THE MOON WALKER - We will miss you

An adolescent screamed, I ‘Got to Be There (1972)’.

He told his nation who the number 1 was with, ‘Ben (1972)’

He shared his love for music through ‘Music and Me (1973)‘

He charmed the world with ‘Forever, Michael (1975)’

When he came ‘Off the Wall (1979)’ we had little idea about what was in store.

He thrilled the world with ‘Thriller (1982)’ and the world went crazy.

Everything was not always good, but ‘Bad (1987)’ did very well.

He wanted the world to know that he could be ‘Dangerous (1991)’.

He was now almost ‘Invincible (2001)’

A tribute to, undisputed ‘King of PoP’ who ruled millions of heart and inspired many.

A short life filled with professional highs and personal lows. Another ‘Shooting Star’ fades away as quickly as it had risen.

There can never be another MJ.

‘The thriller has gone but the thrills he shared will go on for generations to come.’

‘MY xyz’ 2 ‘OUR xyz’ - Being GLOBAL !!

It’s not the first time that I had written/shared my views on this topic. You may want to have a glance at one of my previous post, ‘Enough of Patriotism’, written on August 14th, 2007.


In fact, I started with commenting on of my colleagues blog and ended up posting this here, considering the size.

Clash of civilizations, religions and faith is what we see today across the longitude and latitude of this beautiful planet. From media termed, ‘curry bashing in Oz’ to the incident in Vienna that paralyzed Punjab for more than a week. All in the name of faith, caste, color, creed and religion.

The only question in my mind is, ‘Have we stopped looking at the big picture?’

Burning trains and shops, bringing down the entire state to halt, and for what? Does this help the humanity? Is it a solution?

I love Tamil movies. In fact, nowadays I watch more of Tamil movies than any other language. I love listening to hindi\sufi and English music. I enjoy watching British comedy.

Does that diminish my love for the birth place? No. I like watching our folk dance (yakshagana, from coastal Karnataka), I like the food, I like the people.

And yet, sometime while travelling in train, talking to relatives and few times in office, I had come across people who make fun and demean others faith, language, culture and way of leaving. South bashing north, north bashing east and so on.

I have always preached, Global citizenship and being the citizen of the world, instead of just being the citizen of one nation and fighting over it.

It doesn’t mean that I am less patriotic or that I don’t love my faith, culture or community. It only means that, I respect other culture, community and faith as much as I love mine and would never compare them.

Though many of my friends don’t entertain this and we end up in serious argument, I encourage this debate, because at least, it opens their mind and ignites them to think on different lines.

The entire world is going global. Either the boundaries are going to vanish or we will dig a grave for ourselves and end the civilization. Someday, some other civilization is gonna come up and read about us in their history book, “Once this planet was ruled by the self pro claimed, most intelligent species which was so intelligent that, it dug its own grave of ill faith, wrongly interpreted religious belief, line of controls and catastrophic human destructions and now the grave stone reads “the super dumb species that ever existed on this earth’”

Let’s share the common values. The perfect example is IPL. Most of the Indian players couldn’t imagine playing along with Pakistan players (IPL -1) in the same team. Look what IPL did. Most of the KKR fans were supporting Shoaib to pick up Mumbai Indians, Sachin Tendulkar’s wicket. Now that’s global. This is one solid reason the IPL is a successful story today. What does this mean?

It means, that there is hope. Things are changing. People are changing. The old narrow mindedness will not work. The world is sending a strong message to the extremists. Either you broaden your minds, soul, and extend your arms to embrace change or ignore the message at your own peril.

Some remember the past wound and wait to avenge,

some see beyond the wound and embrace the future.

What a P and What a J ?

One of my blogger friends mentioned about her friend getting all cranky. Guess what, none are spared. In my house, almost everyone gets cranky every now and then.


I don’t blame them or myself. It could be due to heat and dehydration or the girl at the balcony of the opposite building who appears and disappears in matter of seconds.

When we get cranky, we compete.

What’s the competition?

Fight for the best PJ cracking cranky.

PJ meaning poor joke, peculiar joke, pathetic joke and nothing near to perfect joke…

Perhaps, it depends on the person who cracks the joke and the person who cracks his head hitting against the whateverin the vicinity after reading/listening to it.

So, here are few of those cranky once.

Well, the first one is obviously mine. I hope you have got your head as well as monitor insured.

Anyway, both ways, I will remain brave, until I see loads of bloggers holding various house cleaning items. rotten tomatos and eggs, in their hands, looking for me in Pallikarnai. Here it goes.

There is a 2 line space between the question and the answer. That is the time you got to think about the answer. That is, if you are cranky (job less) enough to do so.

What do you get if liquor barren  Vijay Mallya meets the fastest bowler Bret lee?

You get Malyalee.

How would you call Tamanna, after that scene in Ayan where in her brother gets killed?

She would be called Tam, because her brother (Tam) ‘anna’ got killed.

Why is marraiges banned in Taliban ruled area?

Hey common yar. Because ‘Tali’ ‘Ban’ned

Why should you NOT butter your boss?

Because, if you ‘Butt (h)er’, you are obviously in serious trouble. Now, hope I am not in serious trouble?

In ‘Ayan’, why Surya takes such a long time to find out about his friend who turns foe.

Simple. ’Surya tube-lights’ and bulbs. Dan tada..

If your head and monitor are in good shape and if you are not looking for me, then I will try to re collect few of those which I cannot re collect at this moment, and post it later.

If you don’t want me to post additional cranky one’s, hah, there is nothing really you can do.

Ok, I will spare you with one Sardar joke which I had recently cracked.

“Why did a Sardar go to doctor every day?”

Because, he is Sikh yar.

No offence meant. To sardar’s who are looking for me, I know I am Shitty, oops Shetty. Hope that helps. Thanks

Escape>>>>>>>>>>>>

Ok, Are you seriously thinking of thrashing me? Then consider this, “DONT MESS WITH ME FACE”

BOOOOOOOOoooooooo.

HOW 2 ‘ROB A COP’ !!

I had to write this post. I HAD TO, because, I had to.

Ok, now that sounds crazy and some of you might have closed the page before you read this line.

If you are still reading, then, let me assure you that, ‘you are as crazier than me’ :)

This post is inspired by a post from my fellow blogger. It was something to do with ‘Ways to get caught by ticket checker or traffic cops and pay fine’

However, in this post, I am going to explain, “How to ROB a COP, right under his nose, face, whatever.”

Before, I begin explaining the master plan, have you ever come across ‘Walking, talking DATABASE”?

No? Then read this carefully, “You could be one of them.” :)

Alright, we know a guy. In fact he was my friend’s college mate. Every time we meet him, the only thing that he is interested to know is, “Where do you work? What is your salary? What technology you are working on? Etc etc etc….”

Once this query processing is done, it’s time for statements like, “Hey this guy works there, he earns this much salary, he/she is getting married. He/she got a car. He/she is going with this girl/guy or guy/girl, respectively and irrespectively.”

Once this is done, he comes up with the most irritating part. Comparison. “So you are earning so much, but he is earning much less or I am earning quite more. Etc etc etc…

That’s why, we call them. ‘Walking talking DATABASE’. In short ‘WakTakDB’

Anyway, we don’t completely hate him, because he is such an innocent guy. His circuit is built that way. Can’t help. Moreover, he gives us information pertaining to our ex girl friends, ex boyfriends, friends who have turned foe, foes who are now friends. Aka Khabari.

If you are wondering, “How does this guy ROB a COP?” then keep wondering, because, this guy has nothing to do with my master plan. :)

So why on earth (or on my blogsite) am I writing about this guy? You will know before I finish. I promise.

I am going to narrate a tragic story. If you can figure out the master plan, then congratulations.

During our engineering days, my friends had come down to Bangalore from Manipal, to work on so called, “mini project” (wonder why they keep that name. Its funny, you know what I mean :)). So, I was doing my engineering in Bangalore, therefore I joined my friends, to give them a pleasant company to go around in Bangalore. One of the guys spoke to his relative to give the first floor to them for a month.

Unfortunately the mini project never started due to several reasons. The owner stayed in the ground floor, so he would always enquire about us. Therefore, every day morning, we get ready like we got to go to company on project work, all in formals. Go to Majestic bus station. Wait till 4pm and then come back at office time, looking tired.

At the month end, it was time to wrap up, pack and leave Bangalore to join their college. The mini project was somehow done in the last week of that month. Only one out of the many friends was left out to go in the end. I decided to go to home town along with him.

We went to his bro in laws house and got an old kinetic Honda. Drove it all the way to the room in which these guys stayed. Shifted all the beds back to the place we had taken it from. I had a huge suitcase and my friend was carrying equally heavy suitcase. We removed the front grills of this vehicle to accommodate a suitcase in front his legs. I was holding my suitcase on my lap, balancing it from one side to another.

We had to reach back to his bro in laws place to give back the vehicle and board the bus. We had 1 hr to do so.

After pushing the vehicle and dodging the heavy evening traffic we reached a place, which would be our last traffic signal before our destination. We found ourselves right behind a huge truck waiting from the traffic signal to turn green (which in fact was not visible to us because of this truck). The vehicle began to move and we followed it.

Guess, what?. Very soon, our night mare turned to be a reality. We were stuck at the junction. The truck had jumped the signal. The vehicles were honking and dodging us from all sides. We just stopped there, not knowing which way to go. All the people, crossing us from all sides, were cursing and spitting on us.

We looked like bunch of monkeys, just arrived from forest and unaware of whatever was happening in the concrete jungle. We couldn’t balance the bag anymore. One of the rider shouted,”look, your father is coming”, with a huge grin on his face. I wondered why he was so happy with our helplessness. Before I could look at what was he referring to, a huge smoked, black thing came rushing towards my head. I ducked. It landed right on my friend’s cheek who was riding the deadly kinetic Honda.

Only after, the thing came in front of our vehicle, I realized, it was none other than our famous traffic cop, whose white clothes is no more white. The first thing he did was, removed the key and took it to his base at one corner of the road. I got down and started pulling my bag towards him. My friend was balancing his bag on kinetic Honda and pushing it towards the cop along with me. Again, the traffic opened and again we got showered with curses.

1st question all traffic cops ask is, “DL?”. Please note that he doesn’t even look at your face when he is asking this question.

No answer from my friend. I went numb. I couldn’t hear anything though the noise was deafening.

2nd question, “Papers”?

I was thinking,” yeah paper’s. We were fortunate to get this vehicle till here. Do you expect papers for this?”

This is when my friend came out of the shock that he had, when 3 kilo hand had slammed his face. He said, “sir, sir. This is bro in laws bike sir. I am form manipal sir. Student sir. Please sir. We have bus to catch in 10min sir. Please sir.”

Cop.”No no. Nothing doing. Pay fine.”

My friend, with great pride.”HOW MUCH?” ( Little did my friend know that, I had just one 10rs note and some coins. My friend had none in his.)

Cop looked up. This is the first time he looked directly into his eyes. “300″

Suddenly, out of no were, tears rolled down my friends eye. I didn’t know what to do. I was in fact confused. Was he really crying because of helplessness? Was he acting to gain some sympathy? Was he feeling the pain of that slap only now?

I had no clue. I still don’t have any clue.

The cop, waited for some time and declared, disinterested. “Whatever you have got, put it in there.” He pointed at the mobile pouch he had on his bike.

I collected all he coins and the note in my pocket and slipped it in the pouch.

Hearing the noise made by coins in the pouch, our cop shouted. “Do you think I am beggar? Remove those coins idiot.”

I removed them and placed in my pocket. Little did he know that, I had removed all the money from the pouch and placed it in my pocket.

Finally, we reached our boarding point. Returned the bike. Very little money in pocket. Only enough to buy a bottle of water. We needed money after going to home town to change buses. WE didn’t have any. We didn’t know what to do and suddenly out of nowhere, a BMTC bus comes and stops very near to us. Few people got down and few got in. One of them who got down was familiar. Guess who?

Yeah right. ‘WakTakDB’

We almost fainted. Yeah baby. This is the right time, right place. Can’t be any better.

However, he was very good to us, because he was not at his best. We borrowed Rs100 and thankfully, our bus arrived within 5 min.

So, that’s the story. I don’t know if you can repeat this, but we feel proud even today, for Robbing a Robber under his nose. :)

What crap….? You must be thinking

I know, I know. I warned you..

2 LOSE & NOT 2 B LOSER !!

Some win, Some loose to win.



“Mom, What is more important in life? Losing or Winning?”


“Of course winning, son. Else, no one would respect you.”


Most of us would have got this from our parents, teachers, friends, guardians and whoever. We hear about all the people who have won. When we sit in a gathering, every one speaks about the winners. In your family circle, the winner, your cousin, your sister, brother is the most spoken about. Does that make you a loser?


Well I used to feel that way and many of you agree that you too at one point would have felt the same. However, I had a belief.


A belief that, winning is not as important as loosing. Winning is just a collection of loses which teaches you valuable lessons. Nobody talks about the amount of pain, grief a person had to overcome to hear that magic word, “winner”.


First thing that one needs to know in life is not winning. First thing one needs to know is ‘LOSING’. Losing badly. Second thing one need to understand is that, ‘you might lose, but you are not a loser”.


SRK puts it in a better way, “Sports teaches you to lose but not to become a loser”. Even before the tournament started, the fans burnt effigy’s over controversial moves. Experts criticized the owners. Deccan chargers charged over them in the first match, Royal challengers challenged their existence, Dare devils scared the hell out of them. The world poured all its filthy comments on the team, management, the players and the owner. They lost. They kept loosing. Some close encounters, some terrible loses.


People who had 1 milligram knowledge of cricket were suggesting the shots that should have been played, the ball that was not of right length.


Did that make them losers? No. They went on. Like true professionals. Picking up the remains, sweating and practicing every day hoping that someday, they would be in a better situation. That’s the trait of a true professional. Result? The last two matches. Out of nowhere, they successfully chased the highest total in IPL this year and in their next match they out played the last years IPL champions, Rajasthan royals. Now, that’s what I call loosing but not being the loser.


Similarly in life we lose. People don’t speak about you. People don’t ask about you. Let’s remember on thing, “we might have lost, but we are not losers”.


I would like to end this post with a thought from Theodore Roosevelt. This is posted in SRK’s blog (really inspiring and motivating) as well. I loved it. I simply couldn’t resist posting it her for you,


It is not the critic who counts;


Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles,


Or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.


The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,


Whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;


Who strives valiantly;


Who errs, who comes short again and again,


Because there is no effort without error and shortcoming;


But who does actually strive to do deeds;


Who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions;


Who spends himself in a worthy cause;


Who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement,


And who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly,


So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who


neither know


Victory nor Defeat.


Note: For those of you who obviously think that I am advertising my favorite actor. It’s easier for me to say, yes I am. But not an actor, a good human being with wonderful thoughts.


God bless

R U A SHOOTING ****STAR****?

Sunrise and Sunset would always remain as one of the most beautiful things of our nature. I believe there are so many little things that happen in between these two wonderful moments, which are not as beautiful, but we just cannot forget them. The little things that happen in our day to day life.

There are days, we don’t want to remember. There are days, we want to forget. There are days, which stay with us all our life time so that we can cherish it some other day. Day’s we spent in hostel, school, and colleges are simply unforgettable. Good or bad, they just stay with us.


I remember those words of our school principal on our last day at school. “Your life is like a freshly laid concrete mixture. Put your best foot forward, because once you get an impression on this concrete, it will harden in no time and would remain with you, life long.” I guess these are words which remain with you somewhere at the back of your mind and would lead you through the testing times towards light.


I had always maintained in my heart that I am not the brightest student, nor am I gifted like my cousin who can write an exam and score well by just going through the book once. I guess I belong to that group of people whose mind works backwards. For example, we start with what we want to achieve and then work backwards to find what exactly is sufficient enough to attain these results. Most of us are always told and programmed to believe that your 10th and +2 is the most important because this part of your academic life shapes your career in a great way. So, I too was brain washed to believe the same.


That makes my life easy. If 10th and +2 is important then why should one break our head at 1st, 2nd, 3rd ,4rth,5th,6th,7th,8th,9th and +1 ? Just enjoy life and make sure you get minimum marks to get to next gradeJ. So that’s my backward theory. You folks would have got me by now. I just created this theory because I simply couldn’t answer people when I had to face this weird questions like, “How on earth could you get good marks when it mattered?” If I said, “I worked hard.” I got this rolling of eyes meaning,”Yeah sure.”


Sometimes I would just blabber something like, “the examiner was the father of my girl friend. We made a deal. I had to forget his daughter and he would help me to answer. Now, since you know that I don’t even have a micro gram of grey cell in me to pass on my own, I agreed. Oh yes, I am now heart less as well. So, stop rolling those eyes.”


Ok, I will stop all this non sense. Frankly, I just worked hard, like donkey, dog or whichever hardworking animal comes to your mind. I worked so hard that, during my+2 exams, I knew all the reactions and equations in chemistry including the page number of the text book where you could find that equation. That’s photographic memory :-). However, believe me; I lost sleep resulting in mild insomnia, so I just didn’t try this kind of studying in my engineering. I guess it’s the kind of memory that you can use for a short burst, like 100 mts race. Cool, that’s enough of blowing my own trumpetJ. The actual reason for writing this post is that, there is no real reason. Well, If you have enjoyed it till here, you may want to continue because I promise, it doesn’t get any worst


One of my cousins’ friends wanted to get her daughter into my school. So my cousin informed his wife to take my help because he quoted, “……… you can take Raj’s help because he was one of the ‘BRIGHTEST’ student in the school……”


I couldn’t stop thinking, laughing. “Yella OK, ‘BRIGHTEST’ yake?” (Everything is OK, ‘Brightest’ Why?). Doesn’t translate well in English, but sounds good in kannada when our Uppi dada gives the pose for KF.


Now, I felt I have been so successful in building and maintaining this image of brightest student in my family circle, whereas the reality was not even half brightest :-). Oh yeah, I worked hard, but I wasn’t consistent. Also, there were students in the school, who set new benchmarks every year. I just couldn’t keep up. To be honest, I had no motivation to read. I just kept in mind whatever was taught in class and vomited it in exam. It is true that, I studied in village, so I didn’t enjoy the luxury of studying in a city. However, I believed that this was good for me because my thinking was crystal clear and that’s what helped me to get those marks when it mattered.


However, my attempt to tell my relatives, that I am not the ‘BRIGHTEST’ that you think, has failed every time. I am not the brightest, but I would die trying to get what I want when it mattered. I would forget food, water, sleep to get what I really wanted. That’s how hard I need to try to reach the benchmark set by these ‘BRIGHTEST’ students


So I told my cousin. “You might have to change your plans of taking me to my school because, If it is the same watchman then he would not allow me into the campus, considering the fact that I have tricked him many times to sneak out of the campus to buy Ice cream. I was so bright that, we would play football with a stone in public bus stop after school and complain at home about frequent bus strikes. I would walk all the way to home to save the bus ticket amount and buy a candy with that, though it was just Rs1.50. The sweetest of all candies.


My brightness never escaped the teacher’s eye as well. Almost every teacher, head teacher had got me kneeled down at various locations of school. Sometimes, my juniors used to look at me and say, “hey, isn’t this the guy who was outside so and so class on his knees, and yet head held high, as if the national anthem is being played.”


I usually would come to school very early in public bus, so few of us would make a team and throw ball from one end to the other end of class and count who takes the maximum catches. Some played to impress girls, some for fun. Sometimes the girls giggled and those boys, who never joined us, would envy us. Once when we were playing this, the ball bounced of the window and hit our vice principle who was talking a walk on the veranda. She just walked off. I didn’t understand this. Usually a teacher would blast out and end our life with words. But here, she walked off and she is a vice principal.


So the owner of the ball, that’s undoubtedly me, my daring 3 friends walked to head mistress. She was angry but not very much angry considering the magnitude of the event. She asked us to go to vice principal and apologies. We followed her to the vice principal’s room like the ducks following the leader in the water, in line.


My memory jogged back and forth. Few years ago, my uncle had literally dragged me to vice principal’s room for admission interview. I didn’t answer anything right. Most of the effort to get the right answer out of my little mouth went futile. However, she gave me an admission. Little did she know that, I would be standing in front of her after few years apologizing for playing inside class.


Our vice principal listened to our broken apology statement and said, “Do not repeat again. You may leave.”


We looked at each other confirming that what we have heard is right. We never repeated the mistake again. In fact, I don’t repeat my mistakes. That’s one good quality in me. We recruited two classmates as security guards to check for anyone coming towards class. We would take turns to stand as guards. We never accidently hurt any teacher again. As I said, we don’t repeat the same mistake.


However, my BRIGHTNESS never made it to headlines, because there were brighter people in my school . So what happened in campus remained within the campus. I stayed on the boundary, never crossed it. It is fun to be on the boundary and see both the worlds. It’s exciting to be on the boundary.


I believe what happened in my academics has repeated all through my career as well. I didn’t get a placement in campus. As usual I was not the brightest. However, once outside the college, I worked double hard to do WHATEVER to get the job. Once I got a job I worked, triple hard to get what I wanted. I still do that. Because, we are not the BRIGHTEST stars who shine all the night, we are the SHOOTING stars, who shine so bright that you can’t see the other stars, but hey, we fade away, leaving you with the memory to cherish.

R U A SHOOTING ****STAR****?

2 Sing or Not 2 Sing !!

Vande Mataram !!

Bankin Chandra composed the song Vande Mataram in an inspired moment, Rabindranath sang it by setting a glorious tune to it and it was left to the genius of Shri Aurobindo to interpret the deeper meaning of the song out of which India received the philosophy of new Nationalism.



The English translation of Vande Mataram rendered by Shree Aurobindo, is considered as official and best as per Bhavan’s book, Vande Mataram by Moni Bagchee.



September 7th was the 100th anniversary of “Vande Mataram” (”Hail to the Mother (land)!”), which was used often during campaigns to free India (and pre-partition Pakistan, for that matter) from British colonial rule.



A campaign to urge schoolchildren across India to sing the song has stirred controversy, with some Muslim schools, supported by Muslim institutions, refusing to sing it on the grounds that it invokes the worship of Hindu deities, specifically Durga. Although “Vande Mataram” mostly praises India’s geography, the title can be translated to “I bow to thee, mother,” which clashes with Muslim traditions of bowing only to God.



A lot of debate has been going on and it has now become a political issue with BJP voting for making it compulsory in states where it governs. “There should be no compromising attitude on the national song,” said BJP leader LK Advani. Perhaps, this has contributed to one of the many factors for poor performance in elections.



However, despite all the concerns, leading Muslim institutes and bodies such has Darul Uloom Deoband have steered clear of the issue until today, where in it issued a fatwa to against singing Vande Maataram by Muslims.



Now, there are various questions being raised and this has fire balled into a big issue. My views:



Firstly, India is a secular country and the decision to sing the song should be left to the individual just like the national anthem. Though, the people of India should be encouraged to sing it by educating them about the right meaning to the song and the need to maintain unity in diversity. The present government has made it clear that it would not make singing this song or any song for that matter, compulsory.



The Muslim institutes need to answer one simply question. Vande Maataram, has been an integral part of India’s freedom struggle which was fought shoulder to shoulder by all religions united. Why didn’t they find the need to impose a fatwa then? Perhaps, the cause to free the nation was more important than the song itself. However, isn’t the cause more important today as well, where the world is filled with violence and religious divides, wherein we are fighting a different kind of freedom struggle?



However, all said. It is important that singing a song or not should not be equated to the patriotism of the entire community. It will only cause further confusions among the young minds. Therefore, it is very important for our politicians and religious leaders to stop giving this issue a political color and start calling a spade, a spade. If someone doesn’t want to sing, fine no problem. I have no doubt that they are as patriotic as anyone else and they love their country as much as others. Not touching the elders feet should not be considered as a sign of disrespect. If at all there is love and respect, let it be in our hearts and deeds. At the same time it is necessary to understand that the boundary separating absolute honesty and arrogance is a very thin delicate line. Each and every one of us needs to acknowledge that. Therefore, I am steering clear of the how one religion should look at God.



My fellow blogger Sai once commented, “I prefer direct communication. No hidden meanings etc. We all seem to convolute this communication and the reader is stuck on the words rather than the wisdom.” Perhaps Sai was absolutely right. There is no hidden meaning. I didn’t even know the meaning of each word of Vande Maataram until today. However, when it is sung, my heart would fill with joy and pride. Joy of being someone and being free yet responsible. Such is the tune.



Perhaps, this could be well summarized by remembering the fact that, Vande Mataram was sung by Lata Mageshkar. Vande Mataram was also sung by A.R Rahman. Now, that is what I mean by secularism and respecting the soul of the song instead of being hung up on words.