Abhinav Bhatt

For the times they, they are a-changin'

Interviewer: So, where do you see yourself after 5 years from now?
Me: (Ohh man! What have you asked?!? *gulp*) Pass!

Isn’t this a difficult question to answer? After ‘Tell me something about yourself’ question at least, which I like as much as I like eating Brinjal on my birthday which means I hate it. You wish to accomplish thousand things in next 5 years and you forget 990 of them because it is difficult to remember 1000 things, let alone do them. You will buy certain things, visit certain places and meet certain people. Easier said than done, isn’t it? Well, today I complete 5 years of working, and earning. Yes really! Even I don’t believe. But Thanks. And also a long time since I studied in a college. Phew, time flies. FYI, I had stopped sharing what I (actually) felt on this blog a long time ago but I have to get something out of the mind so I will do that here.

It seems like it was yesterday. Cliché but actually time has gone past in a very Usain Boltish fashion. Just yesterday, you were studying and wearing pyjamas having no clue about life and then suddenly you are now this tie-wearing, running after a bus man who has no clue about why one has to wear tie in 2013?. Started with doing a timepass job which continued to be more than a timepass job and lasted 15 months. Then started working with those campus companies and became the so called IT guy. And now after 5 years, one tends to think whether you’re in correct profession? Of course you are but what is correct anyways? The appearance of such thought itself means something is little out of place. But then, what one has on hands is what is real. So living in present, I have certain questions regarding bloody cubicle life (and life outside cubicle) after 5 years. Such as: Why one has to laugh at jokes your senior cracks even when they aren’t funny? Even if the joke was poorer than an engineer, they look towards you as if the joke would guarantee them heavens and make such a face that makes you open your mouth and laugh as if they tickled you? Why people go berserk after they are away from their home for the first time? Those who couldn’t speak a word at home, become crow-ish-loud. Those who never touched alcohol, drool buckets if they get invited to a party where liquor will be served. Even when liquor is not that a big deal, people still carry it in black polythene. No girl will usually be found buying alcohol. Their guy friends will do the honors. Why? Usually people are friendly when they start working. As soon as they complete a couple of years of work experience, life gets sucked out of them and they turn out to be zombies. Death Eaters is not a fictional character, people do actually look as if their patronum committed suicide after watching a Sajid Khan movie? Why that if you join a new team, people don’t notice you? They keep staring into the monitors and still hear everything but they don’t react? Where have the expressions gone? Why are HR people invisible? If HR people call for ‘Friday Fun’, that happens once every 2 years, nobody moves from their place. Why should they if the event happens rarely as it was Haley’s comet’s appearance? Though some people are in office just waiting for Friday Fun to happen so they readily jump in. Also, why people are called to work on weekends? Is there no planning ever? Also, there’s nothing called as Free Lunch which is an observation and not a question.

Anyways, life goes one. But this friendship day 4th of August, a sudden gush of feelings hit me on the face like hot air out of a truck’s silencer. I could hear it saying that I was getting old. Not age wise but rather socially. Emotionally, I don’t think I grew up much. Just that I become slightly colder. But that’s okay to be when you are on your own in a city which you still cannot call your home. By socially, as I was saying, I mean the people around are getting busier. Things aren’t like what they used to be 5 years ago. Some of the best-est friends are married now and not just that, now they have even become fatherly figure now literally. Wow. Probably that’s the best thing they have done in all their lives I think. I am not much expressive but I can’t tell how proud I feel as an Uncle. Wow. And I might not even be able to express it ever anyways. Many people are not in touch anymore. College friends have ended up being numbers on Facebook friend list. Some have stayed and they will stay for some more time. Also, thanks to technology, people like staring in the screens more than each other’s eyes. Face to Face communication is obsolete. Heh, but someone must have blogged about the same when TV was invented. Just finished watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S. last week (yeah I know I started 2 decades late but completed it in 2 months by watching 4 episodes in a day on an average) and the last episode made me realize (again) that things won’t always be the same like they are now so change will be a constant thingy. When you complete these years which are in multiple of 5, it is good to contemplate what all you did in last 5 years. Few things could have been different and few could have been better handled. Thinking too far in the future is not a great idea IMHO and regretting about what you didn’t do in last 5 isn’t great either. So I am writing this just to refresh the sleeping cells in the brain. Some of them have procrastinated so may be this is the time to put them to work.

P.S.: When I started writing this, the tone was totally different and probably sad. Thankfully, this blog is not made on paper, or I would have had to dry it up before publishing. Heh. But this turned out to be just bad, not sad so publishing it as it is. 🙂 The title of the post is taken from a Bob Dylan song which I got to know about from Steve Jobs biography by Walter Issacson, I am reading nowadays and getting amazed by it page by page. May be, may be, it could change few things or it might not. We shall see.

Minimal Posters – Breaking Bad

Made some minimal posters for the series Breaking Bad ~~(till season 5A).~~

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