Inventions of a lazy mind

I had just come back after my daily round through the city, it was a sleepy morning..well for me as on Mondays we usually find people in 'Jaago re' mode running to offices mostly late. I was just going through the motions of shifting gears when a thought hit me, for all the technological advancements is there not anything that would make life simpler ala changing channels on a remote... there are times when i find that too very laborious let alone driving and shifting gears which is totally unacceptable on a sleepy morning like this.
Reaching home in the thoughts of flicking of remotes and one touch technology, my mind rallied through the various application that can be done by just one touch and the lazy me as evident as ever was having a walk in the park as i was imagining every other thing that could be possibly changed by a touch or flick of a button.
That would be heaven. But then i hit the road block my lazy mind reminded me,i had to change my clothes. Why, well that is how it is right you get into your torn T-shirt n track pants when at home feeling relaxed, but why go through the entire process of changing clothes seriously is Chameleon could change its body colour as and when it like cant there be any technology which can be adapted to perform the same. Imagine how this can be the next greatest invention for mankind after Fire,wheel,internet and Reality shows, imagine you put a suit which keeps you cool during summer and shall heat up when its winter and also shall provide as a rain resistant material.
I have drawn out a master plan of what it should have (ya too lazy to think of anything else)
1. It should be a a body suit which can fit all ..so i can borrow anyone else
2. Should have a low waist to show my Ck underwear maybe a small tear on the backside wud do
3. Should be reusable continuously for a year without washing
2. Should have a pocket large enough to carry my half eaten burger and smoothies
4. Should have optional to change from casual to executive to swimwear in just a touch, well it can be like the Lxi Vxi versions in a car (psst...and for a few more thousands you could have an option for going 'baba suit' for those 'moods' moments ....only custom made as per request for both m/f)

Now the question is how to choose colours and style, well it is all preset all you have to do is download an app and then configure it on your mobile and all the leading garment lines shall have their online dresses all you got a do is download and attach and then add to your Dress Cloud as in cloud computing and then just login and press change .... lo-behold you are changed forever, you can change anywhere any time come rain shine or snow, now isint this an wonderful invention all you have to do is keep your mobiles recharged and credit cards ready and just enjoy.On hindsight it seems more effective than i thought, no need of washing the various clothes.

P.s i am still to change...at least i found out how to save energy, no washing means no washing machines and no soap powders and no ironing and when no getting dirty. I just saved the whole world a lot of time and energy i expected this thought to come from my dear friend Rahul but laziness has brought out the genius in me.
But till it is mass produced i have to do what is normally done, change into something else...god its such a hard work especially on a sleepy day...

Sourav the captain of his own soul

If ever there was a sports person who can be equated in the same sense as pheonix to my mind there is none better than Sourav Ganguly,there may be others, but i do not care about them, i very well know many of my friends who despise him,but he is my choice, my idol and to hell with the detractors.
I would not believe if someone said it was just mere coincidence that when i started thinking about playing cricket,i became a left hander, which was something that happened, so was my admiration towards ganguly, it has never dipped even at his worst hours. I first took note of him during the mid ninties during his debut against england at lords when a guy was smacking bowlers down the ground with a helmet that had tapes on its rear and a slazenger bat, i thought to myself was he the rich boy whom they called spoilt brat,by god he played well, two strokes made me decide that vinod kambli is a not a typical left hander ganguly is and that whom i want to follow
1) the leg glance and
2) the best of all the drive through covers and midwicket.

That was all that was required for me to make him my idol,then he played some gems in between like one in taunton where he decimated the lankan bowlers then the independence cup where he played another magical one to bring dhaka to a standstill by winning the cup and chasing the mammoth total. Match fixing episode was a when he took over the captaincy of national team when no one including the greats shrugged responsibilities, he took it up and by god the fortunes of Indian cricket changed forever. People talk about Sachin tendulkar being a revelation, but it was ganguly who brought the team together and gave it a much needed killer instinct, yuvraj,harbhajan,raina,zaheer,dhoni were all nurtured under his supervision.
chasing the monumental 300 plus at lords and the twirl of the shirt said a lot about the character of the man. he himself believed and showed the way when many other greats fell out.
Greg pushed him out, and boy didnt he make a come back, hitting out at the detractors and his critics and taking india home to safety in two of the matches, from there on he was the star performer in the tests till he called it a day, albeit he was made to call it a day.

yesterday seeing him bat as a pune warrior i realised that he is a fighter who would not want to go down in to obscurity but would rather prefer to die doing what he is good at,playing like a champion, if at all there was a single run cheered so much in IPL4 it was ganguly getting of the mark yesterday,He may not be God of cricket, he is but a mere mortal trying to do what he thinks he is good at, and will go on doing it till he feels he has done enough, who are we to judge what he should do,let him do as he pleases.
But remember every single one of us believe if he had a chance he might have done something better, i do, he is doing the same its not the money or the glitz and glamour, it is the urge to prove people who doubt you wrong each and every time they say you are no good rising up and proving them wrong is a trait of a fighter and he is one for sure.
He has inspired me, he will inspire many for his determination and will to fight back and prove the doubting people wrong,his is a chapter which only he can decide what is the final pages should look like. not Shahrukh not Chappell not bcci not even his fans its him and just him.

train to catch...

The Chug Chugs are very distinct, its a huge metal thing on wheel rolling on parallel tracks as long as i remember i have been near these tracks,well my home was near the station in kasargod in northern Kerala and later on when we shifted to a new house ,there too was the railway track not very far from it......
i have always been mesmerized by the train....for me trains meant going away from studies and staying away from school.....so it was always fun and we used to travel all the way from kasargod to Ernakulam it took ten hours but the joy was unlimited ......all the people on the station seemed to be so happy on the sight of the train chugging into the station that there would be a sudden buzz......there would be the shrill calls of chai-chai or kaapikaaapi kapi..but the best part would be those who would sell idli vadas my all time favourite not because i loved idlis but i just could not resist buying them as this made me feel like i was a regular traveler and not some once in a blue moon traveler, it made me feel happy...
but the best thing was the cartoon books from phantom to tinkle from mandrake to superman all were sold at shornur and calicut, we have to beg amma to get us those and i would make it a point that i would carry them to school just to let my friends know that i had the latest ones brought from calicut. Returning from Ernakulam was always something we dreaded as we would have ot go back to school, but our incentives to go back were either shoes bought form king's shoe mart in M.G road or toys bought from Paico, we just could not wait to show it to our friends.

For as long as i can remember my father used trains to commute in trains for work daily,then there were those years were he would be posted to so far off place that he would only come home by 11 in the night only to leave by the next morning train as early as 5:30, but this was never a strict schedule as trains were always late except for the morning ones, there were days when he would be home only for a few hours, we were never told about the troubles he went through to be with his family but he always had fascinating stories to tell us, that is why i admire him for all the effort he has taken to be with us even if that meant to be only for a few hours except for Sundays were we would always go out for dinner, but it was in trains that he spent many a hours just trying to make it easy for us and not to miss him even if it is just for a few hours.

Today as i travel by train i still am mesmerized by the whole system that is in place, the amount of people it carries and the expectations it carries along with it, those glory days of train journeys are slowly being replaced by flight travels, but i still have this dream of travelling on a train without knowing exactly were i am going with nothing more than a bag and camera snapping those moments that come along in a journey which one may never get to experience in a plane journey, the vastness that a train covers is simply amazing the terrain changes every few hours one moment you would be passing through green fields on either side of the track, a few hours later you would be in the midst of a dry barren land where the heat would make your eyes burn.
One day surely i would just want to pack my bags and just go.....experience the smells and sights and capture a few in my camera, but i hope those days there still would be those same characters that my father had mentioned you would come across in a journey as i know that would in some way shape the way you would think and react to situations in life, as more than any other class a compartment would be the best class to meet and learn, all are together and all have destinations to reach and nothing can replace that experience about different people from different walks of life....i still would like to wake up to chug chugs and whistles of the morning passenger but sadly as easy it sounds we hardly get those days now.

MY FIRST VROooM

MY FIRST CAR

I do not know when was the whole idea settled in me that a car could be part of the family,i had an relationship with cars from the moment i must have been old enough to speak.
I think my first ever car ride was on an huge one, i do not recollect the name of the car but it was as big as it could get, our neighbour in Ernakulam had the car and we used to get rides on it. I was so scared to sit in the back seat that i used to make it a point to jump to the second row to be with my mother.
Then came the Amby phobia, we were on a family trip to a temple and mid way we had stopped for a cup of tea, completing that ritual we sat in the car and as usual i occupied the front seat and was on my fathers lap!!!SLAM!!! the door was shut and the next thing i realise, i could not feel my wrist and only then did i see that my fingers were wedged between the door and the body of the car.
Thankfully it was nothing serious, though i still carry the scar on my finger which has stayed on as an memorial of that incident.

Many years later my dad decided to buy a car since we all were trying really hard to fit into an old scooter and were inviting many a sneer from onlookers. One day dad announced "its an Omni" we decided to buy this car as it was HUGE and could accommodate a lot of people, well basically two over grown kids my dad and mom and two other kids one of whom was trying to eat his way into happiness and the other was happy staying hungry, you could guess the first one was me.
Another thing that prompted us to buy this car was our trip to OOTY, i was the one who as sitting next to the driver and enjoying the view, i had declared then "jaj I love this CAR" :-), jaja, being my dad was more than keen to buy this car, so there it was newly painted in pearl white and fresh seats gleaming under the afternoon sun. I could not hold back my excitement,i still remember spending an entire evening inside the car bearing the heat and the mosquitoes, honking and practicing my driving on my imaginary roads with an old stereo belting out BABA SEHGAL songs which was a gift from the old owner.
I was never more happier and almost always dreamed of taking the beauty for a drive through some hilly roads looking out through the window,i knew there that i was a natural at it,i mean driving a car, but it made my mother more and more anxious as i was spending more of my time inside the car than the house. Even spending my time studying for my final exams inside it was what totally freaked her out.
We did go for some amazing trips in it, the most memorable being the ooty trip which was like a trip back down a few years where we had decided that OMNI would be our first car.

Today when i see an omini on the road it takes me back to those old days where, for me a car was more of a member of a family than just a machine,we sold the Omni after much thought for another and have gone further through out INDIA than we would have imagined when we first brought our Omni. I never learnt to drive from any driving school, for me those imaginary vroom-vrooms were all that was required, for me it was much more than just a car, i still miss my Omni.
I bet everyone does miss their first car, their first vroom-vroom, their Omnis

a train journey

its been long...really long.i am glad that i still remember my login to this account....
i have traveled a lot and by lot i mean crossed continents a couple of times and it has been an eventful year, did complete my Masters in Law, a thing which i thought was reserved to the extra brilliant and legal eagles of my batch... to live in United Kingdom was one of my dreams i did fulfill it..had an amazing time and it would be one of the best years in my life as i completed a course which was really tough shifting from a relaxed study atmosphere to an competitive international study circle and i am really happy that i came out without any bad memories and only with good friends and better still an LLM.

This is not what i actually wanted to say today, this post relates to an experience which i had a few days back on my way to Cochin from Warangal after attending my beloved friends shivacharan's wedding, we were lucky enough to catch the train back home, we got onto our coach and settled down onto the seats allocated to us besides the four of us we had another two men, one was a north Indian which i could figure out of the way in which he talked to us and the other from kerala, they both never spoke anything. The person from kerala was were weird in the way he carried himself through the one and a half day journey and the only words spoken to us by him were "guntur is a big station ". the four of us were enjoying ourselves with jokes from college life and other incidents just to kill time and also commenting and making fun of each other, even though the north indian 'babu' was never interested and slept as if he had some important dream to finish, the other 'chetan' was not so amused at our jokes nor was he interested in the game of cards that we were playing our anything else that was happening around the coach. we all thought it was a bit weird and was kinda abnormal to see a person just staring out of the window into the empty darkness.

The next morning was more joyful for us as were coming to the end of our journey and we all get to be back home for good food and a good sleep, the train was fast approaching Trichur when the malayalee 'chetan' receives a call, i was surprised to hear this phone ring and him talk as this was the second time he had opened his mouth the whole time we were in the coach, as till then he never wished me back for my polite but inquisitive good morning..which i thought would unlock his mouth and we would have a conversation...what happened next surprised me even more, i had to listen to what he was saying as he was sitting just opposite to me and all he said was..." yes i saw the paper...i saw it there,i hope to reach soon..hope keep it till then" and the phone was cut and he continued the stare into the yonder as i thought 'there he goes again' i realized that there was a tear rolling down his cheek and he could not hold back the tear that was threatening to break his strength...this was something that i had never imagined and was shaken by the whole situation and i was ashamed on myself that i had been stupid enough to call him weird, this reminded me about the short film in kerala cafe a movie were mammooty is seen a rude traveler..but that day i thought everyone travel but the purpose of it can vary from person to person.....our enjoyment should not be something that should bother any other fellow traveler...it is something that i would remember from now on....as i got down at Ernakulam,i had a glance at him he was still looking out through the window...may he find his peace may...the train moves on and so does life, people are but mere travellers