King Long trip in Mumbai Rains

     Its 7.20 pm as I leave my office at Bandra Kurla Complex, cursing my manager to keep me waiting the entire day for that 10 minutes of briefing for the future course of my summer project. The rhythm of Rains: You love it when you are enjoying watching them from your window, sipping on a hot cuppa tea and munching on some hot pakodas. But when you are hearing it when you get out of your office building, theres only one thing that comes to your mind,"I am screwed!". I waited a good 10 minutes, but the rain had made up his mind to make me wet, although I am sure no one would like that sight. Today I was concerned about my laptop, which my mother had apparently warned about for being carried to office everyday. Damn! I will never understand, how can be moms be so right! I tried to gather courage as I took my first steps over the immersed Roads. Suddenly, I started imagining flooded roads, traffic jams, super late and cancelled local trains, wet and filthy people in trains, stench..ok thats it. I decided to try out the AC bus my friends told me about the other day which connected Thane and BKC.

I finally reached the Bus-Stop, which sheltered atleast a 50 people. I almost did a nano-market research to find whether the bus actually halted in the bus stop. The bunch showed the true colours of Indian Democracy, with every one being entitled to their opinion. Some even gave their expert consultancy to reach thane avoiding the train alternatively. Went with the majority, waited till 8.15. Finally the bus arrived and people raced towards the bus to catch available seats,I lost it by one. Its interesting to see how reasonably well off executives spend time in the supposedly 1 hr journey. Could see some speaking to their loved ones, yes their smiles conveyed that, some busy cracking jokes on the boss, corporate politics, some catching up 40 winks, some made me miss my ipod shuffle. At Sion, I got a seat, and started writing this blog on a piece of paper. Finally reached thane after good 2 hours. This was truly a very unique first-monsoon-day experience.

Love the smell of grease

"Arre mera maal atak raha hai, fatafat becho!"...aaahh when I heard this in my latest organisation, I smiled a breath of relief and told myself, "I guess I am home.". After a day in a PSU Bank learning how to market hi-end financial products (read: selling demat accounts), filling a 3-in-1 KYC or know your customer form which has to be signed at nothing less than 46 places, Tata Motors certainly felt like my home-ground. I realised I was more comfortable with all those gears and shafts running in my head than investment, finance, money, markets etc. All the buzz, loud calls, pushing the dealers, following up with vendors, bosses yelling at the top of their voices, everything reminded me of my previous employer, Godrej. A fantastic project was an icing on the cake!

1/2 x MBA

My eyes opened with a stream of sweat flowing from my forehead, as I realised I was fast asleep in the Bus carrying me from the station towards my home. The exams did have its side-effects! There I was looking around and wondering why the Bus had taken a halt that too just a km away from my place, and no it was not at a bus-stop. I thought the Bus had taken its toll, when I saw the conductor and the driver leisurely drinking water and taking a nano-shower under a running tap near a mithaiwala. Every one waited patiently without complaining, with some airs of sympathies flowing around for the non-availability of water at the Depots. For once, the driver-conductor duo weren't being bashed up by janata for the bus being stopped, thanks to the searing heat!

My memories started taking a rewind as the driver plugged the 1st gear, one year went in a jiffy, from the resignation at godrej, the melodrama of admissions, the first sem, the competitions, the case-studies, presentations, counter-strike (optimum usage of college wi-fi), sem-2, virtualities our fest, and the last minute rush towards the end of exams, first year of my management course was pretty fast I must say and now I am waiting for my internship to begin. The memories took a stop with the brakes, and the bus reached my bus-stop. I got down from the bus and it was hard-convincing myself that I was a half-MBA now!

Indian Political League

Although I am not an expert on this topic or politics, I, as a common man, have got another glimpse of how politics,underworld and our official national madness i.e. Cricket are all entangled so firmly that it is difficult to separate one from the other. Tharoor, as it seems, wanted to payback something to his homeland, by bringing the IPL Kochi team to the state. Poor Chap might not have guessed even in his wildest imagination that his personal life will too be dragged in this controversy. Who owns what and how much, I feel should not be an issue for the politicos, more still, who is whos' freind. The Ahmedabad lobby still feel they havent yet lost the battle, hence have got into such antics and this has become such a hot issue that ministers have nothing else to discuss in the parliament. Shame!

Adventures of the Govt: 2

             When you say the government, you suddenly visualise a lazy bunch of pot-bellied people who have never seen office on a Sunday ever in their life, well there are evident striking resemblance to my gang which I had introduced long ago. After I guess two years,  I am writing about us again. We have a new member to our gang, the first lady(Yeah one of us got married ..happily!), and she has quite got used to our antics while we struggle to keep our mouth shut tight when we are enticed to use @#$&*% words and praising the eternal beauties on earth! This Government had rather a busy Sunday this week. We have an official car on duty, the Black Alto, which is abused every weekend. She has seen all the beautiful places in and around Mumbai. This sunday we thought of taking somewhere out.

            We set out to go to Alibaug for Lunch...yeah thats it...and maybe faloodas after that. We hit off early morning and I must tell you the drive was full of laughter with some old songs of our school days playing in the background. Kumar Sanu went Heehee laalaa....and we were Hahahauauhooohahaha! We reached the destination, hotel Phulora, and man we love this place. Real Cheap good food! do we need any more reason to drive all the way from mumbai?? Our oversized potbellies soon converted into an aquarium with all the Mandeli, Pomfret, Surmai, etc etc we had. Yet we still managed to infuse few faloodas and mastanis, it is quite a task mind you!

          We were not convinced to go back just like that, one of our member was there for the first time and he wanted to see places. So we got back to our black beauty and showed her one of the most beautiful roads I have seen. It runs parallel to the sea with mountains on the other side till it reaches the once beautiful Kashid beach. Popularity does kills the beauty. I was quite amused to see duplicate versions of goa's water sports there. We had a cutting chai and started our journey back home. It reminded me of those one day trips from school wherein we are full of energy while going and sad while returning! Amazing day!