FUCK the SUN!!! - A tribute to Sanman a.k.a Sunny

The mercury is giving no signs of going down. With the maximum day temperatures in Pune touching around 44 deg Celsius, this summer is sure sucking the life out of the city. Its hell being on the road in the afternoons with the hot breeze pinning you down. A multitude of stalls selling Neera, limbu pani and the likes have come up on the roadside no doubt but the heat is killing nonetheless.

"Yaar par tujhe kya problem hoga heat ka. Tu toh software main hai na. Full AC office main baitha hoga" this is what even you will think. But don’t forget these are difficult times we live in. Software companies are vying with each other to be innovative in coming up with ways of cost cutting. So one company takes out the toilet papers from its restrooms the other does the unthinkable, they regulate the AC’s and it so happens that the floor on which I am seated gets the cold shoulder and not the cold air.

So software or no software….the fucking heat is everywhere (pardon me the expletives, but its damn irritating, who kya hai India main spring naam ka season nahi hota na ;) ). So how do you beat the heat. I have a cosmic way of doing it (I have learnt it from Sunny) and I have put it in the blog so that it helps a wider audience. Also this is my way of paying tribute to Sunny, one of my dear friends.

In the first year of engg I shared a room with Sunny. This dude had a major issue with the heat. Well back then the mercury level was not that high, but then we were living in the COEP hostels which were to some extent devoid of decent ventilation and may I add working ceiling fans too. Plus we did not have vehicles so in the heat we had to walk down to the college too. And all this did take a toll on poor old Sunny. He became cranky and edgy and then in a moment of creative glory, while he was applying some prickly heat powder to his underarms he gave out a cry, “FUCK THE SUN!!!!”

I don’t know how, but the moment the exclamation was made a cool breeze made its way through the windows. There was a sort of calmness which descended over Sunny’s face as if after the mantra had been said, no heat, no sun could make him sweat!!!!


And so the remaining summer went with the invocation of this mantra whenever necessary and the heat could do us no harm!!!

The other day in the afternoon when I was enjoying a cold glass of sugarcane juice this mantra came back to me (after 6 years). How foolish I was; I always had the wisdom to counter the heat but I was ignorant. I closed my eyes, concentrated a bit and there came Sunny in front of my eyes, dressed only in his boxers applying that prickly heat powder to his underarms. He looked at me and then he shouted “FUCK THE SUN!!!”

That cool breeze I experienced when the first time he had uttered the mantra came back to put me at ease. I gulped the remaining juice paid the money and looking up at the sky shouted "FUCK THE SUN. This is for you SUNNY!!!! "

Sunny is not in India these days, maybe the heat doesn’t bother him much there in the U S of A but he very selflessly has given us all a mantra to survive this global warming. As they say “Its All in the MIND!!!”

What to BLOG?? - Confessions of a naive Blogger

* but what to blog about!!!!???

I have a blog-page of my own, no doubt,
But I don’t know what to BLOG about??

This question has always come to my mind on and off from the day I posted my first blog and today I take it up only because I think I have an answer.

Atleast from the word BLOG.I can infer that it refers to a 'log'. A log which simply put means records of what you have done, what you wanted to do etc. etc. So basically a blog is your dairy on the net. But then why would you want to maintain a dairy (which seems to be always a personal dairy) on a very public domain like the internet. It was this thought which prevented me from posting my daily happenings on the blog. Another thing was that who will be interested in what I did daily. Would it not be a bit more than trivial and yes after a certain point of time all too monotonous? They say that change is constant but then they can never say when change will come ;)

But wait who says that the BLOG has only to be a record of what happened to you or what you want from life? It can also be a forum where you can showcase your literary zeal. You are a great poet, a budding author go ahead post your creations. You will be satisfied that atleast you got a chance to ‘publish’ something. This idea seemed plausible and I, a self proclaimed ‘decent poet and author’ in my initial posts (actually a lot many posts) posted only poems and stories.

The flip side of this was my posts began to be few and far between. I just waited for that spark of creativity before logging into my Blogger account. There was a time where I forgot my blogger password too (that was before you could log into your Blogger account with your Google (gmail) credentials.) This was shameful I know :)

There is another reason why people blog. To answer critics, voice opinions and yes with that create stirs. But these types of blogs are more suitable for celebrities. My blog-page url has the word ‘celebrity’ in it but I aint no ‘celebrity’ :) :)

Therefore I blog using the middle path, which for me stands for putting your creativity into your day to day things and by that weaving incidents which may not necessarily be very true but would be interesting nonetheless.

After reading this you might say that, “All this while, I was reading lies?” and then maybe decide that from now I aint gonna read this blog.

Don’t do this please. I beg of you ;)

13 Shades of 13

I got this compilation of 13 chosen shades of mine on my birthday (26th March) from Neha. She has taken quite an effort with this :)

Thank a ton for this!!!!

The Chinese Nook!!!

J L Nehru very famously said, “HINDI CHINI BHAI-BHAI” and what happened after that is as they say ‘History’.

But my connection with China is not intertwined with the relations between India and China. It is a bit more personal than that. My connection with China is via “The Chinese Nook!!!!”

The Chinese Nook has been there for many years. I have known it for the last 6 years and I am sure that it has been there a good four years before that. You would have guessed it right; The Chinese Nook is a Chinese fast food joint near my house in Nashik. The term “fast food joint” seems too sophisticated I know. Well to tell you the truth, it is simply called “Chinese cha GADA” in Marathi. GADA is masculine of a gaddi (vehicle in English)

*chef @ Chinese Nook!!!! (jus kidding) :) :)

There is one thing which you should know right away about the Chinese Nook. You never go to the Nook, you are always taken there. It is strictly a ‘by invitation’ place. In that sense I can proudly say that the Nook is in a way like GMAIL was in its earlier years, ‘strictly by invitation’.

What will happen if you go directly uninvited? Nothing much, you will be ignored until you stand up and shout. In short you will not be given the premium service. Does that not affect the customer relationship? No it does not. Already every evening the ‘by invitation’ crowd has to wait for there turn to get a table. Plus if you are a first timer, that too in the ‘not invited’ category and you get impatient then you don’t deserve to be in the Nook in the first place.

The more ‘by invitation’ crowd you bring in with every visit to the Nook, the more you will be respected. So when my friend took me to the Nook for the first time, he had already taken a few other friends before and by then had earned enough respect of Ramchandra. Ramchandra was the proprietor of the Nook. Don’t be surprised, he was a Nepali citizen serving Chinese food (authentic(?)) to Indians – globalization anybody????? Maybe but definitely not ‘outsourcing’. I am sure he was not employed by a Chinese firm and India was not his Onsite :)

I apprehensively sat in front of my ‘respected’ friend who with pride was looking around as if he owned the place. “Arre chotu, jara table saaf karna toh!!!” he ordered a kid who was cleaning tables and gathering empty dishes off another table. “Sir order?” enquired a waiter. “Order kya re, tu naya hai kya? Pata nahi tereko!!!” my friend gave me a wink in between. Bemused the waiter looked around towards Ramchandra. “Arre sahib woh naya hai, kal hi aaya gaon se. Usse nahi pata.” Ramchandra turned to the chef who was to his right and said , “One by two Chicken Manchaw soup aur uske baad one by two Chicken Triple rice” “Barabar na Chinmay seth?” Chinmay’s (my friend) chest was about to burst with pride. Ramchandra remembers my name. This was the final hint, Chinese Nook was his place now. He and his accompaniment will be treated royally each and every time they come. Only now he will have to tip chotu and yes during alternate visits strike up a conversation with Ramchandra. For that he was even thinking of buying the Nepali daily, “Nepal Samachar”. :) :) :)

We were treated royally not only that time but each time after that. Chinese Nook became a place where we used to throw birthday parties to our friends. It was economical and if the extra money which mom gave was saved then everybody was ready for a round of matka kulfi.

Chinese Nook was the place where we discussed our first love affairs. That was the place where we talked about cricket, national-local politics and yes that was the place where I also bumped into a guy who on hearing that I had flunked in Graphics came up to us and offered to change my marks. He gave me his number, all I had to do was to put the paper for re-evaluation and give him a call with my seat number. He said, “Abhi Nook main mila na tu isliye, nahi toh main aasani se padak main aata hi nahi!!!” I did put the paper for re-evaluation but never called him. He met me at the Nook sometime later and said , “Yaar re-evaluation ka samay toh ho gaya, tune phone nahi kiya yaar. Bass kya bharosa nahi kya tereko??”. To which I humbly replied, “Nahi re-evaluation main nahi daala. Agli baar padai karke nikal dunga”. “Kya yaar tu bhi??” he said and went back to his soup.

Chinese Nook still stands where it used too. It has weathered many a “no hawker” drives of the munipical corporation. Ramchandra’s brother Randhir took over a couple of years back. Before going Ramchandra introduced us (me and Chinmay) to Randhir or to it more correctly introduced Randhir to us. We knew the Nook more than him at that timeJ. The royal service still continues.

I never really relish the taste of Chinese anywhere else; I like the taste of the Nook. I like the people who serve me with innocence, who enquire about my well-being each time I go.

Even if I ever end up in China, the Chinese food at the Chinese Nook will always be AUTHENTIC.