The Attack!!

The story you are about to read is more than 6 months old. Did not publish it after requests from the victims. Now after taking their permission publishing it. Beware this can happen to you!


Yeah we are. All was well till October. That was when we shifted to our new house. no one had the faintest idea whats in store for us. Everything was normal for first few days. We all enjoyed staying in our new house exception being frequent power problems in the morning hours. That is the time everyone is in hurry to get ready and head to office. Low voltage and our geyser not responding to our urgency ended up us being ready to take bath in cold water. But we thought it is too much to compromise bathing in warm water. There came the idea. GAS!. We hardly used to cook. So we found a way to use the gas stove . Get the water heated using gas stove. The risk was always involved regarding what we would do when gas is over and it would take sometime to get new cylinder. But for the time being the problem was solved. but there was more to come. To watch India play the world cup we got a Tuner card and cable connection to our house. Those were the days we were very happy. Carrom board to play ( to turn the switch as Raghu mama calls it )TV for time pass ( yeah once TV was there Carrom was gone ). Maid to clean the house and wash our clothes.

The day was about to come.

Off late Kummi started complaining about something biting him . Thought that would be some red ant we ignored the same. Perhaps that was a big mistake on our part. We were soon to discover that there was something more ( bigger??) than that. When i was told that i could not believe. All these days i believed that was extinct as i did not see it till now. Then i saw that. One fine day Balchigi called me and showed it to me. That was alive and i am seeing it for the first time. Was 'thrilled' to see living 'Bed Bug' right in the house where we are living. After killing it thought it was over.

Things got worse when they started to emerge out from our bags and shirts in our office. Once kummi's colleague saw it on kummi's shirt and some other time it was raghu mama's turn to face the embrassment. Frustrated by this kummi declared all out attack war on those. One of the room in our house was decorated with dead bodies of the bed bugs. All the credit goes the great bed bug hunter kummi. Should get bravery award. Seeing that i remembered movie 300 where few Spartans resist millions of Persian soldiers. kummi is our Leonidas. I too got my chances to kill some. Especially when some got in my bag and started to come out in office. I had to kill the bugs secretly and was successful in that without letting any of our colleague's know about that. Vinnyk accepted that he hides the bag once he takes that to office fearing anyone would see our brothers ( they have shared our blood now ). Even one complete CAN of bug killer spray did not help us. Felt sorry for raghu mama when he got hit on his leg by belt buckle when he was attempting to get rid of possible bug's from his pants before wearing it.

We bought one more CAN of bug killer spray but soon we had to use that for one more attack. This time it was ants. That day after coming back from office saw our house's floor was filled with ants. No body's bed was spared. We had to clean each and every inch of carpet area in our house and soak that with the spray to sleep happily amidst fragrance of the bug spray. The latest is that raghu mama found bug's nest in the books vinnyk had collected with many eggs. They had to face raghu mama's fury. A litre of bug spray was poured on them. And as of now it is not over yet. Here we are with our eyes open in search of any bug. Now we have challenged them to come out in the open if they dare!!!!!!

EPILOGUE :

The Result -- we are defeated
What followed will be updated soon

BARgained

One of my friends wanted to buy a new mobile. We went to mobile shop, selected a mobile and asked for the price. shopkeeper said the price of the model. My friend seemingly alarmed said the price is too high and others are giving it for less. The shop keeper asked who is giving that mobile for less price. My friend's reply "need to check".

Indian Wonder !

Few Years back, Allan Border surpassed Gavaskar's record of most runs scored by an individual in Test Cricket. Around about same time, Team India was playing a ODI ( i think so ). Amidst the crowd , some one was showing this message written on a drawing sheet.I still Remember each and every word in that message. I had thought that would be too much to expect. That message was for the whole world and was very clear. This is what it read, " Congratulations Border, But Don't worry, Tendulkar is there".

Sachin Tendulkar is now just few matches away from becoming highest run scorer in Test cricket. Similar feat has been acheived by him long ago in ODI.

Life Style

our lives have become so mechanical. just check this out. couple of weeks back when i was walking on the road, wanted to check if any vehicle is coming from behind. i tried and failed to locate a 'rear view mirror'. couple of days later ( again while walking on the road ) was very disappointed for not being able to locate 'indicator' switch before taking left turn.

Chak De!

Victory for Team India!. What a way to bring back the lost glory in Indian cricket. Win the world cup after 24 years. What more!. Win it in the same year in which we were shown exit early in the waorld cup (Another format). No comments on the T20 World Cup final match as every one knows about that. We got the result we wanted for which we waited for years. Team India has finally come out of the tag 'Chokers'. Now there is long line up of matches coming. Hopefully with the confidence gained, Team India give us more to cheer.

Interestingly, it's glorious period for Indian sports. India emerged as champions of Asian Hockey, India won Nehru cup in football recently, India is winning in Chess, Billiards and more. The Chak De! factor is truly rocking for India. Hope to see India in new heights in all aspects in near future.

And started a friendship

I am an engineer. I had shown traces of this skill when i was a kid. i don't remember, but my grandpa used to say i had once pressed all the buttons of his tape recorder together. Well, no wonder my dad did not bought tape recorder till i was little older. The time was about to come.

My Grandpa hated TV. He used to scold us always we might damage our eyes watching TV continuously. He cared a lot for us. i remembered him once telling me to be careful of this new virus ( computer virus). He had heard from Radio that this virus is spreading fast across all the computers.

Well, back to our main story. I was waiting for the tape recorder to arrive. My grandpa had given me the good news. Dad and grandpa will get new tape recorder for our house. The night before i would have dreamt of switching on the tape and WOW so many buttons to play around with. Finally it came. I rushed towards that and searched everywhere. There are no buttons at all. What will i play with this boring thing. After some explanation from my dad i realised it was radio. I was not happy at all. Soon it was decided to return the radio and buy a tape recorder. Couple of days later, the tape recorder came. I thought this is what i call a real player. Yeah there are many buttons to play around with. Boy i loved the 'pause' button. So easy to press. I had been given freedom to play with that button. More over it listens to us. Press and let it be in that state as long as u want. Not like 'fwd' or 'rev' button which used to come back to it's original state with a huge thud when they get tired. For me pause button was never tiring warrior. There was one more interesting button called 'record'. Boy! it was so hard to press. I complained my dad that this machine is not good. i can not press record button at all. Even my dad tried to press that and failed. So far he had seen record button (usually) as part of play button (there used to be a small red button for record which used to be part of play button in some corner). dad applied little more pressure on the record button. Suddenly!. I never thought 'play' and 'record' used to hate each other. As soon my dad pressed 'record' with force, with a huge thud the play button jumped from it's place and fell on the ground. 'Record' kicked 'play' out of the tape recorder. Wow! i said 'record' will be my friend. Dad inserted the button back to it's place. I felt bad for 'play' also was angry with shop keeper who sold us defective tape recorder. Next day the shop keeper explained us that 'record' and 'play' are not enemies but are very close friends. We had to press them together.


The tape recorder was very strong. It dodged all my attacks successfully. Not even a single time it complained to my dad. it became my close friend. A friend who plays music and sings whenever i wanted. He was even a good mimic. sometimes he used to mimic the songs which i sang ( !!????!!**%). This is how a new friendship between me and my ex-tape recorder started.

These changed the way men live - 1

What were the amazing inventions/discoveries made by humans?. There are thousands of onventions and discoveries made, but some changed the way people live . Here is my attempt to lis such discoveries which changed the people's lives.

1. Fire : Go back to Human history few thousand years back. Man was living in caves. say some where during the stone age. There is an interesting story about the fire that i read some where. Once while cave men were hunting an animal, it accidently fell in fire ( may be forest fire ). They pulled out the animal which was cooked now and found it tasty to eat. Before that he would have thought fire is dangerous now he discovered a way to make use of the same fire. of course fire gives heat which helped men to get rid of cold. And then he found out there are multiple advantages by fire when it is controlled. Man eventually discovered many things which can done using fire which mad him enter age of industry. of course he discovered he can hurt some one with the fire. . Man used the same fire power to attack his neighbour which started then and has not stopped yet.

2. Wheel : Ancient man led nomadic life used to migrate from place to place on his foot. eventually he learned to tame some animals like horses and donkeys and used them to travel from one place to another. Horses and Donkeys became means of transport for him. But something was missing. only one or two people can travel on a horse back. Perhaps initially he built a wooden plan which can carry few people and made horses drag the plank, but turned out to be tiresome for horses and time consuming as well. Then came 'Wheel'. Discovery of wheel scores more points than discovery of fire. the reason , Fire is natural phenomenon. Ancient man might have seen forest fire and used it. but was there any natural wheel ?. we find very minute number of instances in nature which resembles wheels. may be rolling stone from a mountain. may be that inspired man to use stones wheels and later it got evolved . stone wheels were replaced by wooden and finally metal wheels took over. got a cushion of rubber which were eventually filled with air. Today the use of wheel is seen everywhere. even in machine parts. There would be hardly any day one spends with out seeing a single wheel.


Coming up : likes of TV, Mobile Phone, Internet.

Million Dollar ??

While i was in Bristol , this was one of the day we went out for lunch. Had a very good day at office till then. had a great lunch and the person who had come with me was in a merry mood. we chatted with the guy who served us food through out the time we were there. best conversation was yet to come. just before paying the bill, the restaurent guy came and asked "do you want anything else sir". as said earlier, the person who had come with me was in a very good mood. he decided to make us all laugh. he said " we would like to have a million dollars" but the guy who served perhaps did not heard peoperly what he said. with out any change in expression, he replied " we do not have anything like that here sir " :-)

Absolute nail biter!

Imagine a situation in a cricket match. last bowl to be bowled. last run to win the match and last man standing at the crease. a Tense situation. Batting team stands more chances of winning. a spinner is bowling the last ball. the person who is facing the ball is not at good batting.all the fielders are inside the circle. it was 1 run in 3 balls earlier but the batsmen could not clear infield in last two balls. bowler starts his run up. when he is about to deliver the ball, he sees batsman coming down the track. he throws the ball wide of the batsman who misses the ball completely. keeper collects the ball neatly and knocks off the bails. the batsman is stumped out!. all the fielders are jumping in joy. they held the match. but wait. umpire has given it as wide ball!. Now what would be the result. we have seen strangest things happen in cricket, this is one of them ( though i do not remember such a thing happening ). The result might go in favour of batting team and might trigger a controversy and may force to introduce couple of new rules in cricket but would be really exiting to watch such a nail biter. all the blame would go the bowler.

now say 2 runs required of last ball and same batsman and bowler are in picture. all fielders inside the circle. batsman could not score off previous two deliveries. batsman comes down the track to hit the ball, bowler bowls a wide, batsman stumped out! match drawn! :-).

Cute.....

Recently heard ineresting conversation between a small girl ( about 6-7 years old ) and one elder guy ( may be her father ) . Perhaps the girl was asking him about his principal ( dunno exactly what she asked . we heard only the answer given by the guy ) and he answered ' we do not have pincipal's we have managers :) '

The smile.

11 PM onwards was the time usually i come home then. Was very busy @ work during those days. No time for any other personel things . i remember i missed many movies i wanted to watch during those days. Did not even visit my home town for weeks. there was stretch of period where i went to work for weeks (including weekends). All these things happened before i went to onsite. when i came back, every thing had changed. No late night stay in office. no more working on weekends. i was very glad to welcome these changes. but....
One might think i missed so many things being in office for hours just for the sake of more money and recognition. guys wait! here comes my answer. i agree i had missed many things in life while i was in office. but i used to stay late and work in weekend because i liked every bit of it. i did that because i was very much interested in what i was doing and was very keen to learn more. most of the times no one used to force me to stay back late in office . Got recognition and money that's fine . More improtant than that for me was every day i used to go home being satisfied with whatever i did that day. Every night before i sleep i used to see myself smiling and felt fresh by the thought that i utilised one more day of my life doing things which bring satisfaction to me. that satisfaction would drive me to work late next day.
It has been long time since then . Now a days, my work is not that hectic. i have lot of time for other things. of course i am enjoying this part of my life being little free, but that smile..... is sort of missing :-) .

A journey! The way back.

Din knew how long we slept, but that was nice sleep we had. wake up only to realise we were hungry. reluctant to go by the same path we had come thinking it would take too long and we might die out of hunger, decided to use a 'shortcut'. the path looked pretty easy and directly we could have been to the place where our car is parked. but, raghu never agreed to take that path. he tried hard to convince me n raghu mama to take the clean path though it will take lil more time. but we were adament. in fact din even allow him to make choice by climbing down a distance and calling him there saying "see the place looks so near from here". cursing us raghu finally started following. now we were making our own way. raghu was little tense, especially after he got call from home. no no it was not his girl friend. finally we reached a place from where we had to decide which way we should move forward. raghumama, the captain, took the responsiblity immediately. he asked us to stay back and went in search of the easiest path from there onwards. few minutes later we found raghumama gone from our sight. is he lost or something. after few agonising minutes, finally we heard voice from raghu mama. but still he was not seen. all that happened was we heard his voice from somewhere. he was asking us to come down. but where is he ?. as we walked down, we saw plain land getting disappeared and dry bushes in place of plain land. we had to make our way through bushes now. bushcrafting??? . we saw a small temple there and found raghu mama resting there. had to eat 'jam' to get energy to traveling furthur. now there was no path at all from there. we had to walk through the bushes now. reached a point from we cannot move further at all. some how we managed to cross that and found a huge boulder. from a distance it seemed that the boulder was the end. once we climb down, we will reach plain land from where we can easily walk to the place where we had parked the car. a shock was awaiting when we reached the end of the boulder. after the boulder, there is steep fall. it is impossible to climb that down with out some broken bones. we had to search for some other way. again through bushes. and finally we saw some people there. with the help of them , we crawled through bushes for finaly few meters and successfully landed on plane land. we were no less happy than columbus when he found new land. no one said anything. we simply started running. as fast as we could. forgot how tired we were. ran through the field as though we are running for the first time. i did not remember when was the last time i ran like that. ran till we got tired and finally a water tank. we drank water as much we could. and headed straight for the car. raghumama swore he will never come to that place again. even had doubts if the snaps we saw was from this place. but now were heading back to bangalore insearch of some good place to eat. raghu called his home and told he will be back soon.

Now let me tell something about the place. actually it is really a nice place. very good for trekking. very calm and windy on the top. there is easy path as well to reach the top. and right time to visit is just after rain has stopped, sometime in november when it is lil cooler. me planing to visit the place again sometime in future. also trying hard to convince raghumama to visit the place again

A journey, the Beginning.

Few spectacular snaps of the place and nothing else to do during weekend forced us to visit the place right away. The place's name was 'skandagiri' around 60 kms from Bangalore. with almost no research about the place , we found ourselves( me , raghu and raghumama. WOW! doesn't it seem like 'Ed,Edd and Eddy') heading towards the place early morning. well finally found the place after lil confusion. Parked the car at the bottom of the hill, we started climbing the hill (in the picture). we refrained from using the path which easily would have taken us to the top of the hill to get xtra thrill while climbing. Little did we knew then what was in store for us. One local boy showed us another way from which we can reach the top. being followed by a cow herd (in search of grass on the hill) with fear one of the cows might hit us with it's horn we started climbing fast. after few minutes, cows found us resting on a boulder. after posing for few snaps, cows marched forward while we were still resting. it was great that we planned to carry a 2 litre water bottle. convincing each other that the peak is very near (oh! what a mistake) we again started climbing. after few minutes we were desperately searching for a big boulder where we can rest. when saw a big boulder under tree shade, it was no less than a treasure for us. the cows are no where to be seen now. earlier, we had light breakfast and carried some snacks (what a great idea it was), thinking we would come back within couple of hours and have lunch. ate some chips and water while we rested(man did we got addicted to rest?) there. no way was seen further. did we reached the top? not yet. had to walk over the boulder to find further path. path? there was no path. we had to make one. By this time we had forgot we carried 5.1 MP camera with us. so no snaps there. little further, we saw few people there .they showed us the way to reach the top that happened to be easy???!! to reach the top. by the way the scenic view from there and fresh wind encouraged us to move further. after climbing couple of boulders and a lil walk through bunch of bushes, we saw what looked like main entrance of some fort. now we realised we had to take some snaps.with out any major incidents, we finally reached the top where we found a temple(snap). forgot to mention one interesting thing. one of the 'cowboys' there had his eyes on water which raghumama was carrying. he convinced raghumama that there is water reservoir(pushkarane) on the top. after repeated search, we did not find that pushkarane. ate the snacks , drank rest of the water we had and slept for a while under the shade available there.

coming up next...... raghu refuses to climb down . raghumama is lost!!. bushcrafting!!!!. we become explorers. the final run.and more........................

Good signs

Has the golden time for Indian football come? chek out blog 1 and 2 i had written about Indian Football. India Hold Iraq 1-1 in Olympic qualifier. Yeah India did not qualify for next round. But the game they played defnitely seems impressive. As a die hard football fan i would love to watch the match if some tv channel shows the match highlights. More over Team India has done well in hockey too. past few years saw almost entire country busy watching Team India in cricket with great hopes. recent failure in cricket world cup resulted in huge disappoinment. Now Even saw couple of wins in cricket as well ( may be against Bangadesh, but it's a win and let's hope it will continue for rest of the season ahead.). With recent good form in Indian hockey,football and cricket, let's hope we will get chance to cheer Team India in all the games. Hopefully we will see Team India standing in a good position in International arena in all sports .

Dream come true

it was stopped on a small road in front of temple. i knew i had to move forward. kept on honking so that guy selling vegitable in a small cart infront of my vehicle will give me some way. just before that i had come in that small strip of road following a circular path taking 4 right turns . In between i had to make my way between an auto and a santro with just enough space for my vehicle to pass through ( or atleast i thought that much space is available ). And of course, before driving my car myself , had kept lemons over which my car's tyres passed through. praying god to have a safe ride from now on, i had started the vehicle just after 'pooja'. Many thanks to raghu mama for doing the driver's job from showroom to temple. Here i own a car. One of my dreams from childhood is no more dream. And by the way the car i bought was Getz Prime 1.1 GVS. snap of car to be uploaded soon.

We earn and spend

Few years back , when we were still in college , Ashvin had exclaimed in horror " hey can you believe it, exactly a year from now we will be working ( or hunting for job )" That did not bothered me then. then i had no plans for higher studies. not being the top scorer of the class hardly had any idea what i would do after completing my engineering ( though my dad asked me to do higher studies , i thought i better stay away from it.) some people even scared me saying only top guys in their field would survive ( was i lucky? din knew what would be my field. so being in top few in that field was deferred) . the day finally arrived. we completed our engg. took our degree certificate and headed towards Bangalore . Job Hunting. One could see the confidence in everyone's face.
It's lil more than 3 years since i have been working as software engineer ( i still survive here . so i take the liberty to assume that i am in the list of top few in my field ). Follow the same routine . going to office every morning. coming home late. eat. sleep. of course i get time during weekend, but before i realise weekend has come, it's already gone. never felt i have completely used the free time i get during weekend. some times i think what we do is like a chain. we work hard for our client/customer's for some product which they inturn sell it to people ( us !!!??? ) . so we work , earn money and spend it to buy things which we ( or someone like us ) have developed. WOW. But the next moment i realized this is the way it had been through out. Only difference being we now spend more time to earn ( may be earn more ) than to spend what we have earned.

a rupee !!

A single rupee can change the life . hmmm , some may say now a days there is almost no value for a rupee. Few days later , even beggars might not accept 1 rupee . But .., every rupee is important. Here is an incidence. Few years back when i started playing football in school, the competition was too much to enter the school team especially when there is no official coach. i was one of the players who used to practice daily and played decently as a striker and used to score some goals. i never knew a rupee can change the way i played football game.
Though we got football from school to play , whenever it got punctured, we used to pool in money to repair the damaged football and play again . each one had to pay 1 rupee. and that had happened several times. but ... this time a part of my future was about to change because of the damage caused to the ball . frequently the captain ( he was the best playing amongst us:) ) used to playing 11. every time i used to see my name in the playing 11 list. but this time when the captain started announcing names i heard my name and couple of others announced first and that had never happened ( usually my name used to come after 5 or 6 people ) . and the team representing our school had to be announced soon. so i was planning to assume that i have been chosen in the team for next few days, i heard that shocker . we were people who were not in the team because we did not pay 1 rupee when ball got punctured .
I was thinking fast in my mind y such a mistake happened from me . can not blame the captain as the competition was too much and we all knew the rules . then i remembered y i did not pay that rupee. i was out of town for few days and unfortunately the ball got punctured the day before i was leaving and by the time i came back , the ball was already in good shape and i forgot to pay that rupee. but i was blacklisted by the captain. now as compensation we had to pay double the regular amount this time and those who paid last time need not pay . that sounds reasonable . that was not enough,a shocker was about to come in next few days. i paid double the original for the repair of the ball .
The day had finally come where the selection for the team was to happen . but i was still not in the playing 11 but was sitting in the bench. In parallel were happening selection for shuttle badminton. one of my friend asked me to try my luck there as that was open to all. i agreed with him and went for the shuttle badminton selection , perhaps that was the biggest mistake i made . my game was football and i went for shuttle badminton selection . of course i was not selected to play for shuttle badminton but attempting for that had cost me dearly. during the match for selection of football team , even players in bench were given opportunity to play. so there i was trying to travel in two boats and fell miserably.
I still was scoring some goals during practice sessions and still was not in the team . but a silver lightning was awaiting for me...... . just few days before the tournament started , few people opted out of the team , that created few opening in the team and i was in as last player to be selected for the team and i was still not in playing 11. some times i used to think if only i had given that rupee on the day it was to be given , i would have got better chances of proving myself and play in team as a striker. but fate had something else waiting for me.
we played couple of matches which we won. i was a spectator of both the matches . sitting in the bench and seeing our players score and cheer for them . but i was happy as i got chance to travel with the team. after couple of matches one more person opted out of the team and then me in playing 11 was almost certain and i would play as striker which was my dream. but questions were raised about me in team as a striker ( the guy who fought wanted to score goals who was defender @ that point of time ) and finally i was asked to play as a defender. we were about to play district level matches , our lone goal keeper got injured. that was really fortunate for me that no one else was willing to take that place of goal keeper assuming he does not have any part to play. me and the goal keeper exchanged our positions . i accepted to play as goal keeper and i was indeed successful as goal keeper right from the first match i played where i stopped spectacularly ( it was indeed spectacular ) a penalty stroke to win the game for us to the last match we played during engineering days ( final year ) where i stopped number of shots @ goals and still ended on losing side in the finals of the tournament. sometimes i think but for that one rupee perhaps i would been playing all the games i played so far as a striker and try to win the games which we had lost and might have been playing football . even now.....