Category Archives: Rant

Rant

Lockdown Day 54 – Freedom!

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Last week, the lockdown rules were slightly relaxed in Gurgaon and it is now allowed to go out and do some things. Freedom at last!

I had been waiting to see my ENT, so I used this chance to step out of my apartment for the first time in almost 2 months.

It was a surreal experience driving after so many days; I had a continuous feeling of guilt, as if I was doing something wrong.

Some Beverages

I returned back home soon enough, but at least it gave me a chance to stock on some beverages. There were very limited brands available, but I wasn’t complaining.

Rant

Lockdown Day 33

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Today is Day 33 of the lockdown. In these 33 days I haven’t gone out of my apartment complex gate once. And it is starting to affect me in some weird and unexpected ways.

  • I do not miss socialising at all. In fact, I welcome this time away from unnecessary socialising.
  • I am having very vivid dreams and remembering them for a change. Normally I hardly have dreams and don’t remember them later.
  • I miss going to Ambience Mall, drinking coffee ☕️ at Barista, eating at Pizza 🍕 Express and just roaming around the mall. It is unlikely malls will open even after the lockdown is relaxed and I am not sure how the mall or the business inside will survive this.
  • I miss drinking fresh beer 🍻 at pubs. Again, not sure when this will happen again.
  • I miss eating out at restaurants. My thoughts especially drift towards Toninos at Two Horizon Center on Golf Course road
  • I miss driving my car 🚗 , while listening to BBC World Service.
  • I miss ordering stuff from Amazon, waiting for the delivery and unboxing the items.
  • I miss going to the park and walking🚶‍♂️ around.
  • I miss going to the nursery to buy new plants 🌱 and fertiliser.
  • I miss going to Galleria, sitting opposite the fountain and sipping Coca Cola.

As per the current situation, restrictions should start lifting in 11 more days, but I have a feeling that’s not going to be the case and things won’t start going back to normal for a long time.

Rant

Lockdown Day 16

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Today is day 16 of my lockdown (Day 11 of the official government lockdown).

During this time, I haven’t used my car, gone out of my apartment complex, or seen many human beings (which is good). I have gone out of my flat less than 5 times, to collect essentials, which are now being delivered at the society gate.

Lockdown
Rare View

On the bright side, the air is clean, weather is starting to heat up and the flowers are blooming.

On the negative side, I am definitely getting some cabin fever now and my allergies have flared up. Hope for all this to go back to relatively normal soon.

Rant

Locked Down

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So, the entire country has been locked down for 3 weeks. No one can go outside. People who do go outside, face this.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdDGUvLoJvI&w=560&h=315]

Today is the 6th day of being cooped up with family. Patience is running thin and tempers are high; however, things are stabilizing slowly.

Between office work & household chores, there’s no time for boredom and the days are passing by quickly.

Today while cooking, I found this old friend, which should make the next few days a bit easier.

Old and forgotten friend

Kudos to delivery guys who are keeping us well stocked and fed. Shame on people who are deliberately hiding their travel history or flouting self-isolation requirements by socializing. I hope they are thrown into jail where they get infected again and this time rot in isolation.

Rant

Pathetic Fool-2

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It is impossible to go anywhere in Gurgaon (Sorry, Gurugram) without stumbling across such idiots. What a pathetic fool!

German Engineering

This one has a Mercedes Benz logo on his Nissan Sunny. Immediately reminded me of people who put Apple logos on their non-Apple laptops.

I do not understand what people achieve with all this. Maybe there are even bigger fools out there who actually believe that it is a Mercedes/MacBook.

McDonald Drive thru VIP

On closer inspection, it turns out this guy is a McDonald Drive through VIP. I don’t even know what that means. In a drive through queue, when this guy comes along, they remove all the other cars and let him get his Vegeterian burger first?

Education, Motorcycle, Rant

My Worst Purchases-Honda Activa

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So, I was “studying” in my first year of engineering (around the year 2002) in Nagpur and living with 2 of my seniors in a rented apartment. For those not familiar with Nagpur, public transportation was almost non-existent at that time and 95% of the people rode 2-wheelers (Motorcycles, Scooters & Mopeds), remaining 5% had cars.

I had nothing of my own and soon started to feel the heat of wanting to go everywhere but not being able to go anywhere.

I wanted to buy a bike, but the aforementioned jealous roommates didn’t want me to have one, so brainwashed my father into buying me a Honda Activa. I was desperate for anything, so didn’t argue much and greedily accepted it.

The Activa is by no means a bad scooter and it is quite handy for middle age men/women looking for a quick trip to the nearby stores or for kids who are just learning to ride. For a college freshman however, it was the social equivalent of walking around college with “dork” written on the back of his head in Bold letters.

As if the social ridicule wasn’t enough, the scooter was also not suited for a hormone ridden teenager riding around town “trying” to show off and competing with motorcycles. Inherently unstable, it caused me to have numerous accidents within the first few months itself.

Eventually, it was either continuing to ride the monstrosity or drop out of college, so I chose the former and sold it before it had completed one year.

It took 2/3 years, the manliest bike available in India at that time and a year away from college for people to forget I had one.

Rant

Hyundai Creta is the new Suzuki Swift

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There’s a word used in and around Delhi and most of North India. The word is “Lafandar”. It basically refers to a class of teenagers (but could also extend to people in their 30s) who have a lot of free time, whose fathers have a lot of money and whose favourite past time is driving around the streets from evening till late night in their pimped our cars. Also, they do not contribute to society in any way, except by occasionally crushing pedestrians under their cars, keeping this country’s burgeoning population in check.

You can easily spot them at a distance; they are the ones driving aggressively, changing lanes unnecessarily and cutting others off.

Till a few years ago, a vast majority of these “Lafandars” were driving Suzuki Swifts. It never made much sense to me, as the Swift is a middle class car and not a show-off worthy car.

Now that the swift has fallen out of style, most of these people are now driving Hyundai Cretas.

When you spot a Creta at a distance, you can be reasonably sure that if you drive too close to it or overtake it, the owner will cut you off; hence it is best to keep some distance between you and them.

Education, Rant, Satire

Nerd of the decade – Part II

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I wrote this article about a freak called Subhankar Mohapatra almost 12 years ago. Since then I haven’t come across anyone matching his level of loser-ness, till today.

Meet Ankur Garg, another freak of nature who managed to score 171/170 in his Macroeconomy exam at Harvard.

One look at his Resume and you know that his whole educational career has been an aimless pursuit to prove only one thing- that he is good at studies and exams.

Garg, who is 36 (but looks 63) first wasted public money studying at IIT. Then he made a complete U-Turn in his career by appearing for the civil services exam and being the youngest (22 year old) to do so (I believe he looked at least 40 then).

The freak writes

“In the last phase (possibly!) of student life now, I end up getting this score (171 out of 170) in the final exam of the macroeconomics course.”

Sure, at 36, he is just finishing the last phase of his student life. At this rate he might even start working and contributing to society in the next 20 years.

If one wonders what happened to this freak during his childhood that led him to be like this, they only have to read this quote from the article

“When I was in school, my father used to say – 10 out of 10 isn’t good enough in any exam. Always strive for 11 out of 10″

With a father like this, I think it is safe to say that the fault is not his own but of his abusive upbringing.

Also, in this article, there’s no mention of his contributions to society or any achievements other than clearing exams.

The overall beneficiaries of all the hard work this person put in his life would be the politicians, whose boots he can (hopefully) lick with more vigour now.

Hate, Rant

Sanghi Rule

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The country is going to the dogs.
1 year before Narendra Modi came to power, things slowly started to change in the country. Suddenly the word “Hindoo” started getting used much more around the office and in general life.
RSS[1]
Everywhere around me, chants of “NaMo NaMo” started gaining fervour slowly, but surely. Being an atheist, I have never  been in favour of political parties with a religious agenda, but surely NaMo would be a sensible man and would focus on things that matter instead of religion, right? He would keep his party people and the RSS in check, right?
Wrong.
One year since he became Prime Minister, the following things have happened in the country

  1. Beef has been banned in my state and many other states of the country. Being a person who likes eating beef, I am not happy with this move. There have been a few incidents of mobs killing Moslems on the suspicion of eating beef.
  2. Almost all new kid’s shows on TV are now based on Hindoo mythology starring the child versions of Hindoo gods.
  3. Gurgaon has been renamed to Gurugram, Allahabad renamed to Prayagraj and talks of Shimla to be renamed to Shyamala and Delhi to be renamed to Indraprastha, soon.
  4. Ramen from Nissin and Nestle both tested positive for high levels of MSG and were banned for a couple of months. Ramdev Baba, a known BJP crony “coincidentally” chose that exact same time to launch his own brand of instant noodles and immediately filled the void in the market. Nissin and Nestle both successfully appealed and got the band removed (turns out the test results were wrong), but by then the damage was done and Ramdev Baba’s noodles were already famous.
  5. One day after the PM banned most denominations of currency, a full page advertisement by PayTM (which gained most users because of the ban) was displayed on the front pages of most Indian newspapers with the PM’s photo prominently displayed. Is the shameless endorsement of private companies by a country’s sitting PM even allowed?

The country is going to the dogs.

Rant

The Beckhams live in a different, parallel universe

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Today while channel surfing, I came across this new show about Beckham going on a trip to Brazil and roughing it on a bike -“Into the unknown with David Beckham”. The show starts with a 15 minute discussions between David and Victoria Beckham about what David will do with his hair in the humidity of Brazil. Many ideas are thrown. Eventually they settle on David wearing a cap throughout his trip.
I have never been to Brazil, but I have experienced humidity, so I do not understand, what happens when humidity meets hair? Does your hair melt? Does it catch fire? Then Victoria casually comments that she can’t even go to humid countries? What? Regular people can’t go to countries because they can’t afford it, or can’t get a Visa. I know the Beckhams are far from regular people, but the Gates spend half their time in Africa without worrying about their hair.
Finally after making sure the hair Is OK, David heads to Brazil and checks in to a Luxury hotel. He remarks many times that he hopes people don’t recognize him, in a football loving nation like Brazil.
He rides his bike all the way to another part of the city and then plays beach volleyball with some locals and Is really surprised when they recognize him. Yes, Brazilian football fans recognising David Beckham is a surprise.
He then boards a plane to go to the rainforests. He gets on his bike again and rides it from his hotel to the edge of the city. Rea’ rough. There he finally meets people who don’t seem to recognize him, which is his dream, right? David looks suspiciously sad and insulted considering his dream came true, but then he and his entourage promptly starts asking these people if they recognize him.
He then sleeps in a hammock inside his hotel and plays flappy bird on his iPad.
I have never seen celebrities so full of themselves or so far removed from reality.