February is right here and we welcomed it with 2 minor bomb blasts for once we didnt sensationalised it, we didnt over feed the modern working vulnerable and high blood pressure citizens of Delhi Thanks to you dear media for having forsaken your extra TRP and newspaper quotionts and splashing the theories behind who and whys of it. I have always wondered why do we need to know who is these militant organisations and why are they doing what they are doing. What to me we as citizens are interested in is the safety and security , andnot who all and how all and why all are breaking it. Dear Police and Government, take ownership and sheild us from all the gory details, dont force us to give out our verdicts we are not courts please. Just let us know if its safe enough to venture out and if not then when is it going to be, dont make us work out the strategies of how to make it safe for me, individually. I mean time and again we hear why the incident happened, hello we dont need to be told why that happened we need to be reassured that it wouldnt happen for thats why we let you have a chunk of our taxes and mind you we pay a substantial part of our hard earn money for you. Become accountable.
Anyway high hopes and yes I know but nevertheless I want to speak out :)
And what is it, Delhi is suddenly getting so expressive sometimes I wonder if I am in Europe or was it always like this. Last Sunday post my show I went in to check the Indraprast park and found no different than trafalgar square, its all about couples kissing, embrassing and fondling I mean personally speaking I dont have any issue with it and surprisingly I may have been the only odd voyeuristic looking soul but by and large hardly anyone was moved. I always thought it as a family park but appears to be the New Lodhi Garden. That reminds me of visiting Lodhi Garden atleast once, I remember we use to go to Lalbagh Gardens to catch one of those odd couples hiding behind the bushes and few odd like us trying to catch a glimpse. But that seems to be history today hardly anyone seems to be bothered. Just day before I found one couple getting really cosy in an white Accent car and felt a little embrassed with me looking straight at them. Anyway way to go Delhi...
So today we met and checked out the Castle 9. Not wouldnt recommend, its way too costly, one round of mocktails and 1 round of coffee with one veg platter it was 600 per heard, not worth it. Should have gone to good old Rodeos though hygiene has been an issue out there.And we talked about the Bhoots versus mind theory which earned me a new title that of a Doctor. The hardest question was why would one get dreams displaying what is to happen in future, how can that be explained...well couldnt do much and so we decided to post it in one of the talk radio show and see what the Delhi thought about it
Serious stuff and before it really gets dreadful lets quit :) gnite..
Labels: Bomb Blasts, Lounges, Mind and Ghosts and Spirits, Public Display of Emotion
Winters are not dead, they are just dead cold! If you know what I mean, enough of complaining that winters have become notional, its just one day when its dead cold and then its back to summers, does good to the country for you don’t have states overdrawing power or outage in the morning hours when you want your daily dose of hot water shower and splash. But this year either I have been lucky not to face power outage or for some reason I have been feeling really cold and chilly. Winter has become suddenly very persistent and so has been electricity so perseverant. Lucky us!
So will tomorrow we get to see 0 degrees temperature as soothsaid by BBC Weather forecast, did you notice we no longer quote our dear Met department either coz it doesn’t give out weekly forecast or we want to invite competition to who gives out the most (in) correct forecasts. Whatever it be, the weather has been really enjoying ;for once I haven’t felt depressed during winters and maybe because I have seen how little sun light you get elsewhere like in UK and co where it is sun rise at 8am and sun set at 4pm or maybe I have really been enjoying my existence. Cheers to you!
Have you noticed that the readymade tea is the cause of acidity or it is just me, I mean we get Coffee day "vended" teas and coffee and these days I cant take more than a sip before I become pukish and so I walk 200 meters in the dusty roadside to have the ginger, milk-heavy "cooked" tea, a term which I coined to explain to my expat boss what do we do when we let it boil and boil and boil for minutes on the gas. That milk heavy cooked tea hasn’t ever let me feel pukish and I enjoy it every time that I pay 4 rupees for it as against having it for free in the office. I remember people telling me that you KILL the tea if you put milk in it and its nothing less than a non potent poison if you make it milk heavy and worst if you COOK it.
So let me get it straight on your face, why do I feel pukish when I have a non-cooked, non milk heavy tea in the office for that as per the sanctum definition is the real refreshing harmless tea?
And is it about showoff when you see someone happily having a glass full of vodka or rum (I am ignorant about the nomenclature and definition of the alcohol) in one hand with window glasses fully rolled down, sipping it, at a traffic junction waiting for the light to turn green. I mean is it not openly flaunting the traffic laws and worst is it not acting yamraj on the street or is this the new method of getting a road dedicated to your car when you are out on it, much better and effective than having a red beacon light flashing and asking for space so that you move ahead out of the traffic cluster?
DL3C AS0282 at Qutub T-junction with someone in a Scorpio and having a turban on his head happily inviting that attention at 10 pm on 29th Jan. I am sure this is too common to be even bothered about. And was something like this to blame in a car which was lying flat on the roof, turned turtle on the sohna road in the median, meters ahead of UniTech Cyber Towers in Sec39 Ggn? Human life is not worth it or else why would someone be able to hit on the head of another man in the broad day light and almost kill him instantly with an iron rod inspite of 100 of men around.
And then you have a Labrador made to sit happily in an Omni Taxi being taken for a city ride, just the dog and the taxi driver. We human may be compassionate, intelligent but mind you we, all of us are so very eccentric in our own big way!
Dare to disagree and I will be happy! Ciao and Goodbye January 2008!
Labels: Tea and Driving, Winter
Alrite its close to 2 years and what a sabbatical or what a nonsense return to a mundane lifeless formless intangible addiction. Bravo you alive to be able to return and bravo to withstand withdrawal after effects.
Or hello it wasn't anything of that sort maybe it was just another of me-can and then I lost interest. Well I don't even remember why I quit, or even if I quit, or even if I had started blogging ever, but what the butter chicken! here I am.. what if its cathartic symbiosis of reality interlaced with memories.
A lot has continued to change, I have continued to think to quit radio, but like a shameless winding tail of a street dog, I continue to park myself every weekend in the lifeless studio; which assumingly and amusingly rocks thousands of lives out there, or so we are happy to believe, but then, who is out there daring enough to rock us out of this delirium; Nobody!. When you slip, darn its you! who is moving away and you blame the world, for having left you alone to free fall, what an irony!
I have in the past 2 years moved out of radio for good 6 months , killed a beautiful show called Hasto Ke Ghar Baste and thank you listeners for giving me an identity out of that show; which took birth out of sheer frustration, when me and Naren use to sit in the studios, with Naren playing non stop tracks in his second hour and I waiting for my Dilli Mail, to kiss the mike couple of hours later. Dr Ritu the darling that she is,equally pricey in giving her attention, well it will be hard for the Channel to get any other Boss, who with her limited, precious, eagerly awaited and remarkably popular on-air presence would outsmart majority of her regular Radio Jocks. She was daring and was ably assisted in her mental and creative faculties, beating her age, she sure is past the exuberant fledgelings youth that todays RJs are made of, but her ability to think on her feet and ability to compose thoughts in hard hitting soft compositions would make any one worth his salt fall for her charms, and with her fashionable straight in the eye demurring presence she would knock out a lot of young wannabes. We miss her, us lesser mortals especially for she picked me up as RJ, only because I being muslim was taken for granted to be good with Urdru (which reality is that I don't know how to read or write) and being North Indian, was not to have any issues with Hindi(reality was that having lived 10 years in south I would mix up genders as if there has to be a perfect marriage of opposites in nouns and supporting verbs) and English was good enough to not worry of, for I had done English Radio for good 5 years at Bangalore. She soon woke upto the reality of having taken on-board a RJ, experienced enough to not learn and fallible enough to be taken back to basics. So she corrected my Hindi and became my Hindi tutor, to an extent, where I could cover up my faux-pas, not so much if you happen to listen to my top of the hour news bulletins.
Anyway so it was a lot of threatening, reasoning, blackmailing, emotional manipulation, buttering and cunning smartness to get her to understand that its a waste to let someone like Naren, play non stop music and why not I, learn some on air humour with him and do a show together without any extra renumeration.
Thats how Hasto Ke Ghar 2 hour show was born and how did it come to an end .. well the reason to bring it down is yours truly. It sure hurts but then there is a nasty satisfaction that the creator managed to be the destructor and what a peace, if there was someone else, God have mercy on him! for we loved the show so much that we could have even have killed that person had it been anyone but me.
Radio has lost its charm, its not easy to work with new bosses and so I have been trying to enjoy my full time job. Our gang of few stupid and mentally challenging and emotionally weak RJs also hit its The End with one getting married, the other moving to a private Station, another first teaming up locally with a private station and then, now moved out of city (as if staying in the same city was getting criminal ,huh?)and me and Naren having parted thanks to the collapse of the show.
So we were talking about how punctual the change had been and how fool we had been to believe, that Changes are only for good, forgetting that good is a comparison and the moment you get few good in your life; it slides down the scale to become average! and then you start moving further up!. Its a futile exercise to find GOOD in your life, Man if you were intelligently foolish enough to believe me, you sure would throw a smile on that.
But hold on, you cant throw a smile on the Toll Plaza on the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway, I sure have suddenly got a hanfull collection of clocks which have seconds running slower than the minutes, for none of my watches clock the whole journey to be of 20 minutes of zip. The first problem is, we attempted to beat the basic Indian belief that staying on the right side will lead us to the Right turn and so you have a chaos on the RTR Flyover where traffic towards Gurgaon wants to stay on the left(need to go sraight) and Traffic for Dwarka/Domestic Airport wants to stay on the right(as they need to take a right turn) which is not what the Flyover designers thought of providing, they wanted to surprise our logic and why not! for its a long 27 km journey which will be so boring if there be no surprises like this. So the first day there was massive jams, second day the vehicles were being driven in reverse gear, in spite of Traffic Marshalls holding the respective placards, aptly forgetting that while driving, we would like to focus at the wheel, our phone and cigarettes :) and we men would go to hell ,to have sinned! if we dared to read signs, and worst if we tried to understand them.
Well this is not just the only beating the logic on this expressway, when you hit the toll plaza you clearly find the indications for lanes marked for TAGs and the for TOLL and they were initially placed alternatively. But reading we do in libraries or offices, but never on the road, its dangerous after all :), so there was chaos and on every lane we had folks who wanted to pay toll and move on, blocking passage for TAGged vehicles. And then next day you had another beating the logic game, this time there was just ONE TAG lane, the most extreme right one and the rest all were meant for TOLL, after all only handful of them had bought TAGs rest of us believed in living the complete experience of paying and getting receipt and then moving on. But here was another beating the logic, now someone forgot that we LOVE to jump the lanes, and get really ecstatic singing hallelujah :) , when we get to CREATE our own lanes! and so when the wide road converges into 16 lanes ,there is a lot of space in between those lanes and so few of us get that ethereal experience of creating our OWN lanes adding to the chaos and then visibly playing - pehle aap pehle aap! (aap actually means ME, if you thought it otherwise).
So 2 days of living with my slow clock, I reverted back to Good Old MG road, simple for I don't have to pay to burn extra gas, ruin the environment and get a nasty look on my face with bosses thinking that here I am coming late after yet another interview for another job; and since I have returned, without yet a resignation letter to him, it means I am no good for another job and therefore shouldnt be considered good inspite of really delivering good work day in and day out and hence he can deny me all the benefits of a hard and leal worker!
More on life tomorrow, till then you can welcome me back ! :)
Let me know who said Weekends are to relax and catch on with your sleep, unwind and you look forward to it. Am I strange or I was born upside down? I hate it for it’s so hectic that the only thought which I end up remembering is Monday Blues, you are tired, gloomy, yawning and so heartbroken.
Weekdays are nice, they are predictable and if you have regular work flowing in; pass like seconds and the best thing is you can count days left for Fridays and on weekends you dare not count days, Saturday nights are long and tiring and Sunday is the worst day for a RJ if he is on air Sunday you are the master for everyone worth his salt is off enjoying the sun somewhere and you are either donning the mike or assisting your bum chums on air. I realised that I work longer hours than weekdays and radio doesn’t even pay me as much as my regular job does. So much to pay for your love!!
I am sure I want to quit radio since past 2 years but then there is so much of blackmailing, your listeners, your trusted colleagues who being RJ themselves are hardest shrinks and sweetest enemies to resist and then your producer whose first question would be if not you then who? Who can do this show I don’t even know what you do on your show. Damn why did I innovate on radio and pay the price, you just can’t miss one weekend on air for it’s you’rs on air hours and then your colleagues hours who depend on assistance provided by yours truly.
Did I not try to charm my colleagues; fooled them as to how easy doing my shows are, it was such a hard task to finally go on my US trip. Soon I had realised that answering questions at the embassy for visa was no comparison to finding my stand by and getting a go ahead from my producer, suddenly all my friends had sidelined themselves putting me up there high on the pedestal which they wouldn’t dare attempt to climb. Finally
Mehak fell for the trap and Geet agreed to ensure the trap continued; by providing all the necessary assistance. All during my stay in US I kept getting blackmailing SMS as to how boring it is to not be doing my shows.And finally I had to cut short the trip to come back to Delhi to my shows and what a professional price to pay leaving my project mid way in US to be back in India and for what?? Radio. Definitely money doesn’t make the world go round its pure foolishness called love and its temptation.
So finally
Vandana got her Album released, what a voice and what a person, having known her now for quite some time and her life a bit, she does deserve accolades to have had her album released considering that she trained to be a Corporate Lawyer and is such an amazing on air RJ.Its sad that its a remix album and that she still is not releasing her self written and self composed songs which have an instant I-know-it lyrics; but to believe her words, she is going to have it out soon. I finally did call her on the show
(Dilli Mail) and had her talk about her album and sing a song for us, I remember I use to do one of my earlier shows and she was there booked for a show right after mine and was calling all her singer friends from Palash to Mallick and with a look like hers; I had thought her to be a firang minus the twang, desi-firang!!.
Those were my earlier days in Delhi Rainbow and was an underdog but from then to now, it’s been quite a journey, a journey which has been worth a travel. It’s a different feeling when you see one of you achieve and get what one deserves; I am sure all of us, her friends wish and hope that she continues to have her albums piled up one after the other. Vendy go for it!!
So its going to be the third year of RJ Bash and how different will it be this year since last year, when I look back I see that I have a knack of starting off these bashes from College to now Radio. And this year we want to take it a little higher, if Movie Stars can have it, Television artists can have it then why not we now when radio is such a catch on. Sometimes I feel that 8 years of radio is enough but then when I look at OP or Parvati or Narendra Joshi or Pradeep Kumar I see that one can be RJ for much longer. But the case is different with Private Stations where you call it quits in 3 years or 4, its such a tiring job, 6 days a week with 4 hours on air every day, come on one aren’t so witty in life to come up every day with something new; so can you afford to become repetitive, no you cant, and therefore you quit.
But it’s fun to be with Rainbow, if you are seasoned then you do one day in a week for few hours and hold your forte and if you are really good then you are penalised by being asked to be on air on weekends on so called weekend manoranjan khazana. I don’t love any life if not this but then I do want to love other lives, let me see when I can call it quits. Let me call it quits now for this weekend and welcome new week.
So what do you do when you are caught in a tricky situation, you just think of getting out of it, feeling of security, safety and the ego hurt gets on to you; yes you would survive injury, loss of money, loss of love but a slight brush down on your ego is like you are amputated brainwise; you wouldn't want it and if you get it you wouldn't take it.
We thought only men carried their ego with an air pump carry on, but what an irony its not such a divider, ego is the new status symbol, if you have loads of it you are well respected and if you don't then you are a farmer, you fend for the rest without which the rest wouldn't survive but you are not even paid back that for yourself what you fend for others.
We get to hear so often how can he not turn back and look at me, am I handicapped or devoid of a shape and form or am I invisible, push button availability !! Yes look backs when you want it how you want it. The irony is ,the invitations to look back are not for everyone even though they are available for every eyes reach, if not feast; it should come only from the ones who are the select few (read out of reach).Its ego which blinds you and singles you out from the crowd, you walk in a sea of people but still think its just you and that special man. No one in his mind would ignore that every action of yours is pried upon by every second person you wouldn't want to even notice your dog, we always thought that was love but alas its the hunger of the ego which sometimes humbles you sometimes angers you to no extreme and when the ping pong gets tired you call a love being lost.
Love is for the dogs ,for its a feeling; why should a feeling need a word or worst sentences, which are so vulnerable to twists and designs of a human. Do feelings needs reassurance, can you generate a feeling do you know what triggers the feeling do you understand where it comes from? And what in the world of mind tells you that reassurance in the form of display and commitment is reassurance to that feeling. Grow up its ego and you want a feed for it, a reassurance that it would be fed day in and day out
Love is probably a palpation, a connection that understands the language of touch,skin to skin or internet to internet or just vibes to vibes something which your mind would forever die to understand but would still be miles away from anywhere close, Love is intrigue, a mystery a reason to enjoy, living in pain all in the name of love is glorifying mindlessness.
Life is too short to experiment pains you anyway would experience it why cant you just experiment happiness, contentment, peace, respect , connect with people connect with mysteries connect with love connect with me :)
Its yet another day when you wake up and walk directly to the washroom, drawing room, reading room, TV room and back to the bed (in random sequence) and then realize that its well past morning and you have brushed your teeth, read your newspaper, turned on the radio and the TV at the same time, microwaved tea ( you no longer boil tea on the gas) and maybe even cribbed about the maid not done the cleaning and you are still not awake. Your mind is programmed to do all this even while you are still in your limberness, today Time is too little to be let passed by in the complete consciousness doing trivial things.
There was a time when you could wake up, turn multiple times in your bed, stretch and yawn, rub your nose, clean your throat and then yet again crawl up against your chest and enjoy few more moments of absolute bliss ;transitioning from the strange and strong dreams to the oh so identical and harsh reality. But where is that luxury any more, if you have few more minutes you would stay a little longer on chat or cam or on Cell or who knows glued to the TV or catch few more lines of Enimem and laugh at his poke in the pubic lyrics.
Sometimes you are lost if its Monday or if its Tuesday because Tuesday is the deadline for the Phone Payment or maybe Friday; for now its time to update yourself on the movies released in the week so as to talk on the show, talking as if you watched those movies yourself or thank to Himesh you can always say a thousand things about him, all nasty and nasal. Himesh bashing is the in thing in radio, its given hours of talk time without you even bothering to understand if Himesh is a singer to be or a Music Director has been.
Delhi is transforming itself like a Cinderella with a pair of shoes and the clock frozen . Don't I amaze myself at times at the pace with which every day you get to see a new development in some or the other locality. And look at weather!! Is Bangalore better or is Delhi better now, every single day I curse my fate of having to go to office and sit in AC Cubicle right next to a glass wall and the outside world teasing me to take a jump. Or to sit in the studio appreciating the rain drops on the mike Finally Delhi is getting blessed, sometimes I wonder what if Delhi gets bangalore's weather!!! Probably everything else is getting close to a perfect, ring roads being widened to be of 6 lanes, noida to Naraina almost signal free or for that matter, Rajghat to Naraina Signal free a good 20+kms, metro done with its Phase 1; a ride which is almost similar to Hongkong Metro (which at one station is 3 levels underground) Delhi Metro is just 2 levels underground (at CP).
What is the future? is it anymore unknown. What is time ? is it lady's diamond and then what is love, that for sure is for the dogs to understand. We are on a downward stream, too fast to catch and notice anything, too helpless to do anything but tide along, Hello; Rang De Basanti is like a big rock which hits you, tumbles you over multiple times, either you are saved or you are pushed down with a greater force and speed. Welcome to my Blog!!
