostel in a desolate mood thinking about the wild wildest ragging waiting for me . As i entered into the room I found a bag(the kind which has sticks ..which we usually get when we shop at textile showrooms like chandana bros etc ) stuffed with clothes to the full next to the door.I sighed "Aah!! here comes another junior ". Finally, after sometime he came in to the room and in quite a cheerful mannner introduced himself as " Manchu sreedhar " . I think he prefixed his surname "manchu" too.He was saying "I was alloted the next room but seniors warned me to not to stay in that room and so i came here " .  There was a funny reason behind the seniors' warning :-)

okay..A day or two later ,minutes past midnight, I was about to sleep when sreedhar,came into the room. I wanted to get some sleep asap. Yeah..i had a good reason. And it was : A senior named Ravi would come knocking our doors in those early wintry mornings. And its not just a knock.He would just literally kick the door so hard. How do u feel when in a heavy violent downpour a thunderbolt falls close to your house.In that sudden loud explosive  sound,the beating of heart almost stops for a second and then it increases exponentially .We used to feel exacly the same when he knocked err kicked the door. Really. And For waht?? He would take all the juniors to the ground and make us jog and do all other weird exercises in that awful cold weather.

Back to the story happened that night ...The lights were shut off. Everybody was trying to sleep after some intense horrible multiple sessions of mass-ragging and exclusive-ragging.And the scene begins. Sreedhar struck a chord with madhan who was also our roommate . The common factor which made them bond instantly was they discovered they both were from navodaya schools,though different districts. And oh god..!!!! they started discussing about thier respective schools, teachers,friends etc etc .. I was waiting impatiently for the end of their discussion. But that was just goin on and on and on.navodaya..navodaya..navodaya...if they didnt stop that , my navodayam(new morning ,next day) would never come. I was feeling restless. Finally after much deliberation ,i took some courage and slowly requested, still lying on my bed and choosing words carefully

"sreedhar,..please.. sleep..in another few hours seniors will come again and take us to ground " .

No sooner had i finished my line than sreedhar snapped at me with a mix of frustration and anger :

"Abbhaaaa!!!! its okay man...nothing happens.. "(this is english version of waht he said.you may feel like this is nothing but  in telugu it was so caustic :-) ) .You should have seen my expressions when sreedhar blurted that line :-).

And they continued. Defeated and embarrassed by his caustic reply, i retreated and slowly tried to get some sleep trying to ingore their high decibel accoustics. :-)

Kishan: ( In USA now)

Ragging days. I overheard a news which was circulating in the hostel. That " a junior arrived at hostel with a costly branded bed mattress ". How could any junior dare to keep it for himself when all the overbearing seniors had their eyes on it like crouching tigers . Within a few hours it moved to some senior's room. I dont think kishan ever saw it again :-) That was the first thing i heard about kishan . We might have had our paths crossed later in campus or in hostel ,but nothing concrete happened.

And the first big moment was this: We both belonged to same mech.engg and his roll number was 310 and mine was 311 as we were alphabetically connected , K for kishan and kranthi :-) . There is a reason I meantioned the roll numbers. And it is : Whenever groups were made in labs we both fell into one group. So in first year we had workshop pacticals. That day ,we two were team and we were doing something . Waht we needed to do,which i vaguely remember , was we had to place some object in a rectangular box and fill it with the sand. We had to press the sand tightly into the box punching hard with something and afterwards we had to invert it. And then slowly we should lift the box up but the sand assuming the rectangular shape should stay there on the table .that object we placed initially should show up on the top obviously..And then some other process would follow. Dont worry if u donnot understand... because even we didnt understand anything that day when they explained before we sarted. edo nalugurithi narayana antuu follow ayipovadame maa policy !!!!

We geared up for the task. First we had to mix the sand thoroughly. . I was devastated seeing the way kishan was mixing the sand. U might have seen our 1990s telugu movies how a rich arrogant heroine, when ordered by hero to do the hard jobs like these, would do. Kishan was following that style.He was mixing with just the tips of his fingers. I was kind of  thinking "veedentraa babu.." observing him :-). Okay finally we placed all the sand into the box..punched it hard...and the next thing to do was invert the box and lift the box up leaving the sand-form on the table in a reactangular shape. We inverted . Kishan took the task of lifting the box holding the supports on either side of the box. He lifted. And the debacle followed.It was a total mess.  half of the sand was on the table and i saw another half of the sand stuck to the walls of the box and as he lifted further everything fell down making a heap. A succesfull failure :-)

I was totally shocked and so was he.After the succesful completion of the experiment one had to write his or her name on that sand mould with a needle or anything. Not knowing what to do we looked around. The other guys were doing well. Meanwhile a short guy from the supporting staff ,this staff always considered themselves as more important than the HOD ,came to us gave us a look devoid of any human emotions .He took a needle ,wallked away from us and he just added our names on some other's succesfully comppleted work :-) . Thank God !!! :-)

i still remember the style kishan mixed the sand and his expressions when the sand fell :-) .That was the first major incident happened between us.

Ramesh: ( In Australia now)

Same ragging days. We never talked. He always used to come to class with his friend Kalyan. Always.

Only, I used to observe him when our paths crossed.. Whenever I saw him the one thing that caught my attention was his dress. Parallel Pants was in vogue then and he used to wear them with maximum parallel-ness :-) . His pants, particularly a blue coloured one, used to be very loose from top to bottom and especially the bottom-loose was quite obvious. And whenever he walked they used to sway like the wings of a big hawk . As he came from a small town like I did , I used to imagine the conversation he might have had with local tailor of his .

Usually…at that age , we would fix on one particular tailor when we felt he would stitch well and the tailor would kinda become friends with the us.

The following was the conversation that used to flash in my mind in just a second whenever I saw him.

Ramesh might have gone with his friends to the tailor and

Tailor : namsthe Ramesh..

Ramesh says hi showing his new clothes to be stitched

Tailor: wow..this cloth looks great ...good quality (every tailor says the same)

Ramesh:yeah (and with an air of pride) am going to JNTU campus,Hyderabd u must stitch it well

Tailor : Ok..i will take care of that

Tailor starts taking measurements of Ramesh..

Tailor: How much parallel thing do u want Ramesh

Ramesh: fullu vundaali..maximum…. It should look great (his friends also intervene at this juncture and they all unanimously say “full parallel..our friend is goin to HYD” )

THE END OF FLASHING :-)

Okay... Later after many days …observing him at a couple of instances.. I found he was a guy with great sense of humour. We never talked much though.

one day at mess hall: lunch time :-

I was having lunch .Ramesh sat on the other side of the table talking to his regular friends. I wanted to share something with Ramesh and i called him. He didn’t hear. Then I called again “ Ramesh….”.He didn’t respond this time too. I was in good spirits that day.. and I called again “Ramesh ….ramesh..”

Then Ramesh turned towards me frustrated … serious expression on his face ..and he said

" knock it off, man !! "

That was the euphemistic version of what he actually said in telugu :-) . The original was brutal which if sent to censor board could be certified as "A" dialogue. :-)

I was stupefied with that outburst. Shell-shocked. All the time he heard me but he didn t respond because he didnt want to. And I was stupid to not understand that. I was totally afraid :-) .

That was the first major encounter with Ramesh.

adios

kranthi

P.S: I bet, none of them remembers a bit of their respective incidents :-) .

K P :-)

The K and P above donot stand for "kranthi P" which obviously is my name :P . Then what ?Any guesses? Need hint? ok.. Those are the initials of the Awesomeness :-) . Now u got it... didnt you?

Yes... K for Kungfu and P for Panda/ Po :-)

Last saturday i went to watch this movie and i was completely bowled. Po jut rocked. His usual innocent antics made me laugh to death :-) .I laughed whole-heartedly.

But I had to control myself while laughing in excitement because i was flanked by two grilfriends. If " :-O " was your expression,let me help you in uderstanding that two-girlfriend-concept before you jump into any conclusions :-) .

That morning, I asked a friend at Hyd to book a ticket online for me(me in Bangalore). When i went to the hall i found my seat in the mid of the row .There were two couples ,definitely not married:boyfriend-girlfriend kind, on either side of my seat .....and the worst part was both the girlfriends of those respective couples sat next to my seat:to the left & to the right :-( . Because of that, I couldnot even lay my hands on the armrests of my seat and i glued myself to the seat without any lateral movements.Hamesha kuch na kuch hota hi!!! :(

Okay..coming back to movie.... THE AWESOMENESS is back with a big BANG .This time.. it had more action.Jack Black,the animation,the dialgoues ,everything.... I loved from the first second to the last . And the soundtrack by Hans Zimmer and John Powell was outstanding.With Hans Zimmer around , u know how the score would be. Watch it even though u are not a lover of animated movies. you will definitely like something . If you havent watched the first part yet ..do watch it before you go for this one so that u can understand Po better :-) .

I watched it in 2D and next time when I go to Hyd i'll check in3D at prasads IMAX. Definitely worth watching. :-)

adios

Kranthi

Total Blankness

How many times have i TRIED to write a new post staring at the monitor. Countless times !!!

Its really a long long time since i posted something. I dont know what took me this long. Honestly, I am not finding anything to write.

I have never felt that i was good at blogging. Infact i feel weird about the way i write. Sometimes i feel silly and sometimes stupid too. Still i wrote.

These days nothing worth penning comes into mind. For a while i thought i reached a cul-de-sac . But i dont want to give up writing/blogging. Because writing somehow emancipates me !!

when I am alone in room .. when i am in low...I always get the urge to write. Really. Writing is such a relief. Perfect way to vent .

But..what to write now? I am damn frightened by this question these days.

Yeah..how many times have i tried to write a new post staring at the monitor. Countless times. Fingers hovering  above the keyboard waiting for a "GO".   Infinite times.

And I failed to write a single word.

But i will try.

But nothing comes into mind.

But i dont wanna give up ........

adios
Kranthi

Kranthi's Redemption ;-) ( haha :-) )

Which class was I studying in then ? hmm....3rd or 4th ???Am not sure..i think, i was in 4th class then. I am going to narrate an incident which could be termed as first-of-its-kind-experience for me at that time. Those days ....in general, if i did any mistake i used to worry a hell lot . Because such acts used to disturb the regular pattern of my life :-). Here goes the story.....

One evening ..after coming back from school.... as usually...I went to the college grounds which is just behind our house. Our regular hang out & play ground. As i told you before , some of my most beautiful memories of life were there in that ground.Love it. Call me sometime.. will discuss our childhood memories ;-) . Okay coming back to the point.... that day i was alone.. we were not playing any cricket ... I was just roaming around in the ground. Sometime later... a guy met me... older atleast by 4 years than I was, ,... very dark ...had a round head..pudgy structure. He had a small blue rubber ball with him.Yeah i remember the color of the ball too..how could i forget ?? . He himself came to me and asked whether I was interested to play a game.

The way of playing that game is : we have to fix three small sticks on the ground. Two teams. One team,say catchers, stand on one side of the sticks and the other team,say pitchers, on the other side. One from the pitchers side tries to hit the sticks with the ball . Whether the ball makes the sticks fall or not, if the ball is caught by the catchers he is out. Or if the ball hits the sticks ..making them fall..and if the catchers side cannot catch the ball..the pitchers have to try to fix the sticks coming close to them. In the mean time..before they fix the sticks if the catchers team hit any of the pitchers team with the ball..the catchers get a point. And if the pitchers can fix the sticks avoiding the attack they get a point eventually. Dont get confused. BTW... Anybody heard about this game ? Weird, huh? :-)

Okay.He invited some others and it was begun. Actually, i hate such kind of games..because one has every possibility to get seriosuly hit by the ball,especially the prone areas being the back and legs which hurts a lot.They would never show mercy while hitting others .Actually for most of them that was the most enjoying part where as for me "catching" and "hitting sticks" was fun part. I hated to get hurt physically :-) . That day.. Dont know why.. i was playing with unknown people though i was famous for my reticent nature(lot more than now) . May be beacuse..I was not playing cricket that day .

Okay..after some tiime.... it was time .I had to hit the sticks. I took the ball...tried to hit the sticks with full energy, full vigour, full force. Did it hit the sticks?? NO..it didnt.it didnt hit the sticks. As i pitched it with much force , those catchers cudnot catch it or stop it . It just bounced over them and gone far.. and they went after it. I wud get another chance to pitch. I was waiting for the ball. The catchers team hadnot come back yet .They were searchng for the ball .That area was full of bushes,rocks and trees with thorns. . Even I went there and began assisting them. The process of searching didnt end for a long time. All the players who were playing searched for a while and slipped away .I was searching alone. Only two were there. Me and the BOG (ball-owning-guy). That BOG stopped searching long back and was looking at me . His eyes were threatening me. I couldnt bear those looks as I was a mimosa those days. Sometime later,the light was fading away too,I went to him

and said " Sorry..I could not find. ball was lost ".

He said seriously " I want my ball. I want my ball. Thats it "

I said "sorry ..i couldnt find it"

He came back with " What ?? No.. i want it... or give me money..I want money..."

I was petrified with this new dialogue. I was damn new to these kind of menacing situations.

I mumbled " How much do u want"

The BOG quoted some price . I was flabbergasted.

I was destined to pay 1 rupee. One rupee.Hey Hello... that was not at all small thing to me at that time. At home i was never given pocket money.No such habbit. And besides that I never took money from relatives when they would try to give as a token of love :-) . So..i was thinking " waht to do now??? How would I get that money? one ruppee...my god..where can i find? " My heart was pounding & my mind was panicking, both synchronously :-( . That evening i came home when the day was metamorphosing to night. I sat silently for a long time at the back of our house in despair unable to come up with a solution.

Some days later. That was the time I was getting amnesic to that gruesome memory.Good for me :-)

And One evening .. out of nowhere ... sudenly he popped up before me in the ground and asked me " what about my money?" . I escaped somehow saying " yeah.i will give..." and ran home with heart in my mouth.

On one sunday... i encountered him again. but that time he didnt ask anything. I was the happiest kid on the planet that day. I felt like everything was fine and the world seemed rosy :-) . But that didnt last for more time :-( . In the next meeting,he warned me seriously .I was so worried. What would my mother think if i let her know.I couldnot explain all this to her.I wanted to share this with someone and who else would that be if not Radhakrishna alias Radha,my friend.He was a tough guy.Not like me. I told him about this. He said something which made me feel like I was in some kind of heaven. "Arrey Kranthi..dont u worry ...i will give money to u..u give it to him...dont worry". I never expected that he wud bail me out. But yes... he said that. You can easily imagine how happy i would have felt . RADHA-----My hero :-) .

After many days.... I saw him. The dark guy. The round head. I saw the B-O-G coming on a cycle. He stood there at the college back entrance. This time I was kinda happy seeing him.Because,that was the day i was going to get rid of him for ever. I ran to Radha and told him that he was coming. Radha was ready with THE PRICELESS ONE RUPEE in his hand. We both went to him . I initiated the talk with full confidence saying " hey..take your rupee.." he didnt say a word..but i couldnt help noticing a sly smile on his face. we turned back and ran home.I was so happy that day. The horrendous story ended finally and i began thinking like " kranthi happilly lived ever after" . :-)

ERROR ERROR ERROR...

It didnt end there. Grave error. I realised the mistake only after few more days. To be specific i realised that when i met him the next time. That day.. i was in the ground playing cricket . i saw him coming to me. He was dark.He had the same round head. but..but he was not of the size i saw him on the day of settlement i.e, when i gave his money. But this size matches with the size of his in our previous encounters. Something went terribly wrong.

He came to me and said seriously in an authoritative tone " Oye..what happened to my money?"

Heart ached.Eyes wept .

I replied anguishing and languishing " But...but i gave you. right?"

He was furious " U gave me? u gave me?? what the hell..? i want my money. one last chance. I want my money"

Yes.U guessed it right. I gave it to a wrong guy. But believe me .. both were like carbon copies. Except the size-difference. I exacerbated the situation to that extent where i didnt have any hope left.

It was one helluva awful crestfallen moment for me. Damn !!! That was the moment which witnessed the culmination of my authentic stupidity :'-( . "waht to do now...where shall i go... i cant ask radha again". Pounding &Panicking already began their work.I was so worried. I hated my situation then. How could i be so dumb. I HATED ME . The only resort to me was to go to the only goddess available around :-) : my mom.

That evening i went home. My mom was sitting there at steps . I went to her ..sat silently for a while and told the whole story right from the begining. And when i told about the money too, she said " oh..no big deal..will give u...tell me when u happen to meet him next time " WOW..So relieved.. . Though my mother is always so cool and considerate to me, I dont know waht prevented me from telling her that story long back . I just didnt. ,may be, beacuse i was worried for the fact that I threw away some other guy's owned possession.

Later... i never saw the BOG for a long time. Kinda forgot him and everything. And.... One evening I was going somewhere walking with my uncle and I saw.I saw the dark guy.He had the same round head.It was him. We saw each other and exchanged a smile. And that smile was genuine. In that ephemeral smile, I felt like we recalled everything happened between us right from the day I threw away his ball :-).I found redemption in that smile :-) .Finally... I was like..hmm...say... LIBERATED :-).

adios

Kranthi :-)

An Evening with Bryan Adams :)

The first step which gave me the entire view of the concert ground just enthralled me. Because in that step, I saw the stage built for the coming up performance.My first reaction was like WWWOW and a big smile on my face.It was one humongous one with its top supported by huge gigantic iron bars.While still in awe, i began finding the best view point to see the show. I went here and there and finally zeroed in on one point. People were pouring in like ants. As there was some more time for the show to begin, many were sitting on ground leisurely ,having stood in the queue for a long time. Some epicures began atttacking the food stalls and some cigarete stalls. Even i had one tiny which he called it a veg burger which costed me 60 rupees. And it tasted hell.

I went back to my vantage point waiting for the show to begin. At 7 shamiak davar and his group performed. Soooooooo boring . I wasnt looking for him.Right? :) After his brief performace, there was a pause. And a few minutes later, On stage, some guys(westerners) with black T shirts and shorts started installing the connections to their instruments and other equipment. And at around 7.40, all of a sudden, like a lightning, Bryan Adams in Black shirt neatly tucked in jeans came running on to the stage from the back with guitar and started playing.And the whole band began in sync.And Bryan was singing . Oh!!! It happened so fast and u can never imagine how I and the crowd felt.There was a loud uproar of excitement. His sudden appearing and singing just bowled everyone and that excitement didnt end for a long time. The lights were flashing in blue, red, pink, orange colours. Everybody was just in awe . So was I.

I tried to take some pictures in my mobile. But waht i could capture was only those dazzling motley lights :). I stopped continuing. One guy infront of me began videoshooting through his Sony Xperia mobile .Everybody around me was seriosuly trying to capture the moments :) . A girl who was short was standing next to me.I felt sorry for her as she could not catch a glimpse of bryan Adams nor even stage.The next minute,she lit a cigarete and was smoking... and sharing with her friends.Nobody cud imagine looking at her that she would smoke :) .She was so short.

There was no room to move my feet along X-axis. The only direction i could move was Y-axis: up-down. I could jump and nothing more.So..whenever the view was blocked by 6 plus feet height guys i used to jump up . I took utmost care in balancing so that i could fall in my original pace once i descend.Otherwise i could crush some other's feet. I expected this kind of big crowd and i came wearing shoes :) .

He sang his best hits. And when he started singing "Here I am.." i couldnot help raising my hands and clapping . I enjoyed that song more as it is my favourite. When he began singing "please forgive me..I cant stop loving u."the crowd remained beautifully silent and everybody riased hands swaying them magnificently feeling the passionate singing. He sang so many beautiful songs.

Once in a while,while the show was going on, I told to myself " kranthi...be in aware..be in consciousness..u are here...in the show...Bryan Adams is performing....enjoy the moment... " and i looked around attentively registering everything. And for once, i felt " how would the show be if the performer on that stage was Michael Jackson" :) . Cannot be defined,i guess.

After finishing his song, whenever he looked at the crowd smiling..the whole crowd roared and clapped :) .After one hour Bryan called his band to the front and introduced to the crowd.Then,everyone thought the show was over and all were disappointed. But it didnt end. He introduced his guitarist who is also his friend as "the man with fastest fingers in the world " and who has been with him(BryanAdams) since he was fifteen. And his guitar play was just awesome.

In the middle of the concert, two telugu guys came from somewhere and stood next to me.It seemed they didnt know much about music and his songs.They were talking all the time.The following were a few snippets from the conversations they had at different points of time :

1. If we know any of these songs we could have enjoyed too

2. Shall we go home?

3. Is BryanAdmas drinking water in between the songs

4. How could he remember all the songs completely ?

5.If only these songs were Hindi or telugu ones, we would have rocked :)

and so on... :)

I was smiling hearing those inquisitve doubts .

Some people made their girlfriends sit on their shoulders.I didnt like it because they obstructed my view :)

A little later Bryan asked the crowd " can anyone of you girls come up and sing with me? ". Those words just turned the whole crowd into frenzy. Everybody started raising their hands shouting "Me..Me..Me..". Bryan invited one girl from the front rows.No wonder...she was ecstatic.Not only just ecstatic she acted weird :) When he asked her wether she could sing any of his songs ,she said NO. Then Bryan said sorry and called up another girl .This new girl name was Sheethal. And they both sang and the house/ground was on fire :) She sang really so well and she had that golden moment singing with none other than Mr. Bryan Adams :)

After Sheethal got down the stage,that inquisitive neighbour of mine was saying to his friend " rey...i guess, that girl cannot sleep a wink tonight..she was so lucky to have sung with Bryan Adams!! What say?? "

After some more time..Bryan said he loved the crowd and he called the band to the front and all of them goodbyed us. The band left while Bryan stayed standing alone with arms akimbo. He was looking at the crowd smiling. And u know what happens when he does that act!!!! Yeah... The crowd cried" Bry---yan Bry---yan Bry---yan ..." He was smiling still and suddenly turned ,ran a few steps and picked up his guitar.The crowd cried again "OOOOOOO ... OOOO" :) and he began singing.He asked the crowd to raise their hands with their mobiles and evrybody did. While he was singing soulfully I looked back once.WOW..those infinite countless raised mobiles with their screen light were brightly shining like stars.Totally in rapture.Totally enchanted. WOW. Nice idea.Isnt it ? He performed two songs solo . I was closely observing his playing of guitar.Just awesomely superb.

After those songs, he bade Goodbye and the lights on stage were turned off !!! :( .

Everyone of us started moving. As i couldnt move my feet while the concert went on, i got cramps in my legs and couldnt move .I thought i would fall down. I slowly paced towards the exit with severe pain. Luckily I got into a cab going towards Hebbal.And from Hebbal, i caught a bus to my place. I had my dinner at PG..went back to room and slept happily.Yeah ,ofcourse..my feet were paining :) A day to cherish !!! :)

Actually, in the evening, I went to the Palace grounds-Bangalore, where he was gonnna perform , around 5 30 pm as the show was at 7pm. Oh God!! the queue was immeasurably long. I bought a water bottle...stood in the queue and began texting to some friends and also tweeting :) .My friends were equally thrilled and everybody was sure that i was gonna enjoy the show as they know well about me :) .

Hey, All you guys !!!! Yeah, As u said/thought/wished, I enjoyed the show so so much :) .

Adios

Kranthi :)

Road to Perdition :(

Hello Hello !!!! ... Looking at the title ... Do not expect an engrossing story like that of Michael Sullivan, Sr . Okay??? Thanks... okay.. lets start!!! :)

What an excruciating day !!!!

The only reason i booked a ticket for Dhobi Ghat was : "What to do in the room on weekend ... lets go and kill some time." For no reason, I was not at all that much intereseted to see that film.Having said that, somewhere deep inside i wanted to see it :). Finally I booked ticket for Saturday 11 45 am show at PVR Banglore.

Saturday Jan 22 2011 : The D-Day

After TV-ing for quite a long time on friday night I slept in the early hours of saturday .. hmm .. around 2 am. Didnt have a sound sleep and woke up at 6 30 am. Switched on TV and was changing the channels in random.At one channel,TV9-kannada...a deserted bus-stand was shown. I was like "oh God...is that Banglore". But i found peace a few seconds later when i found that was Mysore bus-stand. Then i forgot about that and got ready.I should have glued to that channel or some other news channel for some more time. Really should have.

The weather was awesome.Cool winter breezes were circling me. Feeling the morning freshness in the air. I went to Bus-stop at 9 50 am .Generally, It takes almost 90 minutes to reach PVR from my place.Please do not mock at me for travelling that long for watching a movie.I know you wont. Thankyou :P . Ok... I reached Bus-stop and there was already a big crowd there wating for buses. 5 minutes later a bus came and took some with it .People inside were like biscuits in a packet.Tightly packed.Couldnt dare to get in. No other bus was seen coming.I thought that the 'bandh' in Mysore(about which i saw on TV) was trying to cast its shadow over here. Never came the idea into my mind that it was actually 'bandh' here at Banglore too. Infact,it was state wide bandh.

As i didnt have a proper sleep, my eye lids were intermittently falling down freely closing my eyes.I supported my back against the railing of the busstop and was feeling tired and wanted to go room and hit the sack when the inner kranthi came out and said "..but kranthi,waht if the movie was good..what if you missed some great performances.." Actually, i was also looking forward to experiencing the background score by Gustavo Santaolalla, oscar winning composer. i had been waiting there at bus stop for 30 minutes till then . when I was about to drop the idea of movie, a truck arrived with almost 80 to 90 people standing in the back of it. A person sitting beside the driver was crying "silk board". Thats the place i had to go .As there was room for one more guy i got up into the cabin and I was so elated :) Now,the cabin had: the driver,the other person and me. The truck was so high above the ground unlike the bus. Good engine.Good speed too. Trying to see Bangalore in a different perspective from that height :) .

The drama begins:

The truck picked me at 10 20.To reach on time it must go faster. But kya kare!!!!Kranthi proposes - God disposes. the truck stopped at every person's horizontal hand i.e.signal to stop . And it stopped at every bang on it by whoever wanted to get down from truck.You know the trucks!!! To get down and get on to it was not that easy.Time consuming task. At one stop, one guy stopped the vehicle and when i showed him to go back, he was totally reluctant. He wanted to get into our cabin. I said no room and he was adamant.He opened the door by himself, was hanging in the air holding the handle with one hand like a skilfull Orangutan hanging from a tree-branch . What he was doing there hanging was he was discussing and also demanding me to let him in. But there was no room at all. Uff! finally got rid of him.I knew he hated me :(

The only stop i know about, which comes between my place and the Silkboard, is Marathalli. I know nothing about the other stops. When people stopped the vehicle they would ask me whether it was going to "domalur" or some " xxxxxx" ," yyyyy" or "zzzzz" . The first thing is i donot know whether those places come en route. And the second thing is i dont know even the basics of kannada to tell them that "i dont know" . I just would give them my 'blank face' as reply. And in turn i would get some serious, disappointed and sometimes threatening looks too from them.All their grimaces posed one straight question for me " what kind of cleaner are you ,you dumb fellow??!!! Who gave u this job?? " :(

The driver was lank and had a light beard. Somewhere in the middle he was saying in kannada to my co-passenger "more than 100 people sir... will get 1000 today". He was so ecstatic . I felt good seeing his happiness.

I thought it would be better for me if i had some clarity on why buses were not plying much.But the driver and the guy next to me who was also a passenger,were chatting in kannada.What to do?? Finally, after my observation , i found out that the guy next to me, was speaking only 2 words in kannada " eshtu" " barthi" .He was cleverly managing with just those 2 words. i figured out that he was not a local and he must be either a telugu or a hindi speaking guy. Taking my chances, i asked him in hindi whether there was any bandh that day. He said yes and explained in detail in hindi the reason for bandh.Trust me he gave me a not less than 15 minute lecture. This guy was crazy too, in a way. He was asking the driver to pull over the vehicle and go back and collect the money,though a cleaner was there in back. Enkamma!!! I was already running out of time and this guy was hatching some more plans to aggrandize my plight !! :) . But he had the point !!

I opened a book from my bag which has been in pending for quite a long time. But the book found its way back into the bag within a minute. The reason: As the truck was giving me up&down oscilations with a little wavelength,the book was coming close to me and then it was going far down.Up-down-up-down. I couldnt even had the vigour to put on my ipod which was a very unlikely and a rare case. I was so restless and had a strong desire to sleep . But the truck stopped for every 5 minutes and i was bombarded by those incessant enquiries of the road-blockers i.e, people at bus stops . A cleaner's job is the most demanding job.Lesson learnt :)

The driver stopped the vehicle at marathalli .The driver was absolutely unhappy and totally disappointed when the cleaner who was at back came to driver and gave him just above 100 rupees. A zero less in what driver expected i.e.1000. He was completely dejected.But he didnt say a word to cleaner .i felt sorry for him. After some more time when my stop came , i gave him little more than waht he asked .He tried to give me back but i insisted him to keep it.

It was already 11 45. The movie time. I hurried..caught an auto to reach PVR. He charged me more than than the usual rate citing the bandh . I was already late by 10 minutes . I got down and was made to pay another 5 rupees besides the doubled fare when the autowallah said he had no change to give back :( .Having no time to argue,I crossed the road and rushed towards the entrance. There i found one A4 size white sheet clipped to a card board on a stand with these bold arial fonted words imprinted on it "MALL IS CLOSED".

What have i done? :'(  I embarked on a journey which didnt augur an iota of excitement right form the start.But i continued with all those restlessness,sleepiness,tiredness only to end up like this. Emi faceuraa ,kranthi? .Lost all my strength by the time i reached PVR.

I could have got down from the truck the moment when i was made aware about the bandh.But i didnt because my mind(if there is) vouched saying " By the time the movie gets finished..buses will ply normally." But now what??? I didnt have enough options. Immediately , I called an auto and he charged me double (obviously) to take me back to silk board stop. I got down and caught a van to drop me half way . This van driver was smarter than that truck driver. He clearly stated the fare which was double than the usual and he started the vehicle only after he collected all the money.I was woken up by someone when the van reached its destination, Marathhalli. My sleepy eyes were burning and burning. A few minutes later, luckily, got into a bus to my place. Finding no shop to buy food ,i got back to room...and .. and ... i just slept for the next six to seven hours like a dead man :)

hmm... THE END

adios

Kranthi