Hence proved.. GOD exists!!!

Sachin on 199

Over: 48.5
On strike: Dhoni
Takes a single
Entire nation boos..

Over: 49.0
Dhoni hits a 6
Entire nation boos..

Over: 49.1
Dhoni hits hard for a boundary
An unfortunate SA player dives and stops the ball
Entire nation cheers..

Over 49.2
On strike: Sachin
Sachin takes an easy single..
Entire nation rises..

Over 49.3
Forget it, no one cares..

The legend reaches the inconceivable mark!
200.. In a 200 CARAT diamond style..

Many matches will come and go, many innings will come and go, many players will come and go.. But only one God will remain and will always be remembered for the greatness he endeavours.. The maestro has proved yet again to the world, his passion for the game and his insatiable hunger..
I am too happy, too excited, too over whelmed to say much here! The news channels are doing enough bragging, to be followed by the newspapers tomorrow morning.. And they will undoubtedly do a much better job.

My friend told me, the happiness quotient of india increases by 3% everytime sachin scores a century.. Today that makes it 6% linearly.. But I am very sure it would be much more than that.
That is the madness for cricket in this country or I should say that is the love for the legend in this country. When I used to read, the man who carries the expectations of billions of Indians, I used to feel proud but could never understand the significance! Had always seen a match at home, at max with 20 people in front of a TV. But today, in office, during work hours I hear a loud shout! I check the scoreboard on cricinfo and YES Sachin on 168 and had hit a six. I gave up. My desire over-powered my responsibilty and I left to see the match. I open the cafetaria gate and what a SCENE! I never knew the capacity of our cafetaria! It was jam packed, people were standing, eyes stuck on the TV and a rising uproar with every glimpse of the man! From workers to managers everyone was in pause mode and moved only to clap when Sachin scored. Finally with all the hoo-haas and the heart beats pacing the land mark was achieved! I felt like taking a pic and sending it to Larry (Our CEO) and tell him "Yeh hai India meri Jaan". I was pondering over the thought when a friend of mine at IIMA told me that they got an early off from a lecture because of the match! And I smiled and thought "Yes, yeh hai India meri jaan!"

When I was a kid, during the matches my brother always used to tell me "If cricket is religion, Sachin is God!" I hardly used to watch cricket then, knew nothing about God and Religion and Sachin was like any other cricketer. But now I know.. And 10 years down the line, the fact still remains.. Undoubtedly, Sachin is God, what so ever you may call cricket!

Wishing my hero for all the years to come and lots of records to be broken and lot more records to be set. Hope he leads his team to a World cup victory and fulfills his last desire before saying good bye to the game.

To the one man who has brought smiles on billions of Indians, rich or poor, young or old, for 2 full decades..

My Name is King Khan

Hereby cherishing the return of King Khan...

Sleeping early on a friday night and getting up early on a saturday morning would not have been so easy had it not been for a Shahrukh Khan movie! And honestly every minute of My Name is Khan was worth all the pains taken.. The story revolves around the life of an ordinary Muslim man, the story of every Muslim man in US at the time of 9/11 disaster. A touching line in the movie says.. "Like time used to be defined as AD and BC, similarly in US it has become before 9/11 and after 9/11"! A child suffering from Asperser's syndrome (Khan), intellectually brilliant, falls in love with a beautiful divorced mother (Mandira), happily married and living a peaceful life with a wife and child and just when everything looks perfect in Khan's life, 9/11 happens. His cute child is tortured and killed by some hooligans and Mandira in a fit of rage blames Khan for his name and tells him to go away from her. And Khan agrees and genuinely asks her ".. but when should I return"! And then what she says results in the rest of the story.

There have been so many movies made on 9/11 but none can match My name is Khan. Starting from the scene where Shahrukh says "My name is Khan and i am not a terrorist" to the last scene where he finally meets the president every scene is stupendously shot. I am not here to promote the movie (for I am a die hard SRK fan) but I sincerely want all my friends to go and enjoy the movie thoroughly as I did. And to pen down a few scenes which stuck me and should not go un-noticed by you include the scene where Mandira (Kajol) cuts Khan's hair and with the back ground music and the lighting effect, it is a treat to watch. At the scene where he is not allowed to meet the President because he is not a Christian, the theatre applauded on the "No, no.. Honey, keep the money, for the people who are not Christians in Africa". Another heart touching line goes like.. "Ek Sikh ko Musalmaan samajh liya toh aapne apna libaaz badal diya par yahan ek Musalmaan ko insaan nahi samjha jaa raha hai aur aap apna schedule badalne ko tayyar nahi hai!"

The most amazing thing is the way in which Khan has portrayed autistic Khan's balance between insanity and intelligence. Though in some scenes including the romantic scenes with Kajol and the heroic scenes at Willemina the autistic Khan gets over driven by his own heroic SRK style but over all it is a commendable performance. And Kajol has complemented him brilliantly with another strong performance. And as usual the perfect chemistry between the two of them always keeps us asking for more! Five hours have passed and yet not over the Khan magic. The beats of "tere naina" are still echoing in my mind and my facebook message is soon going to be "cant stop listening to tere naina"

Over all it is a perfect entertainment package, Contradictory to a certain friend of mine, I strangely rate a movie as proportional to the amount of tears I shed! And generally I do that a lot on every other sad scene. But here, some emotional strings being attached to SRK, even the joyful scenes saw tears rolling down my cheeks and neighbours laughing on me! But i dont care, it was a fultoo paise wasool for me.. :D Hope it is the same for you in your very own way!

And not to forget, hats off to the man in charge, Mr. Karan Johar. Thank you..
And I just want to say it once again.. Love you Shahrukh.. :D

First trip to Hometown - Part 2

After a hectic week at work I have finally gathered all my thoughts on my last two trips to Nagpur which have left me moved more than ever. My first trip was for the engagement of my two close friends and as if that was not enough my second trip followed immediately a week later for a family friend's marriage.

I left Hyderabad full of excitement, some of the many reasons being, it was my first trip to Nagpur after my relocation to Hyderabad, it was my best friend's engagement, it was the first reunion for all of us after college. And I was not dissappointed in any of my expectations. I had the best time after having left persistent! The useless talk with college friends, the leg pulling session, the night stay at hostel, the same old mess food, the much awaited feast and the sunday tiffin, the jokes and the laughs, the dressing up for treat, the non-ending photoshoot, the Persistent reunion with ex-team mates and friends on and off work, everything was exactly as I had imagined or in fact better than that!

But the most over whelming part was the engagement. Now if you are wondering what is so over whelming about an engagement then it would be hard for me to explain. All i can say is you will understand when one of your best friend will be on the engagement chair and you will stand next to her wondering is she grown up enough to take up such a big responsibilty and fearing is my time approaching too!!! Will I be the next! Though it sounds over dramamtic but that is what came to my mind and that is what my dad asked me when he called me then. All through the engagement fro the time I took my friend to saloon and she was turned from a normal looking college going girl to a lovely pretty soon-to-be bride, I could not stop asking her again and again how was she feeling! And all through she told me, "something weird but not fear"! And it went well till she sat on that engagement chair next to her soul mate. And that is when a strange thought stuck me, that now on we cant just hang out the way we used to before.. Till now, it was like. I am bored, I am off, I want to do something crazy, I feel like having pani puri, I want to just hang out with her alone, I used to just ring her and say aaja.. But now!!! I probably cant expect this once she is married. That will be too much to ask for, she might say "wait, unse poochhke batati hu!" and I felt weird after that point. People say life changes. I realised it when I left college and joined job.. But I had never thought how it will change after marriage! Now that I have realised it, I am certain to stay away from it for a good enough period! :D

An intelligent friend of mine once said long back.. "Kya be, log shadi kar rahe, itne bade ho gaye kya ki bachcho ki responsibility le sake!" (This is a subtle version of what he actually said!) I had a laugh then and thought "grow up man"! But now I agree, "abhi toh hum bachche hi hai yaar!"

For our glourious days which will soon be coming to an end..

First trip to Hometown - Part 1

Well.. I have been a bit emotional lately with all the shifting to new city and leaving behind memories and people hustle. And before I could get over that feeling, I am back to the same old lovely green city which has made a mark in my life like no other place. I was extremely happy while shifting to Hyderabad, one main reason of the many being the over whelming feeling of finally moving to my mother land, AP.. (part of which some selfish people are claiming to be Telangana now! ) And "shifting to hometown" was the very same reason that I smartly specified in my exit interview! Though in spite of my infinite efforts to convince myself for the same, a part of me always feared that I was moving away from my hometown! And this fear came to reality when I stepped into Nagpur for the first time after relocating. I told my friend without looking at the station, that it was Nagpur. The recorded sound of "gadi no. 'do saath do ek', hyderabad se nizamuddin jane wali dakshin express, platform no. ek par aa chuki hai..", the kind of people getting down, the stalls visible from the window and it might sound too exaggerated but simply by the air around me I could say I was in Nagpur! When I said the same lines to my friend who kept me a wonderful company throughout the journey with all sorts of serious, funny and emotional stories all night long, he mocked at me! Little did he know, I actually meant it.. (Well, not all but at least a few..)

I am still wondering how the significance of a place changes from person to person.. In my own college I have seen wide variety of opinions about Nagpur. Some think it is just a boring place good enough only to finish engineering and return to their more happening lives at more happening places! Some think it is a calm peaceful place to get settled eventually but not to waste our "jawani ke din". Some do not think of it much, since their world is constrained only inside VNIT campus. While a few like me, give importance to every possible speciality of Nagpur, like the Dinshaws at Sadar that has no substitute in Hyderabad (high quality@low cost) and the delicious Haldirams sweets which make all pure ghee sweets at Hyderabad look OK-OK, and attach emotions with every possible place I have been to, like the college dinshaws (where we used to hang out till 8.29 pm), the Futala lake(whose walls have heard a lot more troubles than even our hostel walls), civil lines ke raaste (where i and a chhotu-motu friend of mine used to love getting lost), the balaji temple (which has relieved me of my tensions whenever i have turned that way), the sitabuldi flyover (which got converted from a phobia to a dream romantic drive), the buldi market (where everything from socks to suits are only a few steps away), the Abhyankar Nagar Square (where in the first half of my stay in Nagpur I used to wait on the signal dreaming about getting admission into VNIT and in the second half I couldn't stop feeling proud for being able to achieve that), and every other restaurant in Nagpur where we have had our mess offs, last lunch, last dinner, birthday parties, farewell parties, job treats and of course the one and only TDS which would not have been renamed top to down sexy if not for our batch.

Oh god.. I have totally drifted from the topic.. Now considering the mood set, it would be impossible for me to get back to the original topic which was supposed to revolve around "Why I was in Nagpur!" where as it revolved and rotated around "How much I missed it!". The original topic would continue soon, keep watching the space..

This one is to Nagpur and to all the Nagpurians I have ever known.. Cheers!!!

Heights of frustration!

This is not the first time, when I have felt like pulling my hair and shouting aloud "Oh God, please spare me". Sitting in a well furnished, posh conference room at Oracle India, Hyderabad and listening to "Why to Automate" presentation, I tried to keep myself involved writing this so that my brain nerves relax a bit and my BP remains normal! And it gets even more frustrating when people ask meaningless doubts and getting into unending arguments simply to come to notice.

This is not the first time that I have faced such rage in a lecture! In college though, I remember, I used to bang my head in Gandhi's class thinking "What is the fool drawing on board and blabbering.. Doesn't he know every book, in fact every chapter has an introduction!" Right now, it is difficult for me to judge which kind of frustration is more frustrating...

Finally on my own..

All the excitement that I had been holding on to for days, the day was finally coming to reality.. Though it did not start quite the way I thought it would but it definitely gave me goose bumps the way it ended or rather I should say the way it continued to date..

Though I was able to handle the 'last good bye to friends' scene at Nagpur pretty well but not the 'I miss you' scene at hyderabad very well.. With proper pre-planning I was able to contain myself at the bus stop and left with a smile on every one's faces..

And then in the bus, the thinking Swati came to life all of a sudden and started re-calling all the wonderful moments spent in Nagpur. The early tuition days when I used to run from one class to another, the most rocking four years of VNIT where every day was fun and every night was even more fun and last but not the least the PSL days which though short but had occupied the most significant part of my brain right then.. And strangely it was not the memories of these places that were haunting me but the people associated with these places that were coming back to me. Though most of the people were not even there in Nagpur then but had left their unending impressions on my memories at Nagpur and ultimately the most beautiful phase of my life..

My first step into Hyderabad and I was surrounded by auto waale bhaiyyas and in the typical nawabi tone one of them said "utte main naai aayega na, madam.." and I got the "Man, I am in Hyderabad" feel. Next I go home, paying 400 bucks to the chor auto waala combined with a nice farewell fight and that is when I decided not to use meter autos there after. I take my 4 heavy suitcases inside (man, I really do have a lot of clothes) and then fall down on the sofa to get some breath. And that is when the Hyderabad Times copy on the table caught my eye, that was the second realisation of "Man, I am in Hyderabad"! The day went well with me and my sis sharing the latest crucial updates on personal lives and utilising the last few hours of my freedom watching hangover and twilight. Finally, still not out of the twilight-feeling I went to sleep hoping for a new beginning to a lot many things. And then without alarm I woke up at 6.30 am when the chirping of birds was replaced by the kook-doo-koo of cock! And that was the third realisation of "Man, I am in Hyderabad".

Enough of that feeling, by now it is well ingrained in me. And considering, that for the first time I am relishing on the home made Sankranti sweets, I do not think anything else can intensify the feeling any further.

So speaking about the new city and the new job, there is so much to say..

Experience at Oracle:

1. Infrastructure is grand. From reception to conference room, from sports facilities to gym, even from roads to parking slots, everything is as one dreams of or must have seen on television.

2. Professional life is very well organised, less work hours, more work and a lot more responsibilities and as oracle says, every individual is a self managed team :)

3. The free pantry includes tea, coffee, soup, milk with sugar, milk without sugar, milk powder, dip tea sachets and even cold drinks!!! Haha..

Experience at Hyderabad:

1. Call it regionalism or chauvinism.. I do not care, but I love being surrounded by people talking in telugu, enjoy vicco advertisement in telugu at INOX, listen to telugu songs on radio and see wall posters of Telugu movies. I finally feel like I am at home!

2. The city might not be famous for night life or rather it might not have a night life as such but considering that I am from Nagpur and finally getting my independence I am able to enjoy a much better night life.

3. The first day I drove my vehicle back from station, I fell in love with one thing.. Yes, the roads in the city. No speed breakers, no pot holes, no bumps and no signals.. Just plain, wide roads with a fast moving traffic. So all you need to do is to raise it and keep a hand on breaks :) And the best part is the traffic cops here concentrate on regulating traffic rather than inflow of income!

A lot said and written, something that I cannot deny or try to over shadow by the excitement of my new life is the fact that I am missing my friends back home terribly. I am staying in a well furnished, posh guest house room. If I walk out of the door I have a CCD, a pizza hut and a KFC. And every time I look at these places, it makes me miss them even more. It is not that the people here are bad or difficult to get along with. But only time will help I guess. I am trying to accept this as a law of nature. Whenever I have moved further to the next phase of life, there has always been someone who makes me reconsider my decision and creates a strong impulsion of turning back even if that means turning back from success or progress. Then the thought "how important is professional success" peeps its ugly face and laughs on me. But unable to take any drastic steps, I prefer to go by the flow. I would rather regret for not having done something than for doing something wrong. And in the process I left behind my best friend while leaving junior college, another while leaving VNIT and another while leaving Persistent.. All I am looking forward to, is to find one such friend in Hyderabad.. The earlier I find that ray of light, the faster I will be able to get over this nostalgia..

Here we come, Ahmedabad!!!

Living in a corporate world full of strangers (well, this is bit of an exaggeration but sounds more dramatic!!!) was over shadowing me day by day.. A dream about the college days, a bad day at work, a realization of distances already present between friends and still multiplying and totally exasperated from the routine life I finally gave in to the extreme temptation of going for a trip to Ahmedabad and have a small Dynamic reunion J And considering the consequences of our last minute travel plans, I must say it was worth all the pains..

I came to reality with the strange fact that movement of people between Nagpur to Ahmedabad are probably more than any other city!!! (It is high time more trains be run on that route) Last minute plans meant tatkal booking, so Neha and I (two of the laziest people in the world) got up at 7.00 am (even if we had a chance to meet SRK at that time, our eyes wont open!!!) and went all the way to Ajni station to book tickets. Long queue.. What!! Have they been standing here all night!! After 15 min our number came.

Neha: 2 tickets (slips in the slip)

Booking counter man: Madam, waiting hai, 95 (wtf, 15 min mein?!?)

Neha: Bhaiyya, 3AC mein hai kya?

Booking counter man : usme bhi waiting hai

Neha: 15 min mein?!? bhaiyya plz phirse check karo (As if its university result sheet to be mistaken)

Booking counter man (irritated): madam, waiting hai (gives the slip back). Ahmedabad ke liye first number lagana padhta hai

I and Neha do a little khus puss, with others in queue giving irritated looks and finally..

Neha: De do bhaiyya..

The man gave an “omg, aaj kal ki ladkiyan” look..

That was our only motto in the train.. Aaj kal ki ladkiyan J (had to use girls power today) Strange but it did work. Everyone welcomed us to have a seat. Well that was expected but then would you believe a good man actually gave away his berth to us when we attempted to sit down on newspapers!!! So somehow we reached ahmedabad and the first look at Nilange and that group hug took away all troubles and then began our journey of craziness.

There were a few places on my “must watch in Ahmedabad” list which included the very famous Akshardham temple, the Sabarmati Ashram and of course our dream IIM. And another of our favourite institutes which cannot be named here since I could not go there thanks to the concerned person’s busy schedule and his name is not to be revealed on request (Busy person, if you get time to read this, please note I am not blaming you for not taking you around your college even though I came a long way from Nagpur)

So one by one I ticked my list. Akshardham temple was exactly as I had excepted it, calm and peaceful. I wonder how could someone have the heart to disrupt its serenity! Sabarmati Ashram was informative and tiring! And the best was IIMA, a must watch for inspiration to all MBA aspirants. The architecture is grand, the pathways are spic and span, the hostels are breezy, the class rooms are perfect, the auditorium is large. Basically has everything that one can ask for in an Institute. A perfect home to a brilliant brain. And thanks to Das that we got entry into the campus and a special thanks for all his time and efforts.

Well there is a lot more to the city than what can be seen. Not to speak about the delicious food! The gujrati thali, the khichdi at Akshardham, everything at the manikchand eat street were mouth watering. The pineapple sandwich and the Cadbury pizza are the usp at manikchand eat street. Each one of us had the “peth bhar gaya, mann nahi bhara” look when we left manikchand street.

The trip gave me everything I had sought for. A relaxing weekend, a reunion with friends, a break from the boring dabba food and a new beginning to something...