karma

A million years ago someone we call Lord Krishna gave a monumental lecture on DUTY to a confused chap called Arjuna.

then a million years later, or today, a fellow who goes by the name of me realized that he had no attendance-

(i know all my engg batch cannot believe that i would do this again after all the events of my final year when i only played basketball, had single digit attendance and nearly failed my final semester, and passed by bringing my mom to college and a whole lot of drama)

-so obtained a spurious medical certificate from someone to account for my absence. it so happened that person has also passed on a virus to me and im feeling unwell right now... fucking ironic, idiotic and pissing off... Bloody karma.... but JUST Right in the grander scheme of things.

you're only as old as the company you keep

i am 40 years young...
i am young at heart...
my shata.

you can be young at fart but the reality is you are at exactly the maturity level of the collective maturity of the company you are keeping at this point of time.

at ur school reunion you are still gonna laugh in memory of the time your vice-principal's zip was open as he addressed the entire assembly on sports day, and your still going to tease that guy and girl who the batch randomly paired up.

i actually wanted this post to be more developed in content, but i run out of patience - the impatience being quite kiddish: im with my roomies now so...
enjoy.

ok isn't this a little too random?

En route to Bangalore (haha i got to use foreign sounding words while travelling local conveyance!) via train, i encountered some massive randomness. Now given the charm of travelling by general class 3-tier train is some chaos and much randomness but my encounetrs kind of streeeeetcchhh it i think.

case 1: a bunch of chukkas get on the train and beg... standard right? well one of them was a woman pretending to be a chukka! WTF! Which woman fucking pretends to be a chukka? ive seen men with a bulge(ok thats assumed, i dont check them out or anything) act chukka-ish, but a woman?

case 2: there are a 100 vendors of all kinds of food, snacks,beverages,necklaces,games and roti rolling stones who..... wait.. roti rolling stones? Again why the fuck would you sell roti rolling stone platforms in the train? id buy one because immediately someone else would board selling atta, followed by a person with a small portable stove.

o well...
here's to the laloo network!

mumbai and a thief conspire...

someone stole my bloody umbrella today!

Damn. bought that piece this rainy season and am already parting with it... at least its not another cell phone(touching wood ... touching wood).

i left it under my seat in the cinema and at the end of the show reached down and picked up an umbrella and left. later, outside i realized that it was my friend's umbrella. alas! mine was no where to be found outside.

may my umbrella give up on the rascal at the most inopportune moment.

An umbrella is unique as an item to steal, if you think about it. Any other item would have to be later subject to some kind of transaction for the benefit to be realized. However in an umbrella, if the person does not steal it, he is already inconvenienced... it becomes an Versus situation by default.

that being said may the thief trip and land with the umbrella tip planted firmly in his asshole upon which the opening mechanism engages.

of respectability

i am a vp..
i must be respectable and not natural
what is the diference,

what you want to be vs. what u need to be

very rarely is congruency achieved

im not talkin about being politicaly correct
that and respectability have rarely had compatibility wih what the world considers to be congruency
i need to inspire awe and be considered to be desired and be special.... though i dont give a fuck about it
not for me but for the position i occupy

if that is the summation of me.. what you expect of me than the real me... how i pity u and how i pity me for stooping to it,

yet i believe in it.....brand siddharth --- as a wannabe brander... i believe i need to believe.....

its better to be hated than to be forgotten

the ultimate disrespect is insignificance and irrelevance.

so please know me, notice me, recognise me, and show me the passion...
and hence i proceed,exist and endeavour to be relevant....
as my self lies in yor cognizance and recognition....


siddharth srinivasan.

viral campaign.... down with flu

i get these amazing forwards that detail some new "viral campaign".
this is the latest viral campaign released by XYZ company.


Now what's wrong with that statement?

A viral campaign is one that due to its clutter breaking nature itself is propagated by the customers, an amalgamation of buzz and permission marketing.

So how can a campaign be viral right at the beginning?

yes , a campaign would be planned to ideally be viral, however they end up aping previous viral formats and become just another (generally) funny video on the internet.

remember the monkey-ball-kick game? that was a truly viral game, that spread out of user satisfaction, not because someone told another person that it was viral.


i guess we need more viral campaigns to become viral and not go down with a buz flu.

On Olympics

So this will be the 7382628703232083820328820th post on the olympics of the day i guess. why should you read mine then...


i'm not going to help you out with that, offer any justification or plea at all.

Whenever i see the athletes in the Olympics, i wish i was them - such perfection.
I probably think more of the 100m dash winner than the power lifters.
I would love to have such a body.

But i never wish it was me there.

They train year on year, deny themselves everything and then win a bunch of leaves, 15 minutes and no money.

2-3 of them per event get their Nike deal.

But none of them just wants to drink his Pepsi, wear his Reebok and play some basketball like Shaq in his 30 million dollar mansion.

Sports not athletics is where its at!
Power,privilege,luxury and ladies.

See athletics is like basic physics. U dig up basic principles - running , jumping,etc.

Sports are applied research and engineering.

So i'm kind of more enthusiastic about Brazil in football and USA in basketball for a mini world cup of sorts in the olympics, which kind of stretches the Olympic thingie(honestly), than who throws things the farthest.


Kudos to all those who are there but... i could never do it. They are magnificent.

a little more on inertia...

I always wonder how we manage these....

fool's awake since 8 a.m. but rolls out of bed at 2 p.m.

procrastinating doing an essentially half an hour assignmnent for 2&1/2 days till it can be done no more(in both senses ).

Anytime you hear 'this is the way we've always done things so that's the way it will be done'.

Newton sure was onto something big when he ruled on Inertia.

Inertia of convenience is what i think is generally overlooked. The little silly things we do out of habit and convenience when we know otherwise.

Sleeping that half an hour more. Playing with your pimple. Being an unsociable idiot.
Not bothering to shave for months at a time(apparently a stubble isn't ok but a full beard is - but does the full beard count as one when the point of growing it was not decorative but merely to have a more composite stubble?).

And that's why it rains so much in Mumbai i guess.
Just because it does every year and its supposed to every year.
Some one read the history of the Sahara to the BMC/MMRDA.

Yes, i strongly believe they should take the responsibility for the weather.
Not for the implications of and infrastructure to deal with the weather, but the weather itself.

I want a yearly weather policy and guided, personalised, localised targeted weather. Not weather that is because it simply is.

Im not asking us to move into a climate controlled glass fish bowl. I just want a temperature,pressure and humidity knob to be included for the Earth(with none of the wisdom and maturity required to use it).


And isn't Earth a giant fishbowl after all - 70% water, shiny objects all around, lots of fish, spherical shape and open at the top (depleted ozone layer over the arctic) and completely irrelevant in the scheme of things to come.

Enjoy!

of wet cats...

To run away like a "bheegi billi".
a common Hindi phrase.

to run away like a 'wet cat' - this is not a common english saying. It loses something in the translation. Assuming its a clean and mature translation.

but mature we aren't and dirty we are.

A bearded man ran away like a Bheegi billi
plus we must have been high....

so we laughed all night.

if you eat at least rs30 of chips a day...

the last few months have been amazing!
there has been a veritable explosion in the branded flavoured chips options that one can access now.
balaji, chulbule,kulekule,tasty treat, musst chipss, etc
all cheaper than lays and arguably as competitive in taste.

it would seem perfect however these idiots still dont get their colour coding right.
lays has trained us better than any blind man his dog to understand that green is some oniony creamy flavour, blue is masala, dark green is some exotic masala, orange is cheese, yellow is plain or cheese and the other colours dont matter.

instead of decently following that colour scheme, these new guys suddenly try to associate blue with alu, orange with chat etc.

this blatant fucking around and attempt to confuse must be dealt with as soon as they raise their prices by rs 5 to be on par with lays. but for the remaining time, ill put in the extra effort.

p.s.
i was told to not drink from a broken glass out of fear for my life by a man smoking a cigarette.

i also wonder why the first thing i notice in most studying bachelor's houses is underwear in the hall.

is it really that convenient to drop your knickers, look for cover then dash madly to the hall to create the highlight and then run back in to protect your modesty?

and if it is to dry them, why right in front of the door? will the corner right behind it , out of the view of the neighbourhood aunties ,also under the fan,not suffice?

odd couples

The thing about odd couples is that their oddity isn't relevant to them - its an oddity for the rest of the world.

so it is discomfort for the onlookers that things are not in their personalised view of natural order that is really the issue.

so odd couples must be really insensitive creeps to allow such discomfort.

at least offer us some rationalization -
the ugly fat guy with the pyt - let us see and know that you have lots of money to spare.

this couple thing applies at other levels - friendship and footwear as well.
Life is not a comedy-action cop movie with the talkative idiot black guy and the no nonsense action guy.
we just have different types of idiots in reality getting into action of varying degrees.

and please don't wear different pairs of slippers on either foot - Its really pissing off.

Interviews and general bashing...

So we had our marketing cells recruitment today.
I'm having fun with this whole selection thing.
making people do random things, pretending there is meaning in what we make them do and in the questions we ask them, that we are going to unravel their entire potential and ability in those 20 minutes.
but the thing is i actually do believe its possible, i believe we stuck well to the parameters we had set
and i strongly believe that(interview blooper of the day) networking is more than Net + Working

Those guys sitting all nervous and serious and justifying themselves so earnestly....
im in hawaii chappals and tracks and abusing a guy for taking the process so casually.


Its a lovely feeling to be so much righter, better and holier than the person across the table, irrespective of what hes done simply because of the side of the table ur sitting on.

How am i going to take companys' processes seriously if this is what happens on the other side?

Rihanna has 'Sexiest Stomach in the World'

Source: Yahoo news online.
New Delhi, Aug 1 (ANI): R and B singer Rihanna has topped a new poll of the 'Sexiest Celebrity Stomachs in the World'.
The 20-year-old Barbados-born beauty, renowned for her revealing stage outfits, came first in the poll conducted by stomach-flattening supplement AntiBloat, reports China Daily.
Second on the list was Keira Knightley, who is famous for wearing midriff-flashing costumes, and who has bared her taut abs in movies including 'Bend It Like Beckham' and 'King Arthur'.
Dame Helen Mirren, who recently wowed onlookers with her trim physique when she donned a bikini while on holiday in the Italian Riviera, came third in the poll.......

So awesome!


Who has the sexiest toe nail or earlobe out there?
I wanna know!!!

it always rains, we just feel damp when it pours

There is a tap in my bathroom that has been leaking for the past 2 months.
in this period 7 different people have lived in this house cumulatively, 4 at a time, all getting the opportunity to view the dripping tap, and its steady flooding of the bathroom.
i hate the wastage of water, don't care much about electricity,air,food,etc but something about water gets me elementally.
so i realized that the tap was dripping due to wear and tear of the threads and that the faucet would need to be replaced - 1&1/2 months back.
i let all concerned know about that fact.
then i took a single unit of a medicinal blister pack and shoved it into the crevice where the threads are worn and used as a makeshift squeezy thingie to stop the dripping.

the dripping worsens day by day and all i do is shove the blister pack deeper and harder , more and more futilely . All of us do nothing about, all aware that its just a matter of time.

one day the system will breakdown and (probably) in the middle of some exam, presentation or urgent matter the water will gush out purposefully to flood the entire house.

I know it. We all know it. I still probably wont do anything about it till it happens.

A Metaphor for typical inertia.

We never buy umbrellas when its raining, we just get a little damp when it pours.

enjoy!

when you don't know who else has been called

had a good dinner tonight - friend's treat.
( i seem to talk a lot about food)
was one of those of sessions where you really do not know who all have been called.
was one of those sessions where i myself didn't know if i would be called.
then you try to fix up plans as to when to meet, where to meet, what to buy etc. all the while unsuree to broach the topic, unsure whether the other person has been called or not.

scene 1: i and a friend avoid each other the entire day and land up together at the dinner - neither of us confident of the other's invite.
scene 2: i ask a local friend where to buy cake pretending i have a sudden craving for it.

we call friends for all kinds of reasons to these treats.
genuine friendship
strong associations with our friend groups(romantic involvement)
obligation for treats past
general goodwill
desire to be on the roster for future treats
an inability to say no - avoidance of ill will and embarrassment

i hope i was called today with the nobler of reasons.

i hope the people i call when my turn comes will not be a tit- for- tat.

it just boils down again to our inabilty to say no and our need to be liked by everyone.

something like a treat is meant to be a celebration for people one cares about, not an appeasement to social expectation.

why can we not risk the displeaure of those that we feel an unwelcome obligation to? how is that added 0.2% quotient of like going to change our lives?

our security and confidence is rooted in those cumulative 0.2%s .

our aspirations are ayn randish yet our dependancies kafkaesque.


are extroverts the most insecure people of all?

confident - introvert
confident - extrovert
unconfident - introvert
unconfident - extrovert



the last would be the most misunderstood personality type possible. few people would relate to him, would understand him.

it happens.

prolific i try to be as a blogger - inspiration the bloody network admins at nmims end up being

whats the difference between diapers and incontinence pads?
i dunno - but i dont pee my pants and hate to think that the bloody network admins acccuse me and my batch of doing so on a cyber level. I'd like to see them cleaning my butt after i crap next.

porn out - fair enough
orkut and social networking sites out - ok i understand
frigging gtalk and sports sites!
supposedly we waste network resources on meaningless activities and trivial pursuits.
yes i fucking understand how streaming CNN IBN is a trivial pursuit , after all what does a bloody b school student need biz news for?

gtalk - our collective umblical cord to EVERYTHING.
We don't live in a common hostel, we do not have unlimited money to spend of phones - (not the charge of a phone call, but the amazing Rs1000 bill for being caught possessing one)
Yet discussions, study resources, and networking must be done.
The only steady network connection i am offered is for 2 mins while i relieve myself in the loo, then that too splutters out like my mozilla browser in its pathetic attempts to befriend the static IP menace in the library.

If too many cars are on the road, u do not prohibit people from going out, u instead widen the roads, build flyovers and provide for better public transport.

So the solution is not restricting access or having idiot blue collar workers roaming around randomly turning off the routers but instead actually working on the bloody network.

No youtube: are u frigging crazy? i am a marketing student who cannot view video media resources in college - i must view it at home, disect it individually for my Integrated Marketing Communications class and then revel in group work.


Network down, Networking down.


This is today's rant.
Back to Strategic Financial Management.

on friendship:

orkut: will u make friendship with me?
bollywood: kya mujhse dosti karoge?
facebook: fu@#ing hell, only friends can see her pics and profile.
subhronil: dear piece of gravel, may i talk to u for 5 mins without u exploding into dust?

we have many friends and types of friends
hi machan/yaar(depends on which route the bus follows)
sup....emoticon(depending on whether gtalk is blocked for the day or not)
session boys
girl who is ur friend that ur waiting for an excuse to remove the 'who is ur' from
and lesser than 5 people who matter.

humans need company and camaraderie but not friendship, at least not in the truest sense of the word.
i truly believe that man can exist without true friendship but just camaraderie alone.

who and what is a friend? im talking about in the true share-ur -underwear-half-ur-locket-completes-the-half-of-mine-die-for-you-in-sholay friendship.


yet since even that lasts for max 3 hrs on tv we rarely find it in real life. which is why we drink socially as then the lubricant of alcohol helps us bridge the gaps that our own barriers of racism,comfort and like generally do not allow us.
(what about those who drink alone?)

i have a need for everyone to like me.... unless they are absolutely my enemies(who even uses this word colloquially anymore?) so no middle ground for me.i still do not worry about friends i have lost. it doesnt affect mme that someone(happened recently too) that should have been a friend probably does not like me very much(why? because of the agenda factor - u will read about it further on) i wonder why women go to the bathroom in pairs - is there something they are confused about, that they need direction for in there? is women's bathroom technology progressing light years ahead of men's urinals that u need 4 hands and a phd to wo-man their equipment in there
thats neither here nor there but in there where i accidently went into in the l'oreal offices twice during my summer internship - fucking indians have no concept of design and make the men's and women's toilets face opposite directions in every turn. on a hot rainy day after a market visit when ur absolutely tired..... everyone makes honest mistakes.

and then i one day find the rule of 5

u will never find more than 5 people in your life(3 for most) kith,kin,friend,pebble,doll who you can ever develop that kind of long term sustainable relationship with.

try it, count it .

u may have been the most popular fool in college, but how many people could you tell about the time you wet ur pants watching snow white in ur 12th std? ( i didnt do that-just to make things clear) or borrow rs.10000 from at 4 a.m. to satisfy your drug habit?(not me again)


we then cling on to those we like or aspire to be like or aspire to be with in the hopes that they will provide us a rock for our lasso though they are lassos themselves and then wonder about the betrayals and illusions of friendships


everyone approaches another with an agenda
if this agenda is not completely congruent for both parties it wiill be only superficial as a fit
it will be a factor of fun and frequency than anything more
the agenda is the base and while the layered points of transaction change , it never does.
which is why many men are never completely secure in their friendship with women because their underlying agenda is something much more carnal


i have my 5 i think, i hope they too do factor me in theirs


i guess i have 400 after that in queue - its been fun!

so today step out with your 1,10,50 or 400. have a great meal and an ice cream.

happy camaraderie and friendship day!

everyone's a guru

Why the B-school?
money
positions
power
lifestyle
escape from the mundaneness of our earlier jobs
aspirations for something better

and lots of other reasons.

So what does it all boil down to - your placements.
the finality of it fills us with so much fear.
suddenly i realize that almost every conversation we have includes this topic - and here we find that everyone's a guru
People are so filled with fear and confusion - confused about what they want to do : only clarity about what they think they do not want to do - Fear of ending up in an unfavourable position
Newspapers are filled with daily bad news and this adds to the cloud we all carry in our heads.
But the biggest problem and issue is that of straitjacketing - that we will be stereocast by record and circumstance into a situation most unwelcome
at this point the fear and the need to feel self-assured pushes us into sounding positive about something that we want to think can happen or pushing ourselves towards a situation we feel is inevitable, while we are waiting desperately for someone to convince us otherwise. Neither happens.

no one wants to go to a village(not no one but u get the picture)
Begusarai in Bihar is not for me.
we are scared of a lack of escape routes from certain industries like IT or BFSI yet what's wrong with the role of a specialist?
These aren't uniproduct industries where one repeatedly rolls a hamster wheel for the rest of one's life.

Considering that they are at the exact same stage that fmcg was in 30years back is it not the best time to enter in spite of some flux and turbulence?

So we all continue to offer each other guidance assured in the fact that someone else as unknowlegeable as we are and pobabaly more insecure gave us the same.

he too heard the same advice and propagated it as his own opinion.
And for some reason he believes in what he says at that point without knowing why.

Thus we are all Gurus.

where do we get such wisdom and clarity? we justify our positions by intensity of feeling rather than logic or knowlege. i am waiting for a collective and personal epiphany.
i know what i want to do in life for sure the same way i know that 5 mins later it will be something else.



splitsvilla still plays in the background although i ate out today(no cook)

considering its a hunt for lust, i wonder why they keep chasing the pretty girls out.

back,5 mins later...

i fought wih the hp lappie and i think im winning for now
anyway i dont think i started this blog to talk about a broken QWERTY.

So let me talk about my house situation.
I lived away from home last year for the first time with 3 other housemates, 2 of whom were people.
I definitely do not believe in beginner's luck.

Anyway 1 year, 2 friends and a mortal enemy later, here i am in again in
Chapter 2: Away from home: sid retries the bachelor's life

The roomates are much better, they are friends and the house scene is fun and comfortable.
I like!
So now that the basics are done, we decided to get a cook.
Why a cook?

One roommate was with a trucking company. u know how owners resembles their pets and people their jobs ? Well he needs a trucks full tank . (but he purrs by like a TATA Nano so enough on that)
The next roommate is built like a stick but eats like his ass is the starving part of Africa and hes busy saving it every night
The last guy is the size of Africa .

I just wanted to say all of that.

Anyway we thought it would work out cheaper and tastier to get a cook.

The amazing thing about India(notice how i already assume an international audience) is that one finds an on-call cook to whip up anything that you desire or that ur mom can extrapolate into Hindi from Tam-brahm cooking basics over a 3 min STD call within a nominal
Rs. 375/head/month.

So it will all be cheaper.
cheaper.
cheaper.
cheaper.


So Rs.7346 of utensils later , we're eating like pigs and gorging like lords.
We have no coordination - we all go out and buy the exact same things (pulses,vegetables) for over a thousand bucks each and stare each other in the face like idiots.

We buy interesting and amusing items that we COULD cook. We never do but the important thing is that we COULD.

Its also so much healthier - Everything tastes better when deep fried - which makes one happy that releases endorphins that keep the mind happy and thus the body healthy.

And the variety - 3-4 side dishes every night at sit-down table dinners to bonding, gossip,fundae and general ass-taking while splitsvilla puts us all at ease in the background(someone remind me to rant at splitsvilla)

But im happy! im loving it! i who fought against the cook for some stupid dabba have been made to eat humble pie,crow, sambar rice, fried papad, chappatis, sabjis,etc u get the picture.
Thank you guys who inhabit florich with me

Let the money flow like water as long as it detours at the cook and flows right back into my (with some special care and nurturing) soon to be budding paunch.


Please god add Great Cook to the list.




P.s.

The list:

Hot
pretty
Hot
Half a brain
Heard at least once of a sense of humour
hot
LOW MAINTENANCE
thinks God achieved only Brad Pitt when trying to recreate me

in the top row only 't' n 'y' work...

my keyboard does not work.
yes, though i type this, my keyboard just does not work.
this is the third time this is happening.
due to the procss of swinging the laptop to the side of my bed after use, the pressure accumulates repeatedly at the exact same points such that the top row except for 't' n 'y' stop working. then after wrestling(literally) the keyboard, bending ,pushing and treating it like play-doh, i get the 'q' key to work which causes some kind of snow ball effect that makes the entire row work : hence this blog.

this is my first blog.
this is my first post.
it seemed like a good place to start - the struggle i went through to put these absolutely meaningless words to cyberprint.
as with most others i begin in sincerety and pray for longevity.

my kbd fals m agan.