What to do on long weekends

“Spending three days at home with absolutely nothing to do can have a positive effect on one’s existence” is what I have discovered over the period of last three days. The benefits, listed below in no particular order, are:

• You have all the time in the world to bring some order to your room. The male folks can definitely relate to what I want to say. For those who can not - it precisely means having used socks, stashed one after another, not in the shoes that you no longer like putting on, but in the closet after being nicely washed and dried. The clothes washed and ironed on the hangers, the bed sheets neat and clean, the books that I don’t remember when I last read, but still on the study table and so on and so forth.
• There are always some friends, some uncles, some aunts, some cousins you wanted to call since long but somehow the daily grind leaves you too tired to pick up the cell phone and call them up. So, on days like these you can mend broken relationships by calling them up, enquiring about their well being, telling what you have been up to and you will definitely walk away feeling good about something.
• Tax-planning is something that I always keep on procrastinating but on such a long weekend that is something that I enjoy doing and trust me so will you. More than the money that you will save on tax out-go it’s the feeling of having utilized your time in a constructive way that you will cherish for quite a few days. The money saved is just an added benefit!
• I know you have resolved year after year, birthday after birthday, diwali after diwali that you will start exercising regularly from now on. And, always discovered to your great dismay that you once again broke your resolution. Days like these are just tailor-made to hit the gym and knock off some kilos off your tummy. Another positive – you get to meet new people and be friends with them.
• All those movies that you heard your friends talking about and wondered what is so good about them. You can spend quite a lot of hours watching those movies you had missed out earlier.
• Dine at that fine restaurant that was on your radar for quite some time and pamper yourself with some nice ice-creams, sweet dishes etc etc etc

I have done all this and more over the last three days and I am sure my life is a lot more organized & orderly than it was just three days back. So next time you have a long weekend and you are wondering what is the best thing you could do then don’t think any further. Refer to this post and trust me you won’t regret it.

In MADras!

I am back in MADras and life here for people who come from places like Delhi and surroundings revolves around office, Hindi-speaking folks, gym partners, people you find at very few eateries that dish out North Indian meals/dishes, internet (the trusted friend), few friends who are unlucky enough to be slogging out in MADras like you, the cell phone and such trivial stuff!

Some of my friends believe that the locals here maintain a convenient distance between themselves (Tamils) and us (non-Tamils). Its not that we are being handed out a bad treatment but the feeling of belonging is missing. I am sure it will be a long time before we start thinking of Chennai as our city, if at all that ever happens and I dare say that life in Amsterdam or Chennai pretty much means the same to me. Language, food and personal behaviors will trouble you at both places no ends. And, its so natural to feel that way.

Anybody coming from Delhi will tell you that he often feels like having an ice cream at 12 in the night, he would want to go out and treat himself to the best international cuisines available, he would want to go out for the newest English movies, he would want to go out for a stroll in the tree-lined European style parks, he would want to indulge himself in road-side eating once in a while and what not. But sadly MADras, despite being one of the largest cities in the country, offers none in ample amounts. It doesn’t have enough of that entrepreneurial spirit which is so evident in people who come from my part of the country (read Delhi). People here like to play it safe. Very safe indeed. And that is why youngsters/bachelors from Delhi are the worst possible tenants to have! Think of mindless generalization of a very rare phenomenon and here it is.

Some things I like about Chennai include the public transport here, both local trains and buses, which are quite efficient by any standards. Almost everybody here knows English and so I have survived here without knowing a thing about Tamil. The power situation is not as bad as it was in Delhi this summer. In fact, power cuts are very rare. The traffic jams, here, are nowhere as long and time guzzling as they could be in Delhi. This city, I‘ve heard, is safer for woman and I hope it is. Last - with many more to be discovered in near future. This city offers tremendous job and career growth potential.

JAVA/J2EE J, State Politics and Tamil movies seem to be the favorites of people here. Everybody here knows one thing or the other about these three. Imagine my plight here. I am not at all, not at all, absolutely positively not at all interested in any of these!

Nevertheless, I am enjoying my stay here. The friends, the home, the office all inspire me to excitingly look ahead to the next day J

So far so good!

I will keep posting about my efforts to find my roots here. I hope I will find out some nice things to write about Madras. I will keep publishing on this in time to come.

Cheers!

Ambience Mall in Gurgaon

I was at the Ambience Mall in Gurgaon some days back which incidentally is just about 10 mins drive from my home and despite its inconvenient location, courtesy being bang on the Delhi-Gurgaon border and next to the 32-lane toll plaza, it makes more sense to me to come to this place, quickly park my car and go mall-hopping than go to the Metropolitan, spend anything like 40-45 mins to find a parking slot there on weekends and then keep on banging into the huge crowds there L. At least for me, going to the mall is more about having a casual walk there along with some shopping, eating, gaming and entertainment thrown in as add-ons without having to worry about somebody hitting my parked car or eloping with the laptop/music system in the car or avoiding the next swarm of mall-rats heading towards me aka Mumbai railway stations!

But alas visiting malls in Gurgaon is no more the kind of pleasure it was back in 2004, 2005 . Though there were very few malls on the MG road with only the MGF Metropolitan, DT City Centre, DT Mega Mall instantly coming to my mind but they were a welcome change for people long used to shopping in mud-filled, non-AC, poor-assortment stocking, and with untrained sales force kind of shops in conventional markets.

The multiplexes, the swanky showrooms, well-trained sales force, whole range of international cuisines to chose from, elevators, clean alleys, gaming zones, the discs, the bars, the food courts all gave a glimpse of what future could look like for Gurgaon, the millennium city, residents. But, like with so many other things, malls promised so much then and all those promises even today remain just that, promise!

We Indians have an old habit that just refuses to die and that is overdoing things. We first refused to accept malls thinking they were expensive and were a threat to our culture and when we did accept them we, true to ourselves, totally flooded them. Malls are full to the brim, in fact full is an understatement!

With so many new malls mushrooming all over Gurgaon, one expected things to be rosy. But, no matter which mall you go to, there are hoards of people. And that is what brings me to the Ambience Mall.

This is the mall that boasts of 1km shopping area on each floor on three or four floors with three level parking of the same size. But, contrary to my earlier experiences I discovered that no parking slot is free on Level 0 or Level 1 parking so I had to find my way down to the Level 2 parking. And that is after criss-crossing 1 km on each level ! Finally I parked the car and rached the lift lobby where to my surprise about 10-12 peole were waiting for the lift before me. The lifts that came to Level 2 were already full by then because people were boarding the lift on Levels 0 and 1. But didn't I say that there was no parking slot vacant on those levels. So where were these people coming from?? U 've got a mind of your own. Go and figure that out on your own!! Anyways, finally one lift came and most of the people got into it. And, after some more waiting I reached the ground level. I was really taken aback by the number of people there. It looked more like the Annual International trade fair at Pragati Maidaan on its very last day. Finally I managed to reach the Blu-O, the place where you can burn money pretty fast playing games hitherto unseen in India. But I was shocked to see that place. Not one more soul could get into that gaming zone. It was full of children, parents, youngsters, Grand-Pas and Grand-Moms! Don’t forget we are talking about gaming zone. I thought we as Indians were against indoor gaming J. And here was a motley mix of generations playing indoor games. And not one was person was coming out of that ring.

The world is having a tough time dealing with recession but Indians are having a great time burning dollars earned faking as a foreign agent in call centers or writing code for American/European clients. And that is why we cant find vacant places in our malls despite having so many malls now!

This is the new India. Un-afraid, Un-assuming, Un-fettered!

I didn’t want to wrestle with people around for a shot at some of my fav games and rather made my way to the Rockman’s Beer Island on the top floor about which we will talk in some other post. It is a fantastic place. So European, so calm, so serene! And yes it doesn’t have thousands of people. It is almost empty and you can spend hours there without worrying to order some more things to keep the waiters from telling you that we are here to do business and not to do some community service and providing them comfortable seating to sit on, big screen to watch football matches etc etc .

I miss those empty malls, those leisurely times I spent there! Till I write some more....

Letter to Federer!

Dear Fedex,

It was bit of a shocker that you gave us on Tueday Morning. I for once was so assured of your victory that I didn’t even bother to stay awake and guide you to your 6^th US Open crown. But, like all good things must come to an end some day so did your fantastic run at the US Open. You have already achieved way more in your career spanning just 12 years than anybody in the past could nor will anybody in future come close to achieving.

The past has seen players like Sampras, Ivan Lendl, Andre Agassi, Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, Bjorn Borg and more but not one of these had the finesse and touch to make viewers think tennis is not a sport, not a science but an art so exact, so precise, so unearthly. The impossible shot-making, the ease, the high probability of coming up with winning balls a lesser player would not have even reached, the total devastation of top players all make you what you are today. You are God’s gift to our generation for we‘ve got a chance to see you live in action.

I know it feels bad to lose a match after having won 41 consecutive matches at the Flushing Meadows but that doesn’t take away from you anything you have achieved. You are still a God. Even God is allowed a few misses here and there.

Cheers!