Chapter 10

During the end of the year, you always have stories that take place throughout the year to narrate. However in my case, I am blessed with eventful happenings. My friend during my college days once told me, my life was so eventful (with no girls and still heart breaks), that they could have a soap opera on my life story.

During Christmas I decided to visit my sister in Chicago. Now usually, everybody gets excited when they go to meet a relative. And hopefully over-excited when its someone from the same family. I wasn't too excited to be honest. I had to skip 3 days of work (which is around 200$(i can get 2 girls drunk for 3 days and 4 nights continuous for that amount of money)). So after spending 5 days in Chicago it was time to come back. She stuffed my bag up with 4 kilos of food and i guess in 5 days stuffed me up with another 2 kilos in stomach (from packs to flab).

So on my way back in the airport I realized the importance of punctuality. Apparently there is a rule that you need to show ur face to the check-in counter 45 minutes prior to the flights take off. Now the lady at the counter said I was late by 2 minutes and so she couldn’t check 'something' in on that flight and that it would be checked on the next flight. Right before i checked in, the guy in front of me wasted 10 minutes trying to remove stuff from his bag to bring down the weight and stuff. To add to my annoyance, I wasted another 10 minutes standing in a counter just to be told, they wouldn’t take cash payment there. I wanted to shout at the lady and say ' LOOK ITS NOT MY PROBLEM IF THE GUY AHEAD WAS BUSY TRYING TO LOWER HIS WEIGHT BY TRYING TO GET HIS UNDERWEARS OUT AND OUT OF THE OTHER 10 COUNTERS THIS IS THE ONLY COUNTER THAT TAKES CASH AS IT IS WRITTEN NOWHERE!'. But i was all heart-broken. I had scheduled the flight such that I could save 40$ by avoiding to take the cab and take the local transport back home. But oh well, I cursed my luck, the 120 seconds which would cost me 40 $ extra (whoever said time is money was spot on) and that man who was in front of me in the line.

After security check I realized, I was put on the next flight! That something was me along with my luggage! I was furious! Why would I let go my confirmed ticket for a stand-by ticket on a flight an hour later that too because of no fault of mine! I knew the lady at the counter was eyeing me, but so much that she wants to look at me for the next 1 hour! I fumed around the airport so much so that; people looked at me suspiciously scared. If i had even a small stubble on, it would have been an icing on the cake, i.e., good enough to dial 911 and complain about a 20-25 yr old brown guy with a stubble on storming furiously and random in the airport (scary enough).

I was so busy fuming over the phone that I almost got knocked off by a vehicle inside. I had made up my mind, if not get on that flight, at least vent out my frustration on the desk at the gate. So I went there and before i opened up my mouth, she asked me for my ticket. I showed her the ticker and again before opening my mouth, she tore it and gave me the boarding pass for that flight. I was startled and looked at her like a kid eyeing a stranger who gives them candy.
Even before i could say thank you, she said she dint understand why i was put in the later flight in the first place. I just smiled and walked out of there.

I did manage to not spend 40$ on cab and the person who got me late was being frisked by the security personnel.

And PS: I really love my sister even though 200$>love for sister when you are a student.

I learnt two valuable lessons that day:-
1) 120 second can cost you 40 $
2) If a person standing ahead of you in line removes his underwear from luggage just to bring down the weight of his bag over weight by 10 kilos, its going to be one bad day.
3) For every 3 bad things, there would be one big good thing.

Chapter 9

Now getting back to my little merry life. I got done with my finals ( lets not talk about it , I might end up taking anti-depressant injections when i think about it)! So to cheer myself up, my friend asked me to join him and his friends to a club. Now in 3 1/2 months , this was the first time I was certain to go to a club in boston. Last time when I tried , we ended up going so late that we stood in the line for 1 hour just to bear the brunt of winter building up.
Back in mumbai i went to 3 1/2 clubs in my 21 yrs of life there. ( the 1/2 coz we entered , tried sighting inside, realized it was a sausage fest , brought ourselves a drink and then left).

So here I started my journey for another night,
without any foresight
or any idea as to how would it be
what is it going to bring out of me !

We went to this club which plays retro music. Now when my sister saw me dance the first time , she knew then and there our family had a male winner . Over the years my friend srini introduced me to some old moves and so i was excited to go to this club , to unleash my new moves for old songs. Before we entered, we started the usual binge drinking. By the time we entered i felt like i was hritik already.
I was forced to leave my card as tab as they had a minimum amount to be deducted from the card when u swipe the card once ( bars, they know how to persuade people into drinking and then milk them later).

This was really not a good idea!

Every tom, lee and santosh knows that if you drink too much of beer, you have to spend time with the restroom. It was good in a way, during this time i had a very strange conversation with a pretty girl.

girl- is this the line for the restroom?
me- yes it is . I see no other reason to stand in this part, at a corner of the club and wait with legs crossed.

Strangely, this wasn't the end of the conversation. It continued further until it was my turn to relieve myself of the pressure.But during this time she was asking me about the mishaps in mumbai and the whole india pakistan situation. It got me all excited to talk about. So i waited with a new drink on myself till her turn was done. And then we began to speak.
Later as the conversation grew on, i realised she was without a drink

During this moment i went into flashback . I have been practicing the american anthem in a bar 'So can i buy you a drink' in front of the mirror. I thought of myself standing in front of a mirror and then thought to myself, this was it! the time had come to put what i have spent 3 months practicing into action

me- so can i buy you a drink?
girl - uh huh, no i am good thanks
me- why not ?
girl- oh i am not comfortable with the idea? and so i dont let people buy me one

then i go into silence for 30 seconds and i do something astonishing

me- alright then....
girl- alright what?
me- then why dont you buy me a drink?
girl - (laughs) no way
me- why not ?
girl - (looks at my glass) you still have a long way to go till you finish that
me-(chugs down and then points) how about now ?

--------------------------------x-----------------------------------------------
No she dint buy me the drink..
But what completed that night was instead of storing my number, she stored my blog address. oh well atleast i had a name to stalk on and add in orkut. But i would never forget this day, the day when i asked a girl to buy me a drink (without practicing)

Chapter 8 (2+6 november)

Today I would like to drift away from my life and speak about certain happenings in my city back in India. Yes I come from mumbai and I was quite shocked to hear that terrorism has now taken such a new face.Since the last few years , we have heard of serials blasts but this act of terrorism would really make us think. What next? How worse would it get from here ?

I am a humanitarian but I havent reached that stage in life where I can help another human by monetory funds. This does not mean If I would find a group of men trying to hurt someone , I wouldnt jump in to save. But i guess I would do something, hopefully I never come in such a situation.
Getting back to the topic, I would not get into the normal act of getting into blame games of cops ,politicians,a certain nation etc. I am sure there are a million other doing it, but I have certain important observations which I would love to share.

I would like to start off by saying I was shocked to see the pics of the terrorist showed on the news channel. One of then looked like a kid who hasnt even hit puberty. These guys actually had the balls to fight off our NSG for more than 2 days. This just brings a couple of question in mind.
Are these kids being trained from birth to do this ? How are these kids being whitewashed to actually give away their life at such a young age ? what is being said that they really dont care about their life anymore ? I came to think of it as these guys are fearless. Now who are fearless? Those people who do not fear anything in their life. Thats a big training on its own. Once you do not fear your life , you could actually do anything! Just imagine if this training was used for a more productive use than a destructive like this.

I would like to speak few words about Late Major Unnikrishnan.He was a south indian from the bihar regiment who sacrificed his life ,ironically in maharashtra. A state which long time back had anti south slogan and recent anti-bihari,up slogans. I am surprised he wasnt stopped from entering TAJ as he was from the bihari regiment? why did they not throw stones at the NSGs or hit them from being from bihar now ? In a way it speaks that during crisis, we are united, which am glad but then If i was a certain someone, I would be ashamed that a GUY FROM A BIHARI REGIMENT FROM THE SOUTH FOUGHT BRAVELY AND GAVE HIS LIFE FOR MAHARASHTARA. I have nothing against mahrashtra, i am an adopted maharashtrian in a way because i am born and brought up here, but I am glad i do not think that way .But if Major unnikrishnan thought like the certain sect of people in mumbai, he would have been nicely enjoying life back home. It would have been much better as today we mourne the loss of a a great man who gave up his life fighting for his whole team ( wonder how many marathi manoos were in that team ) ,rather he gave his life for INDIA for the greater good. If only I was 10 % as brave and courageous as him and if and only if more mothers produced brave men like him, we would be a much better black. Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan, I salute you and today for the first time in my life i am glad to be having a part of your name sir. May his soul rest in peace and hope his family come through such a time ( i am usually not emotional , but while writing this I feel like crying out aloud).

We lost many other top cops like Mr Hemant Karkare. Its a sad day when you lose 2-3 top cops (non-corrupt). What saddens me is that now the Malegaon case would go to the thrash again and a year from now, nobody would be punished for lifes lost there.What saddens me further is that we lost another honest man.

Now there have been more things troubling me. I heard rumours that foreign nationals were given more preferance than the locals. In a way its shows real good hospitality but when did death become racist ?When you are rescuing, I thought you should rescue the needy and not the colorless or colorful. I am just suprised that this can exist only in a country like India.

The media should be ashamed of themselves for creating certain rumours and worse off showing of the operation and informing about the motive of the military during its operation , helping the terrorists in way. I do agree we need news, I personally would love to hear about the military operation but that does not mean that we give up our secrets ! They nicely covered commandoes taking position on the nariman tower. Clap clap good job guys, you just made them aware of where they would be attacked from. So much for the element of surprise. I was watching IBN online and i saw that the show anchors had made contact with a foreigner trapped in TAJ. During his interview I was shocked when the Anchor went like ,' So bruce any wishes or ( i am sure he tried hard to stop himself say last wishes)'. How de-moralizing is this ? That guy actually makes an effort to call you up and then you say any last wishes ? HAHAHA. So much for morale encouragement. I am truly dissapointed with the media , but thats not new i guess.

I heard interesting comments on facebook such as send the politicians inside to fight the terrorist. Haha, and do what increase the casualty list ?Rather spend the attention of ambulance and firefighters trying to save the needy than the fancy. Rather spend resources trying to flush militants out rather than on protecting the politicians who would go inside fighting. Insane comments.

I guess I would like to talk a lot more, but I would like to end saying that this is not exactly a shock. I would not end saying ENOUGH IS ENOUGH or WE WONT BE RESILIENT NO MORE or POLITICIANS STAY AWAY. We never really picked up from the blasts 2 years ago. what i am hinting on is when we know where all the leads are from, we are still in peace talks with that country. I am absolutely disgusted with the stand. If this happened to USA, would they be like,' hey I am sure they just made a mistake, lets get into peace talk with them?' I am sorry but they do not do that , they invaded 2 different countries and now very few have the balls to stand up against USA.
In a nutshell we have an old saying, one oil stain can dirty the whole water, in this case we know where the OIL BARREL is and something should be done to make sure we dont get stained again. What do we do? if you ask me today I would be like burn the bloody OIL BARREL down but I guess thats not the solution, but a solution has to be created as we do not have many unnikrishnans and karkare to give their life everytime someone tries to stain us.

JAI HIND!

Chapter 7

Its been almost 2 months here now. I have been thinking, what do i miss the most ? then it struck me.

my mom? i talk to her every second day ( i do miss her of course)

my dogs? i see them every quite often, but i do miss them a lot.

my prospective fiancee? i talk to her on the weekends.(i don't have a girlfriend)

and then it struck me.
My friends! srinivas and srikanth. they do deserve a mention on this blog after all they made me hate blogging after forcing me to read their painful blogs.

One used to write about how much he hated life and one wrote shit anyways. Both were acting like little goth kids frustrated in life then (now its my turn).

But these guys are more than friends. they were like brothers.I miss gaining attention from these guys ( i was just told by a certain someone that I should earn attention and not gain attention) (i am an attention seeking a****** i guess). that's what i miss them the most for.

Back in India we did crazy stuff . we used to go out on car drives(called ROAM) every night and shout crazy stuff randomly at people ( we were quite a menace). we used to make the car shake in a very erotic way, in a silent traffic signal giving wrong notions to passerby and other drivers. Once at a signal , we got out of the car, did tribal dance encircling the car thrice, sat back and then drove off, much to the shock of people around.

The last thing we did was stage a mock kidnap with a known friend ( he is one of my fav too but he doesnt deserve a mention as he doesnt call me up even though he is in USA). It was hilarious and those were days i miss the most.

Those were days, and i have no words to say how much i miss those guys. however these a****** hardly called me up.

All this while, i started befriending this weird girl from Chandigarh. she used to make me say the word 'Punjabi' like 100 times till i stressed on the 'bhi' of Punjabi. And then it happened , she introduced me to one of her friend, a sardar. as soon as i saw him, i saw the srini in him. I knew i found my 'Boston' srini. Now i pretty much hang out with this guy and the weird girl ( i don't find her weird anymore , either i am used to it or weirdness understands weirdness.

there are 3 things srini likes to do:-

throw attitude.

drink.

try hitting on girls.

( i would abet him in all these crimes and srikanth was forced into this by us )



Now i am in hunt for the boston srikanth. I recently made an advertisement ,as he has always been my favorite ( sorry srini, reality bites (kidding :P(ill tell u real reality over the phone))), and was ready to put it out on the Internet.



Wanted a short hispanic ( and only we can call him that for his color (i am not a racist)) who likes to sleep at odd hours or every hour, doesn't mind to click photos of himself in weird positions all day long and loves to throw attitude online.



The search is still on.

PS: i still have strictly brotherly platonic love for these guys. Miss you f***faces.

Chapter 6

So now, I started working. I felt like one of those typically middle class guy ( sorry for this usage, but i guess i am a middle class). Rush on time for work, skip food for work. Eventually after week, i got my first pay check.I was all excited, after all it was my first one. The last time i ever earned money was in a college tournament for gaming where i won just a triple figure . but here it was a four figure sum in a week. When i opened it up, I shouted in pain!

why ? my eyes went direct to tax cut. They cut 15 % of taxes from a student. I think i suffered a cardiac arrest for a moment when i saw that. I took out my calculator and start calculating the final figure I would get every month. After some careful subtractions, I saw that i needed to remake my budget again.

That night was tough, the budget list went some thing like this:-



rent - same.

food - cut down on extra unwanted food.

liquor-same.

clothes- one underwear a month.

bar- hopefully girls buy me a drink.

girls- ill have to sell myself to make money for this.

extra luxuries - banana a day, on weekends kiwi fruit.

I was shocked to see i was actually living HAND TO HOUSE!

after all this , i saw that i should have a saved a whooping 5$ 55 cents in a month. I calculated, I would be a million-nair in 15 thousand and 15 years exact.

nice!



I went into depression the next 3 days. i went late to work. i spent time looking at birds outside flying in freedom, not worrying about money . Now most of you guys would be wondering, don't i get money from my house ? I refuse it. I chose to live this life of paying my own living expense.



I have an old relationship with money. once an astrologer looked at my kundli and called me 'Dhanlakshmi Bank'(prospective girls note this down).But after looking at the probability of being a millionaire , i was like, Thank you uncle!
however someday, u never know .u never know.

Chapter 5

We always have a feeling of 'feeling incomplete' on certain days . I could explain this with a very small example( my brain works like a 17 yr old). Suppose you see someone of the opposite sex, and you really like that person. You wish to get to know that person, get more friendly, get close and then, etc., etc. ( you know ). After that suddenly one day , you really dont care much and you move on to next target.This is how I have been mostly all my life. I knew i was getting the job, so no point to continue searching vigorously as before( its a bad habit in a way).

How? Simple , I signed the work contract then and there. The feeling was unique. It was a building block to initate my bank account( in dollar). I felt like a man, a grown up man.Little did i know , the tax would kill me.



During this time, I forgot to talk about my third apartment mate. You need people like this, joyful, cheerful, loves to get drunk. As soon as he entered out apartment, he came all the way to my room. Not to greet me, but to see if i was taller than him.
He was dissapointed that whole night.

He has been used to staying in a hostel back in India ( SITUATORY WARNING: The experience in some hostels can be very dirty and very scary). I knew what was coming, the feeling of living in unhygenic condition. And he did not dissapoint me even one bit. But I was ready, if this is a battle, I was ready to go at war!

Chapter 4

Finally, the time had come. It was time for the long weekend. I have always been amazed wondering as to why do people here get so excited about 'long weekends'. People wait to buy all the stuff they need for months together on the longweekend , as there are special deals on that specific weekend. It beats me and always will. I used to think that everything has a price to pay for, especially when you are desperate for it. And then when I heard about the epic 'thanks giving ' sales story, I stopped bothering.


So it was a tuesday, the one waiting for the the labour day weekend and I had lost all hopes for an on-campus job. I started planning my schedule to take 4 courses ( BU has a very strange fees structure. If I take 3 courses, I pay a certain X amount and if I take 4 courses in that sem , I still pay that X amount. So If I have no income the best I could do was try to save my expenses). I couldnt decide on 2 and now I was planning to take 4. My favorite selection method has always been 'In pin safety pin' and "Inky pink ponky'.



I was out shopping for files ( I miss those cheap stationary stores in India) at staples, when all of a sudden I got a call. The caller said that there is a technical assistant position available and wanted to know when I could come and meet him and discuss about the position. First,I thought it was the routine call where I end up appropriately dressed, just to lose that job. However, , I just couldnt place this job in my head as I had no idea which application this was. Dont blame me , I applied to around 21 on campus jobs in 2 weeks. I was honest and I told him, "Sir, I really cannot remember who you are and what this job is about as I have applied to many other job opportunities". And then he said something that got me stunned for a second! He said "this is not posted as an on-campus job,so when can we talk more about this?".



At that very moment, I felt that god truly existed (I am a god-fearing guy).I have been running around and behind jobs for almost 3 weeks and then suddenly, I get a call without even applying for one. First I was wondering if people recogonized me as ' The guy who dresses up to get a job' and knew that if they couldnt find someone suitable for a job, I was still in the hunt. I really dint care , that evening I was excited . Was it time to get my first on-campus job? Big or small, a job is a job and a salary is a salary( framed from the words of Simon , a bar manager I met in singapore. He said ' Young or old , a wh*** is a wh****. I call it Simons First Law.)