Author: Abhinav Bhatt

  • Mandatory Valentine's Day Post

    I was a shy guy from the onset. Though I could blabber around freely with my guy pals, I was slightly meek when it came to talking with girls. Because of this inability to talk to them, they probably mistook me as an arrogant chap. Though I didn’t care much about others, there was someone in the same class which was a class apart. She, who had joined the classes the same year only, used to sit 2 desks in front of me. But like it always happen, was never able to gather enough courage to talk to her directly.  I thought that maybe she also thinks of me as a rude boy who doesn’t know how to talk to girls. Days went by, but the story remained the same until one day when I got the super powerful, the best thing invented after wheel and fire, ‘The Internet’.

    I thought that okay; I might not be able to confront her directly so why not take the help of the media which everyone uses. It was 8th November of the year 2007. Diwali was on the 9th. I knew that visiting her profile will mean leaving my footprint on her home page, thanks to Profile’s visitor feature of Orkut. Still, I wanted to wish her Diwali on her scrapbook. I quickly made up fake profile on it and sent her a friend request. I kept sure that the profile didn’t look fake and I made no attempt to make it look cool. I just made it same as mine except a changed name. And posted a scrap on her profile wishing her a very happy diwali. Also, I mentioned her that I was in her previous school, so sent the request and the scrap just like that.

    I used to check for her reply, each and every day but didn’t have any luck. After the Diwali break got over, I was on 7th heaven. She not only replied but also accepted my friend request. And hence began the most wonderful time of my life. Weird that it started online and continued to be online.

    We chatted daily. I have no idea how and why but probably because I remained myself in my fake account she and I gelled pretty well together. She shared her ambitions in her life and I told her mine. Soon we became best buddies online. She used to come online daily in the night 9.30 PM and so did I. We kept on chatting and chatting and chatting till my Mom begged me to sleep.

    On the other hand, off line, my relationship with her stayed the same. I still couldn’t talk to her directly. Whenever she brushed past me, my heart used to take 2 360 degrees somersaults. I thought this is good this way only. At least in some way I was in touch with her.

    It was January. While on online front we had became best buddies while off line we remained stranger. Valentine’s Day was in a month’s time. I thought that this is the best opportunity to reveal her my real identity and let’s take it forward in the real offline world.

    It was Jan 9th. We were in school that day, as I clearly remember. I was to board my bus to go home and she was sitting in her’s. And then the tragedy happened. As soon as her bus was about to take a turn, a truck coming from the other side hit the bus. The impact of the truck was not major but it shook the bus off. As she was sitting on the seat nearer to the door, she fell out of the bus and severely got injured. She fainted and blood started to rush through her head. Everyone ran towards her and took her to the nearby hospital. I was about a 100 ft distance and I just stared at the scene. I couldn’t move and couldn’t speak. She was admitted to a hospital and we were informed that she has gone into coma. I used to go online daily but she stayed offline. On Feb 14th I got to know that she had passed away. I was as heartbroken as if someone had snatched my soul away. School declared a day off and the scenario in the premises was sheer sadness.

    Time went by and activities in school became normal. Sadness stayed with me though. I still couldn’t believe what had happened on that day. Call me idiot or what but I still couldn’t show to the world that how well I knew her. What she wanted from life, what she wanted to become, who all were there in her family, what she thought of me, I kept thinking daily all the time. I used to go online every night, just to see a grey dot in front of her name. Though as a rule, I used to read the chat history to feel better. They were so full of life though there was no life left in them. And time moved on once again.

    It was Feb 14th a year later, Valentine’s Day once again. I was still the same shy guy who was single. My mood was as dull as it had been since many years. I was over her but a part of me still longed for her. I switched on my computer and opened the Gtalk. There were no contacts but her and still the grey dot stayed there. I shook my head and decided to delete the fake profile once and for all. When I was about to click the delete button, the grey dot in front of her name became green, a notification popped from the right bottom corner of my screen and a ping came saying ‘Hi <my real name>’.

  • That's Traffic!

    Bangalore: The Garden City or the City of Bangalore (Bengaluru) has known to be a harbinger in many aspects as far India is concerned. While people in rest of India were still looking up in the sky in order to irrigate their crops with rain water, people in Bangalore were thinking ways of loosening up the pockets of people in USA who were looking for cheap labor, thus making itself the Silicon Valley of India. Bangalore became the first city in India to get electricity. It was the first City to get an Internet Service Provider and similarly, it has been the first to achieve things, other cities could only dream of achieving.

    Not Silkbaord
    Silkboard, as rendered from a commuter's dream while sleeping on the traffic signal.

    While Bangalore was still in its nappy as in infancy, after the British had left, it gradually became Pensioner’s Paradise. Army Personnel and other retired people got shifted to Bangalore because of its delightful climate and peaceful environment. The city boasted of many gardens from which it bears the nickname ‘The Garden City’. This concept of making the city Garden-like, though, had some ill-effects which could have not been thought by the people then. As garden has narrow walkways, the architects of the city thought of playing a practical joke with the future residents of the city by making the main roads and streets as narrow as possible. Their vision of future Bangalore was as narrow as the possible and so they kept up with the legacy of being the first city to make narrow roads with heaviest traffic.

    In a recent study, it was found that the traffic running on the roads of Bangalore is so slow because of pathetic traffic condition that even atomic clocks are finding it difficult to measure the speed. Chief Assistant of Bangalore Development Authority’s youngest son’s Girlfriend who also happens to be a team member of the research organization Search for Lethargic Objects WorldWide or S.L.O.W. told us that they came up with the speeds of lowest objects on this planet and surprisingly   they found that Bangalore traffic is slower than the slowest of the slowest things possible. While it takes 1 minute for a snail to travel 1 cm, it takes hours for a vehicle to even shake a bit to be measured. Turtle, Sloth all travel faster than the Bangalore Traffic. In some weird cases it was observed that it might take more than to deliver a baby from conception than crossing an important junction of the city called as ‘Silk Board’.  Of course we are talking about the gestation period of Eastern quoll of Australia and not humans. Though she added that it might be unjust to compare living entities with the speed of traffic. So, she showed the stats and figures that proved that even the Indian Postal Service can be called lightening fast when compared to BT. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the former Prime Minister of the country, was known to complete his speech in lesser time as compared to time taken to cross Brigade Road on a vehicle.

    Another series of experiments like time taken for ketchup to drip completely from a bottle was compared with the time taken to cross the Marathalli bridge, the time taken to login to Airtel’s Website was compared with the time taken to cross the Graphite India red light signal in Whitefield, the duration of an Ashutosh Govarikar movie was compared to the time taken in turning towards NGV from Forum Mall in Kormangala showed the same story that everything other than the traffic moved faster.

    Initially, the study suggested that there are only pockets of city where the air is thicker as compared to the rest of the city. Thus, the viscosity of the air makes travel difficult. But then it was soon realized when the device used to measure viscosity viscometers didn’t reach at all the places because of the traffic itself and they had to be returned back. They were on rent, for your information.  The traffic police was not shy in poking fun at the fate of the people who travel on Bangalore roads by creating an outrageous upper limit of 60 KMPH for all vehicles. Demonstrations were held at Freedom Park against this inhumane sarcasm on the part of the traffic police. Though the demonstrations were not attended by much as they were stranded and stuck at traffic lights at various parts of the city so they were called off soon. To add to the fun, the BDA decided to start as many as 6 flyovers, underpasses on Outer Ring Road where there is basically no need but since they had extra money so no one complained.

    To help the commuters from this draconian task of travelling on the roads, Namma Metro was devised and after spending millions of Rupees, the services finally started between places where there was no need of metro.

    Finally, the research came to a conclusion that Bangalore can be a perfect spot for testing the Einstein Theory of Time Dilation as people travelling in other cities as compared to those who were on the roads of Bangalore tend to age quicker. Therefore, once again, living up with the tradition, Bangalore has been named as the first slow-motion city of India.

    – An Agent Foobar’s Exclusive.

  • The Sarcasmic Verses

    JLF 2012
    JLF 2012 Durbar Hall

    To be born again, one needs to die, and to dive deep into the dead sea, one needs to spark a controversy, and to spark that topic which can be controversial, one needs to take on something which is beneficial to someone, that something or someone has to be rigid and inflexible and stubborn, so something’s happened as I headed to the JLF in the Pink City that is my very own.

    O, their shoes, if not Japanese, were at least made up of posh Italian leather and with time they didn’t weather, hoji these English trousers you see were wrinkled and still wrinkle free, their hats if not for USSR or any country included in that, were certainly showing to their class still after being poshly poshest posh the what, the gentry at the festival reminded everything in actuality we are not. The kids with heavy cams, the writers and authors with interesting names, the aunties with big round bindis and open hair certainly oozed the intellect with the smoke they were puffing, the French bearded literature class with heavy eyelids showed the scholarly text, they were snuffing. And the girls there were simple voila, why to comment over them, some of them were 9.6 and others were 10 on 10.

    As it is not usually written in the preface of the book that it is banned in certain countries so I downloaded and read, where freedom of expression and speech is not as free as it seems, the democracy we live in is subject to certain communities to please and appease, secularism is a joke for the banks where they secure plenty of votes. The book may have its spine, but the Government lacks one, neither have they crossed or let anyone else cross the dreaded line and that in the end turned out to be fine.

    The show was actually going on fine as no one who were actually present in JLF were actually bothered about Salman Rushdie abstaining against his own will. The thoughts and intellect which was flowing in the air was totally healthy and not at all ill. The colors and the speakers at JLF were just beautiful. The crowd, a good mix of photogenic youth and intellectual veterans, was busy hustling bustling to get better view/seats in the tents and marquees. The sessions happening were full of knowledge and opinions, some of them were given by people we love and some we fake love like we cry while cutting onions.

    This year’s Lit fest might not have helped The Diggi Palace actually, since it was getting difficult to hold the crowd there, it might be moved to somewhere else or some restriction on entry might be applied, as it is much needed critically. The basic show got overshadowed by a not so required set of events, but time to time, things should happen to reveal the no-so-clear motives of our beloved governments.

    P.S.: This is my account of JLF and the controversies hovering over it. The language of the post evident somewhere and somewhere not is what I got from the banned book itself. I tried reading it but after 2 pages, I realized that it requires intellect of some other kind. And also it is banned so why bother. Meanwhile, below is a glimpse of how things looked there. Keep reading.

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  • Minimal Movie Posters India – Chak De! India

    Chak De! India
    Chak De! India

  • Minimal Movie Posters – Deewar [1975]

    Deewar
    Deewar

  • Minimal Movie Posters India – Baazigar

    And one more. Thanks for liking the concept on FB and Tumblr.

    Baazigar
    Baazigar

  • Minimal Movie Posters – The Burning Train

    And once more, so probably you know that I am here to stay… [hopefully]

    The Burning Train
    The Burning Train

    More on http://minimalmoviepostersindia.tumblr.com/ and waiting for contributions from others.

    P.S.: The destination might be a little tricky but it is just a fan art so any mistake is minimal too on a minimal poster anyways. No?

  • Minimal Movie Posters – Ghajini

    Since I am liking doing this too much, here is another one up your, err, eyes.

    Ghajini
    Ghajini

    With this, also announcing the birth of the blog http://minimalmoviepostersindia.tumblr.com/ where anyone can contribute stuff. On this blog though, I shall continue with mine.

  • Minimal Movie Posters – Mr. India

    Heavily impressed and hence inspired from http://minimalmovieposters.tumblr.com/, I guess Indian cinema can also have minimal posters of its own. So why not give it a try. So presenting the first for the movie ‘Mr. India’.

    Mr. India
    Mr. India

  • If all goes well

    part one

    I whispered to you the name of the place, where we could meet in solace. It wasn’t between the right or the wrong, it was rather right there all along. You hinted to me that you understood, or at least I thought that you would. It wasn’t very distant, rather it was pretty close. I believed it idiotically being in a chirpy mood so I couldn’t decipher you who was still a bit morose.

    part two

    Optimism took me there, it was indeed very cold, I stood there telling myself that I should wait there and rather take an oath, I could still feel my heartbeat beneath the layers of the cloth. Time went by, you didn’t come, I knew it already though, but still I waited because I hope you come, wrongly so. Then I heard the news which might have made you even sombre, it sunk into me and I felt like the a dwindling project going from green to amber.

    Let bygones be bygones as they say, time heels everything per se, I hope the days to come will bring you some cheer, so if all goes well, I’ll wait for you on the other side of this year…

    —

    Image Courtesy: A link posted by Smashing Magazine or Neuve or some website obviously. I forgot again.

    P.S.: This post is a part of an experiment. And I am talking about JLP in this post. What did you think?

    Update [29 Dec 2011 21.37 PM]: JLP: Jan Lokpal. And some grammatical mistakes corrected. 😐