Travelogues 1

Feb 14th.
12:20 PM, Birmingham, AL.

My name was announced twice at the airport. Looks like I was the only passenger who had to board the plane. I was there 2 hrs early at the airport and smart alec made me take 1.5 lb out of one suitcase and 2 lb out of another or pay 100$ fine. Fine. I took out a bag of chocolates, reshuffled a coat from one to another, weighed them again. 49.8 lb to the dot. Put the chocolates in my cabin baggage. There you go smart ass.

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Feb 14th.
2:20 PM, Houston, Texas.

4.5 hrs of wait time. Crap. Have to go OUTSIDE the security cordon, check in with Emirates and print boarding passes. And pass through the security checkpoint again to board the plane. Welcome to Crappy land.

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Feb 14th.
4:20 PM, Houston, Texas.

Cabin baggae was a little outside the recommended dimensions, so the lady at the Emirates counter offered to check in it as a third bag for free. There were three lives in it. Took out all the original docs of myself and two others and put them in an “emirates” cloth bag (free, free free!), and checked in the bag.
Later remembered. Forgot to take out one of the pockets of the bag. There goes my original Birth Certficiate. Will I get it? Time will tell.

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Feb 14th.
Time: No idea, Flying over Atlantic ocean.

Emirates airlines. 100 movies to select from. Cute girl and me separated by her Mom. Cure girl is a little dumb, can’t figure out how to select a movie on her screen. Her Mom is worser. Show-off time!

Feb 14th.
Time is still.

Cute girl is cute, is a student of medicine(probably just finishing pre-med) in Texas. They are flying to chennai for a marriage. Her Mom stuffs left over muffins, choclates, socks from the emirates pouch and the TV screen in front of her in to her baggage. Kidding. She left the TV screen out.

Feb 14th.
Time is still, still.

Cute girl is asleep, her Mom is asleep too. I’ve finshed Bee movie (awesome!), watched Bourne Ultimatum, Live free or die hard, watched the front camera fromt the airplane into black nothingness. Still over the Atlantic. God I hate flying. I Love movies. I switch on Disney’s collection and start ‘A Bug’s life’. One bug is next to me, but her daughter is cute. And dumb.

Feb 15th.
Over Europe and middle-east.

Had a veggie wrap after dinner, few cups of pineapple juice. Cute girl’s Mom tells me she is Telugu too. I want to tell her she is more of broken enlgish than Telugu. And her daughter is cute and speaks real nice English in an American accent. Then she tells me her catse and wants to know mine. I tell her, No, I’m not from your caste. She expects more. I keep my mouth shut. If it wasn’t for her daughter, I wouldn’t have been so polite. She stuffs a cereal bar and a chocolate from our breakfast tray into her bag. She suggests I do the same. I pop the chocolate into my mouth and close my eyes and try to sleep.

Feb 15th.
7 PM, Dubai.

I buy a telephone card to call a friend who promised to get me through customs without having to pay a fine. Stupid card won’t work in the phones. Looks like it is only for calls within Dubai. I try and check my e-mail. No E-mail from either of the two people who promised me the contact info of a customs guy. Crap. I buy duty free chocolates, Chivas Regal and Black label.

Feb 15th.
9:00 PM. Dubai.

Indians, Indians everywhere. Check in starts for the 3 hr flight.

Feb 16th.
2 AM, flying over Indian airspace.

I breathe deeper, only closed muffled air withing the aircraft. Bee movie and a John cusack movie are the only ones available. John Abaraham’s and Ayesha Takia’s movie (No smoking?) playing but the quality is real poor. I’m tired. They guy next to me has joined me from Dubai, asks me for my pen to fill up his arrival to India card. And we talk for a few minutes, tells me he is from Mahbubnagar and asks me if I’m from “Andhra”. I tell him - Hyderabad, but he insists my parents must be from “Andhra”. I get it that he is speaking about “Andhra” and “Telangana”. I tell him yes. He asks me my caste. I look at him and want to tell him, something higher than his, whatever his’ is. Once on each plane. Unbelievable.

Feb 16th.
2:45 AM, IST. 5 minutes to land.

No excitement, no faigue, rows of lights scattered here and there out of the window, nothing orderly. Cannot make out any land mark. No Excitement. For a moment I want to blame this on someone, something. I hope I get a nostalgic tear in my eye. I don’t.I pick up my duty free alchol and walk out of the plane, a little numb.

3: 15 AM.
Immigration takes 20 min, someone calls out my first name and I jump on seeing an airport customs official, hoping he is the guy who is there to save me from the customs night mare ahead. Two laptops, Ipod, sansa Mp3, Nikon 8 MP, Canon 8 MP, Uniden cordless phone, Sony 30 GB camcorder, Two nokia cell phones, some 20 odd bottles of perfumes/comsetics. Only three items and the perfumes are mine. The guy is looking for someone else. I get a feeling I’m doomed. I reconsider my options, do I pray or not?

3:45 AM.

God, give me my luggage. I Promise I’ll be a good boy. 4 AM, still no sign. 4:05 AM, all three bags pop out, once I stop praying God. Some cosmetic damage to one of the bags, No dreaded ‘x’ marks aywhere. I get a feeling this isn’t going to be that bad. After all, rediff news did tell of a CBI raid in the customs office at Hyd airport two weeks ago. 15 people were dismissed or are facing cages of corruption.

4:10 AM, I’m out. I can see Manu, waving to me. Where’s the band, where’s the red carpet. Nothing. NO ONE STOPS ME. I can’t believe it. One porter tries to grab my cart, I tell him to back off. He looks towards a more sportive entity and leaves me in peace.

I walk out and give Manu a hug, I haven’t seen him 4 years 7 months. I feel some emotions, but I can’t see my Dad in the crowd straining their necks to catch a glimpse of the loved ones walking out. I borrow Manu’s cell and call home. Mom is half asleep but is jolted as soon as she hears that I’ve alreayd landed. Dad’s ready since 40 min, but the driver hasn’t showed up. Dad takes the phone and asks me if I could wait 10 min, he sounds really upset that he didn’t make it, I know he is upset at the driver who walks in just then. I tell him, I’m Home. I’ll be there in 15 min. I load up in Manu’s car, give 10 Rs/- to the two women begging near the car who won’t let us move. And get in. The roads appear a lot narrower, very few vehicles on the Begumpet-Tirumelgerry road at that time. I’m home in 15 min, Manu senses that I cringe a few times whenever he makes a cut. He seems to be enjoying it. I smile. I get down. I see my Dad, Mom and Sis. I’m home. Part of me wants to jump and hop around. My Dad shakes my hand, I’m home. They’ve painted the hall inside a bright orange and the glare is a little too bright. Everything else the same, new cushions though. The TV, my two/three prize wining cups in the showcase almirah, few new pics of my niece, I want to crash onto the Diwan and start watching TV, my Mom N dad are talking to Manu for some time, offer him coffee, I talk to my Sis. I can’t believe I’m home.

How ctrl, CONTROLS my life.

Ever morning, I must press ctrl+alt+del to begin working (checking my emails, blog favorites and news included), once I begin coding, for every 2 lines of code, I use ctrl+c and ctrl+v at least two times. On a good amount of websites, I use ctrl+click to open a link in a new window, I hold ctrl to open my Outlook in safe mode for whatever freaking reason it didn’t close properly last time. I almost always use ctrf+f on many new websites that I find on google. On the code view of my VS 2005/2008 or dreamweaver, ctrl+A ’selects all’ for me. ctrl+r to refresh the page I’m currently working on, ctrl+s to save, ctrl+u to underline, ctrl+b to bold, ctrl+i to italicize, Ctrl+H (find and replace) aids in altering my sql queries, and tell you what, hit ctrl+w and go to sleep.

And oh yeah, for MOST systems restart and hit ctrl (or is it F8?) to start it in safe mode, then if its a Windows XP machine and the administrator is a dumb ass, you can login as an administrator without a password and change all accounts and their passwords, this is hacking 0.01 for you.

I need more control over ctrl

Nostalgia revisited

So while I was planning my trip and trying to organize it myself by depending on the online booking feature of Indian Railways, which I kind of felt would definitely have something for internet users planning their schedule. I googled for Indian railways, and found www.indianrail.gov.in , for sure not a familiar site. But after an eternity(actually 3 solid minutes) when the page finally loaded (advertisements first, matter next). I clicked on online reservations and it took me to an external site, which was a tad faster (2 minutes) and I wanted to get started with registering myself as a user, but something clicked and it wasn’t my mouse, it was the name of the website.

www.IRCTC.co.in, it sure was familiar, YES. LOTSA JUNK MAIL in my oooooooooold inbox. I logged in to my old mailbox and flushed out a registered username and password from 2002. That’s right, I remember seeing the irctc website on news and clever me created a username and password in the November of 2002. I always knew I was ahead of my time , finally started making a purchase, from what I saw earlier today, purchases can be made only during specific hrs according to IST( I wonder why?), that translates to nightish-owly hours for me. Perfect. Indian railways helps five billion passengers annually, so I”m guessing there are thousands of users trying to get thru its meagre bandwidth somehow, buying tickets or checking status or checking timings.

Finally payment time and I could see a lot of unfamiliar options. Citi PG cards, Bank of Baroda, Bank of Maharashtra (they serve North and South Indians!!!, Thackeray saab, don’t u know it yet? Go break windows of a poor taxi driver around you). And finally, one familiar option, AMERICAN EXPRESS. Funny, it’s the most unpopular card with every business here in US (some costlier surcharge issue to the merchant). And it worked. Perfect.

Funny things about the site itself though. Slow. Station codes are slow to find on the pop-up. Can you believe it? Chennai is MAS, Bhimavaram town is BVRT, Kakinada town is CCT and Secunderabad is SC. The codes are NOT uniform! I wish I could write a site review, but an expert has already done it. Amit Agarwal, otherwise known as India’s best tech blogger has it here. And he sums it up in this statement:

” Pop-ups, frames, blinking text, tables with big borders, scrolling text - which are a big no-no in modern web design - can all be located on the Railways homepage. ” 2005

Of course, some changes have since been made.

Like most of you, I Love train journeys. Maybe, I’ve mentioned it more than often, but I was pleasantly surprised to get a Christmas gift a few months back (2007). A toy from Shanth. Thomas and friends and two attached bogies which chugs like a train and runs on a AA battery. For a few days, kodsi and Chandra were desperate to test its Horse Power (maybe micro HP?) Results, well might be available soon.

Jab we met

Kareena kapoor can actually, ACTUALLY act.

Finally, after years. I’m so happy, now. And what a movie. Not a story unheard of, for sure. But simple and beautiful.

I know, I know, it’s kinda late to talk about this movie. Still, Kareena CAN act.  I’m really surprised.

Home is, where the heart is.

Not so long ago, I used to wake up to the sounds of M.S. Subbu Lakshmi’s Venkateswara Suprabatham or M.S.Rama Rao’s Sundarakandamu running on a Phillips stereo which was strategically placed in MY bedroom to wake me up by the time my parents were ready to get to their work. I finally had a complete, what is now known as, King size bed for myself, after two pesky elder sisters had made their way into USA one as a dependent, other as a student and had finally given me all the space I wanted at home.

No longer would anyone convert MY room into a storeroom within hours of me proclaiming that no one was supposed to enter it without my permission, the first was a stack of old text books that made in, for fear of hurting the goddess of wisdom I wasn’t allowed to protest, next came in sacks of seasonal fruit, and then tens of coconuts from the trees in my backyard. “There’s no place for them elsewhere“, I was told. Six rooms, and only the one I chose had to be a store room. Now being the lone child in the house, one was my bedroom and one was MY COMPUTER room, the same computer I wasn’t allowed to touch or install games or invite friends after it was bought in 1997, for nearly four years.

Sipping milk while sitting on the parapet wall of a 20 year old well in my backyard or on the terrace, overlooking the same school bus that I used to board a decade ago pass by gave me a nostalgic feeling. With kids in the same type of uniform I wore for 12 years made me think about how fast the time was going. Initially, There would be lot of familiar faces as I moved from 10th standard to 12th. As the years passed by, there wasn’t a single person I could recognize among the tiny little faces peeping out of the AECS-3 school bus, route number 6. The driver and the ayah remained the same for a few years.

Once I started driving my dad’s two wheeler I was assigned the job of dropping my Mom at the bus stop every morning at 7:55 AM, right in time for her office bus. For the sheer fun of driving my Mom while I was still a school student, I was eager, then later getting up early just to drop my Mom so Dad could finish his puja leisurely made me miss my precious 20 minutes of sleep. And once I had my own two wheeler, Hero Honda Passion, I was expected to relieve my dad of all driving duties, which made serious damage to my own plans of picking up college friends or joining a bunch of them at a specific spot at a specific time. In final year, the college campus was 50 Km away, one way. Ramanthapur was 18 km away, or kukatpally another 20 on a different side of the city, for some reason I always had to go to either of these places and join another friend(s) before a bunch of four guys started to college on two bikes. Daily travel distance nearly 120 km. My parents worried about me everyday, not one day. If I wasn’t home by 6 PM, I had to have an explanation ready of where I was delayed, they just wanted to see my face once at 6PM and then later anytime before 10 PM. Reasons started of with a change of plan in dropping a friend or stopping at a road side eatery, then they became so routine, they were part of the original plan and truth became a lie and lie became a truth till I lost distinction between why I was actually late and why I told my parents I was late. I got through somehow.

Almost everyday, I hopped on to my bike to get to a friends house and then drive to a nearby roadside eatery where he would have pani puri and I would watch and make fun of him about reports of cleaning fluid(phenyl) being mixed in what he was eating, while I had my mirchi bhajji in hand. I detested pani puri, especially the way the bandi wallah put his entire hand in a container of the spicy masala pani. For some reason, there was no way one could mess up a mirchi bhajji, in spite of having experiences with bad cough because of the cheap oil that was used and reused and reused, to fry the bhajjis.

My average conversation on the phone would be 6-8 minutes to a friend I had last seen an hr ago and we would discuss all the day in those 6-8 minutes, though it was always the case that we had spent most of the day in the same group of friends. An occasional call from a girl would be longer (*snicker*) and have my Mom worried about who the girl was.

Over all it was a fantastic life I had, or so I thought. An occasional thought would drop in about the real future, JOB, money, love, marriage, life. But it wasn’t worth thinking about for more than 10 minutes and I felt content that I had done something useful that day and I could peacefully go to bed with my fantasies.

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I now rarely get up before 9AM or get out of the bed earlier than that. Breakfast is non-existent. After a long shower, I go out through my back door into the patio that overlooks a small alley, the alley that the Centennial Olympic bomber “Eric Rudolph” used to get away after bombing an abortion clinic in Birmingham. I find a parking spot and walk back towards my office while on phone to my Sis, who is 2 hrs behind my time, or a cousin one hr ahead of my time, who’s preparing food for her husband. I pass by Confederate Motorcycles which occasionally has a black bike in display, the same black bike Tom Cruise rode in M.I.2 (How do I know, I read Black & White, Birmingham).

Lunch is usually at a restaurant around south side, Thai, Chinese, Italian, Mediterranean, Greek, Indian, American, seven types, five working days. I never run out of variety. And occasionally Home. Heeding to my Sis’s advice of not eating outside “too much”. For all I know, the veggie subs, or the pita roll up is probably healthier than my tasty and oily brinjal, chicken, turkey, or other cooked items the Indian way.

I work until I want to, on Mondays I cook, Tuesdays I occasionally cook, Wednesdays I meet my friends at the wildlife center and feed baby squirrels by hand, hold an injured red tail hawk or a barn owl or a tiny screech owl, while Greg administers baytril or eye drops. April will be the baby bird season and scores of baby birds will come in and it would be really fulfilling to take care of them and release them back in the wild once they are fully recovered.

Thursdays are back to routine, with work on the mind. Fridays are fun, moderately competitive volleyball, movies and possibly dinner with friends over an occasional red wine or beer. Saturdays and Sundays pass of as if they were one day, friends and their wives and places around Birmingham that never change anyway. Meditation, maybe a new book or a piece of work in pyrography. Variety is the spice of life.

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4 years 7 months later, I have changed. I desperately look forward to visit home for the first time after long. I know there’s no route no. 6, AECS-3 going that road, the dry 24 year old well collapsed into itself two years back, there’s a little underground tank in its place. My Mom’s retired, my Dad now drives my bike, and I’m a little worried about if he has maintained it well or not. And there’s an occasional chauffeur to drive my Mom, Dad and Sis if they are going into the heart of Hyderabad or Sec-Bad. Job and education, don’t bother me. Money sometimes does, but I don’t loose sleep over it. Personally I wish I had taken care of my Sisters in a better way when I was a kid. The fights over a TV channel, the volume of the television, fighting over control of the phone, computer, each others lives, wasn’t worth it. But my nickname REALLY ticked me of then.

I have seen very little of my family in the last 4 years, hardly spent a week in all. And I haven’t seen my Dad in 4 years 7 months. My cousins and relatives, who I cherish the most, some have left me in grief, never to come back again. Others have made themselves busy and rarely available. Few of them have come to the US and we develop a new bond in a partly alien, partly adapted land, where virtual communication somehow covers the grief of missing one’s family over years.

I see Google Maps and I notice a whole new bunch of high rise buildings all over in the area I once lived, one of my best friends and my neighbor for 26 years mentions that nothing would seem the same, “even the metal rod, you hang on to for dear life in an auto, it’s now thinner“, Vivek said. My neighbors have moved, most are in US, a few left back home, their children however are here. Google Maps bought tears to my eyes the first time, later they couldn’t satisfy my desire of wanting to know more and see more in a limited vertical view. I haven’t received a single pic of my Mom or Dad or house or new car in the past 4.5 years, webcam somehow sucks big time.

Some worst moments have been hearing death of relatives, grandma, uncle, cousin’s son, some good moments have been seeing the progress of little cousins into mature men and women. New families, new members, new careers - time passes on. I have changed. For years marriage sounded like a joke and suddenly one friend got married, and the reality became vividly clear. Damn! decision time. In case I’ve to take a decision myself.

At the most postponement for 6-8 months, for what? It seems inevitable, no out of the box approach perhaps. Sight seeing, Match fixing, dom dom dom. Babu bhajantreelu.

I hate it(?). I don’t know. I see two friends and restore my faith in letting my relatives introduce a girl to me [ not my parents ]. Maybe the typical Indian way isn’t too bad, however there are a lot of personal obligations to fulfill. I know what my heart aches for, career wise, personally and spiritually. I remind myself, one step at a time. I have fallen, picked up my self, well enough to start again in spite of knowing I might fall again. I’ve won, I’ve lost. To realize what I can do to win again. I’ve a whole pack of new friends, I know these ones are for life too. I know I’m meeting my best friend after 4 years 7 months.

One month later I’ll be back to this life. I was born in a home. I’ve made this another home. I was born in a family. I helped create a family of friends here. I’ve moved from existing to living however,with living comes joy and pain. Joy makes it worth it, pain tests it. To flinch and retreat is a failure in itself. Because being hurt hasn’t killed me, being hurt again probably won’t kill me. It’s worth taking the risk. At least it’s still better to LIVE that way than exist any other way.

I love life, and everything that comes with it.

psst-shout 2

Psst is a whisper as soft as a flower petal falling on earth, shout is anything from a warning to a sudden catastrophic news, be prepared, go on, show your mimicry skills by whispering and shouting the text below alternatively.

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psst: The bible freaking said, be ye AS little children.

Shout: Don’t freaking BE little children.

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Psst: My targeting skills are so bad right now, I can’t even click a link properly with my mouse.

Shout: I’m practising archeryyy.

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psst: It’s February.

Shout: It’s a freaking 72 out here.

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psst: All northies and southies vacate Mumbai.

Shout: Then there’s NO Mumbai.

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psst: All northies and southies vacate Mumbai.

shout: All Mumbaikars will now be named as Mumbai-rays. Why? Thackeray doesn’t have a ‘kar’ in the name.

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psst: I bet you know about MNS.

Shout: Mumbai’s nonsensical sena!

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psst: MNS’s motto? Say no to MNS!

Shout: Say no to Mumbai’s Northies and Southies!

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psst: Shivaji Bhosla (other wise known as Shivaji the great, who tormented Mughals from Western Ghats) did in fact dream of a Hindu empire.

Shout: But he was not a bigot. See page 28 of Andrew Ward’s - Our bones are scattered.

Scream: “DURING HIS [Shivaji Bhosla's] CAMPAIGNS, HE FORBADE SOLDIERS TO DESTROY MOSQUES OR KILL MOSLEM ASCETICS, TO WHOM HE TURNED FOR SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE. IF ONE OF HIS SOLDIER’S STOLE A COPY OF THE KORAN, HE TOOK PAINS TO RETURN IT TO THE LOCAL SCRIBES AND TEACHERS.” page 28, Our bones are scattered.

psst: You know now, who the bigots are.

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psst: All Northies and Southies vacate Mumbai.

Shout: Let the Thackeray family ruin the rest of what will be left. So you can go and help build it again from scratch with the remaining Marathi speaking Indians in Mumbai.

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Psst: Thackeray’s trace their genealogy to Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu family that is supposed to originate from Yama’s helper - Chitragupta (Courtesy wikipedia)

Shout: SOMEONE UP THERE, is keeping the records of all the actions of the Thackeray family!! And it’s the same lineage. Ironical.

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Psst: Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu (CKP) is, according to wikipedia, originally from Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa (Now in Pakistan), and later from around Chenab river in Kashmir.

Shout: Ironical. The CKP lineage is from Kashmir. Hence probably the aversion to Muslims.

Scream: PEOPLE IN CKP LINEAGE TOO, ARE MIGRANTS. FROM WHAT IS NOW, PAKISTAN. Can I please ask you to go back??

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Psst: Readers, don’t you get it?

Shout: As they say, home is where the heart is. In INDIA, I’ll live wherever I want to. Mumbai to Madras, Bombay to Chennai. Kashmir to Kanyakumari. If not for emotional reasons, as long as I have an Indian passport, I can live wherever I want to. I’ll grab a job, irrespective of where I live, because I have to LIVE but not to starve a Maratha, if you cannot get a job, you are probably not good enough for it. For all the million Northies and Southies grabbing jobs in Maharashtra, there are a million Maharashtrians grabbing jobs in the North and South of United India.

Scream: And to live that way, Maharastrians and other Indians in general, CHOOSE your leaders wisely.

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Screaming on the rooftop of solitude.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.

If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

———————————-Oriah Mountain Dreamer

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