Saurabh Gupta ko gussa kyon aata hai

...not because I am from Kumaon (Jai Kumaon) and he is from Nilgiri but because of my desire to have fun at the end of a Murphy filled day in Hazira.

The sales call was long, much longer than we expected, then our driver (my dear friend Jignesh) made his Swift (bought thanks to our monthly payout of 75,000) a chopper and we still missed the Indigo flight. Sometimes, ontime delivery can hurt!!

So we are without ticket at the Vadodara railway station and the meal I get is stale pooris with aalo ki subji. You can imagine what kind of day this is turning out to be. We somehow manage one ticket in Vadodara Express and another one in Golden Temple Mail. Saurabh was in VE which was going to leave an hour early. So I ask him to check if he can manage the TT to get me a seat in VE. He puts in all the effort to get some agreement from TT and calls me. I get on the train and tell Saurabh that I am going to tell the TT that I thought Golden Temple mail ticket was valid in Vadodara Express. You can see the horror, and the disgust on Saurabh's face. ("Kapil, you Kumaon people are like that only. If you were doing it for money, I would understand. But its not for money. It is just to trouble me") So he tells me to do whatever I want and goes to sleep.

TT comes to me and asks me to show the Golden Temple Ticket. His words verbatim: " Your friend did not tell me that you want to travel using Golden Temple Mail ticket in Vadodara Express. Is he not educated? (I feel like answering: He went to IIT but his hostel was Aravali. It happens. Hostel can have that kind of effect on you") I don't know where these kind of people come from".

I am dying to stop laughing out crazy. None the less, in the daily bustle of a consulting life, how do I tell Saurabh that this was an opportunity to play a real prank and I would do anything to not let it go.

Mr. Billu inherits the famous mango apetite of his father

My son calls it differently..it would probably spell like Mayngo. You know when he hollers it, he knows what he is asking for and he wants it now. Not surprising because a good mango can have that effect, even on an 18 month old. So even though I am getting ready to peal one for him in a kitchen corner, Billu would come running. He knows the smell, doesn't matter if its Safeda or Kesar or that wonder from Ratnagiri, he knows what is happening. And he doesn't know how to wait. He doesn't know that Daddy is doing it only for him. It has to happen now or it would become an incessant rant of Mayngo Mayngo Papa Mayngo.

I have 22 Ratnagiris in my bag today. Early morning I board the train from Delhi to Ludhiana, reach home, quietly put a couple of these babies in the fridge, let them shed some of their heat and then serve them to Billu...looking forward to it. For next 7 days, Ludhiana would be fine. Lets see if I can manage the next shipment of Alphonsos before North India mangoes: Dasheri and Langda take over. Thats the way you manage continuous happiness.

Finally, the fine taste of Cow Urine!!!

Piss dilemma came back to hit me in a vicious way today. Our office was inaugurated in Pune today and since I and Saumya were the only couple present, we were asked to represent in the ceremonies which the priest conducted. I was fine with this role because I recently went through a big ceremony with all kind of recitals in my marriage.

So this thing started...and I am perfectly fine. Then this guy starts preparing something and everything looks fine. Milk, Curd, Honey, Ghee...and damn it...I see one more thing...some yellow liquid from a bottle...the bottle says in Hindi: Cow Urine. I am 100% sure that we would not be required to drink this mixture. Doesn't happen that way..he pours a spoonful in our hand and ask us to take it in....DAMN IT DAMN IT DAMN IT...

I and Saumya officially are now part of that group of people in India who have drank cow urine. I used to hate that program on AXN where they would show people in Benares drinking cow urine before going to work. I would hate every bit of that episode because I really thought that it was creating an image of India that was not true( and really...as you can see in the picture..a child bathing in cow urine..that should be so rare). I was also sure that very few people have had the pleasure.Now I am sure that this problem is wide spread considering that priests are dishing it around in these kind of ceremonies.DAMN IT DAMN IT DAMN IT...

My 9/11

9/11 has a certain ring to it since terrorist hit America that fateful day in 2001. There are certain aspects of this date which are worth observing. If you are in America, 9/11 would mean 11th September. In Europe, India and a lot of the wider world, 9/11 would mean 9th November. So all depends on how you write your days and months.

My 9/11 was very interesting because it was wedding day for me in Jaipur. While the whole day and night, and following day was quite surreal, there are some observations which I thought I will share with the readers:

1) Clearly, dancing is not the forte for a majority of people who do end up dancing in an Indian wedding. It definitely does not come naturally in my family, proof being awful dancing by my father and I can definitely match him step by step for some awful steps. There were quite a few on the wedding day, especially Rob, who did try but was awful. I guess he should be given the benefit of the doubt because it was his first Indian wedding. If you had seen Bhupesh grind, you could see that he doesn't dance a lot but is super with wedding numbers...so take in some alcohol, get inspired a little and shake it for your friend somehow managing on top of that cranky horse.

2) India has a big eunuch problem and our party was not going to escape this menace. They do their job well and have you by your balls at the very time when you would definitely not get into an argument with them. Their deal is simple: give them good amount of money and they won't do what they can(too shitty to describe here). Not so easy for us...this one came to us and asked for money...my dad offered some which was much much below his expectation...and the nuisance started...somehow we managed to get away but not without our share of embarrassment.

3) Finally, a lot of people offer cash as a gift to the bride and the groom( Unlike some who really find and get time to come up with something really innovative). So we got our share of envelopes and believe me, the number of these envelopes during the period of the ceremonies can be quite substantial. I am wondering while sitting on stage( because after some time, what is happening becomes quite repetitive) what would be an average contribution if you take out the outliers...I am thinking somewhere between 150-200 rupees per household. I am also thinking with th total crowd around us that the number of households would be around 200. So that makes it around 40,000 rupees in gifts. Now this number does not seem very big to me and I am wondering if my mind is already in the recession mode where it has already factored in the suppressed desire of the participants to gift cash and save money in this turbulent time!!!

Slow but definite gang rape of Maharashtra

It is not enough that pretty much every thing is missing in Maharashtra. If you leave aside the sheer resilience of people going about their daily lives unperturbed with basic support, then there is pretty much nothing. I am going to get settled in Pune soon and believe me, whoever painted a very rosy picture of the place needs a tight kick from you. Very basic infrastructure is missing. There are no roads in very big areas of the city. Airport does not let flights take off or land after 7 and it is hell to find a cab. That does not mean that you will pay top money to rent any apartment.

So you would think that someone would start putting these things together. Pune was the favorite manufacturing destination for a very long time but then Sena did to industry in Pune what Communists did to everything in Bengal....go and ask for money from the industrialists or make life hell for them. No wonder, a lot of manufacturing has migrated to Chennai and Hyderabad. There still is a lot of industry left and especially because hiring people from so many colleges in Pune is easy. But the latest nonsense is classical. This whole hoopla about kicking out North Indians who are taking up jobs from Marathi people could be the final nail in a city which looks like a very very big slum. If it needed one final push, this might be it.

The Piss Dilemma

The Deccan flight from Jashedpur to Calcutta is about to take off and the person with me finds himself in an interesting situation. His seat has signs of some liquid which looks like water. Problem is that this water does not smell but has a lot of drops on the back part of the seat. Now this being not a full service flight, waiting for the air hostess to come and do something about the wetness is too much hassle. So this person goes ahead, takes out his handkerchief and wipes the wetness away.

Alas! The smell is now all over us. But still we are not sure if it is coming from the liquid that just landed into this guy's pocket or something else. Well, after cleaning the seat, he decides not to sit on it...talk about sacrifice!!! So he is sitting next to me and I am talking aloud about what if it was piss, against all our fears. So the gentleman takes out the hankey just to make sure and YUK...it has to be piss...both of us would have puked...we tuck the hankey in the seat and are fortunate to find two vacant seats...doesn't matter that we were ascending and the seat belt sign is on...this was a true emergency!!!!

I have thought about this incident for last one week and wondered how the whole thing could have been different. One option( which can lead to deflation of your ego) was to bend down and go close enough to find signs of smell which would have proved conclusively that it was piss. Now that seems like a good idea now but at that time, how could you commit yourself to smelling piss volunatrily!!! Other option, as one of my friend Rajeev Singh suggested, was to carry a litmus paper( not sure if it is called pH strip) and see if the liquid shows some alkaline inclinations...well, I have heard that Rajeev has done this to bull's excreta too without reaching any conclusions!!!

So jokes apart, what do you do in these situation. It seems to be the work of an innocent kid with an insufficient diaper. And with so much ambience smell hanging in the Indian air, it does take some effort to really find out if the liquid in front of you is piss or not. I have one learning: I would never use my hanky to clean some liquid in front of me...its something to struggle with this problem but it is too much of a stretch to go out and get that smelly wetness all in your pocket!!!

Refusing Money From A Customer "Make My Trip" Way

So now I am in India and I will try to be more regular at this place than I have been in the past.

One of my first shopping experience was with Make My Trip, India's premier travel portal. I try to book a flight using the website and they stop me from doing it because I have a non-Indian credit card!!! No problem. I try to find a way to go back and change the information I gave. No way. You have to start the booking all over again. I am pretty sure not many people are using this website. It is actually quite a surreal experience. If you have used it, you will know what I mean. None the less, this comes as no surprise. I was told that Internet in India is not used a lot for transactional purposes.

Now I try to use the next channel...a phone number in Gurgaon. The initial prompts are smooth and the system is quickly able to identify that I want to purchase a domestic ticket. Now comes the human interface. Someone called Arti picks up the phone and I tell her that I want a flight from Jaipur to Bombay on Sunday. Her first question is: Are you calling for informational purposes!! hahahahaha....these people are beginning to irritate me but I have some more patience left. I say no, I want to buy a ticket. She says ok...there are some flights on Sunday and I say I want the one with Indian Airlines in the morning. Her reply is awesome...rather than making sure to close the sale, she tells me whether she can put me on hold for as much as 5 minutes!!! Lovely....yeh jo des hai mera....whoever is managing the call center operations of makemytrip should be kicked in the a$%. I still keep the patience. Ms. Arti comes back every 2 minutes and asks 2 questions and then disappears...interestingly, she never took my credit card information. Talk about the desire to not make money...I am wondering if she looks like Indira Gandhi? or probably Prakash Karat!!!

Finally, she comes back to tell me she cannot buy travel insurance for me. I say bye bye and decide to write this post. Do I need to explain the problem with what just happened? I guess no...it seems pretty self evident.