Abhinav Bhatt

Minimal Poster – F.R.I.E.N.D.S

Made some minimal posters for FRIENDS (TV Series from 1994-2004)

Joey & Chandler's Apartment — Joey & Chandler’s Apartment

With Lack of Outrages, Tweeple hang up FirstPost Site

New Delhi. 12th June 2013 by Anonymous_Journalism_by_Broadband

In an absolutely inexplicable set of events, Twitter users across the country hung the news portal site FirstPost by overloading it with comments citing their frustrations due to lack of outrage generated on Twitter.

June 11th day was the most unusual day in the history of microblogging site Twitter as there was no event through which Twitter users could fetch any hint of outrageous material to carry out their daily Twitter duties. Normally, a day on Twitter is initiated by ridiculous statement by a politician or a molestation or rape case in NCR or the weather of Bangalore or snow in Chennai or some act by a Bollywood personality in Mumbai or a brilliant performance by Ravindra Jadeja or an Apple event or any event which can be made fun of, literally. But nothing of such nature happened on 11th June. Twitter users had nothing to comment, trend or even play contest yesterday. Even the irritating handles which carry out quizzes were busy in their rare but mandatory real-life activities.

‘I have nothing to outrage today. As I have already outraged over nothingness of outraging, I am getting frustrated more and more.’, tweeted a twitter celeb with handle @Psychedelic_Sundaram.

Similar tweets of frustration were seen from most of the users in India. This build up of frustration took its toll on the news portal FirstPost which usually runs on the content generated by Twitter. As there was nothing on Twitter which could have helped journalists on FirstPost to write an article, they put up an article which stated ‘How boring Twitter had become and is this the right time to pull the plug off it!’. As soon as this post was tweeted by their handle, Twitter users across the country got irked and start commenting on FirstPost’s website. This created a frenzy of comments as everyone on Twitter, as they had nothing to outrage upon, jumped on to the website and crashed its server.

The editor sensed the situation and asked all the staff of 3 people present in the office to evacuate the building faking a mock fire drill. He was caught saying that he feared that people like KRK could attack their office in angst. Rest of the staff was working from home, as usual, couldn’t even post their attendance of the day because of the server outage. As per the last reports, the IT admin team have restarted the servers and meanwhile a pub related incident has occurred in Gurgaon. IT admin believes that since at least something outrage worthy has happened, people might get distracted from the site and get back on to Twitter doing the best they can do, that is to outrage.

The events of that night

Usually I don’t ponder much about life because I find the word ponder funny. But then sometimes, you experience certain happenings when you have to ponder on your life and jot down on your blog, for everybody’s amusement.

Last week, I got an opportunity to visit a Hill-Station-y sort of place called Coorg about 220 KM from Bangalore. The place is good if you like riding across hills with light drizzling and in need of a much needed respite from Bangalore’s traffic. Actually I had gone to Coorg to attend a friend’s wedding who happened to be a Kodava. They’re very unlike usual stereotyped South Indians and usually drink a lot as if it is free. Apart from the shock that they don’t use spoons while eating rice, the affair was pretty nice as everyone ate a lot of pork, got drunk and came back home happily. And vegetarians like me had to live on just rice and regret about lack of respect people have nowadays for vegetarians. And apparently, if you seriously ask, I can tell that the appearance of the Kodava people and dressing are quite pleasant, if you know what I mean. Anyways, let us not digress as we have to travel 220 KM back and we have no time.

So while coming back from there, I was supposed to take a bus from Virajpet Bus Stand. The departure time of my bus was 11.45 PM and I had reached there at 5.30 PM because it is assumed that I am oblivious to the practice of getting bored. To add fun to this exciting journey alone, I had no earphones or any book to read to pass time. So to drag patience for 6 hours, I had no option but to see around the place. Usually bus stands in India are quite chirpy and full of life. This Virajpet bus stand was very small and you could do nothing but seeing some of the people getting on and off the buses without much hoopla. It is often said that when Murphy was about to jot down his laws, he ran out of the ink. Similarly, when I thought of seeing in and around the Virajpet Bus Stand, it started to rain which went on till bloody all night. After deliberately spending time in counting the number of time I bit each biscuit of a Good Day pack, I could only reach 7 PM. Soon the roof just above the seat I was sitting started to leak, drop by drop. After that I got in conversation with a local plantation guy who told about degrading Coorgi culture and that guys in Bangalore are weak physically for sometime. He left shortly though. As I was wearing shorts it started to feel a bit chilly and wet so I had to move my place to another seat near to which a person was sleeping and snoring at regular intervals. He kept on sleeping till 11 PM by the way. Before it starts getting boring, let us quickly fast forward to 11 PM. One bus arrived which looked similar to mine so I went there and asked whether this was it. The driver said no and asked me to stand on the main road outside the bus stand as buses towards Bangalore don’t enter the bus stand after 11 PM usually. I don’t understand why they call the bus stand the bus stand as buses don’t enter and stand there at all.

I picked up my stuff and stood outside the bus stand under a shed as it was still raining continuously. Under a neighborhood shed, another guy was standing who asked me ‘Bangalore??’. I nodded in agreement. Raining, I am sitting alone under a shed and one guy. Nice setting no? No. The guy came closer. Not that closer but in one-on-one discussion distance closer. Yes, I am offending you all but that guy was probably a squint. He was also travelling alone so he thought he could lure me into a discussion. Heh, poor chap because as soon as he started talking, I realized that it was all Kannada and I was getting nothing. I told him ‘Kannada barailla’ because ‘Kannada gothilla’ is too mainstream. He looked very disappointed so I asked him ‘Hindi? English?’ He smiled and said ‘Toda toda’. But he knew nothing actually. It was getting darker and rainier and bus stand across the road was now almost deserted. The guy told me something from which I could make out ‘Single person standing at bus stand can invite trouble’. Well done man, well played. Then he made a hut like gesture and asked me where I lived. I told him and he felt satisfied as he now understood that gesturing is a better way to pass your message across instead of just talking gibberish to me with eyes pointing in some other direction. Then we talked, ahem, in signal language about jobs, family, Rajasthan, rains, Electronic City, Coorg, etc. Then he said something that he didn’t have reservation in the bus and was being tortured by his father so he was traveling to Bangalore. I just gave an ‘oh’ and started looking into my cellphone as it was now 1145 and my bus should have been very near. At around 12 AM, a bus arrived and when I stopped the bus and asked about the scheduled bus, the driver said that my bus was about to arrive shortly. Meanwhile, there was one vacant seat in that bus so that guy who was supposedly running away from Coorg boarded the bus and went away.

I stood alone now as the roads and the bus stand was now almost fully deserted, I could just see few groups of workers passing by and occasional auto-rickshaw zooming around. Few drunkard also passed by apart from some weirdos who chose the bus stand as smoking zone. I could see a couple of Policemen who also wandered to check any ill happening. Now I wondered what if the policemen interrogated me about my intent of standing there alone at such unholy time and that too in Kannada. They didn’t which first I felt alright but then realized that they could have been of help as well. It was now 1 AM and I thought that end is nigh and I should do something about it. I tried calling friends but the call couldn’t reach. After trying a couple of times, finally I was able to call one friend and told him about the situation. I also asked whether I can go back to the city and stay there for the time being so that I could start in the morning but the call got cut again. Just when I was about to lose all hope and cry :’-), finally the bus arrived.

I boarded the bus and eventually reached Bangalore in the morning without getting robbed and whatever is famous nowadays. Some lessons were learnt and also it was noticed that even if you’re a guy, you are as vulnerable as anyone if you are alone in a place in the night where you don’t know the language and have no idea about the geography and you are just unfortunate. Ponder over it.

Possible Causes of Rapes in India and How to Avoid Them version 2

Sources:

Version 1 here: http://abloquacitylab.wordpress.com/2012/12/22/causes-of-rapes-in-india/

Social Media and Real World Enthusiasm

You might have watched the latest Fastrack ads running on TV nowadays. The ads which suggest us to ‘Move on’. The problems with those ads are not that they are asking our society to break shackles of orthodox traditions and culture and simply be a progressive society by moving on (Hilarious!) but that they don’t tell us about the things they are trying to sell via those ads. A normal Indian mind will think of wardrobe, furniture and inflatable houses to be honest and not watches, bags and belts. I wish they had taken model-looking-models at least. Anyways, the point of this blog post is to give an insight on the predicament Indian youths are facing in these times where we are stuck in between the Social Media and the Babu at the Post office. While the Internet has strangled us from all the sides and made us faster, smarter (?) and louder, the post office uncle is still the same chap from 1950s who uses lubrication from Paan he’s chewing to turn pages on our Recurring Deposit (don’t ask why I wrote this) passbooks. And we have to deal with both.

There’s no denying the fact that social networking sites have changed our lives. World has become smaller (you can marry your online mate) and faster (still learning about Bitcoins, more on this later) and transparent (for instance Article 66A). From the ultrasonography pics of yet to be born children to the uncle on the verge of retirement, everyone is online. What if the most popular pages on Facebook like ‘Bahut bhookh lagi hai yaar…’ are run by socially inept people who have never seen daylight or twitter accounts run by Anti-social elements where they crack jokes all the time using puns lamer than lame duck prime minister one particular country in South Asia has, the social media sites have shaken the society from its deep roots. People being people get to share things and voice their opinions which enable us to think forward and stop being a regressive state. The Social media is slowly taking over Mainstream media as well. Which means that newspapers even have the right to publish some tweets under the title Twitterverse (hah) because new age journalists were taught that writing actual news is absolutely boring and when you can copy paste stuff from net, why do anything else like going out on the road and listen to real people and report real life problems! So, people believe in social media and new age journalism and marketing. They do.

But beyond this active, chirpy world in retina and AMOLED display and mesh of LAN cables, there exists a world which you have seen only in real life, that is, the offline world. Yes, that world where you’re made a Kiwi at the instant you try to jump more than you should. Real life happens when you were busy making plans with online mates. Well, the truth my dear friends, is that Twitter and Facebook are majorly nonsensical. Apart from being a matrimonial site, Facebook is mainly a birthday reminder service. Twitter is nothing but an Earthquake alert service. Your outrage on Twitter is waste. Unless you are a jobless chipmunk with > 1368 followers (Well researched number, so please) nobody is going to pay attention. Ok, you’re a girl, then fine, people will listen. While you are trying to arrange a tweetup, your parents are going to tie you up with a suitable match they approved after watching her pic on Facebook. While you were shouting against govt. policies, in real world, govt. has slapped you with newer taxes and increased the price of water as if it was petrol. While you were angry about corruption, you yourself are paying 100 Rupees to the traffic police who caught you without helmet. While you are cribbing about the summer as if it is the first summer which is hot, the met department has promised a normal monsoon this year which translates to ghanta normal monsoon.

Summarizing, we are a generation who have one leg in the traditional India and another in the Internet savvy Bharat, as DJ says, you have to decide where you want to let go your frustrations. I suggest, go offline and play.

Ludovic Toinel

I believe in Dravid

I have decided. That I am going to stand by and support Rahul Dravid’s team during this season of IPL 2013 because it is a Rahul Dravid led team. Also, I believe that because of the recent events, Dravid won’t participate voluntarily in the next edition of the cursed cricket tournament. This post is also a long pending tribute to the man himself, Rahul Dravid.

But first, if you haven’t read Sidvee’s post about him after he got retired, cut short reading this and just go there and read it (http://sidveeblogs.wordpress.com/2012/03/09/goodbye-dravid/). Else, continue…

You want to go to a place and you have two options. You can take the shortest route possible and reach within no time. Or you may take a longer route at a slower but steadier pace, savoring the moments of journey and then reach the destination. The route which one takes defines the person, I think. Same goes with life. It is a weird span of time. We all fall into the trap and try to lead a life following a certain dream based upon the expectation of others and set standards of the society. That ambition of ours, to succeed in life where the term success itself is very complex, makes us to crave for milestones and work towards achieving the aim. Everyone tries that, some are able to do it, most don’t. The trick is how you do it. Of course you want to be born in a well-doing family where all the amenities already exist. But some people want a different life. They want to work hard and achieve everything on their own. They toil day and night to learn new tricks. They keep trying till they are perfect in the technique. They live life and not just zoom past it. There are some terms like ‘meticulous’ specially made for those individuals who work towards their dream. They represent the average guys who are born with a certain potential but it can work for them only if they extract the kinetic energy out of it by grilling themselves on a regular basis. They have to better themselves every day or they will lag behind. They are also the responsible and dependable. They know that along the journey, many things will fail around them but they have to keep their cool, keep the concentration intact, keep the blood flowing in their veins and most importantly keep their integrity. They fail yet they keep coming back. They are stubborn. They are called slow, tortoise like but still they complete the journey. The never dwindling will makes them transform their average backbone into tough tortoise like back as if it is some therianthropy. During the journey, they become strong. They become tough, cynic by not getting perturbed by the crumbling and yet optimistic. They resemble a wall. It stays there. Others feel safe around it. Others know that if the wall stays, they are safe and this instills the confidence in them that they can win, even if they are plain average.

Such is Rahul Dravid.

There are innumerable instances where he did what was expected of him. From 96 till last year or so, he kept performing. The belief in Indian cricket came back after the April 2000’s findings. I risked my 2001’s final exams (which happened to be the X Board exams) because he was creating magic with VVS during this http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/current/match/63920.html and I don’t regret it all. He, along with few other names, did his best to take Indian cricket to its heights, thereby making platform for them to win the subsequent No. 1 positions and a few cups in limited over tournaments. He never complained of the over-shadowing because he was just doing his job. We already know the achievements. What makes him stand out more that he is still strong in his will. The integrity is still intact. Now he is not there anymore wearing white kits. Just after he retired, India lost a couple of series with blatant whitewashes. You might not realize directly but the backbone of Indian batting had been taken out, when he retired.

He is now playing, most surely, his last professional cricket, IPL. I am going to miss him so I support him for a couple of matches more. I should. I must.

Sun raha hai na tu

One billion articles have been written about how IPL is sexist and a capitalist paradise. Nobody wants to say bad things about Rochelle Rao but those cheer girls (same set of girls everyday!) dancing in SET Max studio are of no use to the game of Cricket and also because of another gentleman named Siddhu already present in the same room to distract the viewer from the girls is already a menace we are being subjected to. Another billion articles have been written over Hansie Cronje’s life and other match fixing scandals surfaced a decade ago. Poor Gibbs still avoids coming to India and tries to remain unsold at the IPL Auction every time. (He doesn’t know about the OLX ad as far as I know). One more billion articles are being written about the spot fixing catastrophe which has embarked upon the team of Rajasthan Royals today. Consider this article as One Billion and oneth.

Consider, you’re sitting at your home at night listening to Saliva’s ‘Lades and Gentleman‘ and electricity gets cut, thanks to 2 namesake drops of rain. It becomes all dark (IPL match starts). Now even if nothing is visible (not a Test Match kind of genuine Cricket format but still…), you still know where to go (all your favorite players are there) and get emergency light (which are never charged by the way) or candles (quickfire sure shot excitement of T20). You know that on the way you will have to evade furniture to avoid getting hurt (meager faint-ish chances of matches being rigged) and you actually do cover your ground with great success (reaching play offs). But just before you reach the destination, the smallest toe of your right leg (Sreesanth) hits the bottom most corner of the dining table (spot fixing) and you utter a sister-related swear word (Kohli’s catchphrase) under your breath, trying to hold your tears from coming out because of immense pain you have to bear. This feeling is like that. Moreover, when 2 more names of Chandila and Chavan came up, it felt like something hot being pressed on the same little toe which was subjected to pain in the last sentence.

I am devastated beyond repair. Why this? Why this now? Why Rajasthan Royals? Agreed they are the poorest IPL team of the lot but being poor is not a legit reason to indulge in bribery and all. Even if they may be the poorest franchise but their poorest player still earn more than me. Some people have to be on bench, Sir, I also have to be on bench (IT company policies). If it had been some other team, I would have at least taken it as a sour burp and moved on. I am like that. But it is bloody Rajasthan Royals. The Royals for which I am rooting, hooting, shouting, modulating BP, changing DP and cheering for the last 6 years. The Royals which have their fortress mere 2.8 KM from my actual home. The team which has no Rajasthani players (who cares) but their captain as the most gentleman cricketer of my era Rahul Sharad Dravid. Also, its ex-captain was the most playboy cricketer of my era Shane Keith Warne. You know, cheering for the team which is least expected to win, the underdogs is an absolute joy when it comes to Sports. Also, trash talking about the genuinely deserving team nobody likes like CSK is also fun. Rajasthan Royals is the poor hero (while IPL Cup being the rich heroine) which you want to do good. You want the poor guy to beat the hell out of strong Shetty and Delhi Ganesh kind of villains (pun intended) and their right hands (other useless teams like Pune Warriors India). If the poor guy himself gets corrupted, where will be any room for optimism then? Further saddening part is that the IPL and in general Cricket haters (read unpatriotic Indians) keep poking you about the recent turn of events and embarrass you more than you were embarrassed after JEE. That is where the pain becomes unbearable. The most shameful day of my IPL viewing career.

I know Sidin Vadukut is not showing as much drama as I am showing but Sreesanth and Sidin were like conjoined Siamese twins as far as IPL was concerned. Thanks to his Dork series, the rapport with Malayali humor people like these two had only improved. Disgusted and ashamed now. I can feel for you Sidin, I sincerely do.

On a serious note, watching a person of stature like Rahul Dravid defending his team in IPL Rajasthan Royals is one of the saddest moment I have seen on TV. I almost had tears in my eyes, well almost. Genuinely saying. Now question is where we go from this. Should I keep my support intact for RR for the playoffs and see Watson beating the hell out of Pollard? Sigh. Tough call, let me think over it and revert.

At least WWE is openly calling itself as Entertainment. Have some shame yar!

P.S.: Listening to ‘Sun Raha Hai Na Tu’ song from Aashiqui 2. Fitting.