Arrival of new roommate relieved us from the burden of the house-rent levied by our owner. Though the new roomie is nice chap, intelligent, he is little scatty. You might consider following incident as imaginary, but believe me it is real.

My roomie walks into a handloom store to buy curtains for his room windows. The shop-keeper showed him wide varieties of cloths, and finally he short-listed one. It was and is really a fine cloth. My roomie ordered to stitch three curtains.

Bewildered by this question How long do you want the curtain to be? my roomie opens up and stretches his arms and replies itnaa (just like you stretch your arms and show it to your loved one, when replying to his/her question How much do you love me? and say Itnaa or this much).

Looking at this un-expected gesture, the shop-keeper was baffled; but still politely he asked itnaa mane kitna sir?(Itnaa means how many feets sir?).

I was laughing all the way.

Why people get angry?
Just an observation. When somebody tells you that you can not do this and even if you know that it is true, most of the time you end up loosing your temper. You loose your temper because somebody else is telling you what you can not do, because somebody else is pointing out that you do not have enough capacity, capability, because you are jealous internally, and because it hurts your ego.

If you happen to be in bangalore, Check out this new arrival "Royal butterscotch" at the corner house ice-creams. As the name suggests; its a butterscotch ice-cream; with a rich layer of cream, butterscotch souce and topped with the baked Almonds.

We, the people.

I liked the movie. Not because, it's about Indian culture, values and scruples it has; but because Ashutosh Gowarikar has made it quite simple and without any prejudice. Neither he has blasted america, or its culture, nor he has praised us. He has tried to show that it is we who keep fighting amongst us all the time, keep blaming others for our problems and keep bragging about our culture and values without doing anything.

The story starts with Mohan Bhargava [SRK], a project manager in NASA. He comes to india in search of his nanny, and finally after looking at the poverty, illiteracy, lack of electricity, child labour, child marriage, caste-system, mental backwardness and all, tries to do something worthwhile for india.

The Movie would have got a very good effect, had they reduced its length. It has become more of an documentary rather than movie.

After a long time, perhaps Shahrukh Khan has shown that he can also act in a mature role with perfection. He is, perhaps after a long time, IS the actor he portrays in the movie. Gayatri Joshi is stunning in her simple yet graceful role. Overall I suggest that the movie is good, but don't expect Lagaan.

Its quite a long time some eventful incident happened. And after many days I guess, I had the weekend completely free, without any trace of work (neither official nor personal). I was completely on my will. I wanted to watch TV, I watched;I wanted to listen to music system, I listened; I wanted to read, I read; I wanted to sleep, I slept; I wanted to roam around, I roamed; and when I wanted to eat, I ate.

Its very different and amazing when you dont have anything to worry about, don't have to think about whats ahead and just accepting every moment as it comes. Initially on Friday, I thought after some time may be I will get bored of being inside the house and doing absolutely nothing for the complete weekend; but even for a single moment I wasnt. On the other hand, its so amazingly refreshing to detach your mind for sometime from all your other activities. So calm, so pleasant, so quiet, so creative, so gratifying and enjoyable. Maybe I should look for solitude at least for sometime in a week.

The win was expected, but shattering of so many records in a single match wasn't.

Another win to ganguly's cap, Sachin's 34th century (248*) and highest ever score in an away test match, Anil's 438 wickets (highest ever by an Indian), Zaheers 75 for best ever score by an 11th Batsman, Irfan's 10 wicket haul at the youngest ever age, and India's highest winning margin.

Looking at the bowling attack, I still think Sachin should have gone for triple century.

The kind of honesty when it comes to helmets on bikes really amuses me. An acquaintance once told me that he has the habit of leaving his helmet on his bike unlocked and it has been safe always. And he told me that in past year he has not had his helmet stolen even once.

That piqued my interest and I decided to try it out myself. No matter where I park my bike, movie theatres, office, temples, shops... I conciously make it a point to place it on the bike's handle-bar. Mind you, my helmet is relatively new (Just a year or so old). I've been doing this for over a month now and should agree with my friend. It's been totally safe. Now, touchwood.

The Funny Tale ...

Daily, I can see few auto-rickshaw's standing in front of my house. It has sort of become a rickshaw stand in the morning. One day I was sanding in the balcony of my first floor apartment, and happen to overhear following conversation. The so-called rickshaw stand is just below my balcony.

A person walked by the rick, and asked the driver to take him to Bannerghatta road, a place at about 2-kms from my place. The rickshaw driver flatly refused. The expressions on the face of rickshaw driver gave a look that someone has kept fire in his hands, or somebody has thrown filthy garbage. The person has to finally walk towards nearest bus-stand as no auto-rickshaw driver was ready. Reason, the place is too close to drive.

A few moments later, another passenger walks to the rickshaw stand and asks to take him to Koramangala, a place some 5-7 kms away from my place. The rickshaw drivers sternly refuses this time also; Stating reason at this time there won't be any return customer and adding that the place is not very far. Once again similar expressions appears on his (rickshaw driver) face.

Some time passes, another passenger walks to the stand, and asks to take him to Fraser Town, at 15 kms it is far. The rickshaw drivers looked at him, from his legs to his head, shook their heads and flatly said "NO". The reason this time, place is far. Poor guy had to walk towards another rickshaw stand.

I was stunned; my sympathies towards fellow passengers, but these rickshaw drivers were not even ready to go anywhere. I was rather worrying whether those rickshaw drivers would earn any money; Instead those rickshaw drivers were simply reading newspapers, chatting and couple of them even playing cards.

More on my experiences with b'lore rickshaws later.

Today when I went for lunch, I glanced over the menu. "Chaspy" was listed at the fourth place in north-indian food. For sometime, until which I had not decided whether to have south-indian or north-indian food, I was wondering what actually "chaspy" is. When I was browsing through food, I realised it was actually "American chop-suey".

Well I should actually have guessed it, knowing the english spellings of my caterer, "Dhall", "stemed-rice", "pannir", "birayani", "kolla puri", "soop", "jaya puri", "shai paalaav", "badu-shai" etc.

Anyway whats in the name...Many times even my name comes under attack and with following most common mispronunciations: piyus, peeyus, piyu, pivs, fiyus, fivss.

The Border-Gavaskar Series with australia is now over. Much has been said about the *great* Indian batting lineup and even more has been said about the pitches (Mumbai as well as Nagpur). I would say that these were the same pitches where both the teams played. It wasn't like one team played on one pitch and another on other. Nobody in India complained when similar pitches were prepared by New-Zealand when we toured new-zealand just before the world-cup.

But still australians are all complaining that the pitch wasn't any good. Had they won the last test match, they probably would not even had talked about it but rather about how well they had prepared, how they had planned things for so many years, and how everybody contributed etc. To add to their misery, they lost a match which was easily in their pocket. The much talked about best team in the world wasn't even able to score just 107 runs required to win the match and lasted only for over 30 overs. I agree with the points made by gaurav here. He has really got a good analysis of what went wrong and for whom.