The name’s Khan? too bad.

Security : Your name sir?

SRK : I’m Khan, Shahrukh Khan

Security(to other security guard): Khan? did I hear that? Is that so…? Khan…?
SRK(meanwhile): I’m a VIP. I’m a movie star. I’d come here for shooting last weekend.

Security : Your a VIP? Then you need a VIP welcome, sir. Step aside please.

(that may not be the actual conversation, but when put together all the bits and pieces of information this is what it more seems like in TOI).

I wasn’t expecting such a scary looking headlines on such a beautiful day. It was just a security check and it was SRK who was frisked. I heard about this news soon after SRK was frisked in one of the news channels and it seemed really sad cuz I wasn’t aware what actually went wrong. In fact nothing went wrong. I was feeling really sorry for an Indian being humiliated like that on an Indian I-day celebrations in Chicago. But the very next day when I looked at the newspaper this news was so hyped. In fact scary, really scary looking headlines with all the pictures and bold headlines stuffed together, it more seems like a terrorist attack and SRK’s picture right in the spot made me think, did SRK carry weapons?

What seems more funny is the rest of the story. All the celebrities commenting about the whole incident.

If they (US) want I can frisk Angelina Jolie when she is here- SRK

That seems hilarious with the word “I” there.

I am shocked and upset. I am feeling terrible- Karan Johar

This manner of detaining(over religion) is unjustified. There should be a tit for tat response- Ambika Soni

This is not a kiddo fight madam, “I’ll tell mommy that you hit me!!” security checks are much serious in US since 9/11 attacks and there haven’t been a single terror strike since first and last 9/11. This is what it takes a country to make their citizens more secure. The security guards are doing their job and they are not taking chances to even let go a popular figure without being frisked. This incident is an act of making a country terror-free though it might seems dumb by US officials. It took Al-Qaeda terrorists to be trained as commercial pilots in the US. But the other part of the story was to use the planes as missiles and strike out the two tallest towers? Using their own(US) planes, hijackers also being trained in the US as commercial pilots and plan a major terror attack in the history? And last but not the least, one of them also being a US citizen! What can be more horrifying than this? With this SRK incident the first line of defense by mr.security guard was why not actor be trained to act today as a real suicide bomber? That is it. It was an act of defense against terrorism. There is nothing to feel terrible about or being humiliated racially. Salman Khan too have experienced such situations and so have Amir Khan, Saif-ali-Khan and all other Khans. Nobody can help it. US has its own rules and if one has to visit, then abide by its rules. Instead not throw such kiddo comments and make fun of us Indians as under-developed brains, or brain dead kids. If our country can make its own rules, let it be. And all visitors should abide by it, instead not make a cold war against individuals and make such “tit for tat” comments fly over the globe and make fun of yourselves. Spare the other Indians, please.

It is traumatic to not be allowed to even make a call- SRK

There’s the whole point of the story. Bombs are much made with such instruments only, pocket radios, mobile phones, and one taking out a mobile phone in front of a security guard is as good as taking out a naked bomb.

What prevails in our Indian minds from yesterday is “All Khans are not terrorists”.

What prevails in the minds of US citizens from today and forever is “All Khans are Muslims and all terrorists of 9/11 were Muslims”.

Point and angle vision in human beings

Have you come across the fact that men are better drivers? True. But the fact women are cautious drivers is also true. There is a scientific reason behind this. Men have point vision and women have angled vision.

• Women can see 45deg right, left, up and down. But the straight vision is almost nil. If they can see so many things at a time they have too many things to process and straight vision is less concentrated. Men have good straight vision and the side view is almost nil. When I came across these facts I was astonished that I could recall so many instances that were exactly the same to the performed experiments.

I was once on a ride in a busy road and I was fast approaching a small but congested junction and it had no traffic signal. The scene, I’m traveling on a main road and a service road passes across the main road exactly at right angles. This is the junction. There was a scooter approaching this junction, two ladies on it. And as I came near to the junction I heard a loud shout and hit the breaks hard but too late. The main road in which I was traveling was pretty clear and so was the service road. The angle of vision was too big for me to judge. And that woman riding the scooter could see me to her left, but I didn’t.

Also in the refrigerator women can spot things very fast, while men cant. I’ve seen my mother take out vegetables, rice, milk(and what not), very quickly while I take ages to spot the box of eggs or even give up the search!

• Women can perform multiple activities at the same time. Men can perform one activity at a time.

I’ve seen women cooking, feeding a baby, and talking over a phone and may be commanding the servant too. But I’ve observed my father, while having dinner and watching tv, he’s either eating or watching, one at a time!

• Women can recognize various color composition in an object, men rarely can.

One of the conversation that I remember between me and mother. I asked, “mother, what was the color of our old house?” She said, “Sea green” Me confused, “Sea green! right. Whats that?” She showed me an old photograph of our old house. I said “you said its sea green. But I don’t see anything green in it. I can rather say its blue”. She laughed and said, “take a look again”. Me scratching my head, “hmmm yeah, somewhat green”.

• Who’s better in crossing busy streets?

Men can judge speed, direction of vehicles intuitively and while women, can see too many things, things that don’t matter for crossing roads. Again too many things to judge and they back off.

• Now who’s better in driving?

Again speed, direction, focus, objects come into play. Men are more focused. While in a highway men’s angle vision including both ongoing and incoming traffic are well within critical limits and the superpower “intuition” takes care of the rest. And as I said women are good in angular vision seldom see things that are right in front of them and intuitively weak. Although less careful than women, men are better drivers.

Change

I remember a newspaper saying “…..humans race is likely to be split into two in the next thousand years, one part into an intelligent living creature and the other into man-eating goblins “

I remember another newspaper saying “…..male chromosomes are dangerously going down in count”

What do you understand by this? And why is this happening?
Is this a natural transformation?
Is this a blunder made by ourselves?
Is this a misinformation that has made a scientist find a vaccination for swine flu and inject the same sample to every human being?
Could this be an infection carried by an astronaut who had been to a different world on an occasion to explore the universe?

B’coz there is already a change!
People are dying of heart attack at a very young age
Some get asthma before they can learn to walk
What would this kind of strange happening be?

People eat human flesh in reality shows(that’s next to come)
There is a habitat imbalance, I see leopards crossing the streets
There is food crisis
There is a reduction in aquatic population
Number of tigers existing can now be counted in minutes

A recent change I read yesterday:
A friend can be the best sex buddy!!!
B’coz there is no risk involved of any kind
B’coz you don’t need to apologize for your mistakes
Marriages were a trend once upon a time!
What kind of hilarious change is this?
( who did even talk about this? What have you stuffed in your head? )

This is turning out to be a contest now
Who’s gonna be the ‘goblins’
I’ve classified various classes of human being, the best way I can
The last guy left is me
Or someone like me
Or someone who is wondering about this change
Can I possibly become a goblin?
May be I can already sense some change in me

Swine flu

I hope most of them are aware of the deadly swine flu caused by the virus H1N1. Pigs are the largest carrier of this disease. Its been spreading very wide through out the world and many infected and few of them dead too! Its horrifying to hear it while being safe in non-infected countries. It takes my breath away to imagine myself being infected when I have no clue what this freaking disease is. As I’m aware from the latest news there are 900 people already being infected but no one bothered to count how many pigs are being infected, instead people are counting how many pigs actually exist?

I was watching the news today morning and it was so really sad to see the flash news saying, “more than 900 people infected by swine flu, 30 dead and more than 300,000 pigs slaughtered”. Before I go on further, just stop reading at this point and make a contrast on what the situation is.

Its a fact that we are suffering but we have a medication for that. But what about these poor animals? They are suffering too! and without medication! Its never that pigs want us to share the disease with them. Or is it? Those human beings who are infected are quarantined and given proper care and treatment but why are the pigs slaughtered? For the kindest of information those 300,000 are not the one’s being infected, they are only the pig count slaughtered and people are searching for more pigs to slaughter. Tomorrow I’ll probably be reading 300 millions of pigs slaughtered and I wont be surprised then. Why don’t animals have the right to live? Let the infected people be slaughtered too. Thats a fair deal and I wont be posing this question. If human beings can be quarantined and there are research operations for the finding of a vaccination formula, there should be a way out for the safe being of these animals too. Why aren’t the animals quarantined? Or should I make an excuse again by saying “we are indeed human beings!”

Guitar & Music

I usually have my tea in the terrace floor. I just love the evening phase at 5-7pm. No matter how I would have passed my day I’l be very relaxed and happy during this hour. So  I just leave behind my belongings in my room(viz cell phone and watch) and just enjoy the breeze whilst having tea. Its a very nice time to spend that way. So as usual today too I took a cup of tea and went to the terrace floor and had a good time, the surroundings around me was just normal as it always seems. Orange and sunset!

Soon after my tea I just felt like getting my guitar to the terrace and play whatever music I knew to play by then. So I just ran to my room as it was getting a little dark and got my guitar. I just leaned to the wall in the terrace floor and  thought of all the songs I knew. Then I chose this new song I’d learnt called “killing me softly”.  I’d learnt this song by my virtual master,Siggi. He’s the best guitar teacher I know. He uses “finger style” which is not so easy to learn.

I started playing this song but I found it nearly impossible to sing along with the groove I played  so I just played the solo tune, I neither had heard of this song before. I though played it in broken pieces and enjoyed every bit of it. I had such a great time playing solo guitar in open air.Well if you don’t have a guitar yet I think you should go grab one. Its awesome fun to play your favourite tune on proper musical instruments instead of grumbling and scare off your neighbors Just kidding.

I cherish Music. And Music can cheer me up all the time and I don’t remember me living my day without listening to music. But me myself playing music got to be really special time for me.

Ok here’s the video of Siggi teaching “killing me softly”

Well I’d made a very good choice of playing this!

Off post: Many music lovers nowadays think of buying a guitar and play some of their loved tunes. But really run out of patience soon. Frankly it happened to me as well. I just bought a guitar and started going to classes and it got really boring as I was only doing finger stretching exercises and very limited to playing songs. I just stopped going to classes and was trying to play my own tunes at home and all of them sounded awkward. After a few days I got to know about the online lessons available in YouTube. Justin Sandercoe has given some really nice lessons for beginners and in a matter of few days you can get to play some chords and few songs too. Then I also knew about Siggi who teaches songs directly for beginners and teaches just awesome! So I follow a routine practice of finger stretching skills everyday and some theory for 30 mins and I try to play some songs taught by Siggi. This routine keeps my interest going and I get to understand music day by day. I’ve been through lots of ups and downs learning guitar but once I cross it, its all worth it. Need not be a rock artist or something but being a bedroom rocker with some basic skills is far enough to enjoy the groove by yourself. Its been 2 and half months since I started playing guitar and I’m near to completion of beginners lessons. Just give a visit to www.justinguitar.com or just search for beginners lessons by Siggi on YouTube. Its really fun playing guitar. I hope that day comes where me and my friends can Jam music together.

Coorg and its dark secrets

Its been pretty long since i used this blog. Hmm I’m not sure how true this is, but Coorg being my birth place and me in spite of staying there till my 10th birthday I’d never heard anything about this, neither my parents. When I first told about this to my parents they were breathless after hearing this, and me stupefied seeing them astonished. I wondered how big secret this is and also wonder why.

After settling in Bangalore i gave a visit back to my birth town with my friends, some 5 years back. It was late in the noon by the time we reached Virajpet. A well known town in Coorg district, and my birth place. We hired a room and dumped our luggage and went off to the streets to have some coffee. After that we just set off to revisit my old house nearby. I was very nostalgic to see most of things unchanged. These were  an inexpungible and a very very emotional moments for me. I also met one my class mate, and again, was happy that she recognized me. It was going to be dark pretty soon, and so i told my friends that we should give a visit to some WILD spots around. I suggested them one such place I always used to go with my old friends, back when i was in Virajpet. This is called kottoli. All three of us were pretty excited and hired a rickshaw. It was such a perfect time we reached there. River flowing, surrounded by paddy fields, thick forest within vicinity and the orange sun. Wow!

We just relaxed for sometime, dipped our feet in the flowing water. We were unusually quite and flirting with silence. And busy admiring the nature. Coming to me, i was so taken back in time where I spent such wonderful moments here. Me and my old friends used to come walking all the way just for the same reason always,to play. We used to play in the tree, climb up to a swing like branch, take turns and just swing and swing and swing until dark. And that tree was still there, untouched! Yet so many things missing.

It was getting dark fast and so we just left and by now I’d told my friends that I used to come walking all the way till here. And so we tried to do the same and we didn’t go back in the same route we came from. Took the paddy fields and for the sake of adventure took a long route, I kept on telling my old stories and all the good times i spent here and as we walked, I smelled something fishy but i didn’t pay attention to what i was feeling as i was dominated by the excitement in telling them my old stories. And suddenly something caught my eye and i noticed that the paddy field was pretty far gone. We were approaching the nearby forest area. I was wondering how i could be wrong. Our footsteps started sounding crispier and i feared bad. I stopped talking for a while and I thought to myself, ” What if in a few moments we could only sense our footsteps and nothing else? “

I didn’t say anything to my friends, I didn’t want them to fear the worst as they were unfamiliar with the place, and finally i didn’t want to panic. So I cut down on myself being a chatter box and spent most of the time looking ahead and looking around but never looking down. By now it was well late in the evening. Say 6:40 pm just to give you a hint. And we were well inside the forest, my 2 friends didn’t question me anything. Perhaps they thought we were approaching the town where we hired the rickshaw earlier. But it was never gonna happen that way, I knew it and didn’t say anything about it at all. As we walked my friend yelled, “Hey there’s a narrow way here. Lets just check out what’s inside!” I didn’t wanna go there, it seemed like a temple or something. I feared the worst. It was cold, yet the sweat rolled down my nose. It was actually haunted and while I was a kid my dad,while he was helping me with my homework late at night rushed to his hospital, to perform an emergency post-mortem of a priest who was killed by a leopard. I feared the worst back near that temple. More over that I didn’t want my friends know anything about this so i kept quite like a dumb lady. I too walked into this unknown place shivering. And for the sake of my life i saw a small gate but the balcony inside was deserted. There were spider webs on the gate and I’d never seen such a haunted place in my life before. All my hope of safety was the gate itself, I thought leopards wouldn’t be coming in the vicinity of humans’ occupied area. We just went in and as i guessed it was a temple and by God’s grace we found a priest there. How relieved would i get?! My friend said, ” what a beautiful place!! So deserted and haunting!” I smiled unconvincingly. We took photographs from my friend’s analog camera. Most of the roll was used earlier. We spoke to the priest for a while and for a great surprise we got to know that he was the only one living there and he’d made it his home. He also said that very few people come to perform pooja on the day of the local’s festival once in a year,which is called as ‘huthri’ by the Coorgies. We spent some time talking to the priest and left the place in a jiffy.

I was still in a dilemma where our path was taking us to and I didn’t even ask the priest the correct way outta there. Don’t ask me why. I really feared some negative response from him. We climbed up a little way up the narrow path from the temple and joined the old ‘unknown’ path we were walking in. We walked fast for another half an hour and almost near our exhaustion we reached the town and this opening was “makoota road” which is way different from where we started off. I wasn’t happy, I was only breathing relief that we all were safely back to the town. My friends didn’t know what I was going through all the while neither the danger to their own selves. They still don’t know anything about this unless they read this post.

I remembered this small piece of newspaper article I’d read way long back and it flashed back in my dream last night. Ok there is a trivial news in the history of Coorg, said by some archeologists that Coorg has the most number of hidden temples in the whole world.  One of them might be the temple named “Shiver”

And the photographs we took in the “Shiver” temple was not able to be developed, for which i have no answer!!!

Survival of the fittest

Now lets go back to the stage millions and millions of years backwards(almost to life’s beginning). And you are existing too. And you are very hungry. And you know you should be eating something soon. All you are aware of is that you are lying on the forest floor and craving for food. And you can hardly see anything since you hardly have any energy to even visualize something. So, next:

1. You grab something nearby you and start eating. After a while you feel better and now you can see things. Now you see there are some green leaves in your hand that you just ate and you name it “spinach” leaves.
2. You grab something nearby you and start eating. After a while you feel better and now you can see things. Now you see small pieces of tree barks in your hand. It tasted yuck. Now you know you shouldn’t be eating this again.
3. You grab something nearby you and start eating. After a while you feel better and now you can see things. And then you come to know its blood around you, all over your body! You just ate rat meat.

The first point seemed alright. Second point seemed nasty. The third point seems “okay” to the non-veggies. But the veggies will seem skeptical about this, perhaps. But the first case and the third case is now termed as “food” in general. As life evolves and you become more organized and you start classifying every single thing around you(including yourself and of your kind). One of them you shall call yourself :

1. Something like “Veggie” -> the one who eats only plants and their sub parts (lets name this class of people as V).
2. Or something like “Flesh Eater” -> the one who eats only flesh and drinks blood for survival (lets name this class of people as F)

Life evovles more and you are still confined to same eating habits. But now you come across few changes:

1. V sees F eating something which is not green. And asks F to share his food with V. He indeed likes the change (we shall now name this class of people as O).
2. F sees V eating something which is not red. And asks V to share his food with F. He likes the change too (we shall name this class of people as O too. Since O now considers both green and red as food)
3. F sees V eating something which is not red, but is not comfortable with the change he sees. F says to V, “gees, why is that you eat?” (name this guy as C)
4. V sees F eating something which is not green, but is not comfortable with the change he sees. V says to F, “ewww, why is that you eat?” (name this guy as H)

Life evolves and becomes more organized and you observe what other creatures eat. They are either alike you or disjoint. So the green eating creatures are termed as Herbivorous. Flesh eating creatures are termed as Carnivorous. Those eating both is now termed as Omnivorous.

So this is where all the eating habits started. And it has also slowly evolved to spiritual levels and they are sub-divided to something called as “caste” and “relegion”.

All the three class of human still exist and they still stick to their eating habits. Skeptical about the class C in human? YES they do exist in some parts of Africa!!

Do respect all the three class of existance and not make nasty faces when you see the other being different from your eating habits. Indeed both plants and meat is termed as FOOD. So at one level, both make no difference.

I’d like to pose an important question here:

You are lost in an island. And you have a blown off raft. For water, you’ve to depend on the rain. And there is no food source around you, except for the fishes in the water. But no plants around you. For the survival of the fittest, You have to make the decision between life and death. What would you do now?

Usual-Special day,Cooking

Every vacations my day starts with cricket,this was another such usual day. Mom was getting ready as she had to attend some function and she asked “what would you do for lunch today?” I’d just woke up and so i babbled something, i don’t even remember what i said( she knew i’d ping her later for lunch )

So i was off to play and when i was back home, i’d absolutely nothing to do and i knew it’d be one heck of a boring day without anybody around in the house..I was watching TV and then something flashed to me, “oh! i gotta get my bike repaired. hmmm, so i have something to be done  today”. And then i thought “what do i do for lunch?!” The very next second, i got a call from my mom and she asked me the same thing she’d asked me before I was blank for a while and then she said, “I’ve kept some money on the dining table, get something parceled”.. So!! I’ve got another thing to do! I decided to cook Maggi noodles and order for some dry chicken item for side dish( cuz i always prefer the best food in place )

After a while i took my bike for repair, got it fixed and went to nearby restaurant and ordered for “chilly chicken dry” and got a Maggi pack on the way back.. I chose this chicken flavored Top Ramen’s noodles.Back at home i was damn hungry and i’d been very long since i’d prepared Maggi and thought of reading the procedure at the back of the Maggi pack.Since it was chicken flavored it’d some pre-preparations to be done( just for delicacy.) It was only an egg mix with salt N pepa.. Since i was hungry i even got goosebumps just by the thought of it! I’m very bad in cooking and i’d no idea how to prepare egg mix.. So i gave a call to mom for quick instructions and she was surprised after hearing the purpose.I always wanted to learn cooking though i’d never thought of giving it a try.. So this was the day

1. heat up the utensil until it dries out

2.pour 1 tea spoon of oil

3.pour egg yolk into boiling oil,stir well

So these were the steps mom asked me to follow to prepare the egg mix..

It was really a great time i spent in the kitchen cooking for my own self for the first time with such high energy and great sense of intuition.. I was behaving like an expert cook in the kitchen in order to preserve the irony of a beginner Never mind i poured off the egg all over the stove.. Some also fell on the flames and made some dangerous hissing sounds! I also forgot to stir constantly and some egg were left sticking to the bottom.. I poured too much of pepper and made it really spicy.. Never mind i love spicy food All in all i felt so happy that i prepared some food for myself and it was delicious too ! Well, this would definitely be the beginning of my cooking part

A postcard from far away

why did we two ever meet?
why did we become friends?
why did we ever get close?

Never mind, that was a time,
we had to share.
every moment was so precious.
every moment was so special.

I remember,we sitting on the beach side.
I remember,we having lunch together.
I remember,we talking.
I remember,the sky so blue.

Time passed with no delays.
every night always awaited.
every morning with expectations,
always fulfilled.
with such a perfect day.
I so wanted to slow down.
But Time changed so abruptly,
I never knew you weren’t around.

Now the sky, so so blue
I could admire.
But without you its a waste of time.

I will always have those memories,
I can always cherish.
without you its a waste of time.

Gopalswamy betta

Its about 220 kms from bangalore and about 80 from mysore.. very pisursque place.. its best if visited during monsoon-winter..

Its a part of bandipur forest, and there wasnt any crowd at this place.. we’d been here during feb and the climate here was ice cold chilling, so if u’ve planned to visit this place this weekend, be prepared with cosy outfits and don’t forget the food or snacks atleast.. Or be filled before you reach here, and the route is Bangalore->Mysore->Nanjangud->Gopalswamy. Best if you have your own vehicle.. And there’s a deviation once you reach the foothills.. One leads to bandipur national park and the other leads to Gopalswamy “uphill”

We took off early in the morning, and we didn’t have much information about the route and neither about the distance.. We jus knew the destination and the landmark was mysore

We had no expectation as to how the place wud be.. We all friends jus needed a break, and one of my friend had heard about this place, and we jus took off the next morning.We had our breakfast at Indradhanush, on the way to mysore(beside maddur ccd). We reached here at around 6.30am and didn’t stop anywhere else.. We reached Mysore and met one of our friend there.. He jus gave us rough map to Gopalswamy..

As we were nearing we could see sunflower fields,the road was pretty good.. Not the best though.. And then we reached the foothills, and in no time we reached Gopalswamy.. Its more of walking to be done here, thats really fun.. Once we reached here, twas completely a different world, lush green spread everwhere.. and such fresh air!!

We went on walking and we were accompanied by a couple of other groups(only for a little while) In a while we reached the view point.. Most of them take pictures here and leave.. Its pretty risky walking further( cuz of wild elephants) We didn’t find any threat or rather didn’t bother about the risk.. The climate went colder and colder as we went deep.. And there we came across a steeper hill.. This one was pretty scary cuz the mist was really thick and we could hardly see each other! This was top most we could reach and felt like we were atop a globe!

Time was another factor so we had to leave early(we’d already taken enuf risk) And on the way back we visited the temple and drove home soon..

And not to forget the driving.. That was another part of fun for me..

A “must” visit place..