Getting back at the Game - Triathlons

Well, its been a while. Last blog 2007, this one 2016. 9 Years. Seems like a life time. A good friend told me that one of the ways to discover yourself again is through writing. Taking her advice, I said why not. I was more convinced about this idea since when I read my blogs from 2007 and backwards, I realized who I was, what I enjoyed and my true nature. Over the years, result of corporate dampening, I seem to have lost myself, I feel less connected, feels like I am a kite cut loose. Hence, in an earnest attempt to re-discover (not re invent) myself, I am getting back to writing.

Currently the most interesting thing in my life is getting back to Triathlon. Almost after 8 years of in-action, at the cost being politically correct, I am enjoying the littelities of swimming, cycling and running, in that order. For those of you who don't know what the sport is, its a suicide mission where an individual chooses to put his body through enormous amount of stress first swimming, then cycling and then running ONLY to prove to himself that he still got the balls! and by the way it "appears" that the athletes are killing it but in reality this is how it goes in an athlete's mind :


1. First 100m of swimming - I am gonna kill it! Whip Lash Loosh! Full speed ahead
2. 500m -1000m - Speed stabilized. Man, How much more?
3. Last 500 m - Look at others, they are taking over me, lets do it faster
4. First transition to cycling - My pants are wet :(
5. Cycling - Why am I cycling so hard?
6. TRANSITION TO RUNNING - WHY ON EARTH WAS I BORN?
7. Running, first 100 m - Life is beautiful
8. Running, 1km - 2.5km - Life sucks
9. Running last - 500m - Let's do it baby!

Above feelings are from practice session, I am yet to run my first triathlon on the season on 10th of Sept. God Speed ahead! 

My First Professional Rendezvous - ITC Corporate Induction

Barely out of IIT, i was standing here, in the grand lobby of Sonar Bangla, kolkata, an AUT, overwhelmed by the warm welcome of ITC hotels. But the grandeur was short-lived, soon I realized I had forgotten my originals, photographs and everything they had asked to bring, except myself. Convinced ITC would not chuck me off for my not-so-serious-crime I headed to collect my room keys, with my colleagues from jaipur, who looked more shocked than I was, on my negligence. But it felt good to see one more and few more who had forgotten some of the things I had. All done we signed in our rooms, pleasure at its maxim, luxury redefined, elegant scent of affluence pervading the space…and AAILA! My key didn’t work.. neither did my neighbours’. Standing in the 5 star corridor wasn’t bad either, green carpet, yellow lamps..woooh perfect playground. My first room mate was farhan, management chap, a cool guy, except for being a devoted smoker which I hated.

It was six, I was in a professional mix, confused about what to wear(that’s ok im confused most of the time). I was wearing a blue coat unlike my colleagues who were in shirts. We took tables which had our names written, the first professional seating (after high school quizzing). I could read most of the faces, some looked snobbish (specially girls from management, but they were exorbitantly pretty), some had sweat, rest bore a plastic cover of malignant grandiloquence. And so began the unending 5 day tour where we were constantly fed about the ITC umbrella, its grandeur and expanse. Let me take you throught the series,

Prof J Ramachandran, case study: Age old Robin Hood, Aim to find what problem was he facing and solve it, if prof allowed us to. The tiger gnawed its prey's skin, a huge class of 80 professionals laid before him to be savored. New to the management world, we the batch of gullible AUT's (Assistants under training as ITC loves to call new joinees), came up with ideas to define problems, which were treated a fracas, later I realized prof was sure there was no problem and hence no solution, but it took us 3 hrs to come to this conclusion. All that drivel was necessary, it actually gave us an insight on how unnecessary things get discussed daily on board of director's table neatly coated with name "value proposition", but its ok, prof had to speak for 3 hrs, ITC pays no one for free. Probably he was subtly telling us, mission statements of any corporate are misguiding complex of seemingly simple things brought about by confusing English jargons which follow a "complicate-solve-complicate" theory, to which everyone in the hierarchical framework nods. We were no different, as one of the board directors recited and re-recited the policies and strategies all AUTs, as it was our first day, nodded in anticipation of having maiden recognition, quite normal, may be peer pressure!!

What followed were informative sessions (in case this blog is read by seniors at ITC), where we learnt about finance, safety, businesses, folklore and much more. And it was peer pressure again which had most of us make notes; though there were intelligent skippers who were eyed time to time, did I tell u there were monitors? four on sides, two at back and one in front, who made sure we don’t loose attention, it does make a speaker feel insignificant, specially when he is telling you what percentage of cow dung is used to run biogas plants now as compared to 5 yrs back (i never knew they weighed dung! oh yeah.. they might have weight cow before and after she did "it".) Lectures looked similar from day 3, except for the topic. Schedule was to come at 8:30 am, have breakfast, occupy your seat, listen... and listen. Listening eventually turned into hearing and hearing into careless whispers till the day ended. Monotony was also exhibited in the meals offered, ghar ki sabzi was rated the most seen vegetable on platter with near to zero change of taste.

Coming to Happy hours, the Dublin nights rather, most of us after exploring pool, gym, spa turned to the Free bar, the freedom limited, it was timed, from 6-8 evenings. It was quite surprising to notice that all AUTs were devotional in turning up here right on time, some didn’t even want to change to informals, who would like to waste time anyways when agenda is FREE BOOZE. Lined up! queued up!, we did psyche others in the club, by apparently acting like spendthrifts, those who didn’t drink cashed on mocktails, and still managed to get high. Befriending the bartender was fruitful, I hated the queueJ. To the amateur booze lovers, it was a paradise, the only problem being their lack of knowledge about what to ask for, so the man (one man) said “take the costliest of all u have and mix it in a big tumbler”, dude! This aint a pao bhaji + the bartender has been instructed to dupe you when he got a chance.. And you just gave him one, I didn’t say it though, my relations with bartender were NICE. And we drank, toasting our first jobs! What was remarking was the bonding we made at a professional level. There was humor but of a different kind, there was a professional touch about everything we discussed, it was no more protective college days where you can say anything and get away, this was your company, choice of words was important, especially when one is talking to a female colleague. Alls well that ends well, we headed to our respective locations, exchanging contact numbers with a promise to stay in touch, lets see how much of it works!

victorian euphemisms still plaguing indian journalism

"The woman was relieved of her purse by a miscreant yesterday night"
better: woman was robbed
"they guy was caught in inebriated state before entering the room"
better: guy was drunk
"would u please repress the insane outburts of merriment"
better: stop laughing!
"where is my rotundity of leather?"
better: wheres my football?

These are few examples picked up from conemporary journalism which make lavish use of circulocution and gibberish. Indian journalism since ages has been plagued by babu english, legacy of english officialiase. We tend to do pick up these mistakes from the model essays served in guides (like wren n martin) in schools, irony is, inspite of publishing revised editions every year, mistakes stay!It seems journalists are rather paid to make sentences longer and senseless all because when they write they forget about the reader.
There can be two approaches to writing, speak-as-u-write or write-as-u-speak. Needless words clutter writing producing a khichdi out of nothing. Circumlocution or the roundabout way of telling things is one of four main diseases indian officialese suffer from, for eg. for business writers prices dont go up they undergo an upward revision, oh sorry i just wrote it in a hasty manner (hastily)!
Planeonasm or the art of adding adjective to a meaningful-by-itself word is a crime newspapers are often seen to commit. The first word only duplicates the idea in the word next to it:
advance planning, final outcome, end product, past history, proposed plan etc.

To catch the match

I recently visited Banglore as a volunteer for Match Pia, which is creating a USADR (United South Asian Donor Registry) in India to help find match for Cancer patients. But with Social motive came along a lot of fun. We were 4 guys from IITM, me kallu kishor and panda. And the least expected Kishore was the cynosure of all eyes, he really didnt try too much to make us laugh .. but it just happened all the time. Prime features of the trip included stay in a super delux guest house on MG road, and parties late night in finest hotels of Banglore, and there was beer, lot of beer! Parties started the day we checked in, there was tim, aaron, aditi, prank, raghu, doctor, we four and few more! place was charcoal, regalis. on the platter we had them serve veg nonveg starters and some beer....umm no.. a lot of beer as my glass was still full when we left. Kallu got his rum partener aditi and kishore found solace with doctor. I was relishing almost everything from wines to Tim's lines. And we headed back to guesthouse some high on booze others on food. But a strange thing about banglore, One way traffic rules apply even after 12 pm. implication of this revealation as you might have guessed is... we were "caught red handed" breaking the rules. We paid 200, not fine but for his wine, a novel way to escape fine.

The next morning was quite eventful kicking off with Kishore in his half sweater and half pants (his logic works half too) coming to my room looking for Indian style pot, which we unfortunately didnt have, to which Kishore repented and said "Shit man today also ill have to go "there."" No points for guessing where. Panda must have been relishing to have become the sole owner of the toilet which panda and kishore shared other than the bed.

The drive started at Oracle delayed by one and a half hours, courtesy banglore traffic. Though not many people came for registry that day, we were constantly entertained by KK's obvious one-two-or three liners..(we stopped him before he went to fourth). Kishore's larynx is a unique product, fine tuned with a "Sine wave" and he never loses the rythm when he speaks. He ends all his sentences with "know" and i really doubt if he knows everything he claims of ..eg. fagging.. which he claimed he can do but "demonstration" depicted otherwise. Almost all his remarks or comments or statements, lets say his gamut of vocal production comprises of obvious observations. To prove which, he would "discover" which coloured t-shirt you are wearing in a typical KK nasal tone with his head tilted at an angle of 12.5 degrees. From posture to preposterous presumptions our man has it all, enough to drive one mad.

Inside the rooms where we were swap testing people (a process where we used a swap, a long johnson bud structure with cotton at one end to collect saliva) amazing was behaviour of girls. Most of them closed their eyes...we absolutely had no romantic intentions, atleast we didnt show them. In a more general sense, when a donor was asked to open his/her mouth some wud take their tongue out making "aaaaaa"...come on man.. im not here to treat your tonsels, others would close the mouth assuming we wanted to brush their teeth.

All's good that ends good, we made a whooping >1000 registeries in the city to complement our efforts and i hope we get to see more of such lavish social drives.

TRIATHLON06 @ IITM

Saturday, April 01, 2006

my first traiathlon

TRIATHLON06 @ IITM

.....and it all started at 5:40 in the morning with a missed call from aunty, i woke up fuse , got freshen up and rushed to the pool and to our surprise three of us, me aunty and pointy dicovered the most unusual scene wrt IIT standards, all teams had come on time and the coach was shouting at us to change and line up...we had no "flag nos" no pins so were were aww struck for a minute ..but somehow was i was relishing the slight chill of the morning with no butterflies in my belly...yes it was my first triathlon. For those who are unaware of it.. triathlon in IIT consists of .5 km swimming, 7.1 km cycling & 3.3 km running...jogging....for some even walkin depends on ur energy level after the previous two. I got the no. 216 ...was lucky for me... we all lined up in the 6th line ready to roll. coach whistled and we started. aunty then pointy and me trailing last... although i was confident that ill be good at swimmin but things were turned the other way round, i was infact one of the last participants to drain my pants out ...guess was relishing too much the warmth of hot chlorinated water. FINALLY i got out, welcomed by murli, shame, fuse and majaz ..honestly speakin it felt nice to see them ..i got a boost... more by their presence than glucose.. now comes cycling the tyres roll , muscles fatigue, sight perfect, aim still in head.. and i bid adieu to my friends... In the second round i caught up with give up & aunty with his wobbling cycle he was askin me to go faster...i was one lap behind him, i realized later. In my last round i could easily see draac comin for running (he stood fifth) but i had already taken lead from 3-4 cyclists..and i felt good abt it. with all bits of energy exhausted i reached finishing line ..sipped water and fluxed glucose .. and the worst thing happened ..i got cramps , for once thought of giving up but could not or else alak would have been disqualified.. but yeah running alone was as boring as talkin to dumb girl...lol... i wish "someone" ..So i started running against all odds...but the good part was i was slow but i was steady ... i kept my feet thrusting against the road.
Fuse was present everytime i crossed the T junction ...actually i felt like an athlete when i drained my face with glucose water. At that time i wasnt puttin too much of effort and i had to pay for it..i was over taken by harsh...and he kept the lead ....but my mind was preoccupied with aim to complete the race rather than gettin a position. ....and i hit the finishin line coming 16th...it was an achievement to me as well as to our team which bagged 3rd position for the hostel and an experience well to be remembered. TRIATHLON - was undoubtely the ultimate test of stamina ...and the satisfaction of this accomplishment was awesome.

D of D

D of D

Dumbness of Decision is as profound as Weakness of Wisdom.
With great power comes great responsibilility.. no no im no spiderman, but most of us feel like him faced by multiple options at numerous junctures of our lives. I am talking about the dilemma faced when it comes to CHOOSING the best, problem is we dont know whats the best. The choice we make shapes us but this choice can be opinionated at times by peer, parents, pressures. Its not difficult to decide, to stick to your decision is difficult. The roots of this inability lies in the upbringing of an individual, stereotypical of Indian bringing up. A child is born with his/her parents wishing him/her to be successful, guranteed by an engineering medical and newly introduced profession of management. The notion of embracing unconventional careers is still alien to them and so does it become to the new "borns". They invariably land in the arena of JEE's , AIIMS and CAT's thinking themselves of gladiators set to pursue the highest in aforementioned cliched fields. I am not speaking against joining this institutions, i am speaking for the recognition, recognition of the pure interest of the child. Most of the times a child is being laid by his guardians into this madrush as they themselves consider it to be the best overlookin the real interest of child.