Best gift ever!!!

What makes one decide this question “The best gift ever”. Do we consider the value of the gift, the necesssity you had for the gift, the gift with no strings attached or a gift just full of love???

The gift may cost anything. The price tag is does not matter. What matters is what the person gifting it to you wants his / her gift to express. Gift is a tangible thing carrying an intangible message. If the receiver can decode this message, then there is no need for words like “Thank You” to express his gratitude.

That’s the best gift you can give to your friend or the person who has given you

TOI – You made my day!!!

I had a recent experience with one of my clients ( Hindustan National Glass & Industries-HNG) which left a real bad taste in my mouth. It involved a research work which we had done for them and in spite of the efforts put in by us they still refused to accept the research findings.

Not only they made us go beyond the agreed upon scope of work but also vilified the reputation of our company and but simply rejected our findings.

During the course of this study, unfortunately there were some media reports raising concerns about our company’s quality of data & findings by a major FMCG giant. A consultant Mr. S, involved with the client even went to the extent of saying that had he been in my organization and any of his clients raised serious concerns about the veracity of research findings he would have immediately put in his papers.

I wonder want Mr. S is doing now. Has he put down his papers as according to this article which apperared in The Times of India, Mumbai edition today his MD turned out to be a petty thief caught stealing a Blackberry!!!

My hands are itching to place a courtesy call to him and check out if he is a man who walks the talk.

I’m a celebrity so I dope!!!

C follows D in the English alphabet. C – Celebrity. D – Dope. Where ever you have a celebrity chances are high that you will also have dope.

Andre Agassi is the latest celebrity to come out in the Open (which incidentally is also the title of his autobiography) about his tryst with drugs. So, what is this thing about celebrities which makes them go for drugs. Is it a necessary precondition to become a celebrity or just that it adds bonus points to your celebrity tag.

What is critical is the way in which these celebrities go about bragging / tom toming about their addiction unmindful of how this act will have a bearing on the millions of die hard crazy fans of theirs??? Who follow or try to imitate everything done by their superstar / superhero / sports icon. So, you can very well have a young Agassi fan doing dope and giving the excuse – “Mom, what’s wrong in this??? Even Agassi did it.”

 As much as  I admire Agassi’s return of serve and baseline power play I was really shocked when I read about this and I am not even his die hard fan (Pistol Pete is the guy & I don’t wanna hear / read any similar stuff about him).

I hope sportstars of today become much more sensible in how they project their image across continents of followers & think twice before they go snorting around. So I hope that the Thorpedos (Thorpe = once lucky), Hamiltons. Ronaldos, Woods, would set an exemplary standard both on & off the field.

Coffee Khichdi!!!

Its that time of the year when my throat problems are compounded with the season changing from Autumn to Winter.

Every morning I wake up with a sore throat with only a whisper emerging no matter how much effort I put in. Drinking warm water brings some respite but its availability is limited at home only.

In my office I ususally do with drinking gallons of coffee (by Indian standards). But the only issue being that the vending machine coffee tastes yuck. Drinking coffee is an addiction for some, trust me put that guy on a month long supply of vending machine coffee he would give up coffee drinking!!!

With me also it was nothing different. I tried drinking Cappuccino.tasted bland. Tried Coffee Mocha. Blander. Espresso. Blandest.

But for the sake of my throat I needed to do something. I am a coffee person so tea was totally out of the scenario.

I decided to have a heady concoction of espresso, capuccino & mocha (1 serving each) and the resulting taste is how to describe it…BLANDEREST!!!

But at least it keeps my throat warm…

Pandal Hopping @ 0400 Hours Dashami Morning

Protima @ Shiv Mandir

Protima @ Hindustan Park

Adarsh Pally, Behala

Babubagan Mandap

 

Protima @ Babubagan

 

Wall fresco @ Babaubagan MandapBadamtala Mandap & Protima

Protima @ Bose Pukur

Protima @ Ekdalia Evergreen

Hindustan Park Mandap

Protima @ Lake Youth Club

Protima @ Mudiali

Protima @ a small Badamtala Pandal

Shiv Mandir Mandap

Sculpyutre made out of banana leaves @ Shiv Mandir

Protima close-up @ Shiv Mandir

Deja Vu

After 2 years and 3 months I touched down again at Netaji International Kolkata Airport. Nothing had changed. The queue in front of the only pre-paid taxi counter had reached serpentine proportions by the time I had picked up my luggage. Somethings never change.

We ventured outside only to be mobbed by taxi wallahs charging a premium on the pretext of Pujo. 200 bucks for a 15 minute ride is a bit high even for Pujo standards.

We eventually had to resort to cycle rickshaws to get till the VIP Road. It was a ride I really enjoyed. It felt as if time had come to a standstill. We may have reached the moon but Kolkata moves at its own pace. Each city does, Mumbai is quite fast. So it was a welcome change. Adapting to Kolkata’s pace from Mumbai’s was quite easy.

Sunday morning “Navami” we came to our flat at Behala from my in-laws at Baguihati. 9 in the morning the streets were empty. Twin effects of a Sunday morning & “Asthami night of pandal hopping”. A handful of tired people returning back to thier homes after a night of pandal hopping. 

Kolkata’s own WORST private buses were conspicuous by their absence. A welcome respite.

The Great Train Robbery!!!

Nothing beats it. Sometimes back read an article in TOI about Central Railways stealing 2 new Siemens rakes meant for Western Railways right from the yard where they were stationed before deployment.

To the uninitiated, a background score is duly provided hence. The Mumbai metropolitan is basically served by the 2 lifelines the Central Railway & the Western Railway. Even though the Central Railway operating on the CST – Thane route carries more passengers compared to the Western Railway locals operating on the Churchgate – Virar route it has always been metted out a step brotherly / sisterly treatment.

This is mainly in the form of the Western Railways having more number of services and getting a lion’s share of the new Siemen’s rakes.

So. it was about time that Central Railway offcials decided to do something of this discrimination in their own way even if it meant taking “kanoon” in thier own hands!!!

Hers is the link to the article. Enjoy.

The Land of Unaccountability

India. The land of unaccountability. Everybody wants power but no one is ready to handle the responsibility which comes along with it.
Everyone wants to weave their tale of deceipt but nobody wants them to be a Spiderman (“With great power comes great responsibillity”)…

This is in context of the this article wherein the law enforcers have themselves developed cold feet in coming clean about their assets…
Hello!!! What about the concept of “practicising what you preach”…if the judiciary who can very well be considered to be the upholders of justice are themselves running scared of the ramifications which their assesst declaration can have how can they lecture or order politicians and other key decision makers of the society to follow suit.

What are these guys afraid of??? It isn’t a crime to be rich. Unless, there is some dubious source for the asset disclosed. No way would any self respecting conscientious human being would like to be the focus of attention in such a case.

The bottomline for the judges it seems is “You can know all about my money but don’t ask me what colour it is”…if you do it will be treated as a contempt of court.

A conversation on Aloor Dum

The other day while returning home, I overheard an interesting onversation between a guy and his to be wife. I didn’t mean to invade their privacy but the topic was entirely on food and not on their bedtime fantasies & moreover it was being conducted in Bengali which drew my attention.

What I could gather from the conversation was that the boy was a “Ghati” and the girl “Bangal”. The chat started rfrom where he was now and when he was expected to reach home. Soon after discussion a bout of headache suffered by one of their to-be-relatives the topic veered towards food.

The girl must have gone gaga about her culinary skills (passed on from generation to genration like the secret chicken soup formula in the movie Kungfu Panda) earlier to impress the guy and so that sets the tone for the conversation:

Guy: Do you know how to prepare Aloor Dum?

Girl: Yes, I know!!!!

Guy: Really! Or after marriage I find out that that all your talk about your culinary skills was just a hogwash and you can’t even prepare daal.

Guy: Do you know how to prepare Aloor Dum prepared in curd? When I was  a kid, I remember I had once gone to a family friends place and Sengupta Aunty and I had Aloor Dum prepared in curd and it was just awesome, I even had it at dinner…so can you prepare that!!!

Girl: I know how to prepare Aloor Dum with posto.

Guy: Ok. We will one thing, after marriage you prepare whatever dishes you know best and I will try each one of them and let you know which was the best. The ones I like you can prepare more often.

I don’t know what the reply to that was as my station was fast approaching…but I found the conversation quite amusing and destressing after a long hard day at work.

May was indeed a dry month

Before you bevdaas sink to any conclusions let me state that its got nothing to do with the lack of a peg or two but a lot more to do with the environmental factors…

The summer heat nearly sapped out all my creative juices and whatever creativity I had left within me was used judiciously in writing reports, emails in the office.

So, didn’t have time to make any posts. But now that the monsoon clouds are looming in some distant horizon (the met depratment has again delayed the monsoon) its time to make a post and here it is.

So, as they say watch out this space for more…