Swim Away to Glory!

Since my childhood I have been very fond of sports. Its an altogether different story that I have never been good at it. But there have been countless occasions when I have put on my headphones, played the song 'Dil Chahta hai', and dreamt of being the first one to cross the finish line in a 200 meter race. I always chose a 200 m race for my dream because I liked the idea of having a slow start and then accelerating at top speed in the last 100 meters leaving everybody behind and presenting a exhilarating win to the applauding crowd. But I was always the kind of kid who would rather dream than practice. I took up many sports and gave up most of them. I have taken Taekwando lessons (I am green belt by the way so don't mess with me), cricket coaching, basketball coaching, swimming lessons, and finally 6 years of tennis coaching. I can play these sports well but could win in almost none. So during my childhood I always had this dream of winning, especially living with a brother who was a champion in cricket.

Our colony would annually organize a sports competition and all the kids/adults would participate. They even had a cricket competition in which you had to participate as a team of 11. I was always picked last or only because of my brother who was usually the captain of one of the teams. I hated it. A chance to bat would never come or whenever it did I would get out on the first ball as per everybody's expectations. It was during this game of cricket I had heard that the swimming competition was also being held that very day. Somehow this excited me as this was an individual participation and I had really not known how competent I was in swimming.

It was a 25 meter race. All the participants were at the starting line. All except me were ready to dive. I was going to take push from the swimming pool wall as I had yet not mastered the dive. But this did not dampen my spirits. I was confident. The whistle blew, people dived, I took a strong push from the wall. 25 meters does not sound much but when you are a 10-year old and swimming, it felt like the English Channel. But I was not going to lose hope. I pushed the water back with all my might. That day I was out to prove something. The race ended. I had come third.

At the day of the prize distribution I was smiling. My name was soon announced and I climbed the stairs to receive the cash prize of Rs. 20 for securing third position in the under-10 swimming competition. Soon friends and aunties came up to congratulate me. But that was not why I was smiling.

I never had to tell anybody that there were only three participants in that race :)

Hey Taxi! Hayeah!!

Mumbai is one of the safest cities I know. Well I speak as if I have stayed in a number of cities but in comparison to Delhi/Noida/Gurgaon, Mumbai is heaven. Well if you must know I was mugged once in Mumbai. But even then I consider it safer (it was a one of case). In Delhi I have been pick-pocketed, blackmailed by a number of autowalas, slapped (by a policeman), left stranded (at 9 pm), seen my driver get beaten up, witnessed eve-teasing, and been roughed up (again by a policeman). Sorry I got carried away. What I was trying to say was that in Mumbai it feels safe. So safe that my Mom would always let me and my brother go to school by ourselves. Or atleast when we had reached secondary school.

Now there were three ways to reach our school. On foot (it was like a 1 Km from our place), by bus, or by taxi. When I just entered secondary school (grade 6) my brother was in grade 8. I, my brother, and a couple of his friends always traveled to school together. Since a bus ticket would cost Rs. 3 each for my brother and his friends, and Rs. 1.5 for my ticket (Thats right! Half-ticket) it made more sense to just take the taxi which cost us just Rs. 13 (In your face, Delhi!) for the trip to school. Now even when the city is safe and the people are really friendly, as a child you always have a fear. The fear of getting kidnapped. I mean the taxi-driver could drive us anywhere. We were just kids. We did not also enjoy the idea of jumping from a moving taxi. So before hiring a taxi, we would always have a plan. A simple plan of words. The following is the one conversation repeated everytime I travelled in a cab with my brother and his friends to school:

Sagun (My brother): So Shalabh....How are your Karate classes going on?

Shalabh: Great! I just earned my black-belt! My teacher says I can beat up anybody!

Me: I finally gave my test for yellow belt. I have really improved my kick.

Abhishek: You guys should come and see my boxing practice.

Reached the school. Instilled fear in the taxi-driver that these kids can bring pain. Mission accomplished!

Hes Probably Gay!

I was recently having a discussion with an office friend. She was telling me how her close boy friend (two separate words) reacted when she told him how well her ex-boyfriend (single word) was doing in Paris. Surprisingly for her, her friend reacted quite irrationally by saying that her ex was most probably lying. Listening to what she was saying got me thinking and weirdly enough I could relate to this friend of hers. If there's one thing men cannot tolerate (actually there are many) its praise for another man coming from a girl you are close to. The best part is the reaction to this praise. Given below are some real life snippets:

Girl: Did you hear he got placed in McKinsey?
Boy: Its Mckinsey Knowledge Center. We do the same thing. And I have heard they make them work like dogs

Girl: Did you hear he's got a package of 8 lacs?
Boy: Thats CTC. They have probably added medical insurance to this. In hand its probably the same 30-40K

Girl: Ooh. Did you see his new car? Isn't is great?
Boy: Bah! Spending his dad's money. Whats so great in that? (My God! Lucky bastard. Look at those wheels!!)


Girl: Oh did you hear the poor guy got 60% this semester. I feel so bad
Boy: You feel bad for that loser? If he would have studied like me he would have got 80%

Girl: Did you hear he got 80% in this semester?
Boy: Ghissu Saala!!

Girl: Did you hear hes studying sincerely for GMAT?
Boy: And whose gonna pay 50 lacs for his education. Its a foolish dream

Girl: Did you hear hes studying sincerely for CAT?I think he'll crack it...
Boy: Let him crack it. I don't believe in Indian education anymore. I am going for GMAT

Girl: Oh my God!! He's so cute!!!
Boy: Yeah....hes probably GAY!


This one's my favorite:

Girl: Hes so witty. I mean hes so funny. I had such a great time
Boy: Ha Ha!
Girl: What? Whats do funny?
Boy: No nothing. Just remembered he has a small d**k

What are you gonna do?

Has it ever happened with you that at times you find yourself stuck in awkward situations and you must find something to do? (Well you may not find situations so awkward the way I do but still!) Lets take a simple example. You agree to meet a friend at a cafe. Your friend is already at the cafe and you make eye contact with him from a distance. You wave to acknowledge the aforementioned eye contact. It is this distance that I need to travel that kills me. What does one do while covering this distance? You can't obviously keep making eye contact. That will just freak him/her out (What you don't think the person I am meeting can be a 'her'?) You can't always look away because its not polite. There are a number of things that you can do actually. I usually use my cellphone as an object that has me occupied. I pretend as if I have just received an important message which I must attend to. In fact I have seen a lot of people do the same thing. Another one of my tricks is to pretend as if I just tripped over an imaginary stone and must watch the ground closely to avoid any future such clumsiness. (What? I am sure you have your own tricks). If I am the one sitting in the cafe and have spotted my friend then I have a neat trick that I am proud of. I'll just pretend that I haven't seen him. I'll just keep looking randomly at people or places and acknowledge the person only when hes inches away. Oh! When did you come?? (I must tell you that I have run into a lot of problems when I randomly 'pretend' (totally intentional) to 'observe' (checkout) 'people' (girls) when I am waiting for that 'her' friend that I was talking about).

The worst is when the friend you are with runs into her long lost friend and it is imperative that she must catch up with this friend at that very moment. Ofcourse she introduces you but then what? You can't speak because there is nothing to say really. You just have to listen to their tales of how they tried contacting each other and smile in an understanding and i-am-totally-interested way. A phone call at that time is God sent. Even if its one of those bloody customer care executives you'll listen to them patiently as if you were getting paid for this.

There is another situation which somehow happens a lot to me. So by now you must have realized how conscious a person I am. You must also know that I am very shy. I have what you call stage-fright. And the world is a stage. So I kind of rehearse my lines a lot especially when other people are speaking their lines-in real life. So when my friend introduces me to her friends and I must introduce myself at the end this is how it goes:

Friend 1: Hey, Ravi* (Me: I am Gautam)
Friend 2: Hi, I am Siddharth* (Me: I am Gautam)
Me: I am Gautam (No clue what either Friend 1 or Friend 2 said)

*Real names not disclosed (Don't know the real names)

And sure enough a time comes when you must repeat these names. What are you gonna do?

Lets paint the Wall red

A very brief conversation at the office today made me raise an eyebrow (Actually I went like WHAT??). I now completely understand why they say that half knowledge can be dangerous (or embarassing..whatever). All this may not make too much sense but the end result is that I have decided to change the name of my blog. I have decided to name it the 'Red Wall'. Well this name has no magnificent history or story behind it. Its just that one of the walls in my room is red (Naming is tough! My kids will be called A and B).


Talking about walls and colors, have you ever thought that you'll paint your apartment or atleast your room? Well I did (I didn't actually do it. I just thought about it). Its sounds fun doesn't it? You think about this great weekend you'll have where you'll invite all your friends, spread old newspaper all over the floor, have pints of cold beer, order pizza when you get tired, make graffiti before the first coat, accidentally paint over your friends (female) nose who'll obviously be wearing mini denim shorts and climbing ladders to reach that missed spot on the ceiling etc etc. Bullshit. It just proves that I have been watching too many Hindi movies. Its a tough job which takes a almost a week to complete requiring four full time professional painters.

Take my red wall for instance (which now looks fabulous by the way). First, you have to scrape off the old paint and chuna which leaves you looking like a spooky ghost. Most of the time you are just gasping for breath (I am just passing on the experience of the professionals we hired. I hardly entered the room). Then comes two coatings of 'Birla white putti'. In my dreamworld the weekend is already over. Mixing of the paint is also a tricky part because they hardly ever turn out to be the ones you chose from the brochures. Pizza?Beer? You'll end up fighting with the hired help because you think they take too many tea breaks.

The worst happens after three coatings of nice red paint when your mom begins to feel that the lighting fixture should be at the centre of the wall. Such irregularity in the position of the fixture is totally unacceptable. Apparently the irregularity in the timing of such a realization is totally acceptable. The painters watched in horror as the fixture was removed leaving a long white stretch of old white paint. It took a lot a red coating to fix that one.

Point is that in a way our life can be like the red wall. We may try to paint it the way we want but we'll always get a different color or be left with an unwanted white mark. 

P.S. The picture is for representation purposes only. That is not my room.