The Chennai floods - 2nd life...

The crazy Tuesday

I woke up disturbed by the sound of commotion outside my apartment. As had become practice for the last few hours, the first thing I did was to take a look at the water level on the road. I switched on the torch and strained to see the road through my netted window. It was a surprise and then a shock. The footpath was not to be seen; on looking closer I saw water in our parking area; it had touched the bottom axle of the tyres. And my home was in the ground floor, about 3 feet higher. Without power for 9 hours, we had gone to bed at 8pm itself and at that time the level was below the footpath outside and it had stayed fairly constant at that level for a long while; now within 3 hours it had shot up by a feet.

The neighbours were chatting about the problem in Saidapet.

“The bridge has broken.”

“A water line has burst there and is flooding the place. The water is flowing through our area. It’s coming from the overflowing lake.”

About 15 minutes later I inspected the level; my reference point was the car tyre; my mind felt it had gone up but I calmed myself saying that it was probably because of some ripples that were flowing across. 15 minutes later, my doubts were erased - the water was definitely rising. This was the first time water had breached our complex which was built on a slightly elevated platform.

This had become a crazy day for me; in the morning I was reaching out to office folks to check their state and coordinate for help and information in case they were stranded. And now I was also stranded and cut off.

Is this the end?

At about midnight we dispersed since there was nothing we could do. I could hardly catch any sleep - my mind was calculating how fast the water was rising and how long it would take to enter our home; about 6am was my guess. No power, inverter would last for a short while and I was conserving it for night for my mom, no mobile connectivity, deluge of water all around (street had about 4 feet of water).

I decided to monitor the level whenever i woke up - which was pretty much every 30 to 60 minutes. At 2am I felt the pace had perhaps slowed a little and it would take a little longer to breach our home; ETA 8am.

I used a little bit of the inverter to watch the news on TV; and it was frightening - homes were flooded with water. Even when we used to have water only at the street level, I knew there were many places that got badly hit; with the current level in my place, the news confirmed that the levels reached elsewhere were life threatening. They announced that the airport was shut for 5 days. The headlines read “City of 5 million stranded”. Your heart aches when you see such images.

At 3am lying in bed, worried to hear the intensity of rain picking up, I wondered if this may be the end. The army was rescuing people in the city but how many people could they save? They were also going to be limited in resources and people. At least we had 3 floors above that we could move up to; but thousands wouldn’t have the luxury. And if nature wanted, it could keep the rains continuing and wipe the city.

At 4am the water had crossed the first step; another 3 steps or one more foot of water and it would be in our home. I recollected all the things I would have to pack up for evacuation.

During the night I heard a lady in the opposite bungalow calling out to her mom to come up to the top floor; theirs was a two storey home. It was painful to hear the worried voice - and there was nothing anyone could do since to reach their home we had to cross the street and that was almost impossible. All I could see was a candle, and I hoped that the old lady had reached upstairs safely.

All of life in a suitcase

At 5:30am, with some trace of daylight I got busy in action - the water had gone up a little but only by a few centimetres - it had slowed in the last hour for sure; at this rate ETA was surely after 8am. I plucked all documents and dumped them into a suitcase; and also packed a smaller bag with few clothes. At around 7am, one of the uncles said that the water has been at the same level since 4am. I wasn’t so sure but at 8am it definitely hadn’t risen any further. We spoke with our neighbours in the first floor and they told us to come over whenever needed; and in turn they also packed their important documents in case things went further downhill.

Finally all these years had come down to one suitcase! And I knew that if the situation went to a life or death case, even that suitcase wouldn’t matter. 

Fortunately, the water level didn’t rise after that. In fact we saw it go down a couple of centimetres; not much but it did give some room for safety and assurance.

The landline surprisingly worked - and i tried calling folks in the city; most were unreachable but one person said his place was ok and he kept me updated about the news. I heard from a person living outside the country that the forecast predicted rain for another week! The city wouldn’t hold up for another week of this.

The strength of the flood even displaced cars that were parked on the road by a few metres.

How long can you survive?

With the threat of our home flooding low, next worry was about supplies. Do we have enough to last this out - we had no idea how long it would take for the water to recede. There was no way we could drive; no way we could walk with elderly people through chest high water. I remember reading that we could live without food for 2 or 3 weeks but without water it was only 3 days.

We rationed the food we had – survived on dosa and idli for which we fortunately had some extra batter left and which even without the fridge didn’t get spoilt. We had stock of rice and lentils and some potatoes – food wasn't going to be an issue. Water was - all the homes in our complex had water for about a couple of days. We used edibles like oranges and tomatoes - I assumed that would help with getting some nutrients and satiate thirst.

When I heard from a colleague staying in a nearby hotel that the hotel told their residents to leave because they could only provide food and water for 2 days it was worrying; if they couldn’t get supplies where would we?

I spent the daytime reading a survival pocket guide which I had bought many years ago. It was written by a SAS (Special Air Forces) agent; part of their training and role requires them to survive in extreme hostile conditions - floods, hurricanes, forests etc.

The guide read…

“Do not venture out in floods if you have provision to go to higher ground. Do not stop rationing of supplies till you get supplies replenished. Do not use salt water or urine for drinking even after boiling them. They can be consumed if you distill. Boil rain water and consume. Do not use flood water because sewage will exist.”

For some reason I had never thought of rain water till then; with rains lashing us and with us having enough gas to run the stove, that seemed a good option. And that’s what we did on day 3. We even opened our overhead tanks to fill up rain water; used buckets to get a few and supply them to homes in our complex.

Quite a situation - the city was flooded by water and yet no water to drink; an elderly man in our place said, "We have to go back to the old days; build wells that we can use."

We lived in darkness for about 4 days. There were people from low lying areas who were trying to migrate to higher ground; we heard some neighbouring roads were clear of water. It was a painful sight - an elderly man carrying a suitcase on his head and holding his wife by the other hand wading through hip high waters; we tried helping some as they passed by. But being ourselves down on supply there was only little we could do.

Partial return to normalcy

Late in day 3 the rains had become scattered and few - but those few bursts were frightening because they struck with intense force; on day 3 a few folks ventured out for supplies in an SUV - they got a couple of drinking water bottles for their homes; a few small shops were open 3 or 4 kms away; at least the milk was being sold at normal rates in this area - i heard that in some places they charged 4 times the money for it. Vegetables were expensive - about 5 to 10 times more expensive than normal. ATMs were out of money and supplies in supermarkets I heard ran out quickly. Petrol bunks that happened to open were flooded with people filling fuel in cans and bottles. A lot of this would have been due to fear and wanting to stock up on supplies. 

A few kilometres away there was still seven feet of water on the main road; people were dumping spoilt supplies (rice, lentils etc.) and damaged electronics and furniture in the water. Dead cattle was floating around and even one dead person was floating.

Towards end of day 4 power was restored and we began to get back to normalcy; shops still shut but at least with power we could get drinking water at home; water logging had gone down to ankle height. Few people did leave the city of day 3 since cars could ply certain roads. Some neighbouring roads are still in hip deep water.

We were among those very fortunate and privileged. So many lives had been lost, homes swept away, sewage flooding homes, property bought after years of hard work damaged and washed away. And there were more sad stories of few folks who tried rescuing people getting engulfed by the flood.

One person on television said, “It is like a second birth for me.”

He said it from the standpoint of materials he lost; but there is a lot more meaning in that statement.

My tryst with self-publishing

I've been busy lately in experimenting with self-publishing. And that's the reason you haven't seen any blog updates for a while (can't think of any better excuse at the moment!) :-)

Since the novel has been eating my head I thought it better to get it published soon; this novel has been running around my mind for a while. And it gets hard when you have another story also fighting for space and time in your mind. And so I decided, enough with the amount of revisions and let's go for it. Is this novel then a half baked product? Well, I hope not - considering the amount of revisions that have been made.

I decided to do the ebook publishing first and later with the help of my friend Prem will try the print edition (if there is any interest in the book!) eBooks are easy to publish and if you haven't read a book on a eReader device like the Kindle or haven't used the eReader apps to read books then do try it out - it is a lot lot better than reading PDFs.

The reason for this blog - just wanted to list some of the things that new authors might find useful so that they don't struggle like I did for a few small things in the ebook space.

1.) Microsoft Word

Seems to be the most popular document format liked by Smashwords (who can help you distribute your ebook to many retailers like Apple's iBooks, Barnes and Noble, Flipkart etc.) Even Amazon likes Word documents.

What if you don't have MS Word - OpenOffice seems to be a good alternative.

I tried the Apple's Pages but since the format accepted was a *.doc file it is easier to use Word/OpenOffice.

What Smashwords does is take the doc file, run it through their engine to produce multiple ebook formats like epub (very popular with all ereader apps), mobi (used by Amazon's Kindle device) etc.

2.) Follow the rules

I never knew about using styles in word processors; Smashwords has a comprehensive guide that tells you how to format your book, what styles to use, what font sizes to use etc.

If you confirm to that format, it is very likely that Amazon will also be happy with your file - Amazon has a much shorter guide about what they expect.

3.) Beware page breaks

So after editing on OpenOffice and submitting the file to Smashwords I saw one strange output - there were extra blank pages appearing before every chapter. After a lot of trial and error I discovered that after you give a page break, on the new page just hit an Enter and start content from the next line (like the Chapter title). This ensures that no extra pages appear. I assume you might not need to do this if you are using MS Word.

4.) Beware guides on the Kindle

The Kindle reader for every book will provide guide links (called guide items) on the tool bar; like Go to beginning, Go to end, Table of Contents etc.

The Table of Contents requires a TOC bookmark within your file else it will be disabled when people read your book. This is mentioned in the Amazon guide; I didn't notice it when I first when through the short guide.

Table of contents guide item will just link to the TOC page; it won't list all the chapters under the guide list; to get all chapters listed in the guide list I think we need to edit the metadata of the doc which isn't probably worth the effort.

There is a guide item to go to the 'beginning' of the book; I found that when we provide a bookmark for that, Smashwords doesn't like it and throws a formatting error (tried this from OpenOffice by giving the bookmark named 'Start' because that's what Amazon says they look at).
The same file uploads fine in Amazon. No harm even if this particular bookmark isn't given because by default 'Beginning' will take the reader to the first page of the ebook.

5.) Book sales/downloads/marketing

For people who've never read any of my writings, I felt it would be good to give a free ebook. So that they can read that and if they like it then (hopefully) they would purchase my novel. And so I did that on Smashwords - unless you market, don't expect the download count to fly high even if it is a free book. I just saw my download counter for the free book hit 100! Not bad without any marketing having started yet; but that gives you an idea. After around 10 days it's hit 100 and this was a free book. If it is a paid book, the count will surely be at 0! And that was confirmed because my novel 'The Fake Mask' was available for pre-order in Amazon but not one person had ordered it, even though the price was a modest $1.5

6.) Free ebooks on Amazon

Amazon doesn't let you price a ebook at $0. What you need to do is get it published on other sites like iBooks, Barnes & Noble and then inform Amazon saying that it is available for $0 elsewhere. Just drop them a mail from your author account; their customer service is extremely helpful - I never expected quick replies from such a large firm to my queries.

7.) Pre-orders and region differences

Pre-order mechanism is not available in all ebook stores and even within the store it may not be available across countries. Ex: As of now, pre-order is available in Amazon US site but not in Amazon India site.

And from region to region, even your ebook listing might differ; Ex: iBooks India doesn't list any ebook other than literary classics.

Oh yeah; and I obviously should mention about my first couple of ebooks here (marketing!).

• "WakeUp - Food for Thought" - the free ebook
• "The Fake Mask" - my first fiction novel as an ebook

Please look at http://www.sstutor.com/book.aspx for downloading/ordering them.

Salesmen hurry you to take a decision!

I recently had to visit a bank and being a long time customer they took me to the manager's room for a quick chat; a chat to get me to buy some new insurance/savings product. Later during the chat I came to know that they wanted to reach their year end targets and so were forcing me to buy this before year end - I guess it's performance appraisal for them and some bonus perhaps!

When salesmen start pitching their product it all sounds rosy; they throw in terms like guaranteed benefits, maturity benefits, assured bonus, regular addition and what not. Even if you say that you will get back to them, they'll say that it will be good to take it right now!

Analysis

Back home, I looked closer into the product - out of the 3 amounts that they promised, 2 are dependent on what they announce at the start of every year! So it's not really a guarantee! Anyway, assuming that it is, I compared of what we would get if we were to take the traditional route: regular fixed deposit (FD) in the same bank along with a term insurance (insurance where you don't get back your premium).

And lo behold - it turns out that even after considering tax deductions on the FD interest, you would still do better to take a FD and term insurance rather than their new product. It confirms to the age old advice I've heard from people who analyze investment products - "Don't combine insurance and wealth generation; keep them separate - take 2 separate products." 

But it is disheartening that many people still buy these products; and those in a lower tax slab will feel a bigger pinch - because the lower you're tax slab, the more money can make by going with the traditional route of FD + term insurance.

I wonder what the salesman would say if I showed him my calculation; I didn't have the time to sit with him, put a spreadsheet and do a comparison in the manager's room. 

Well, I'm still tempted to do it - perhaps he would say that, "This reduces hassles because it is a single product" or perhaps he hasn't given this a thought.

A day in the city - 12 lakhs bedroom!

An interesting day that started out with a movie in the morning. After lunch, the guys said they wanted to go on a long drive. And so we went - we stopped at Loyola to catch up with a friend before going on a loooong drive where traffic cops were surprised seeing us stop for red signals that were not meant for us! 

We covered around 40 kms within the city. A couple of things that made the day eventful. Our last stop was in a relatively unknown mall in the city.

12 lakhs for my dream bedroom!

We saw a Tempur shop - a company specialized in memory foam mattresses and pillows (the ones which regain their shape). My friend wasn't interested in stepping in because he felt it would be expensive. A memory foam foot mat welcomed us. We enquired about the rates and he said about 4 lakh rupees for a double bed mattress. It did feel awesome - firm but soft. You would most certainly have a very good sleep on it and probably less neck or back pain as the posters illustrated. In case you didn't want to buy a full Tempur mattress, they had a top-up version which could be placed on top of regular mattresses - the top-up is thinner version and a single costs just Rs.78,000 or so. After sitting on it and testing it, we left the shop with a determination to buy it someday! It does come with a 15 year warranty and they say it should last for 30 years!

Next stop in the same mall was a Philips LED shop with a tag line that said something like "See what light can do". The ambience inside was nice - one area bright, one area dim like the setting in a bedroom or a home theatre room. On enquiring we learnt that all the lights were LED, they could be controlled and they changed colors. It wasn't just the lights but along with the lights they had glass items like tubes which were used as reflectors to add to create different effects. They provide customized solutions and the setup they had in the showroom cost Rs.8 lakhs. So that's Rs.12 lakhs for my bedroom!

The small things matter

We jumped into a coffee shop that was advertised as being specialists in coffee/tea. But what we found interesting was something else - after finishing our drink, the owner asked us if we wanted anything else. We said no and assumed that they would bring the bill. For 15 minutes we kept talking and there was no sign of the bill. We asked the owner for the bill and he immediately brought the bill - he was waiting for us to ask because he didn't want to interrupt our conversation; giving the customer the bill is as good as asking the customer to leave soon - instead over here they waited till we were ready to leave; we found it touching; maybe we'll visit them again.

What would you do?

Scenario: You did something which is unfair - it gets you 'credit' and leads to someone else missing out on the 'credit'. The other person doesn't know about it. When you are officially given the 'credit', what would you do? Would you own up saying that the credit really belongs to the other person or would you just leave it?

I wondered about it a few minutes after the incident occurred. It reminded me of a parallel - in cricket whenever we see a batsman walk off on his own even though the umpire didn't give him out, we usually feel good about it - you feel happy that the batsman did the right thing because he knew that he edged the ball, he knew the bowler was better than him and he knew it wasn't fair for him to stay.

It's easy looking into someone else's life and commenting on what they should have done; but what would you really do? I think most of us wouldn't own up; and it frightens me that since we don't own up for something that is minor, what if the stakes were higher?

The other aspect is how can you tell what is right and what is wrong? Something that my conscience feels is right, yours might feel is wrong and vice versa. So the person who got the credit might not even have felt that it was wrong; the batsman who nicked the ball, but didn't walk off, might feel that in the grand scheme of things everything will even out. The umpire didn't catch him today but on another day the umpire might give him out even though he wasn't out - the plusses and minuses even out in the end! Do they? Maybe they do, maybe they don't... what if they don't?

What if the stakes were higher? What if your decision to leave the situation as it is, ends up doing harm to the other person who deserved the credit? Do you still consider yourself right?

It is strange how we act and react in different circumstances; anyway, keep pondering... time to hit bed; time to step into the other world...

The 'buy and hold' policy!

It'll take me a while to get into the grove of writing travelogues - so till then, I'll ramble about a few other things.

Recommendations

I was talking to an elderly middle class man who takes care of carpentry work (he employs a few guys) was asking me what stock to buy; it's a little worrying when you recommend a financial investment to someone - especially if they don't have surplus money. What if your recommendation goes wrong? In that case, just because of you someone else loses their money! A frightening thought due to which I hardly give a stock reco; another reason is that without giving such tips, people can't judge whether you are a good stock picker - and when there is no data to look at, they assume that you are very good at it :-)

Buy and forget

So rather than flatly say 'no, I don't give recommendations', I moved our conversation away from that area. He told me about how he he buys stocks and then forgets about it. And then after a few years, he will take a look at his portfolio. And to his surprise he saw that a few companies have completely disappeared from the market! 

It made me wonder about the policy of 'buy and hold'. Does it really pay off? Well, maybe and maybe not - if you had bought an Infosys 15 years ago and forgotten about it, you will be sitting on a nice little fortune today. 

But for every such multi-bagger stock (stocks which increase your wealth) there are plenty of multi-beggar stocks (stocks that wipe out your wealth). I just went back through our stock market index (the Nifty which tracks some of the 50 biggest companies in India) - in 2007 December, the Nifty was at 5900. And now in 2012 December, the Nifty is again at around 5900! 

So that means that if you bought a mutual fund that tracked the Nifty or a combination of stocks that closely resemble the Nifty, then in a period of 5 years your wealth has increased by Rs.0! 

Yikes - alright, I know that a few of you will say "Hey, you can't just look at a 5-year period. Give it some more time." Well, maybe in another 5 years the Nifty goes to 12000 and in that case your returns aren't that bad. But if you take a look at some of the company stocks, you will find that the price of many have gone down by 80% or so - and it doesn't seem like they will ever regain their old highs.

And at this point, those of you who have never invested in the stock market will say, "Gee... this is exactly the reason that I stayed out of the market"!

Anyway, in the end I avoided giving any recommendations and told him to look at his holdings at least once a month to see how his portfolio is doing and take decisions based on that.

Ramblings and Looping!

We had an interesting couple of days with a discounted lunch and a movie... The movie  Looper is in the sci-fi genre... It's about time travel and the ending, hints at a person knowing the future sequence of events and correcting the sequence in the present! A more simplified version would be a question everyone would have thought of at some point or the other.... can destiny be altered based on what you do or is what you do just taking you on an already established course? Keep pondering...

I just Googled for the movie and you have articles on explanations, paradoxes and even a visual timeline explaining the flow of events in each timeframe!

My one  friend didn't like the movie while another did; but all of us are grateful to the friend who saved us from the extra service charge!

I am amazed at our Chennai drivers; a person on a bike with a wife and kid takes a  u-turn in a forbidden junction putting his  family at risk; it shudders sometimes to think how they are willing to risk their loved ones to save a few minutes and a little fuel. I guess we never treasure what we have.

My ramblings from my mobile

I won't write much since this is my first mobile post and some reviews of Google's mobile app are a little worrying... they say your blog will disappear!

It's been an interesting 2 weeks with a lot of experimenting on my mobile... the GPS came in handy with downloaded maps... we spent about 30 minutes to find a Saravana bhavan for lunch near sangam  cinemas; unfortunately the offline map didn't have this branch; but roaming admins in areas of Chennai that we'd never seen was fun.

I also tried my hand at android programming; the developer's life is made a lot easy with the development software available... it's satisfying to write a program and see it execute on the mobile phone.

Will be back with the travelogue soon... was caught up in completing a story...

My ramblings - Domestic airport observations...

I thought I'd write a travelogue today but have ended up listing some observations that I saw in the last few days.


Like father like son?

What a pity it is the way we set examples for others - we crib and cry about the wrong that others do, but how good an example do we ourselves set? I noticed a father and an inquisitive son step outside an ATM after they withdrew some cash. Once outside, the father proudly tore the ATM receipt in eight pieces and threw it on the footpath as if they were flowers that he were showering in a marriage. What an example indeed?

Ask and you could get it


I didn’t know it was this bad - last time it took me 1.5 hours to get to the Bangalore airport. Today it took me 2.5 hours. As we approached the airport, I checked the time on the cab’s dashboard and was pretty certain that I would miss the flight - just 30 minutes for departure and I hadn't done an online check-in as well. But the cab time was 10 minutes ahead - I rushed to the departures entrance and was confronted by two queues with more than 6 people in each. It would slow me down if I waited there. 


I saw a couple of North Indian security guards sitting idle in front of a 3rd entrance; there was a board that said “Staff only.” Looking at the guy I had a feeling he wouldn't budge but I still thrust my ticket and id at the man and told him my flight was at 9:10pm. And he causally, in Hindi, replied that there was plenty of time for me! Fortunately the lady beside him noticed my hurry and told him, “Just check.” Not happy at being rushed into this, the security guy examined my id card very closely. Seeing me at this empty queue, a couple more passengers joined behind me. The security guy said that my name on the ticket didn’t match with the id card - I pointed out that the id only had the first two names and not the third. He examined the id and ticket for a few more seconds before waving me through. The lady then said, "Check theirs also," referring to the two people who were behind me.

Listen to your mom!


I then rushed to the Check-in counter to get my boarding pass and drop my check-in baggage. There was less than 40 minutes left and today morning a colleague missed his flight because he arrived at the airport 30 minutes before departure - you are supposed to arrive 45 minutes before departure. He had to cancel and rebook on the next flight which was 3 hours later. For me there was no other flight after this one tonight. 

Fortunately in Bangalore, there isn’t a separate security scanner for check-in luggage; you just go directly to the airline counter and drop your bags - but the queue here had more than 12 people. After talking to one of the airline boys, he created a new queue where I was the first in line. I don’t think anyone else would have liked it! I thought the lady at the counter might say, “Sorry,” but she didn’t. She said, “I’m giving you the last aisle seat I have.”

In airports, you can feel relatively relaxed once you get your boarding pass - because then even if you were held up in security check, the airline would start searching for you and expedite the process. The security check queues were moving very slowly and only a few were operational. After ten minutes, a energetic security personnel opened one more line for screening. He was so fast with the metal detector instrument that he completed 4 people while the others had finished just one. And it wasn’t that he took any shortcut - it was just that he was so energetic and brisk when he waved the metal detector on your body. The people in the queue were delighted to see the speed at which he worked. 

The moral of the story is, as most of our moms would say, “There is no harm in going to the airport or station early. What big deal are you going to do at home in that one hour? Why not spend it in the airport?”

Why the hurry?


It reminded me of something else. Every time in flights, I always dream of a day when everyone in the flight will be patient while exiting the plane. Today was typical - as soon as the flight slowed after touchdown, most people stood up and start pulling out their bags from the overhead compartments as if they could leave the plane immediately; why so much hurry for such a petty thing?

Oh well, that’s enough for today... No space for a travelogue - next edition will be about the first baseball game I attended in US.

Poor Trisha

Very interesting day it has been - 10:33pm and I'm finally back at home after an eventful day. Morning went in some regular household work and then on a ride with my colleague to inspect a couple of places on ECR to check whether they were suitable for an office outing. The first place which was the unanimous choice in our team turned out to be a flop - why would you want to pay money to play games on a public beach? The second one was an amusement park and at least you get to go on a few rides for the money you pay! I wonder how amusement parks in Chennai make money - they wouldn't have repeat guests and on weekdays they'd probably not have any. Wonder how much profit they can generate considering the amount of people they have to employ to maintain the place. My colleague took the extra pain to come over and pick me up from home and drop me back home - he's done over 100 kms today.

Next up was driving over to a hotel for a function hosted by a magazine (a magazine for which I had written a few articles a year ago). I handed over the car to the valet - my first time and I was quite hesitant to give away the keys. On enquiring at the reception I was told that the function was being hosted at their new branch and not here! The staff told me different routes, all of which seemed familiar but I really wasn't confident about any of them. Finally I realized that the route he was talking about was the route I had taken to reach this place! And off we went in the reverse direction but just because there was no right turn at a signal junction we had to go a kilometer down the road to take a u-turn. Since I wasn't sure of the location and didn't want to get stuck going back and forth on the main road, I parked the car on a side street and started enquiring. After 10 minutes of walking we reached the hotel. It was 7:10pm, ten minutes past the scheduled start time.

The show begins

The chief guest was a famous South Indian director (Gautam Menon) and I was reminded of a forward email that proclaimed that he hasn't done original plots. The event was a small one; with around 100 seats available. Even though we were late we did get a couple of seats (but within the press area!). A small band was performing on stage and the lead singer was trying desperately hard to get the crowd to sing along - after five or six attempts, one section of the audience responded to him - Thank God else the guy would have been embarrassed. After four songs the show began with the announcement of results for some contests. A little later, while a video clip was being played amidst the dimmed lights, Trisha stepped into the hall in a pink dress with perfectly straight hair. Now it made sense as to why there was so much press in the small hall. Around 10 to 12 cameras went to the front and started flashing at Trisha for ten minutes. And the first thing that popped in my mind was, "Poor Trisha - can't she have a little time out." She wasn't the chief guest and yet there was so much of flashing on her. It must be so hard to do even normal things because cameras will be following her everywhere. And to add to it, she was wearing a bright pink dress whose bottom was like a skirt but seemed like it would be quite uncomfortable. In the afternoon ride my friend was saying that she was the most beautiful actress in the South; and from my seat she did seem pretty. But I did feel sorry - sacrifices for popularity - sacrifices for being a celebrity - can't even vent out feelings in public and need to be extremely cautious outside.

There was a fashion show in which we had some more celebrities appear - like Arya and Deepika (the squash player). It was the first time I was viewing a live fashion show and it was a little amusing - the way each model walked the ramp twice, the way they had to stand like a statue for a while, their unnatural walk, their smile at an empty corner of the room when they came close to the cameras, 200 eyes gazing intently at them and at least 10 cameras recording each of their moves. Modelling is also tough to do - having to put on so much of makeup, changing costumes in 5 minutes etc. One of the masters of ceremony for the fashion show, in his over enthusiasm to spontaneously crack jokes, made a sudden comment that was quite vulgar. I really don't think he even dreamt of saying what he did! But the words were spilt and he had to move on.

The suit that Arya wore didn't seem to suit him; looked partially informal and something seemed odd; I'm not a fashion conscious guy but something looked odd - perhaps the colour combination. On the other side, if not for the celebrities we wouldn't have had so much press people out here. If they were to call for a press meet you can rest assured that the place would be houseful. There were a few speeches before the fashion show along with the release of the anniversary edition. The dinner was sumptuous with even some Mexican food that I tried out (made fresh and served - some form of bean burritos but the cook called it something different) after having desserts - sugar free carrot halwa and chocolate mousse. Before we left we saw the models having dinner; they were probably more pretty with the glossy makeup now washed off their face! Actor Parthiban and the hero of the Tamizh Padam were also around - they were giving interviews to a couple of TV channels - NDTV was also present; wow - talk about Star Power! Inside the hall Deepika was giving interview to another channel and a couple of anchors from SS Music channel were also present.

Fortunately our car was in the same condition as we left it in, near the main road - no one had bumped it and there was no traffic police lock on the wheel for parking in the wrong ! The drive back home at 10pm was fun with hardly any traffic and even a couple of traffic signals not working; beautiful weather, beautiful ride and a beautiful song - ...In dino, dil mera, mujse hai, keh raha...tuuuu khwaab sajaa...tuuu ji lae zara...

Ramblings of 8th April...

I've been spending my time learning about semaphores and processes and threads - probably something that I should've learnt by now; but as they say 'better late than never'. It is quite a fascinating topic.

It was nice to watch a supposedly weak team topple the number one team in the cricket world cup. The passion and enthusiasm in the players is something that stirs even a passive spectator. Bangladesh batted beautifully in the last ten overs playing some cheeky shots and scoring runs at will. South Africa was at the receiving end and a total of 250 against any team isn't a cakewalk. And so Bangladesh have done their second killer act in this world cup; who knows, they might have more in store!

I read an interesting news article about a research being conducted somewhere in Europe regarding "what women want". The results are really depressing news for highly ambitious guys; it seems girls don't prefer the highly ambitious, high life bachelor since these hi fi guys might not spend enough time with family and won't help sustain the relationship. What a pity :-(