Best Dance moves ever period...Ending is really awesome....I laughed for 2 full minutes after watching this.
- posted by Kiran @ 9:29 PM 0 comments

 


Episode 59 - Punked !!! - Part 1


December is typically a slow time at work and people generally shutdown completely by either not showing up for work or come really late and compensate by leaving early. This is the only time of the year when people start chilling confidently at work without the fear of their boss watching their backs.
During my internship year in 2005, we had a new guy join my team around December. His name was Marcos and he was from Mexico. He was one of the weirdest guys that i had seen in my life. He was as fat as he was tall and looked like a bicurious bandicoot. He reminded me of Humty Dumty and it looked like god had used a compass to create this perfect sphere. He had this strange habit of sneezing and muttering "Bless me" and this equally weird habit of wearing a helmet in his car when he drove. I guess normalcy was his achilees heel.
On one occastion, he requested my only fellow Indian in the company, Murali to take him home in his car as he had forgotten the document that he had to prepare for the meeting with the team and that his own car had a flat tyre. Realising how tense Marcos was , Murali drove him to his place which was close to 15 miles away. I tagged along with them since I had nothing much going on anyways. After reaching their place, Marcos quickly got down and told us to wait for 2 mins so that he could dash in and get the document. Murali and I waited for a while and there was no sign of him. After close to 25 mins with still no sign of Marcos, I decided to head inside to see what he was up to. I knocked on the door a couple of times and there was no response. I repeatedly rang the door bell a couple of times and after a while a fat lady who appeared to be totally irritated opened the door and screamed

"WHAAAAAAAAAAATTTT ?" she yelled.
I shuddered and asked
Kiran:- "Is Marcos in there ?"
she replied rudely,
"YES. He is sleeping. Im his Wife. What do you want ?"
Kiran:- "Sleeping ? But he asked us to wait so that he could rush in and get his documents."
Wife :- "What ?? Give me a minute. I'll wake him up."

I could hear a few violent screams and after a while, I saw a groggy looking Marcos heading towards the door. He quitely got into the car and without offering an apology or an explanation dosed off in the car. Murali and I looked at each other unable to come to terms with what was happening and headed back to the office totally pissed that this lunatic made us wait for half an hour and went on to take a nap.

We decided to put the incident behind us and after a few days Muralis friend, Gabriel came to meet him at his desk and Murali in an effort to impress her decided to target Marcos. He looked at Marcos and said

Murali:- "Hey Marcos ! Did you enter the office today by jumping over the compound wall instead of using the gate. I heard that pole vaulting is the number one sport in your country."

Marcos surprisingly was spontaneous in his reply

Marcos:- "Thats interesting. I heard that in India people travel on cows from one place to another. I heard that they stand on the pavement waiting for cows and get on top of them. Later when they need to make a turn, they get off the first cow and wait for a cow which is walking towards right."

Gabriele held her fat stomach and started giggling like a piglet uncontrolably which made Murali more furious than ever before. His whole face turned red i could see that he wanted nothing more than to pulverize Marcos to pulp.

I decided to help Murali out and stepped in and told Marcos

Kiran:- " Hey Marcos, you are soooo funny. You know what you should do ? You can author a book called 'Marcos and Jokes'. The first joke could be a photo of you."

Murali forced himself to laugh loudly to irritate Marcos and it seemed to be working.
Marcos quietly looked at Murali and asked

Marcos:- "Hey Murali, can you kindly do me a favour. It would mean a lot to me."
Murali :- (with a smiling face and his years pointed upwards like an attentive dog.)"Sure man. Let me know. What can i do for you ?"
Murali :- "It would mean a lot to me if you could SHUT THE HELL UP !!" (he yelled like a beast with yeast infection.)

Muralis ears drooped like a petrified puppy, as he did not expect Marcos, who typically has the patience of a coma patient to be this upset.

At this point Murali and I decided that this thankless goon had to be taught a fitting lesson.

(to be continued)
- posted by Kiran @ 8:54 AM 15 comments

 
Episode 58 - Pyramid scheme:- A pyramid scheme is a non-sustainable business model that involves the exchange of money primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, without any product or service being delivered. It has been known to come under many guises.

How often do you enter a mall these days without some stranger soliciting you about a business proposal, which turns out to be a pyramid scheme ?....Rarely ! When i was a newbie in the US, I was approached by this weird looking guy who was accompanied by his weirder looking wife. They had this smile on their face which made me suspect that they were retarded. The guy had a god fearing face - meaning a face which even god would fear to see ..and his hair looked like an over used toothbrush. His wife looked like a typical fat auntie next door and resembled Phoolen Devi seen through a convex lens.

They gave me an over friendly greeting and started talking to me like they knew me from ages.

Uncle: Helloooo Saaar ....How are you ?
Kiran: (stunned) I am sorry ...Have we met ?
Uncle:My name is Kashi saaar. This is my wife Mala Saar (and pointed to his wife who gave a scary smile which made me jump backwards)
Kiran: Oh (still confused) ...Err...nice to meet you.
Uncle: Are you from India Saaar ?
Kiran: Yes
Uncle: I am also from India saaar.
Kiran: O really ? I thought you were from Russia(sarcastic tone)
Uncle: No Saar, i am really from India
(without sensing the sarcasm in my voice)
Uncle: Saar i have this Business proposal for you where you can make lots and lots of money.
Kiran: ????
Uncle: Saar what work do you do ?
Kiran: I am a software engineer.
Uncle: Saar i too was a just a mere software engineer at CISCO when i was young. Later i discovered this company called Quickstar.
Kiran: Ok
Uncle: Yes saar. i read in the news papers that all software jobs will be gone in the next 2 years saar. But dont tell any one .
Kiran: What do you mean don't tell any one ? You said it was in the news paper.
Uncle: Yes sir but when people hear it, they will panic.

I could not believe the stupidity that he was unleashing and how common sense intolerant he was. He tried explaining what he meant but ended up struggling with his English, like a cockroach held upside down. I grew impatient and decided to leave.

Kiran: Actually i need to go. My friends are waiting outside for me.
Uncle:-Very happy to meet you saar. Please keep in touch saar. Can i have your email address and telephone address saaar?

Before i could realize what was happening, Kashi and his trophy wife-Mala took my email address from me and said they would discuss their business proposal with me later. I later told the incident to my friends and they laughed at me for wasting my time with that loser. They warned me that the company that he was talking about- "Quick star" was a company which was based on a pyramid scheme. I grew terribly upset with myself for not spotting it. My friends later told me that these guys would be really hard to get rid off and they would hang on to you like a leech till you signed up for their business plan which would cost me 300$ to enroll.

A few days later i received a mail from Mala(Kashi's trophy wife) who sent the following mail

Dear Kiran
Hope you are doing very good. It was very fantastic meeting you in the mall.
Here are the details that my husband Kashi and i would like to explain to you about Quickstar
:(blah)
:(blah)

Sincerely
Mala and Kashi

I wrote a mail saying that i was not interested their proposal but the following day i received another mail from a different email address with the same information but different names(Shilpa and Suresh). I checked the IP address of the email and found that they had both originated from the same source. I quickly realized that it was the same fool who had sent it with a different email-id and sent the following reply via email.

Dear Shilpa aka Mala
I am glad to see your email after a long time and am very happy to know that you are getting back on your feet.You should have been careful and should have listened to your parents, when they said that you should not trust Syed. Look what happened. He gave you a baby and left you.
He is now happily married to a girl from his country. Now you are the loser. When your parents advised you to wait until they find you a suitable match, you didn't want to listen to them and now you have to raise the kid all alone.
Anyways, past is past. How are your parents. Hope they will come out of this shock.
Please convey my regards to them.

Good luck and may god bless you!!!
Thanks
/Kiran

I got the following reply the next day

Mr IDIOT aka KIRAN
Before mailing anyone, make sure to whom you are mailing.Better make sure you would not mail such non- sense any more (or) I'll have to take serious action on this and complain to our higher authority

Thankfully that was the last reply i got from the crazy couple.
- posted by Kiran @ 9:50 PM 6 comments

 
Episode 57 - Burn after reading

What is a Burn ?

slang: to disrespect someone (to diss);
to make fun of someone;
used by a third party after a first party makes fun of a second party.

With the startup culture still prevailing in my company, the word burn is used in a slightly different context. Every time someone in my office leaves their desk and fails to log-off or lock their computer, people send out a mail from his/her outlook session masquerading as the owner of the account, more often than not embarrassing the victim. This trend was started by fresh college grads who started the company and has struck with the company ever since. No one is spared including the CTO, who was once burnt by the VP(who was a good friend of his), who sent out a mail saying that if any developer caused any bugs in the future, he would move them to the customer support division. After 5 min another mail was sentout explaining that it was a burn causing everyone to burst out with laughter. People usually take it well and laugh it off at the end and are taught the fun way, to log off their computer when they leave.

I decided to do my part to embarrass some people in my team and here are a couple of mails I sent from their computer when they failed to do the needful.

---

From: Toms, Teddy
Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2008 2:30 PM
Subject: Interesting Story
Hi all
I wanted to share this interesting story with you guys. I was racing home last night totally pissed off that I had been assigned a P1. While I was driving, much to my dismay, I saw a cop car flashing behind me. I cursed my bad luck ,thinking that my day couldn’t have gone any worse. Expecting a speeding ticket, I pulled over. The cop came over to my window and asked me

"Sir, my car has broken down and I need your help in chasing that black corvette in front which is getting away"

I asked him to hop into my car and we raced across the streets at break neck speed and chased the corvette through dark alleys, narrowly avoiding a few homeless folks by a whisker. I finally rammed into the corvette which brought the car to a screeching halt.
The cop jumped out of my car and nabbed the suspect who was trying to flee on foot. I too got down and landed a couple of blows on him and helped keep the suspect down while the officer handcuffed him. The police officer thanked me profusely and said that he would recommend me for an award.
When the mayor heard this he decided to have a grand function thrown and presented me with the KEY to the city. Upon seeing the key to the city, it dawned upon me that I hadn’t locked my computer. DARN!!!!

-XXX

---

From: XXXXX,XXX
Sent: Monday, September 22, 2008 5:04 PM
To: DL-PP-Architecture
Subject: special offer

Hi All ,
Are you constantly bullied at work ? Do you feel tired and stressed out at the end of each passing day ? Do you feel attacked and unable to defend yourself ?
That was me 3 weeks ago. Until this miracle happened to me. With the theme song from Rocky playing in the background, I began secretly practicing kung fu in my basement, with my teddy bear-Rupert (who was my only true friend in this world). Under his able guidance I soon got the courage to launch flying kicks at people who messed with me. I won the respect of my collegues and admiration from my friends and enemies. I was heading home from work one day,with my teddy bear in my back pack, when I had to walk through a dark alley where I was a confronted by a gang of goons. I put up a brave fight and knocked the teeth of a couple of guys with my flying kicks.
But one coward decided to attack me from behind and aimed a sharp blow on the back of my head. At this point my teddy bear stuck his head out of my back pack and took the blow just to protect me. Just before dying he whispered into my ear.

"Son ,(cough cough) please conduct kung fu lessons…….. for a discounted price of 99.99 per week…. in my memory…and if possible throw in a free copy of Kung fu panda-DVD(cough cough)……. death………(cough cough)…excludes shipping and handling….cough cough …death…ZZzzzz………."

So that is just what I will be doing.
Sign up soon as this exclusive offer wont last long.

If you don’t the curse of Confucius will be cast upon you and will be burnt like how I am.

/XXXXX
- posted by Kiran @ 8:43 AM 9 comments

 
Episode 56 - Revenge is a dish best served icy cold !!!
While doing my masters I maintained a squeaky clean image and generally tried to stay away from trouble. My dad had warned me that all the crap that I could get away with in India, would fetch me swift kicks in US. So I decided to keep to myself and limited the interaction I had with the outside world. Being a student in a foreign land who is a vegetarian and doesn’t know how to cook, forced me to lead the life of a sage. I ate fruits and roots most of the time and tried to cook once a week. But it used to come out so bad that it reminded me of Infosys. Once in a while I would befriend some Indian students who came to the lab and would invite myself to their place for lunch/dinner and have a sumptuous meal.
One day I met this Indian student from mechanical called NARasimha swami in the computer lab. He was so thin and dark that he reminded me of Skeletor. I could have sworn that I had seen a couple of eagles hovering around his head waiting for the inevitable when he walked alone in the field. He was coughing loudly like a Cholera patient which made me wonder if his name should have been Nursing-Home-Swamy instead of Narasimha swami. He was struggling with some C program in the lab and asked me if I could help him out. After i helped him out he reciprocated by mentioning that his friends had pooled in some money and bought the subscription package for watching the India Aus 2003 cricket test series and that I was welcome to join them.

I went to his place and found that his roommates were not too happy to have me there, since I was watching the game for free. There was this one guy in particular, Ashish Tirupathi who was bald and black and looked like DeveGowda's half brother. He refused to even acknowledge my greeting. It looked like he hadn’t taken a bath in ages and stunk like a corpse. Noticing how quiet every one was on my arrival, Narasimha swami decided to break the tension with a joke. He pointed to a bottle of mouth wash on the table and asked Tirupathi

Narasimha Swamy: Hey Ashish Tirupathi ,does the alcohol in mouthwashes actually kill the germs that cause bad breath or does it mask the odor ?
Tirupathi : Alcohol is an antiseptic and kills all kinds of germs
Narasimha Swamy: Then why don’t you use it ? Your breath smells like there is a dead rat in your mouth.

I burst out laughing at this point. I tried controlling as hard as i could but ended up pointing my finger at Ashish Tirupathi and started rolling on the floor unable to control my laughter.

For some strange reason Tirupathi was extremely upset with me instead of his roommate Nursing home swami. He gave me an evil look. I could see that he was plotting revenge. The cricket match started soon after and Ashish politely offered me a seat. I was surprised and thanked him and told my self that looks could be decieving. As I was about to sit on the seat, Ashish decided to do justice to his looks and removed the seat from behind which caused me to land on the floor with a THUD!! Thanks to the momentum, I almost did a complete reverse somersault, rolled like a ball and landed on all fours like a cat. Tirupathi started laughing loudly along with his fellow goons. Much to my surprise, even Nursing Home swami stopped coughing and started laughing hysterically(HEEE HEEEE HEEE) like an old witch. I quickly picked up my things and left plotting revenge.
During the course of the conversation, I had realized that these goons were desperately looking for a roommate and had even posted several ads in some of the universities yahoo groups. One of their ex-roommates had left suddenly after having a fight with Tirupathi causing the other 2 to share the burden of the rent. I created an anonymous email id and sent an email to these guys.

Dear brothers
My name is Enkobrao Elakapalli from the Vibhoothi district of Andhra Pradesh. I will be coming to US next week and am looking for an apartment to share. I wish to be your roommate. Can you please arrange for a pickup from the airport? [I inserted flight timings and some flight information that I found online. I specifically picked up a flight that landed at 12 in the night.]
Thank you
EE

Tirupathi was very excited that they had found a potential roommate from his state and replied in a jiffy.

Dear brother
I am very excited to have a roommate from my state. I will come to the airport with my other roommate Narasimha Swami and pick you up.
Regards
AT

I then exchanged a couple more mails asking some basic questions that any newbie in a new land would ask to ensure that no suspicions were raised. I found out through a common friend that a week later, the two goons then hired a cab and went to the airport at 12 in the night. Since it was the peak of winter where the temperature was well below zero they armed themselves with sweaters and gloves and waited at the airport for close to 2 hours in the bitter cold freezing their nips off, shiverring like wet kitten and hugging each other for warmth.
They returned home later very confused, worried and mildly irritated. They sent a mail immediately upon reaching home

Dear brother[Enkobrao Elakapalli]
We waited at the airport for 2 hours and you did not show up. Hope you are safe. Please let us know if you missed the flight.
Regards
AT

I replied

Dear brother
At the last minute I decided not to come to US since mother and motherland are greater than heaven. Hope you did not have to shiver too much in the biting cold. I am told that in US it gets very cold.
Keep in touch
/Enkobrao Elakapalli

Unfortunately I will not be able to paste the reply that I got from them since it was smeared with curse words and profanities close to two pages long. It surprises me how people can get so angry at patriots. :-)
- posted by Kiran @ 8:38 AM 24 comments

 


- posted by Kiran @ 12:11 AM 11 comments

 
Smart Parrot

- posted by Kiran @ 3:10 PM 5 comments

 


Episode 54 - Road Rage


Words aren’t sufficient to describe the deteriorating traffic situation in India. Few have escaped without getting into some form of a minor accident or another. I was looking at a narrow road, close to my house the other day and was wondering if there was enough space, for my dad's two wheeler to go through. But before I could make up my mind, I was blown away by this guy in a truck trying to do the same. BOY ! Was i nervous moving around. I remember the good old days 10 years back when I used to play cricket on the same road ,which takes me more than 5 minutes to just cross today.
The road in front our house which connected 2 other roads was a breeding ground for many minor accidents. The fights that broke out were a constant source of entertainment on long boring Sunday afternoons. On one occasion while I was standing in front of my house , patiently waiting for something to happen, I noticed my friend BK practicing his brand new Luna-moped, with his elder brother. BK's brother was twice as tall as he was and thrice as stupid. If there ever was a Nobel Prize awarded for stupidity BK would have been the runner up. BK brother was affectionately called L-K-B by his friends, if thats what youd like to call us. We later expanded the acronym Long KaaLina(legged) boy just to make him happy. He rarely took a bath and i could have sworn that i saw some spider webs in his hair ones. He smelt so bad that i felt like putting him inside a washing machine so that he would come out clean. Since BK had no experience of driving a 2 wheeler in his life before, he was moving like a snake on the road wobbling from one side to another with his brother, LKB cheering him on. But much to his bad luck he rammed into a fat uncle who was driving an old scooter. The stout old guy bellowed like a bullock and fell to the ground with a thud. BK instead of helping him out suddenly got up to his feet and yelled (BOLLI MAGNEY)"YOU SON OF A BITCH". The super fat uncle who was wearing a super tight T shirt and an Extra tight Chaddi(shorts) got up , left his scooter behind and ran at top speed. From behind he looked like an aunty in panty running for the hills. While BK and LKB were gloating about how they scared an old man away and giving each other high-fives, the fat guy returned with a huge thug pointing towards BK.
He pointed towards BK and told the thug,
Old guy:-" This was the guy who called me a son of a bitch"
The thug walked up to BK, launched a tight slap across his face and said
Thug :- "HEY !! Do you know who this is?"
BK :- (with his hand on his cheek and a broken voice) No Sir!
Thug :- He is my guru (teacher). Now apologize to him.
BK realized that the fat guy was actually a professor at APS and the thug was one of his students. He looked around for his brother, LKB and realized that he had bolted like a rabbit sensing trouble. Without his brother BK seemed toothless like a toothless cobra.
Thug :- You will have to pay for the damages to the scooter. It includes a broken indicator light and a mirror.
BK :- (without a moments hesitation,in as polite voice) But of course sir
Thug :- Let me check if there are more damages. Wait here
BK :- OK
BK slowly but casually, walked up to his moped and acted like he was checking for damages. While the thug and the fat guy were assessing the damages to the uncle’s scooter BK looked around like a cunning clown and slowly kick started his moped. He quickly got on the moped and put his hands on the accelerator. Giving it maximum throttle he quickly started moving away from the scene. The uncle pointed to BK and yelled that he was getting away. The thug started giving chase on foot. BK after noticing that he had gained sufficient lead turned back at his oppressors and yelled.
(SAAYRO BOLLI MAKLA)"Die you 2 sons of 2 bitches".
But much to BK's bad luck there was some sand on the road which caused BK, who was still learning how to ride his moped to lose control. He moved in the shape of 8 (eight) ,rammed into a lamp post and fell down. The thug came running towards BK. BK thinking that he was trying to offer him help lifted his hand so that he could be pulled up to his feet. But the thug twisted his hand and launched 2 powerful slaps on the fallen BK. BK finally got up by himself and paid the fat guy for the damages caused. He decided that he had enough moped practice for one day and pushed the moped slowly back towards his house.


- posted by Kiran @ 11:04 AM 15 comments

 
Episode 53 - AAKRAMANN...

While I was doing my undergraduation (BE) at PESIT (VTU), I always made the last bench my humble home. In the first year, I used to actively participate in intense friendly chalk fights between North Indians and South Indians, who sat in the last benches.
Before each class we would collect enough chalk pieces from the lecturer’s desk. As soon as the lecturer turned around and started writing something on the board, the battle would begin. Both teams (north and south) would fire away their missiles at each other and mentally note down the score. Every thunderous KNOCK on the enemies’ skull was greeted with a handshake from fellow teammates and rewarded with more ammunition (chalk pieces) from the stock pile. Most times however, the brunts of the missiles were borne by meek folks who were sleeping peacefully in the class. While we initially felt sorry for these souls, we realized that a few civilian casualties were to be expected in the quest for the greater good of mankind. Some of these folks who were rudely woken up, soon picked a side and tried to extract revenge, by throwing back the chalk pieces at their oppressors.
We had a guy called Nithin Bidare in our team, who looked like brainless gay baboon. He had the impeccable record of not only failing all subjects he attempted, but also the sum of the scores he received in all the individual subjects did not add up 35. One day the north Indians who had practiced their throwing the previous weekend picked him as their target. As soon as the professor turned around, they fired away the chalk pieces at Nithin who received knock after knock on his tiny skull, face and arms. There were so many white marks on his body that he looked like a South Indian Poojari who had just come from a temple, with white lines all over his face, arms and body.
We decided to take revenge on the gay baboons behalf and waited for the professor to turn around. Yogindra and I who had the best aim in our team took 5 chalk pieces each and took aim. As soon as the professor turned around, we threw chalk after chalk at the North Indians. Much to our surprise, we realized that they were not throwing any chalk pieces back at us. Without wasting any time thinking why they were not throwing anything back at us, we continued our indiscriminate firing.
While we sat these beaming with pride at our incredible achievement, we realized that the North Indians were actually giggling at us. It dawned on us at that moment, that the professor had turned around and was watching the entire action unfold, with his hands on his hips.

" This explains why those goons were not firing back at us" said Yogindra.

The professor(with smoke coming out of his ears) came to our desk and said

Professor: - (pointing to Sandeep Yogindra and myself) You Three, GETUP AND GETOUT!!
Sandeep : - Sir, I was not involved in this. You can ask Kiran.
Kiran : - Yes Sir, even I was not involved in this.
Professor:- I know what you are capable of. I have been seeing you guys from day one.Get OUT !
Sandeep :- At least give me attendance.
Professor:- SHUTUP ! You careers are over. You will be getting your TC's soon. Good luck with your new careers.
Kiran : - Sir, I have never been caught doing such mischief before
Professor:- Never been caught ?? Does it mean that you have been escaping all along? Give me your addresses. I will have the TC’s mailed to your houses.
Yogindra:- Sir, I stay in the outskirts of Bangalore.
Professor:-I don’t care whether you stay in the outskirts or in-skirts of Bangalore. Give me the postal address.

We knew that this loser was just trying to scare us and gave him our address. But even after a month we did not get our TC’s and he soon forgot the episode as well.
- posted by Kiran @ 9:37 AM 18 comments

 


EPISODE 52 !!! Foot in mouth disease- part III

While interning at Interactive systems, the happiest day of my life and saddest day of Murali’s life was the same day. It was the “Bring your kid to work” day at our company and Murali’s heart sank like the titanic when he realized that the receptionist (Samantha) he was eying, had a 3 yr old son. Alex.

Murali decided to take it in his stride and convinced himself that it was still not a bad deal, despite the baggage. Given his gorilla like looks and the 2kg’s of dandruff that he carried in his hair it still wasn’t a bad deal he thought. He decided to befriend the kid to get into Samantha’s good books. He approached the kid with a small chocolate in his hand and started off the conversation with the usual

Murali :- Haai..Vaaat ees your naaeme ?
Kid:- (no reply)
Murali:-Name ?
Kid:- (no reply)
Murali:- (Looking at Samantha). Hey Samantha. Duss he taaak yet? I started talking at an earlier age (was probably trying to prove how smart he was as a kid)

Out of the blue the kid replied to Murali

Kid:- Your breadth smells like dog breadth !!
Murali:- (TOTALLY speechless and embarrassed)
Kid:- Did you eat doo doo for lunch?

I as usual laughed out loudly to make sure that everybody knew what had just happened. Murali came to me later and said,

Murali:- Dude ! I have never seen such a racist kid before in my life. What do you think I should do?
Kiran :- Use a breath mint.
Murali:- No dude. I am pissed off with Samantha. Should I follow her home and give her a piece of my mind.
Kiran:- That would be like stalking. She could have you arrested and molested for that. :-)
Murali:- Oh! Should I dump Samantha?
Kiran :- But I don’t think she even knows your name , or cares to know.
Murali:- Well she wont know in the future either. It is her loss.
Kiran:- (rolling my eyes) Of course.

A few days later Murali came to me and said

Murali:- What do you think of the CEO’s secretary, Gabriel.
Kiran:- I think she is horrible, very rude, has a loud voice.
Murali:- I feel that she has the girl next door looks.
Kiran:- Yah , if you stay next door to a slum.
Murali:-Good to hear that you don’t like her . It will reduce the competition for her.
Kiran :- She is the reason to believe that humans got aids from monkeys.
Murali:- Dude, Stop it. I have been going out with her for the past 1 week.
Kiran :- (blown away) Oh ..very sorry dude. Err…Actually looks aren’t important. I think you two will make a great pair.
Luckily , Murali did not realize what i just said and smilingly replied
Murali:- Thank you.

- posted by Kiran @ 7:43 PM 14 comments

 

Episode 51 - Hard work is the key to failure Part - 8

I am sure that many of you have worked under head strong managers with the IQ of a mouse. But have you ever worked under a real Crack Pot. Enter Jaideep Choudry. While I was (not) working in India , I had the misfortune of working under this loser whose only moto in life was to be a Psycho. The very first day I joined his team I realised that this guy was unstable.
I knew that I had to be careful with this psycho cause he had a very short temper.I remember once when I was not feeling well and was coughing at my Desk

Kiran :- COUGH COUGH !!
Jaideep:- (seemingly irritated) Kiran, Can you cough softly, I am trying to listen to the cricket score on my radio.

I quickly used this as an excuse and went to the dorm to sleep peacefully.
For some "unknown" reason, the managers of my previous projects had given a bad feedback about me and Jaideep was weary of this. He had once asked the team members to study a crappy design document that he had written for a lousy project, which I had casually ignored. The next day, he setup a meeting to discuss the project. While I was physically in the meeting room, I started peacefully daydreaming about what I would be doing the following weekend. Jaideep suddenly startled me

JAIDEEP:- Kiran !! Can you please explain the design of the project?
KIRAN: - (visibly stunned) Err.. Actually I tried reading but it was very complex. So I could not understand
JAIDEEP:- What was so complex about it ? Any way, Nithin, can you explain?
(Nithin started explaining)
(Phew!! After dodging the bullet, I went back to my day dreaming mode. Jaideep startled me again)
JAIDEEP:-Kiran Can you explain what Nithin just explained ?
KIRAN: - Oh!!!(more stunned than before) I did not understand the first part can you please re-explain it ?
(While Nithin started re-explaining it, I said to myself to be careful, as this manager was a crazy guy who could stoop down to any level. But before I could finish saying this to myself Nithin had finished explaining the design.)
JAIDEEP:- Kiran !! At least now, can you explain the design?
KIRAN: - "Errrrr ..I am still confused"
(Jaideep quickly sent Nithin and Rohan out of the room.)
JAIDEEP:- "Kiran !! This is not acceptable. It seems like you are not committed at all. I had received bad feedback from your previous managers but I did not expect it to be THIS bad."
KIRAN :- Which manager ? (i wanted to say that i had a fight with that manager)
JAIDEEP:- Actually , All of them.
KIRAN :- Oh (speechless)
JAIDEEP:- Commitment should be your MIDDLE name in this company.
I felt like giving him the MIDDLE finger when he said that.

On another instance, like I had mentioned in my previous episodes, I had a 100% attendance record...in the 5pm evening bus. I used to punctually leave the office at 5pm which instigated a joke that one day I did not show up in the 5 O clock bus, the bus driver refused to leave. Reason being he could not be convinced that it was 5pm. One day like always I had left the crappy work that was assigned to me half done. Ok ill be honest I hadn’t even started it and left the building through the emergency exit, with an old jacket and a half opened water bottle at my desk. What I was totally unaware though was that Jaideep had a side kick named Padmalakshmi who was his second in command. She had this weird habit of walking sideways like Kannada actor Ambrish. It seemed like she was dancing every time she walked which made me give her the nickname, Pole-Dancing-Padmalakshmi or PDP for short.

Pole dancing Padmalakshmi (PDP) had seen me ascend the 5pm bus and had reported this to Senior Psycho aka Jaideep the next day. When I showed up for work the following day, Jaideep was furious.

JAIDEEP:-"Kiran ! I need to see you in the meeting room right away"
KIRAN: - (gulp) OK
(In the meeting room)
JAIDEEP:- "Kiran, If I give you a booby , Will you abandon it ?"
KIRAN: - WHAT? (I realized later that he meant baby)
JAIDEEP:- "What will it think of you , when it grows up ?"
(I almost fell off my chair when he said that)
KIRAN: - I am not sure. What is this regarding?” (With an innocent face)
JAIDEEP:- "I think you know what this is regarding ?" (With a stern voice)
KIRAN: - "Err I ... had ... a headache yesterday"
JAIDEEP: "We wasted one hour looking for you cause we thought you were here in the office. Padmalakshmi told me later that you had left for the day"
(Damn that PDP)
JAIDEEP: - "This Friday, we are going to a project party. I don’t think you will be joining us. Try putting yourself in my shoes and you will realize that what I am doing is right"
(I felt like telling him that I did not want to put myself either in his shoes or his socks. This was the best punishment that I could expect. I did not want to hang out with those losers anyway)

- posted by Kiran @ 5:03 PM 14 comments

 


EPISODE 50 !!! Foot in mouth disease- part II

While working at Interactive systems as an intern, I was the only Desi (Indian) in the company. A couple of weeks later we had another Indian join the company as a contractor. His name was Murali. He looked like a beta version of an African tribal and his English was comparable to theirs. Since I was the first Indian to join the company, people generally asked me about India and its culture and seldom asked Murali anything. For some reason this would frustrate Murali and he grew very upset with me. Added to the fact that his pronunciation was so bad that even I found it hard to understand what he was saying sometimes.

He always made it a point to speak something about India in every meeting irrespective of the context. I remember in one team meeting he said

MURALI:- "Today if GandhiJayanti(one single word).
MANAGER:- "Oh (confused look) what’s that ? "
MURALI:- "It is Gandhiji's happy birthday.He was the father of our nation" (And gives me a smile indicating that he has beaten me by bringing it up first).
MANAGER:-"Oh that’s good."
MURALI:- "Today everyone in our country is Moaning".
(Everybody is confused and starts looking at each other to see if anyone understood)
MANAGER: - "Moaning?? But why? Are you in pain?"
KIRAN:-"I think he means Mourning. "
MURALI: -"Yes"
Every one burst into fits of hysterical laughter, which caused Murali to go into a shell for a few days.

We had a decent looking receptionist in our office named Samantha who was very friendly and outgoing. She once told Murali

SAMANTHA:-"I like Indians. You guys are really down to earth."
(Murali mistook down to earth to be literally closer to the earth)
MURALI:-(Visibly irritated)"WHAT? Are you saying that we are short?"
SAMANTHA:- "Oh I am so sorry what I meant was that you are humble."

Murali felt flattered and for some reason decided to hit on the receptionist . He would always make up an excuse to talk to her. Unfortunately he mistook her friendliness and tried to make big statements but always ended up looking more stupid than ever before.
One day he went to her and said

MURALI: - "I can believe they expect us drink this water (pointing to a tap). It tastes very weird and even the color is slightly brown"
SAMANTHA: -"Sir that is recycled water. Its not meant for human consumption. We use this to water the plants in the building. It is even mentioned on the board next to the tap. "
(In an effort to make a quick comeback)
MURALI: - "O..I know... but I think it is too dirty even for the plants. "
(Which left the receptionist speechless)
SAMANTHA: - "Ok I got to take off for the day. See you tomorrow. Take care. "
MURALI: -"Take care?? Of what? "

I could see the receptionist through the window, wobbling on the road unable to control her laughter.
There was another occasion when our manager asked Murali to interview a candidate. After interviewing him for an hour, Murali came back

MANAGER:- "So how was the candidate? "
MURALI:- "He was O plus(+)"
MANAGER: "What??"
MURALI: "He was O+".
MANAGER: "But what do you mean by O+? Did you say A+? "
MURALI: "No No..He is O+ "
(My manger was about to tear his hair out )
KIRAN: "I think he means hopeless(O+) "
MURALI:- "Yes !! He is O+"
MANAGER: Oh my God. Thanks Kiran .If it wasn’t for you, I would have ended up hiring this person :-)

(To be continued)…
- posted by Kiran @ 9:08 AM 23 comments

 

Episode 49 - Pranks thrill but Kill
Back in the early 90’s kids had very little things to keep themselves entertained. As a result we had to get creative to create our own entertainment. I remember this time my friend Raghavendra who had purchased a mini-soccer ball which looked like a real leather soccer ball, till one felt it. It was as hard as granite.
The most common prank that never got old was leaving this ball on the road, and then wait at a distance for passers by to come near the ball. We would then request “Could you please kick the ball in this direction?” with an innocent face.
People, as eager as ever to relive their childhood, would kick the ball and end up howling like wolves in distress. We would laugh loudly, run as quickly as we could from the scene, and hide behind a compound wall, waiting for the victim to leave the scene. Then we’d wait for the next victim to pass by.
One fine day my friend BK got carried away and asked a middle aged woman to kick the ball in our direction. From the moment we included BK into this evil scheme, I knew that we were inviting trouble. The middle aged woman kicked and screamed. BK ran like a cheetah but unfortunately dropped our team’s cricket bat in the process. The middle aged woman grabbed the cricket bat and yelled

"You guys are not getting this back"

We had to go back and apologize to the lady but she was furious.

"You rouges .If my leg breaks and I have an infection and die .who will take care of my daughter."

I was tempted to say

"I will"

but decided to stay quiet. She left the scene with our cricket bat, causing us to share the burden of losing an expensive cricket bat.
Another instance happened during the good old days of middle school. A time when it was so much fun to play a million pranks on my classmates and get thorough beatings from the class-teacher for that. I also remember spending half my life in the head-mistress’s room, blasting my bad luck for getting caught many times, while nursing my bruised knuckles and the other half of my life gloating over how I got away. There was this time when I was in 6th standard, where in my class teacher had written a note on the Black Board with a chalk piece:

"Today Is Clean Your Class Day."

As soon as the teacher went out of the class for an instant, I went and asked a classmate of mine Srikanth who was a bit slow in the head,

Kiran: - "I challenge you to erase a letter or two off from the board." and told him the letters to be removed
Srikanth: - (Totally puzzled)"But what does that mean?”

To which I answered

Kiran :- "Oh..err" (Controlling my laughter). "It means donkey".
Srikanth:-"Ha-ha that’s funny. But I am scared." he replied
Kiran:-"If you are a boy, you will do this."

Since I had challenged his masculinity, Srikanth marched like a soldier towards the board and erased the 2 letters ‘C’ and ‘L’ from the board. As he was returning to his seat, much to his bad luck, the teacher entered the classroom and was shocked to find her note tampered with. It now read:

"Today Is Clean Your Ass Day."

She caught hold of Srikanth who was trying to getaway and gave him powerful blows to the head, each time yelling

" Pervert!... Pervert!"

While I was in the last bench, belching with uncontrollable giggles, our class student leader, a bitch of the first order, went and complained to the teacher that she had seen me challenging Srikanth to change the note. I could not believe that she was such a sadist to put me into trouble for no reason. I tried explaining to the teacher that the leader was lying shamelessly through her teeth. But before I could even finish my sentence thanks to my checkered past, the teacher twisted my ear so hard that I almost did a somersault. Both Srikanth and I were then dragged to the head mistress’s room yet again to cool our heels for the rest of the day.
- posted by Kiran @ 10:35 AM 18 comments

 

Episode 48 -Foot in mouth disease - Part 1

While doing my internship at Interactive systems, a small company with around 10-12 employees, I had the opportunity to work with some strange characters. I was totally unaware of the fact that most of the seniors in my team were long time buddies and often poked fun at each other. Unfortunately I did not realize this and thought that this was the work culture in US where people keep taking friendly jabs at each other.
As it is, to start with, my brain has little or no control over my mouth. Smart-ass comments seemed to flow seamlessly irrespective of the situation and the people I was interacting with at the office. I just didn’t seem to understand what had come over me.
Interactive systems took us on a rafting trip (that’s right the pics in my other blog) and after rowing for 2 hours in the water; we were given a break and allowed to rest on the shore. My team lead , John who had done most of the rowing was very tired and lied down on the stone bench. I didn’t know what came over me.
I suddenly went up to him and said.
”Hey John wake up, we are not at the office for you to be taking a nap”.
He looked around stunned and witnessed people laughing their guts out at him , including people from other companies who had come for the trip. My team lead sheepishly laughed along with them, but only when my appraisal results came out did I know if he took it sportily.
A little later while we were rafting, our boat overturned and we were all thrown into the water. Thanks to our life jackets we were able to get back into the boat pretty quickly. While my team members were struggling to get the water out of ears, my team lead -John unwittingly uttered.

“Hey I don’t have any water in my ears”.

To which I blurted out.

“That’s probably because for you, whatever goes into one ear, comes out of the other”.

I tried to cover my mouth before i could finish the sentence,but it was too late.As always people laughed with their fingers pointing at him. John acted like he did not hear it and started rowing more vigorously than ever. He talked little to me for the rest of the trip and I had to later apologize for having such a big mouth.
I was quiet for a week and spoke little cause I was scared that every time I opened my mouth something stupid would come out. But as luck would have it, one day the director of our company, Thomas who was leaving the company introduced the new guy Andrew who was about to be take over as the new director. He also happened to be an old friend of our current director, which I as usual came to know much later. The new guy who wanted to be funny told Thomas as he was leaving

“Goodbye Thomas we definitely wont miss you.”.

I figured that if this guy could make jokes he would also be man enough to take some directed at him. He stood at 6feet 7 inches and was the tallest guy in our office. He came over to our desk and introduced himself to the development team.

Andrew: - Hi, I am Andrew.
Kiran:- Hi, I am Kiran

(I then took my cell phone out of my pocket and gave it to him)
Andrew looked at me totally surprised.

Kiran:- Can you please check if you are getting any signal up there ?(mocking his height).
(But much to my surprise he took out his phone and gave it to me and said )

Andrew: - Ill need this to talk to you. I cant hear you from up here.

(to be continued..)
- posted by Kiran @ 10:31 PM 18 comments

 
Episode 47 - (Driving) License to kill

The easiest exam to pass in India is the written test to obtain a driving permit. All one needs to do is pay RS 200 to the examiner and come out with flying colors without even having to face the exam. When I turned 16 my dad took me to the DMV and as soon as we entered, we were thronged with people who kept asking for 200 to ensure that I passed the exam.
My dad wanted me to become the next Mahatma Gandhi said

“My son is honest and will give the exam. He will pass if he is good enough.”

I was a bit irritated and said to myself

“HONEST??? It’s about time I introduced myself to my dad. He hardly knows me.”

While I was sitting there brooding and waiting for the examiner to call me I saw my friend BK. He was talking to one of the examiners and was surprised to see me.
I asked BK what he was doing there and he said

“Oh I’m here to get my license. Ill be paying these goons Rs 200 and they will pass me without me having to give the exam.” , with a wicked smile on his face.

For once I felt that BK was making a smarter move than I was and rushed to my dad and told him
“Dad , why do you want to waste both your time and mine and lets not forget the examiners time ? Lets just give them 200Rs. If you think about it the entrance fee is around 50Rs so we are just paying 150 extra, which I will be paying anyways if I fail 3 times.”

I received a sharp blow to my head and was dragged to the examination room for demonstrating my analytical skills.

While I sat there waiting for the inevitable in the examination room, much to my envy, BK was issued the license and even received a congratulatory handshake from his proud parents. The examination room seemed like a dark and desolate place with fellow honest wannabe’s like me. The examiner was visibly irritated that I had not bribed him to pass the exam.

”WHERE IS YOUR APPLICATION” he yelled like a bitch with an itch.

He then directed me into the room and gave me the question paper and said I had 15 minutes to answer them. The paper had 15 multiple-choice questions and I had to score 10/15 to pass. I could figure out only 7 of them and was not sure about 3. I returned the paper in 5 min and the examiner said that it would be in my best interest to not leave any question answered. I just marked the remaining 5 questions as ‘C’ and returned the paper.

Much to my surprise the instructor evaluated the paper and said that I had scored exactly 10. Three of the 5 ‘C’s that I had marked were correct. My joy knew no bounds. I took the license and went directly to BK’s house, to rub it in.
As soon as he saw me BK asked.
“So when are you giving your next exam?”.
I shoved my license in his face and told him that I had passed in my first attempt and saved 150RS.
BK grew extremely jealous and said
“Well at least I did not have to waste my time sitting in the exam room giving the exam”
I replied
“BAH .I finished the exam in just 5 min”
BK: -Well y did you need so much time. I could have finished it even sooner.
Kiran:-Then why didn’t you give the exam ?
BK:- “Err..I dint have time” he said giving the look of a confused clown inviting bouts of laughter from the public.

- posted by Kiran @ 10:12 AM 38 comments

 
Happy Birthday Blog !!
- posted by Kiran @ 10:35 PM 23 comments

 

Episode 46 - Viva Exam

If there was one thing, which sent shudders down the spine of every engineering student, it was the Viva exam which happened in the lab during Engineering. Students prayed the whole semester that a kind soul (external) would show up the next day and would be happy with the wrong answers they gave. It was the confidence that mattered was what we thought.
My first Viva exam was in chemistry lab in first semester.
There was this external who looked like a baby kangaroo with his mouth protruding outwards. After we were done with our experiment we were summoned to his desk for the dreaded viva session.
He started off by asking our names and then immediately jumped into the question and answer session.

Examiner: Have you heard of Molarity?
(well if he had said morality, I could have said that it was something I did not have but with molarity it was a different ball game.)
Kiran :- No Sir. I don't know.
Examiner: What about you Nagraj ? Have you heard of Molarity ?
Nagraj: Sir I have heard of Molarity.(he said with a confident smile)
Examiner: Well what is it?
Nagraj:- OH..(Totally surprised). Err..I have heard of it but I don't quite know what it is.
Examiner: OH!!! Very intelligent. Unfortunately you don't get marks for just hearing terms.

He moved on to the next question.

Examiner : Kiran what is galvanizing ?
Kiran : -Err I think It is the coating of one metal over another.
Examiner: Is he correct Nagraj ?
Nagraj :- Sir he tried his best.
Examiner: Well. What is the correct answer?
Nagraj :- Errr..It is the processing of creating alloys, which dissolve in acid.
The examiner went into a state of shock.The hair on his head almost stood up when he went
Examiner: WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nagraj:- Err...Sorry sir actually I don't know what it is.

"This is unbelievable. You guys are from such a prestigious college and you don't know the answers to these simple questions. You are supposed to be the cream of the CROP. But every question I ask you guys either blink or give horrible answers " he said and made us feel like we were the cream of the CRAP instead.

"Success is 99% perspiration and 1 % inspiration." He said

" Oh thanks for reminding me I thought it was 99% perspiration and 1% urination." I said to myself.

The Moron thought that we were listening to every word that he was saying and continued

"You should be positive in your approach. I have not seen anything positive in you guys today. A positive mind is the key to success. A positive attitude is the outward manifestation of a mind that dwells primarily on positive matters." .

He kept saying the word positive so many times that towards the end I was wondering if he was HIV positive.

His face looked so ridiculous that I could not control my laughter but bit my tongue to ensure that I did not bungle up the exam. Luckily since we dint laugh, the examiner was kind enough to pass us both with flying colors for being obedient students.


- posted by Kiran @ 11:59 AM 22 comments

 

Episode 45 :- Chit Chat

Remember the good old days of Internet revolution. Those were the days when I used to pay 40Rs an hour to chat with total strangers and vent out my frustration by randomly picking up a guy and blasting him/her with full throttle for no fault of theirs. But a couple of years later I matured and realized that there was more to chatting than taunting a person by asking him silly questions like

Kiran:- “Hey jeep67 !! Do you know what is common between your wife and a jeep”.

Jeep67:-“NO”

Kiran:-“Well they are both high on (w)hores-power”

Jeep67:-“@#$#$@#$@@”

But after coming to the US and seeing most of my friends getting hooked up I realized that it was about time I found that special some one to fool around with.

"What better way that on yahoo chat”, I said to myself. I cracked my fingers before seating myself in front of the computer on a Sunday afternoon. I joined the room, which said San Francisco singles.

“While I am at it, why not a Phaarin girl?” I said to myself.

As soon as I entered the chat room one person who had apparently seen the photo on my profile and quickly realized that I looked different said,

“Hey where are you from.”

I looked at his profile/photo and realized that he was an Eastern European.I didnt want to waste my time on this as my intention was totally different but decided to be polite and said

“I am from India”

To which he replied “Oooh the land of Kama sutra”
Kiran:- “Well Yah. …But it is known for more than that”

The idiot continued. “I heard that you have Elephants on the road?”
I was surprised by this question and shot back“What??”
He then asked me something which left me speechless

“Do you have villages and towns like us in the west”
I was by now terribly irritated and said.

“Boy you are dumber than you look. And you look pretty dumb too.”

This guy got irritated and said

“Hey Nigger!!! Get the hell out of this room. This room isn’t for Niggar’s with attitude.”

I shot back “Your racist poop-brain probably is full of Indian elephant dung. Which explains you imagining them on roads”

After giving him the finger I decided to ignore this creep. I continued with my quest. I looked around to see if there were any girls with decent profiles on. I noticed one profile of a girl whose id was Jemina Khan. I decided to look at the photos that she had uploaded on her profile. They looked stunning. I said to myself

“People don’t need a better reason than her to develop religious tolerance”

I initiated a conversation and said

“Hi Jemina khan”

and much to my surprise she replied back saying

“Hi "

She then immediately typed

“I am leaving the chat room now. Please call me at ########### "

I naturally got excited and noted it down immediately.The next day I called up this number and to my surprise a recorded voice spoke

“Welcome to 1800-Yes Girls…..MMMMmmmmmmmm”

"Oh God what the hell is this!!” I thought.

“Mmmmmm Please dial in your credit card number Mmmmmm and speak to …”

“What the hell I screamed” and hung up the phone.

- posted by Kiran @ 7:43 PM 19 comments

 

Episode 44 - Ra(g)ging Bull

Ragging is one thing that scares the crap out of every new junior in high school. After undergoing the all too familiar form of torture, we decided that since we had reached 9th grade, it was time we started giving it back to our juniors—the 8th graders.

I along with a group of my classmates— Pradeep, Vinod and Balaji came up with a master plan to rag some juniors to get a high. We noticed a fat kid who looked like a mild-mongoose sitting on one of the stone benches near the school compound. We rehearsed our plan and confidently accosted him. Balaji decided to start the show and said in a bossy tone to the dark fat kid
Balaji :- Oye Dumma…Eno nin hesaru ?(Hey fatty …What’s your name ?)
Dark Kid :- Raghu…Nin hesareno ?(Mine is Raghu. Yours?)
Balaji :- Oye Seniors na questions kelbeda.(Don’t ask questions to your seniors)
(There was something wrong in the tone the conversation had. I quickly realized that things weren’t looking good and took two small steps backwards, casually whistling.)
Balaji :- A to Z backwards heLo (Say all the alphabets from A to Z backwards.)
Suddenly there was a loud sound like a fire cracker
THAAAAAAAAT
Before we could realize the dark fat kid Raghu had launched a tight slap at Balaji.
Balaji stood there totally stunned. Half of his face had turned red and the other half was turning white. With his hand on his red cheek he looked like a confused-clown. He looked at us for support and seeing that he wasn’t getting any turned to Raghu and asked him.

Balaji :- Yak guru hodithya ?(Why did you slap me boss ?)
THAAAAAAAAT THAAATTTTTT
The dark kid launched 2 more slaps at Balaji. The rest of us (Pradeep, Vinod and I) closed our ears and ran in different directions like confused ants. Balaji, with one hand on his cheek, cursed at the dark kid and ran as fast as he could, promising revenge.
Balaji :- Loo dumma eeega class ge time aayothu…niinnanna ameley nodkothino, maganae .(Hey Fatso.I have a class now and I need to leave…I will make sure that you pay the price for this.)

The four of us met later the first thing that Balaji asked us was

Balaji :- You rouges, why did you desert me ?
Kiran :- We just left to look for help.
Balaji was not entirely convinced. So I told him
Kiran :- I have a friend called Ravi a.k.a Rowdy Ravi in the neighboring class. I am sure he will help you get your revenge.
Balaji :- Oh cool. Take me to him.

I introduced Balaji to Rowdy Ravi and had him tell his story to him.
Ravi got up like a film hero of a B-grade movie and said

Ravi :-Don’t worry man. As long as I am there in this school, such injustice will not happen. Take me to this fatty. I will deal with him aptly.

The four of us along with Ravi waited the next day near the stone bench for the fat kid to arrive.Unfortunately none of us realized that Raghu was infact the younger brother of rowdy Ravi.Balaji without realizing the uncanny resemblance the brothers shared , continued his verbal bashing.

As soon as he arrived, Balaji spotted him and with his finger pointing at him said

Balaji:- There he is. The son of a chimp.
Ravi :- Hey that’s Raghu.

Balaji :- Look at his fat ass. They look like hot air balloons. Hey Fatty (he yelled at the kid) You are going to get it now. Ha Ha Ha

Before I could stop Balaji from continuing with his bitching I heard the all to familiar fire cracker sounds.

THAATT THAAATT.

Ravi launched 2 powerful slaps at Balaji and told him.

Ravi :- Next time you mess with my brother Raghu, the consequences will be fatal.

I and my other conspirators ran faster this time, to get help for Balaji. Yeah right!!!
Balaji cursed at me for introducing him to Ravi and decided it was the last time he would rag any junior again

- posted by Kiran @ 8:58 AM 18 comments

 
Episode 43 - Split personality disorder

Any time guys(myself included) are among members of the opposite sex, there seems to be a strange and sudden personality change. Though deemed by psychiatrists as normal, it is hard to come up withan explanation for this common disorder. There have been instances where this transformation tends to extremeties—from being normal to abnormal to obnoxious.
The level to which some characters are ready to stoop is simply remarkable. In their attempt to impress girls, these psychos sometimes laugh their guts out every time a good-looking girl makes a silly joke. They heap praises upon her intelligence, declaring that she is the mostbrainy person on the planet for solving a simple math problem etc etc....
But the most ridiculous behavior of them all was noticed recently on one of my ex-colleague’s blogs. She had written a couple of atrocious poems on her blog and there were no comments on them for a couple of weeks. As an after thought, she then put a picture of herself on her blog and within aweek there were 50-60 awwes and ooohs. Here are some snippets from her brainless tasteless poems.

I saw a tree
Which wasn’t free
I felt sad and cried
Till I was tired.

Another timeless gem below—chk it out

The Sun gives us light
Which is very bright
Which makes me want to fight
On the side of right

Many desperate losers(read guys) complimented her as a creative genius—a prodigy and that her ability to play around with words was next to Shakespeare’s.
One guy even wrote

"Please be my friend"

People stop being who they are and try to project who they want to be. Out of the blue, people start acting smart (only to end up becoming smart asses) and try to be funny by making dry jokes, which fall flat. They then try to make fun of their friends in front of others just to garner attention and end up making fools of themselves.
Sriram, a former colleague of mine during my Infosys days, always made it a point to show how stupid he was in front of a female colleague--Kamini Mehta, who worked in the same floor with us. Whenever she walked by he would make stale jokes like:

“Oh God !! It is raining!! Damn I should have bought my boat to the office instead of my bike.”

And started laughing loudly at his own stupid joke. He would then look at Kamini to check if she laughed at his insufferable joke.

Once he even dared to train his guns on me and said

Sriram:-“Hey Kiran I saw you on TV today.”
Kiran :- “What ?”
Sriram:- “Yah On INDIA’S MOST WANTED…….HAHAAHAHAHAH”
and then glanced at Kamini
Kiran :- “What a coincidence !! I saw you yesterday on TV too. On INDIAS MOST UN-WANTED”
Kamini :- “HAHAHAHAHA”

Another day, while I was talking to Kamini, Sriram butted into our conversation and said.
Sriram :-“Hey Kiran, Did you buy your shoes second-hand ? HAHAHAHAHa”
Kiran :- “Yah actually your grandfather was selling it on the footpath”
Sriram :- “Don’t you dare bring my grand father into this. The cosequences will be unbearable.”
Kiran :- “What ? Please dont threaten me .I am shaking in your grandfathers second hand boots.”




- posted by Kiran @ 12:15 AM 39 comments

 
Episode 42 - He who laughs last thinks the slowest

1998 was when every street corner in India had a computer-training institute. Every garbage-bin and public wall on every road was peppered with posters screaming computer ads. Some such examples are imprinted in my mind.

Here's one that was pasted next to a public toilet:

“At Sree-Matha Computers, we train you in providing training in advance state-of-the-art Y2K solutions to multinational companies.”
(State of the art?? I always thought that Y2k solutions were meant to fix historic code)

How about this one:

“Join Trimurthy computer training institute - Job guaranteed or your money back. Special price 5000Rs.Last day at this price”
(A friend of mine who joined this course quickly thinking that it was the last day later realized that from the next day they offering the same course for 4500Rs. Well it certainly was the last day at 5000Rs he must have figured later.)

“How to earn 10000$ a month? Join Sri-Vidya computer training institute and become a computer EXPERT in 3 months. Limited seats!!! Hurry ”
(I wondered why he did not make the 10000$ himself, instead of living in a shabby 2nd floor apartment/office. Perhaps he always thought of the welfare of others first. And limited seats?? Limited to what….A thousand?)

How about this one?

“C++ courses.50% off.”
(What was the initial price? And 50% off what I wondered. The syllabus?)

But the one below topped it all.

“FREE Computer courses – Join Data-Point!!!”
Goaded by my friends, I called them up and asked what the deal was.
The Trainer said,
“I will conduct an Aptitude test. If you score 100% I will offer the courses free. If you score 75% then I will give you 75% off. If you score 50%…”
Kiran: - “Ok I get it.”

We (5 of us) decided to take the test. "Results will be out within 2 business days" ,the trainer had said. So after two days, my friend BK who was a dummy called him up.

Trainer:- “Mr. BK, you have got close to 25%. I can give you the 25000Rs course for 20000Rs”
BK:- “Oh boy, that's great. Can you tell me the result my other friends:Kiran, Rajesh, Kaushik and Manoj ?”
Trainer :- “It is actually confidential. But I will make an exception this time. Everybody got in the 25% range. So you guys must come quickly and register. The seats are limited.”
We quickly realized that this was a scam cause there was no way that BK could have scored more than 20% in an aptitude test. Not surprisingly BK was the only person who decided to go ahead and register for the course.

9 months down the road,BK came to my place.

BK:- “So Kiran , looks like you will be wasting 4 years in Engineering studying Comp Science, while I learnt the same in just 9 months at Data-Point.”

He gave me the smile of a champion. My brother, who as it is has limited patience, was sitting there listening to BK incessant boasting. Finally, he decided he had had enough.

Brother:-“BK , what all did you learn at Data-Point ?”
BK :-“They taught me JAVA”
Brother:-“Nice! Did they teach you JAVA-BEANS?”

(BK looked a bit skeptical casue he had never heard of it.)

BK :- “Err….well actually…no.”
Brother:- (With a shocked face)“WHAT ???? You payed them 20000rupees, and they did not teach you JAVA-BEANS ? Oh man, you have been conned.”

(BK’s face was getting redder by the second. Had the Data-Point fello fooled him? )

Brother:- Ok, did they at least teach you JAVA–TURNIPS ?
(BK did not want to repeat his mistake and said )
BK :- Ofcourse. That they taught us Java-Turnips long back.

We couldn't control it anymore. Both of us pointed at BK and burst into fits of laughter. BK, realizing that there was no such thing as JAVA-TURNIPS or Brinjals or Coconuts, laughed at his own stupidity, and decided to quietly slink back home.
- posted by Kiran @ 9:15 AM 21 comments

 
Episode 41 - Serial Killer

I entered the living room and was shocked to find my mom wiping her tears off. What could have possibly triggered this I wondered? Had she found one of my 8th standard mid-term marks cards, which I had so well hidden under my bed?
After getting a grip of the situation I quickly looked around and realized that she was watching a television serial 'Kunthi' and one of the main characters in it had met with an untimely death. I asked my mom why she was crying but she did not respond. I quickly turned the TV off hoping that it would stop her crying. But to my surprise she stopped crying, got up and gave me a blow to my head.

“I am crying because I have a stupid son like you. Don’t you dare touch the TV when I am watching Kunthi. ” she thundered.

She turned the TV back on and went back to crying mode. And all I did was tried to help her.
Damn these cable channels. During the good old days of Doordarshan, I was subjected to this nightmare once every week for 30 min. But now we have multiple channels beaming the same junk at full throttle.
Ektha Kapoor’s serials, which start with ‘K’, drive me nuts and make me want to pull her hair out in frustration. Come on to start with, the names are so ridiculous.
‘Kyonki saas bhi bahu thi’ hmmm souds more appropriate if it were ‘Kyonki saas ki badhboo thi’ ?
Or how about the serial ‘Kabhi Sautan, Kabhi Saheli’. Boy, what next “Kabhi Kuttha Kabhi Billy”?
The familiar stories, the broadly drawn characters, the convenient plot turns get rid of existing character or that bring a new character around at exactly the right moment. And not to mention the high degree of overacting done by each of the loud-mouthed characters used to make me go crazy. Every story has to have an evil mother in law and a daughter- in-law who cries her eyes out at the drop of a hat. The story moves at snails pace with almost all characters crying all the time. The music gets unbearably loud every time some character says something ridiculously stupid.
There was this story in the serial Kannadi where a housewife who undergoes torture for almost 6 months from her mother-in-law. After 6 months we discover that the daughter-in-law actually is actually an UNDERCOVER COP who is trying to investigate a murder committed by the mother in law!!! WOW…so she got married to this guy and underwent 6 months of torture so that she could investigate a murder as an undercover cop!! Double WOW !!!
But that story line is nothing compared to next one. You all must have seen serials where the hero has a kidney failure and his wife gives him one of hers to save him. But have you heard of any wife donating her brain to her husband. In the serial Kasturi the hero meets with an accident and is declared brain dead .So his wife commits suicide and writes a suicide note asking the doctors decide to move her BRAIN to his body!!! Triple WOW !!!Which the doctors ofcourse successfully carryout.

But after making all these nasty comments and despising these serials I must admit that I watched a couple of them religiously. While many guys feel less macho to admit that they follow at least one soap opera, the truth is very much out there. I still remember the day of our engineering Math exam when a friend of mine, Ashoka and I were discussing how difficult the subject was and how hard the exam would be the next day since we hadn’t studied much yet. We were brooding about the bad shape we were in when suddenly Ashoka’s wristwatch alarm started ringing.

ASHOKA: - “Kirana. It is time for Mayamruga.(TV serial)”
KIRAN: - “Oh shit. I am still contemplating whether to watch it today or study for the Exam”
(Ashoka uttered these golden enlightening words)
ASHOKA :- “Kirana!!! You are so naïve. If we fail in the exam tomorrow, we can take the re-exam in 6 months. But if you miss this episode of Mayamruga today then you will never be able to see it again in your life”
(For some reason it seemed to make a lot of sense and we both decided to go ahead and watch the show)
As I went to the living room to watch the show, my mom looked at me totally stunned
Mom : - “Kiran!!! Don’t you have an exam tomorrow?”
(My dad decided to pitch in)
Dad : -“I have been noticing him not studying well these days. Every day he stops studying at 4:30pm and watches this show ”
Kiran : -“Wait a minute. I have actually noticed you coming back from the office early at 4:30pm these days. Don’t tell me it is not to watch Mayamruga.”
My Dad stopped questioning me about my studies after that and we all decided to peacefully watch the show.
- posted by Kiran @ 1:23 PM 15 comments

 
Episode 40 - Campus Interview with the Vampire

Year - 2003.

I was sitting in my cubicle at work one day, as usual wondering when the 5 0 clock bus would arrive when a friend of me signaled to come over to his cubicle to show me a funny video clip. Since I was 2 tired to walk half way across the hall, I just looked around to see that my project manager was not around. I climbed on my desk and just as I was about to cross over the cubicle wall I was stunned to find the project manager of another useless project catch me in the act Visibly shocked and literally screamed his neck out

“EXCUSE ME!! THIS IS A PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATION!!”

I was so startled that I almost fell of the cubicle wall. My damn trouser got stuck thanks to one of the pins that were in the cubicle wall. I slowly managed to free myself and get down.
“This is not the behavior expected of an engineer in a WORLD class organization”
He then went on to explain how our company handpicks the cream of the crop and how privileged I was to be working in this organization.

Hand picked????? The way people are recruited in truckloads; one can only imagine how big their hand must have been.

Year 2002

100% placement yelled our engineering college notice board. All students from the senior batch irrespective of their caste creed, sex or IQ have been placed said our placement coordinator proudly. People were recruited in truckloads and the only criteria, which companies seemed to be using was that the candidate, had to have 2 fingers (To press Ctrl-C + Ctrl-V).

Many Indian IT companies got so desperate that many stopped conducting technical interviews and started giving a couple of puzzles which one had to solve to get into the company. It was soon discovered that this was 2 complex and not enough candidates were passing the tests. To counter this a few months later there was just an English test which one had to clear to get into the company. I would not be surprised if going forward they start recruiting people who can sign their name or at least know how to mark their thumb impression.
My dad had a friend who was a moron and thought that his son was the smartest kid in the world.(Yes. He's the guy I have mentioned in Episode 33 - Whizzz kid episode. His son had achieved the pinnacle of human achievements by securing a job at infy.He decided to come over to our place and started boasting
“Joining our company can be compared to joining Stanford or MIT. They get 10 million applications and they recruit 10000 so the ratio is the same as the number who apply and get into these top class universities. The son(Prakash) gave a smile at me like he was a part of history now and it was mere mortals who he was wasting his time conversing with. The uncle started talking to my dad and I decided to interrogate his son on his mind-blowing achievement.


Kiran :- Which college did you go to ?
Prakash :- SLV College
Kiran :- SLV ?? Isn’t that a canteen ?
Prakash :- NO… it is a college in the outskirts of Karnataka. It is also recognized by VTU and the government.
Kiran :- Oh….recognized by the government…..wow……Congratulations on getting into this company.
Prakash :-I always wanted to get into this company which is why I decided not to attend the interviews and written tests at Oracle SAP and HP he said.
Kiran :- Did these companies call you for an interview or a written test ?
Prakash:- Err…Actually…. No..But i wouldnt have gone even if they had called.

(now he started to get on my nerves and I decided that it was about time I put him in his place.)
Kiran :-Hey how was the interview process ?
Prakash:-Oh it was quite easy
Kiran :-So that explains how you got selected.
Prakash:-I mean it wasn’t that easy It was actually very tough in the second round
Kiran :-But I asked my friends from your college who got in with you and they told me that it was very easy. May be you found the questions tough even though it was simple for others.
Prakash :- What ?…No .
Kiran :- I’m just kidding. May be Infy decided that since the competition was intense in the prestigious SLV CANTEEN they had to make the interview process tough to select the best of the best.
Prakash :- It is not a CANTEEN. It is a college in the outskirts of Karnataka.

By this time the uncle who had missed the humiliation his son was subjected to focused his attention on me and continued gloating.

“This time EnPHosis took just 45 people from his college and our son was one among the elite few. They are giving him plenty of stocks/shares” he told me giving me a smirk.
Kiran :- Uncle I work at Infy too.
Uncle :- Oh……. Can you please tell me how many shares they give there?
Kiran :- “Not many”

The poor uncle and his genius son left disappointed that even I had made it to this company. With a droopy face like Scooby-do, uncle and his stepson left disappointed, hoping to find a vegetable seller this time to boast about his son's achievement. With interviews where SLV's come out with flying colors, It is no surprise that PMs come with factory settings set to "Retard", just to beat the software coolies at their own game
- posted by Kiran @ 2:00 PM 16 comments

 
Episode 39 - Say No to Cheesywood.
Conventional wisdom should suggest that the Indian Film industry churns out the most outrageous/ridiculous movies ever. The only recycling that ever happens is that of the wafer-thin story lines, which are used and reused over and over again and hence overused, and misused and finally beaten to death.
The 70’s and 80’s was full of movies which involved 2 brothers separated at a very young age and whose parents are killed by a villain who apparently spent his entire day drinking, smoking and watching girls dance to ear piercing numbers (what a harmless villain). And to do that he lives in a remote cave guarded by 2 burly guards with guns. I still don’t quite understand why he couldn’t just live in the city. What follows next is , you guessed it, the heroes meet each other "accidentaly" after 20 years and pick up a fight, and accidentally the 2 halves of the photo of their mom falls out of their pockets. The extremely intelligent duo smartly solve the complex jigsaw puzzle and decide it’s about time they killed the villain, but not before singing the poem that their mom taught them when they were kids. They go to his cave and beat up his 2000 guards and then finally beat the villain to pulp. The police show up and arrest the villain.(Still beats me as to why they did not do it earlier.)And of course the heroes start singing the poem their mom taught them 20 years back, while the credits begin to roll.

While the comedies that are made turn out to be utter tragedies, the movies that are intended to be sentimental or patriotic give us bouts of laughter. Why do we have over the top cheesy dialogues trying to portray the hero as extremely intelligent or patriotic. Is it because the movie makers are plain stupid or they just underestimate the intelligence of the audience.Lets take a look at some of the most hilarious serious movies of our times Has anybody seen the movie Lucky (Hindi). In one scene, A person from a neighboring country makes a nasty statement about Indians and describes their attitude as selfish and greedy. Salman khan, a patriotic Indian soldier, tries to impress upon this person, how kind and generous Indians are, and narrates the following third-rate dialogue.

“True Indian wo hota hai jo apney ghar ko jalakey doosro ko light deta hain” (A true Indian is one who sets fire to his own house to provide light to others in the dark.).

I dint know whether to puke or laugh at that dialogue. What next, I thought.

“True Indian wo hota hai jo apney aap jo jalakey dosro ko loght deta hain” (A true Indian is one who sets himself on fire to give light to others.).!!!!!!

And the above is only one instance of the stupidity of our movie makers--the tip of the ice berg. How about the kannada movie Chanakya. In one scene, the hero ,Vishnuvardhan is supposedly a very intelligent lawyer who brings wicked politicians to justice. In one scene a politician refuses to acknowledge a baby as his in court. The hero runs out of all options and looks distraught. The wicked politician looks at him and gives him an evil smile and starts licking his lips. The hero then suddenly looks at the ugly baby's sorry face and has a brainstorm. He says to the judge

“ Your honour, look at the baby. It is licking its lips just like this evil politician. This is called heredity.”
The politician gets tense and sensing that he has been outwitted , licks his lips more furiously than ever. The judge gives one look at the baby and then looks at the politician. Noticing that both are licking their lips he says

“This proves beyond any reasonable doubt that it is the politician's baby. CASE CLOSED.”.

And then there is this loud music played and the hero gives a smirk while the cops take the politician away. The audience give the lawyer a standing ovation.

Well if that doesn’t impress you how about the action movies of the 90’s where one cop decides to take on the biggest dons in the country with his gun which can apparently shoot infinite bullets in an encounter, like he has applied some cheat code to the gun.There was this Tamil movie starring Rajnikanth, where thugs with machine guns surround the hero who is a cop. The gang leader in the second floor yells at the cop,

“This is the power of Rajashekar Naidu”.

The cop takes off his belt and spins it fiercely over his head. He flies upwards like a helicopter to the second floor balcony. There he beats up another thug , snatches his machine gun , kills all the gunmen on the ground floor and yells back at the don,

“This is the power of the Great Indian police.”.

The don quickly realizes his mistake and feels disgusted over the travesty he has commited all his life(like drinking smoking and watching girls dance to ear piercing numbers). He picks up a gun and yells

“A villain like me doesnt deserve to live. Jai Hind” and shoots himself.

But the prize for the best scene in an Indian movie should go to this movie starring Telugu superstar Balakrishna. In one scene a train fast approaches the hero who is stuck on the railway track. I watched breathlessly with great excitement and wondered how the hero would escape this seemingly inescapable trap.The train hurries with steaming vigour with the driver shot dead in it. As the train comes really close , the hero opens his hand and signals the train to stop.The train comes to an abrupt halt leaving the villain who planned to kill the hero totally shocked. The hero then signals the train to track back and the trains starts moving in the reverse direction.WOW!!! Shame on Hollywood for copying this idea and using it in The Matrix where Neo stops those bullets with his hand. Balakrishna is the real chosen one.



- posted by Kiran @ 4:09 PM 16 comments

 
Episode 38 - Copy Cat









Have you ever copied in a test or an exam? Come on admit it. At some point in your academic life, you would have done it at least to get a high. People usually come up with creative ways when it comes to copying during exams.
The common practice was to place the textbook on the lap and copy from it. The examiners wary of such tactics ensured that all bags (including books) were placed at the front of the room until the answer papers were turned in. Some students tried to hide a book in their jacket. But during exam, they must have realized how foolish it was. How the hell can they look into the book if it is well hidden. So, some dared to carefully slip the book to their laps when they thought the examiners wasn't looking. Nah, it didn't work. Within minutes, such students were usually caught, given powerful kicks, and sent out of the class room.
Students began to panic. A new method had to be found be found, failing which, failure in exams were but certain. Enter Veerappan, the creative genius.

Case 1
Name: Verrappan
Exam: Engineering Physics internals
Incident:
During the exam, he placed the book on the floor, took his shoes off, and began turning the pages with his TOES. If I were his examiner I would definitely have let him get away for being so creative. Later, when the results were out, I eagerly looked up Veerappan's score with more interest than my own score. I nearly fainted. There must have been some mistake. His score read "7 out of 25" .Later, I met Veerappan and asked him what had happened? Had there been a totaling mistake ? He shook his head sadly.
"No man, I didn't know which answer was on which page." I told him how sorry I was, and immediately told his story to my friends. We pointed our hands towards him and burst into boisterous laughs.

Case 2
Mr. Pandith(first letter changed from V to P to protect his identity)
Exam: Engineering Mathematics:
Incident:
As soon as the examiner exited our room to fetch the attendance register, Pandith’s joy knew no bounds. Sitting next to him, I saw his cheeks blushed, and he grunted "YES , YES !!." At first I thought he must have solved one of the questions. Then,
“Kiran, show me the solution to the 3rd question,” he said, expectantly.
I shook my head, gave him a cold stare, and said in a low harsh voice: "NO.”
Pandith, stunned by this unexpected setback, was silent for a minute, as if thinking deeply, before saying:
"Ok… How about the 5th question.”
I pretended not to hear him, but the dummy thought that he wasn't loud enough.
“KIRAN, 5th QUESTION.!!!!”
The examiner barged back into the room, looked around for the source of the disturbance, and zeroed in on Pandith
“Why are you talking?”
“Sir err… I was asking him the time.”
The examiner believed him, overlooking the fact that Pandith had a brand new Mickey mouse watch. You lucky dog, I thought of Pandith's incredulous reply. He must have copied that excuse from someone else,too.

Case 3:
Mr. Raghu, another friend of mine,
Exam: Chemistry (12th Grade or P.U.C)
Incident:
Raghu was a student of the world famous ABC College( famous for having the maximum number of goondas, next only to the Bellary Jail). His math skills were worse than a cows and it wasn’t to surprising ttat from some angles he looked like one , But atleast his ridiculous looks served one good purpose. Every time he failed in an exam and was feeling depressed, he could look at himself in the mirror and have a hysterical belly laugh.
When I met him after the results were declared, I asked:
"Hey Raghu, I heard that you failed in the chemistry exam……..AGAIN….. Is it true?
To which he replied angrily: “Who told you that I have FAILED this time?”
"Oh!" I said, embarrassed. "Sorry man, it must be a rumor then."
“I didn’t fail this time…I was debarred for copying” he said proudly.
"OOHHH" I said, nodding my head as if in understanding.

Case 4:
Name: Jumani
Incident:
I know people who copy, are generally lazy to study before an exam and hence copy. But this laziness was taken to a new height by another friend of mine, Jumani. One of his friends decided to copy in an exam and brought paper chits containing a lot of important formulas and solutions. Jumani instead of writing similar chits, xeroxed his friends chits before the exam and used them to copy in the exam. Talk about being creatively lazy.

Case 5:
Subject: Computer Security
Exam: Computer Security(Masters in US)
Incident:
The instructor left the room as soon as the exam began. As soon as he left, a bunch of Indian students started copying frantically from each other and from the textbook. They came out thumping their chests like wild gorillas, thinking they had nailed the exam. On the day of the result, the students who had copied, much to their surprise found their grades marked as ‘F’. All the answers they had written was marked as wrong and given zero points. In fact for one student, the instructor had written a big zero with a smiley face. The students were stunned. They started bitching about how the professor was a racist and had given low scores to Indians. She asked my score, and then said "He must have left out 1-2 Indians by mistake.”. So, off they went to the professor, the entire copying battalion, and raised hue and cry about the blatant injustice. One even brought the text book to prove how correct his answer was.
The professor listened to their hue and cry patiently, not interrupting them. Once there shouting was done, the professor smiled and showed them the video footage of the culprits copying captured by the camera that he had installed. He told them that they were lucky not to be kicked out of the college.

- posted by Kiran @ 2:29 AM 21 comments

 
Episode 37 - Land Of oppurtinity - Part 2

Interactive technologies is a small company that my previous employer (HOD of the English department) had referred me to. His letter of appraisal explained that I was a hard working dude who put in twice the effort (only in the time sheet!) as any other employee he had seen. Soon, I began my work at the company.
A few weeks into my work, I received an on-campus job offer from the Natural Sciences department. They wanted me to build a stupid website for a pay of $12/hr. I told them that I would work from home, which they gladly agreed to. So I accepted the project requirements and outsourced it to my roommate who accepted the job with open arms for a pay of $6/hr. I thanked God for giving me an opportunity to help others. My mom always said that she hoped that one day I would reach a position in life when I could give work to others. Little did she know that it would be happening so soon and in this way. My friend finished the job in 30 hours and I promptly reported to the Natural Science department that I had finished it in 55 hours. I paid my roommate (30 X 6$ = $180) and tipped him an additional $5 out of good faith. The science department was so happy with the work that they gave me three more projects. These I got done in record time by outsourcing to different people since my greedy roommate started getting suspicious and demanded a whopping $8/hr which I refused.
In the meanwhile, my work at Interactive Technologies started to become a little shaky. One fine day, one of my colleagues told me that there was a change in the organization structure and that many people were laid off, including me. Stunned and upset as I was, I wrote a mail to the project manager telling how unfair this was, and that I didn't expect such mistreatment. I signed it off by writing a sarcastic comment: "Thank you for giving me a chance to work in this 'OUTSTANDING ORGANIZATION'". The next day the project manager replied that there was a slight confusion and that my position had been restored as I was being paid relatively less compared to full-time employees. In addition, the manager assured me that there was no reason to worry, and he would do everything he can to safeguard it. But as fate, strange as it sometimes is, had a cute twist—My project manager himself was booted out of the company the next day to cut costs further .
- posted by Kiran @ 7:57 PM 8 comments

 
Episode 36 - Land of oppurtinity - Part 1
I came to the US for the first time in 2003 to do my Masters. After some intense searching I found an on campus job as a tutor. My job was to grade the exams and solve any doubts the junior students had for 15 hours a week. Unfortunately despite my best efforts, I was fired for losing all the answer sheets I had to grade for the final exam and for missing most of the classes I had to take, to solve any doubts the students had.
I was shocked upon being fired and could not believe that they expected perfection in my work.
Totally distraught at the unfair deal I had received, I desperately started looking for another job. I was told that in the US any job a guy did was treated with respect. So I applied for close to 15 jobs for various positions ranging from campus security guard to office assistant to a waiter. Each resume was appropriately fine tuned explaining how I had 2 years of experience as a dishwasher in India or how I was a security guard for a year and a half in Bangalore to support my undergraduate studies. I even wrote how I had been a waiter in India in a small restaurant my dad owned. I gave some bogus email addresses as references, which I had created a few days earlier.
After 1 month of intense searching, I found my next job as a data entry operator in the English department. This job was by far the best job I ever had in my life. I worked for 2-3 hours a day but filled my time sheets with 8+ hours a day. I was paid a whopping 15$ an hour for every hour I entered on my time sheet, which was the highest on campus. Since I was the only guy in the entire department who knew about computers, I was treated with great respect. On one occasion my supervisor’s (Sheryl) computer speakers stopped working and she asked me if I knew what was happening. I tried to look into the problem but could not figure out anything. Later when she stepped out for coffee, I gave a sound blow to the speaker which miraculously started working. Upon coming back she was thrilled to find the speaker working.
She asked me “Wow!! How did you do it?”
I realized that this was the right time to gain some good impression. I made up some bull shit on the fly and said
“Oh it was simple. The synthesizer in the sound card was not configured to synchronize with your hyperactive processor.”
She was totally blown out by what I said and replied
“Wow!! That is so smart. I have a lot of respect for Indian students. They are so smart.”

I struggled hard to control my imploding laughter.

But my relationship with Sheryl soon began to deteriorate as she started growing suspicious about the excessive bogus time I was entering in the timesheets. She even asked me one day
Sheryl: - “Kiran , I have noticed that you have said that you worked for 52 hours this week. but our office is open only for 40 hours a week ? So I need some explanation cause I have put just 36 hours this week.”
(I was stumped but made a quick recovery and said)
Kiran:- “Err...hmm....Actually even though the office was closed I used to work from home using remote access cause there was so much work to be done.”
(She replied with a sarcastic tone)
Sheryl: - “Oh I am sorry if we have been over working you.”

The next day I was summoned by the head of the department to meet him in his office. I knew that I would be fired for all the ridiculous timesheets I had filled.

HOD: - “ Kiran ! I noticed that you have been working for Fifteeeeeeee twoooooooo hours every week. Don’t you think it is too much”
Kiran: - (gulp)..Err…actually I can reduce the number of hours if you want.
HOD: - “What!!No I just felt that you have done a commendable job for our department and so I wanted to recommend you for an internship where you can make a lot more money for the amount of effort you are putting in.”
Kiran :- (Totally dazed and lost unable to come to terms with the fact that my evil ploys were so wealthily rewarded)
(To be continued…..)

- posted by Kiran @ 1:48 AM 8 comments

 
Episode 35 - Hard work is the key to FAILURE - Part 7

Let me introduce you to my alter-ego JAGGESH(name changed slightly on request).A hard working intelligent and honest guy who worked day in and day out. Mid way through the project one of his team members Ram, was smart enough to quit the company and another member, Sheetal was even smarter as she smartly timed her pregnancy to coincide with the last 2 months of the project and decided to take a break from work forcing my friend JAGGESH to take all their work.
I am sharing his episode with you guys and narrating in first person. Heres the raw deal he got on the day of his appraisal which made me feel less guilty about goofing off at work.

MANAGER :- So Mr. JAGGESH. Are you all psyched up that today is your appraisal? What grade are you expecting?
(I felt like telling him that i was expecting an 'A' for the amount of work that i had done, but decided to act modest and said)
JAGGESH:- Well I think i deserve a 'B+' or better.
MANAGER :- (with a sarcastic smile) What makes you think that you deserve a 'B+'
(I was stunned beyond belief. We have had our share of arguments but was he taking it out against me to settle a personal vendetta?)
JAGGESH :- I have worked 14-15 hours a day including weekends for the past 3 months.
MANAGER :- but it is not the amount of time involved that is important, it is also the amount of work you did that matters. You were 2 days late in delivering the module.
JAGGESH :- I did the work of 3 people. One of my team members Ram, left the company mid way and Sheetal took a long leave because she was pregnant.
MANAGER :- But such things are a part and parcel of the game. A good engineer can look ahead at the problems that may arise and put in extra effort to finish the project.
(What the hell was this psycho thinking, should I have looked ahead and predicted that Sheetal would get pregnant)
MANAGER :- Also when ever I tried to assign new work to you , you would say that you were busy.
JAGGESH :- But that’s because I was busy .Like i said earlier i was doing the work of 3 guys. Added to that you were away for 1 week on vacation when there was so much work left and there was no one to co-ordinate with the other teams.
MANAGER :- I manage a team of 5 people. I don’t complain that i am doing the work of 5 people now do i ?.
JAGGESH :- But that is not the same !!
MANAGER :- Well infact I have heard from the manager of your previous project that you occasionally show slack and your performance is wavy. Which i why i have given you a 'B-'
JAGGESH :- WHAT !!!!That cant be, because this is my first project since i joined this company.
MANAGER :- Oh really ..(And gives a confused look like he has swallowed a bee)...let me check my files ...(stares for a full 10 minutes at the monitor without blinking and scratching his bald head every 2 minutes)MANAGER :- Oh sorry about the confusion , i had gotten your name mixed up with Janesh.
(I heaved a sigh of relief that this idiot had confused me for someone else and that I would be getting a better grade)
MANAGER :- Hmm ..Ok here is your corrected grade. 'C !!'.
JAGGESH :- WHAT !!!! You said that you got the names mixed up.
MANAGER :- That’s correct, but i checked and found that Janesh had got a 'B-' but you have been given a 'C'.(This un professional lunatic was sharing his subordinates appraisal with me..)
JAGGESH :- But that’s not fair.
MANAGER :- No it is...Janesh took too many holidays this quarter, which is y i gave him a 'B-'
JAGGESH :- I was referring to the grade i got as unfair.
MANAGER :- Oh...well you weren’t able to convince me that you deserved a better grade. Let me ask you a question "If you have a horse, will you give it water to drink ?"
( I just blinked not knowing what he was getting at.)
JAGGESH :- Well yah cause a horse needs to drink water to live.
MANAGER:-Wrong answer. You can only take it a lake , but you cant make it drink water.
(I was stunned with this fantastic exhibition of stupidity)
JAGGESH:- But what has that got to do with my appraisal.
MANAGER :- Oh JAGGESH,I don’t know whether to cry or Laugh Out Loud at this statement of yours.
(I felt like telling him that I wouldn’t care even if he would FART out loud but i needed a fair grade)
But the looser just said more crap which made me leave the room with a huff. I decided to take the matter up with the senior project manager.
KIRAN:All this led me to believe that managers were given an IQ test which they had to fail miserably to make it as a manager. I figured that Jaggeshs episode might happen to me some day and decided to goof off at work. Whom am i kidding ? i would have goofed off any ways.;-) (To be continued....)
- posted by Kiran @ 3:51 PM 21 comments

 
Episode 34 - Whizzzzz Kid !!!
Ever had relatives who bragged incessantly about their kids.
UNCLE1:- My son is just 4 years old and can count numbers for 1 to 10.
UNCLE2 :- oh that is nothing my kid can count that backwards.
UNCLE1:- But my son can do it faster.

It used to drive me crazy as a kid to watch these sickos drive me nuts about how their kid was the smartest person on the planet.

To top it all sometimes people would call my parents and tell them about every question their kid answered in class. there was this fool I had for an uncle who would brag about his son had done spectacularly well in CET(Common entrance Test-an exam attended by over a 100000 people and are ranked based on their marks. similar to SAT) and was wondering whether to send him to the number one college in Mysore or the number one college in Bangalore. On the day of the result i called up my relative to ask what his sons rank was.
He replied ...
UNCLE :- "Oh there is some problem with the evaluation...my son's rank was 21348~. Actually this time no one has got a good rank. "
(So i said to myself...Hmm so the board must have decided to start giving ranks from 20000 this time cause no one did the exam well.)

On one occasion when i was in 7th, my neighbor came to our house when my mom was blasting me for not letting her watch a kannada movie cause i was watching a cricket match instead. Our neighbor who was at the door thought that i was being blasted for one of my ever low test scores . She decided that this was the right time to pitch in her younger sons achievements. Out of the blue she carefully bought up the topic of cars and said
NEIGHBOUR:- "These days we have so many new good cars. Oh by the way my kid is so smart , he is just 3 years old and can identify the name of any car he sees on the road”.
(I was in no mood for such crap and subtly retorted )
KIRAN:- "Nice he will definitely be a mechanic one day !!".
The poor lady looked at my mom thinking that she would blast me for that comment, but to her surprise my mom was laughing at her face,

Once of my stupid Aunties started telling how her son had aced the 10 standard exams and how she was expecting her son to secure a rank for the state.

AUNTY:- I keep asking my son ,if he will get a rank this time and he keeps telling 'I am not sure’. he is just a bit nervous , but i am confident that he will get a rank.

A few days later i noticed her on the road with a pale face. I asked her..

KIRAN :- "Aunty , what happened to Arvinds result(10th standard)"
AUNTY:- "Oh Don’t you know what happened this time? All the students who studied well got bad marks and all the students who hardly studied got super marks"
KIRAN:-Ok so what did ur son get
AUNTY: - Oh he failed in only 4 subjects .But i am confident that he will NAIL the supplementary (re) exam.
KIRAN :- (faking a concerned face) Oh.! Why dint you apply for reevaluation for these 4 subjects?
AUNTY :- Oh we thought of doing that but 'SOMEbody' told us that if we applied for re-evaluation,they would give us even lesser marks in these subjects.
KIRAN:- Who was that somebody ?
AUNTY :- err..........(trying to change the topic) Also my son told me that this time some questions were out of syllabus.
KIRAN :- (with a heavy sarcastic tone)Hmm i heard that this time not just questions but some subjects themselves were out of the syllabus.
- posted by Kiran @ 6:56 PM 12 comments

 
ARNIE'S DAY OUT !!.
Prank Calls made as The Terminator-Arnold Schwarzenegger by collecting voice recordings from movies, TV, and radio and then played over the phone.This dude sure has a sense of humor.

Call 1
Call 2
Call 3
Call 4

Enjoy
/Kiran
- posted by Kiran @ 12:44 AM 4 comments

 
Monkey Vs Tiger
Watch this crazy little monkey drive the tigers nuts


Enjoy
/Kiran
- posted by Kiran @ 10:19 AM 0 comments

 
Episode 33 -


Ok, ever since I started writing this blog, I have received a lot of encouraging mails from people. But one in every 10 mails is a hate mail, more often than not from the losers who have been fingered at in my episodes. As is evident from the comments in some of the episodes. Take "Episode 18- Every dog has its day" for instance
There was this idiot from Infosys who found my blog on Google and wrote a comment(which I haven't deleted yet. You can check them out in the comments section)
It goes something like this:

"Why didn't you meet with an accident at the end?"

I decided to ignore this, but he followed it with another stupid comment.

"I would have been happier if you had met with an accident --Well Wisher"

I naturally got irked and replied to his comment by saying

Dear well-wisher,
I hope this message reaches you in the WORST of health.I wish you all the best of bad luck and hope you rot in hell!
Keep reading.
/Kiran

Then, this loser decided to taunt me further and wrote

Kiran
Yes , as per your wishes , this message certainly finds me in the wrong half of my health .{coughs & sneezes } . I believe that rotting in hell is a lesser punishment for the sin that i have commited :){you should probably take the pleasure of visiting hell once :) and see what it is like and then suggest your kindest wish to me} , your anger { a form of your guilt } seems to have been aroused by my mere mortal words. I shall take the responsibility of taking all your bad luck and leave you with your good luck. Atleast then you would shed off your arrogant side and see through the so-called attention_grabbing and I_am_so_smart_and_witty { but in real words its foolishness :) } attitude.
keep responding

I tracked his information using the IP Tracker I had installed on my website and sent him a mail showing all his details and told him that I would make these details publicly available if he continued with this stupidity. I then posted a reply on his behalf that read as follows:

Hi Kiran,
I am extremely sorry for demonstrating such outright stupidity.I have now recovered fully after taking some tablets (double dose).Being the faceless coward that i wish to remain,i will go down quitely and can understand if you do not respond to the ridiculus comments i have made.I request you to kindly delete the comments that i might make in the future when i have another bout of psychotic attacks.Since i am too dumb to understand your blogs i have this severe inferiority complex which causes me to act this way.
Will try to stick to my tablet schedule next time and stop bothering the public . I also know that you have found out who i am by now by logging my ipaddress but please refrain from making it public.
Thank you
Anonymous

The loser ran away with his tail between his legs.
On a closing note, I encourage readers to give me honest feedback as long as they are constructive. Hope you guys have a Happy and Safe Diwali.
- posted by Kiran @ 11:32 PM 16 comments

 
Episode 32 - IT dot Bomb

It.com is by far the the most ridiculous stunt pulled by IT companies in Bangalore. What makes it even more ridiculous is that students go there thinking that they will get a chance to see next-generation tools, or sillier still, get hired by some great company just because they attended their presentation.
I and a couple of my friends collected the free coupons given to students to attend this fiasco. Little did we realize then that there would be a million more guys just like us with free tickets. Only after stepping into the bus did we realize that there was there were tens of thousands like us—with free tickets--that we felt like chickens stashed into a cage and taken to the slaughter house.
I remember standing in this jam-packed bus, my feet not touching the ground, suffocating amidst the sweat-drenched people around me. Vikas, a friend of mine, was in a worse condition; he'd almost been turned upside down and was struggling to get back to his feet and was unsuccessful at it.
After a horrific 1 hour, we finally reached the venue. We jumped out of the bus with joy only to realize that our nightmare had just begun. There were 6 super loooooooooong serpentine queues which almost circled the whole building where the conference was hosted. Cops with burly lathis were on either side of the queues. A couple of mischief mongers in one of the queues,pushed the guys in front of them, who in turn pushed the guys in front of them causing the guys in the outer queue to tumble on these cops. The cops, infuriated now, would put their sticks to good use on anyone within their striking distance. This brought about hearty laughter to the guys who had started it. Though I felt bad for the innocent victims, I did my share of pushing and enjoyed listening to the painful howls . well a guy has to do something to escape from the drudgery.

I looked at a friend of mine who had come to the fair with just slippers on and asked him
"Dude, how do you manage to stand on your legs with just slippers on in this rush? Aren’t you scared that your feet might get trampled upon?"
He replied: "I know that. That is why I am standing on somebody else's feet"
Out of the blue a guy next to him screamed:
"Hey so its you who have been standing on my feet. Get of my feet you son of a !@%$^"
Finally, after a grueling 2 hours in the queue, we managed to enter the building. Much to our dismay, however, there wasn’t a thing that interested us except for a giant screen plasma TV. A friend of mine P decided to act smart and went to the lady at the stall and asked her, “Your company’s TV is impressive, but don’t you think 80,000 Rupees is too much for it.”
She replied: “No i don’t think so. And besides the price of the TV is 800,000. Looks like you missed a digit.”
Another guy from a different college not to be outdone, went to the same lady (sales representative) and asked her: “Don’t you think that the LCD TVs are better and cheaper than your TVS?”
She asked him: “Which company do your work for, Sir?”
He proudly said: “I am still in college.”
Without saying a word, she pointed him to the Exit, which brought about spontaneous laughter from all the folks standing around him
- posted by Kiran @ 9:28 PM 13 comments

 
Episode 31 - Road to Perdition

To attend college, I rode a rickety black moped—a gift from my parents.
Essentially a cycle with a small motor attached ,just to make some engine like noise. Driving around in Bangalore on it was by far the biggest embarresment a guy could be subjected to. In fact it might not be a bad idea for judges to sentence criminals to ride on my bike around the city for commiting petty thefts. I was so depressed that i had not even renewed my licvence for the past 1 year cause i did not feel that this vehile deserved it. I was riding(pedalling) back from college with another absent minded friend of mine K(name witheld upon sincere request) when i was stopped by a traffic cop.
COP: Why were you coming on the wrong side of the road ?where is your Licence ?
(I showed him my licence)
COP: This has expired.
ME : OH(acting surprised)
COP: Dont you know that with a learing permit you cannot have a pillion rider with you.It is written here, even on your EXPIRED license.
ME :Oh sorry sir, I cant read Kannada too well.
COP:Where is your emission test certificate ?
ME :I left it at home.
COP:OK show me your liability insurance documents.
ME :What is that ?
COP:Hmmm...step aside from the vehicle.
ME :Sir,I have an exam tommorow,I need to go home early.Added to that I am not feeling well.(well back then I was so thin and meek that it was not hard to convince the cop that I was indeed sick)
Friend-K: Kiran ,Which exam are you referring to ?
(luckily the cop did not hear the words that came out of friendK's stinking mouth)
COP:(Softening a bit).See, you're an educated guy.You should know better.Next time I catch you the consequences could be bad for you.
When I was about to pedal away from the cop, my friend-K went to the cop and blurted out:

FRIEND-K :Excuse me Sir.How much is the fine he needs to pay now?
COP and I : (Stunned !!!)
FRIEND-K : Kiran just pay the fine. Let us go home . I'm feeling hungry.
This wasnt the first time that he had demonstrated such stupidity. I remember in one occasion when a middle aged lady came to me and my friend when we were chatting on the road and asked
"Do you know where Ranganatha nursing home is ?".
My absent minded friend instead of askin her if she had any land marks asked her
"Do you have any birth marks ?"
giving the middle-aged woman the creeps.
Back to the story ,Well As if on cue, the cop again started demanding that I pay him 300 bucks (with receipt) or 200 bucks without receipt. I did not carry a single rupee with me and neither did the moron friendK.
While I was mentally debating how to handle this debacle, another of my classmates, friend-P, happened by. On seeing me, he stopped his vehicle and enquired with me as to what was happening. I explained him my problem. My friend-P gave me a concerned nod, and kick-started his bike and left casually. The bastard was not concerned,he had just stopped by to quench his sick curiosity.
Finally the cop must've realized that there was no point in getting moolah from a pauper student. So he ranted a 15 min lecture about how strict he was and that I was the first guy he was letting go.
Just as I heaved a sigh of relief and tried to start my moped, friend-K casually tried to take the back seat as though nothing had happened. i felt like twisting and unscrewing his head like a bottle cap.I yelled at him and asked him not to show me his stupid face again.
- posted by Kiran @ 10:17 AM 12 comments

 
Episode 30 - Long live the king

Ever been totally clueless about a question in an academic exam? Ever had to write crap in your answer sheet, just so that you would get some marks in case the evaluator failed to notice or better still, hope that the question itself was wrong, and that you can get some grace marks for trying?
I and my friends have done it every now and then, and actually got away with most of it. Below are a few such instances:
For the 'History' class, lengthy answers were expected even for questions like: “Write a short note on Alexander”.
See, our teachers, rather than looking into the answers, simply used their pen as a yard stick to measure the length of our answers. If an answer measured 2 pens long, that student would get high marks. And if we reduced the length by half then the marks awarded, you guessed it, was reduced to half as well.
Consider this question in a 'Civics' class: “What are the powers of the President of India?”
Here's what I wrote as the answer:
“President is the powerful ruler of our country." and after that, I continued like this: "He has a lot of ministers. He has the power to appoint and DISAPPOINT ministers.......”
I got away with decent marks for that.
One more: This happened to one of my friends, Vivek: “Write a short note on why Emperor Akbar was called 'Akbar the great.'”. Vivek, whose English was worse than atrocious, wrote:
”Akbar was an awesome king. He had a huuuuge army. He fought like a tiger and he defeated the Sultan of Singapore. He was kind to animals and animals were also kind to him. He always performed Video remarriages.(instead of widow remarriages)..He banned Sita from the kingdom. (instead of Sati- burning of the Hindu widow).He loved his subjects like HELL and built huge buildings for them. He gave low taxes and ignored people who did not pay him back.”
Unfortunately for Vivek, the instructor was a bit more alert than usual. Not only did he award Vivek a big ZERO, but also read out the answer loud for the rest of the class. Vivek, instead of being embarassed, started giggling. Angry now, the instructor made him stand on the bench for the whole period with his hands up.
- posted by Kiran @ 11:16 PM 21 comments

 
Episode 29 - Hardwork is the key to FAILURE - Part 6
One day, while I was sitting alone in my cubbyhole at work, casually browsing the web when accidentally I clicked on a popup, which took me to a site which had clips of the movie 'Basic Instinct'. Filled with glee, I looked around to ensure that nobody was around and then decided to play the movie on the site. Just when I started to play the movie, I heard footsteps fast approaching me. I tried to close the movie, but the computer just wouldn’t (damn media player). I tried to turn off the monitor, but that wouldn’t work either. I frantically tried to shutdown the computer, but the switch was nowhere to be found. I finally decided to pull the plug, but much to my dismay, the computer, rather than shutting down, its volume increased to maximum. Oh my God!! I turned back and there he was—the Devil Incarnate—my project manager Sandeep, glaring at me with a lopsided smirk, and brandishing a huge steel knife. He raised it high, and brought it down at me with a deadly force, when I woke up from my DREAM with a gasp, my forehead totally sweating! What a nightmare!

After coming back to my senses like I did every afternoon, I was still sleeping in the dorm where Indias top software companie's employees in Mysore could take rest incase then worked the whole night, or if they were sick. Working overnight never applied in my case and as for being sick, I surely was .., of work.
Wondering what caused the nightmare, I recalled the events of that day. It was as follows:Earlier that day, noon to be exact, I, as usual had gone to the cafeteria. Much to my surprise, I found that the room was empty. I checked the kitchen. It was empty too. I checked with the security guard as to where the cafeteria workers were.
He said “Sir, there were a lot of complaints about the quality of food here and also frequent complaints about insects being found in the food .So the company decided to terminate his contract.”.
I was glad that the guy had been kicked out.
"But what is the alternative?" I asked.
Suddenly his face turned into a bagel face.
“OH, I never thought of that” he mentioned.
He then started wondering about where HE would be eating that day.

I decided to enquire with my colleagues. They told me that some new guy had been asked to get food to the campus. I waited at the gate for this soul to turn up. Finally he arrived, a lanky chap, on a cycle with 2 heavy vessels tied to either side of the rickety bicycle. He charged a whopping 20 Rupees for a plate of rice and some rasam along with some half cooked vegetables. How was the food? Fit for felons and finks—edible but bland as paper. I forced myself to take a couple of spoonfuls, until I could no more. Out of nowhere, a stray dog happened by, a scrawny creature that was thin to the bone, it's wiry tail wagging to and fro like crazy, its ears pointing upwards. Obviously, its powerful nose had sensed something it wanted—FOOD. Out of good heart, I dumped the food near by, and the dog lunged at it, as if to chow it all down in one mighty gulp. One sniff at the food, however, brought a sudden change in this once friendly creature. Its tail became still, it coughed and seemed to gag a little. Then its mouth bared. The dog stared at me, positioning itself in a defense posture, and snarled at me. Its staccato of sharp barks were enough to scare the living daylights out of me as I cautiously backtracked. Lucky for me that it was a non violent dog and let me off with a warning for serving it such crappy food.

Who knew what else I was to go through in this hellish place.

To be continued.....
- posted by Kiran @ 11:13 AM 16 comments

 
Episode 28 - Hardwork is the key to FAILURE - Part 5

I was sitting there totally depressed that I had been booted out of my 3rd project in 5 months. I had put so much effort and surely deserved to be booted out of my 6h project by now. The new testing project that I was put in was like the dumping ground for the worst of the worst. But just like how every cloud has a silver lining, life at Mysore sure had its moments Until now, were you thinking that I was a unique specimen around in my work place? If so, then perish that thought. There was one, Avinash, who out-Kiran’ed even me. A funny character, he hated work more than I did, and our project manager hated him more than he hated me. (I couldn't believe it myself for a while). He had been in the company for more than 3.5 years without any promotion thanks to his abilities and the amazing stunts he pulled off. In fact some guys who joined after he did had already become project managers. He was like a mentor to me, sharing some of his legendary tips and tricks. For example, he showed me alternate routes to exit the building on Friday evenings, without getting caught by our managers. Very few people were aware of these routes.
Avinash never feared his superiors, and wouldn't hesitate to yell back at them any time they criticized him. Once, when the new project manager (Vinay) yelled at him
- “You are responsible for half the problems in this project”,
Avinash shot back, saying,
- “And I think you are responsible for the other half”.
The senior project manager had to step in and resolve arguments such as these many times. That Avinash was still not fired made me wonder about my compaies' work ethics policy.
Now a little note about our project manager for testing, Vinay. The only thing he was good at was to test my patience. He was short heighted, short sighted, and his temper was so short that it was nonexixtant.I realized that since I had a bad experience with all my managers in the past I would start off on a good note with him. I decided to laugh at all the horrible jokes he made . But the problem was that his jokes are so bland and tasteless that it is hard to identify when he was serios and when he was kidding. On one occasion he said.
- "Kiran i want you to finish testing all the programs by end of this week instead of 2 weeks that I had earlier mentioned"
and i went
- “HAHAHAHAA”,
thinking that it was a joke. He blasted me saying
- "What is THIS ?? I have been noticing that you laugh at everything i say since the day you joined. Dont u have any seriousness.”.
I felt so bad. Had I been his manager, I would have made him wear tight leather boots with the right and left boots interchanged, and have him run ten miles non-stop. Then, I would have him eat his socks.

On one occasion, when the project deadline was fast approaching, Vinay emailed our team, saying that we had lots of work and we had to work on the weekends unless we had an emergency. Avinash(my mentor) and I discussed this atrocity and started scheming on how to escape extra work. Finally Avinash said
- “I think I will tell him that there's a religious gathering at my home this week end which is very important to our community. And so I will not be able to come. HAHA Hows that for a lie ? Bullet proof !!".
I said
- “WOW. I hope that I will also be able to come up with a good excuse like that.”
The next day during the project meeting , Vinay addressed the team.
- "As I had mentioned in my e-mail, you'll all need to work this weekend unless there’s an emergency”.
Avinash and I raised our hands together. I got the first chance to speak and I said
- “I have a religious festival at my uncle's house that is very important to our community”. Avinash, stunned and feeling betrayed, turned red in the face as I had used up the excuse he had come up with.
Vinay said
- “Ok that is understandable. You dont have to work this weekend. And what about you Avinash”.
Avinash said
- “err…hmmm…..I have been invited to Kirans place for the function.It is very important for his community. Err.....So I cant come.”
Vinay retorted,
- “That is ridiculous. You can go in the evening after finishing your work. So you have to work this weekend.”.
After the meeting Avinash chased me several blocks with a spike buster. I had to avoid him for 1 week to cool off.
Another time, again in Mysore, Vinay brought his 2-year-old son to the office. Since his cubicle was next to mine, I just went over and said hi to the toddler. The kid raised his finger, pointed it towards me and said “DADDY.”. Vinay, embarrassed, now tried to put on a fake smile and said. “No, that is your friend Kiran .I am your daddy”. But for some reason, the CRAZY baby kept shouting "DADDY, DADDY" with its finger pointing at me. I was shocked I tried to leave the place before someone could notice. Unfortunately, Avinash noticed this and let out a huge guffaw. The DAMN baby got excited and started randomly pointing its finger to people and called them DADDY which gave people the creeps.People started giving a "OH MY GOD ! How did the baby find out it was me?" look. Vinay could stand it no more and finally yelled at the clueless baby “SHONU BEHAVE YOURSELF !!!!”

TO BE CONTINUED...
- posted by Kiran @ 1:51 PM 19 comments

 
Episode 27- Hard work is the key to FAILURE - Part 4

For once my bag of tricks failed to get me out of trouble that I had dug myself into.My conpany transferred me to Mysore. Mysore branch of my ex-company is like the Andaman of pre independence or the Australia of 17 century, and is located in a remote area that is at least 20 miles away from civilization. I was so disturbed that the building looked like a creepy mansion—a bastion of desolation and despair.
I guessed that people who did little or no work were exiled to Mysore for anywhere ranging from 12 weeks to 2 years, depending on good behavior.
Here, my new project leader was Sandeep who was as huge as an Ox and had the brains of one too. I seemed like he had a vengeance against me as he dared to give me work to do. Leaving late at 6:30-7:00 in the night was a daily event. My module leader here was a guy named Shivaiah who looked like a creepy cobbler and had less skills than one.
His people management skills were third rate, and by all accounts, he was at least 17 times as evil as my earlier Project managers in Bangalore. On one occasion, when I was just 15 min late for work, he rudely asked me “WHY ARE YOU LATE? Do you have any personal problems at home?” I felt like hanging him upside down and telling him “Yah your wife called and complained that our kids were making a lot of noise”. But I restrained after noticing the photo of his wife next to his computer and found that she looked 23 times as stupid and ugly as him.
During weekends, I always made it a point to visit my home town, Bangalore(90 miles away). Both Sandeep and Shivaiah despised this to the core and made sure that I did not, by giving me plenty of work during Fridays. I had to adopt cheap tricks like leaving my desk casually to get a glass of water and then when I was close to the door make a dash for it like a rabbit. On occasions I would leave an old bag at my disk or an opened half used water bottle so that they would think that I would be coming back. One Friday evening, when I was trying to sneak out of the office to take a quick break for The Rest Of The Day, Sandeep somehow noticed it and startled me by saying: "KIRAN, come to my chamber." .Damn I was so close to the door. There, Shivaiah and another psycho by name Satish(senior project manager who looked like a tiny yet evil Bunny with a Constipation face) were already seated, all staring at me like I was some kind of diabolical abomination.. The meeting went as follows.

Sandeep:-Why are you going to Bangalore every weekend ?
Kiran :- Cause I feel home sick here.
Sandeep :- Home sick ? Every weekend ? Or are you sick of work?
Kiran :- Actually I feel homesick every day, but I am free only during weekend.
Sandeep :- You don’t see me going to Bangalore every weekend.
Kiran :- That’s because you are from Mysore.(Duh!)
Shivaiah :- What about Rajesh ?He is from Rajasthan.He dosen’t go there every weekend.
(By the way folks , Rajasthan is more than 1000miles from mysore..So what was this dummy thinking.)
Kiran :- That’s because he dosent have a choice..
Satish :- You cant talk to your project managers like this.
Kiran :- But I am only going for the weekend. And besides, I have asked Yamuna Bhaavi’s permission in Bangalore.
Satish :- But if you keep doing this ,and establish a bad relationship with your project managers, you will not get a chance to go onsite (America).
Kiran :- Actually I am quitting in 2 months to do my masters in US.
Sandeep:- See Kiran, the work we do here should be treated as our work. There is so much work to be completed. You should take up some responsibility for the module assigned to you.
Kiran :- hmm….I get it now. I NOW totlly understand what you are saying.
(Sandeep gives a smile like he has tamed a wild bull)
Kiran :- Ok, I will come back on Monday and do my work with responsibility..
Satish :- Well I will talk to Yamuna Bhaavi and report this to her.

The following Monday, I was unjustly booted out of that project and put into testing

TO BE CONTINUED..
- posted by Kiran @ 10:34 PM 15 comments

 
Episode 26 - Hardwork is the key to FAILURE - Part 3

Working at Indian software companies is by far the most thankless job one can ever get to do. Employees(Software Engineers) struggle day in and day out, and at the end of the day, are blasted for not working hard enough by managers who come in late and leave early. Besides, the work was so monotonous and dumb that it ultimately becomes a test of one's physical abilities than of one's intelligence. Added to the fact, unrealistic time lines made employees go batty. Many were loosing their hair fast and loosing their minds faster still. A dumb guy called Gurram who had gone bald in 9 months after joining the company even claimed to be loosing his teeth of late. I realized that my hair and teeth was more important than this rotten work and decided to put minimum strain on my body and mind and just collect the pocket money my company gave me.

After being booted out of the first project for "unknown" reasons, I was forced to work under a project manager—Nadhi Mishra. She was the uggliest woman i had ever seen.From some angles she looked a bit like Karuna(Nidhi) (former TamilNadu chief minister). I sometimes wondered if she was Karunanidhi's clone or if it was him in disguise .
Nadhi's attitude was worse than her looks. We had a loser named Chandra Prakash Agarwal, whose unmatched stupidity was close to infinity. Thanks to his dramatic acting, he was made the module leader of my team. Suspecting that I and Niranjan were not doing much work in this project, ChandraPrakash called us both for a meeting on a Monday. After our initially emotionless hellos the meeting went as follows

CHANDRAPRAKASH:- I have noticed that you guys are not doing your work properly, So I have decided to monitor you closely from this week.
(Me and Niranjan gave him a “Whatever” look.)
CHANDRAPRAKASH :-I will give you a small module to work on later. But you have to tell me how long you will take to complete it ?
ME :-. What is the small module ?
CHANDRAPRAKASH:- I cant tell you what the module is. I just want you to estimate how many days you will take to finish it?
ME :- Is this some kind of a trick question ?
CHANDRAPRAKASH:-(not amused) Anybody can estimate how long it will take if they know what to do, but only a real software engineer can estimate how long it takes to do a module without knowing what the module is.
(I and Niranjan are totally lost in this incredible display of stupidity)
NIRANJAN makes a quick recovery and says :- Ok, we will need 3-4 months.
(By the way the duration of the entire project was 2 months)
CHANDRAPRAKASH :- 3-4 MONTHS ??? I want the module done by next week !

(1 week later, we have a meeting in the same room. There is the usual exchange of emotionless hello’s)

CHANDRAPRAKASH:- Hi ! How was your weekend ?
KIRAN :- Oh it was awesome. I played in a cricket tournament.We lost but it was a lot of fun, we had a party in the evening where….
CHANDRAPRAKASH:- (interrupts) WHY AREN't YOU DOING ANY WORK ?
NIRANJAN :- (Laughs) HA HA HA HA
CHANDRAPRAKASH:- (looking at Niranjan)This question was for both of you.
NIRANJAN:- (with a stunned look) Oh !
KIRAN :- (Laugh) HA HA HA
CHANDRAPRAKASH :- Arent you guys interested in working here?
KIRAN : We are very much interested but we are not finding enough time to finish our work.
CHANDRAPRAKASH :- No time?? I always notice you leaving early at 5pm sharp.
NIRANJAN :- I have already finished 25% of what you gave me last week.
CHANDRAPRAKASH:- And what about you Kiran ?
KIRAN :- Oh ...I had finished 40% ...but ...err....I forgot to save.So I just restarted.
CHANDRAPRAKASH:- WHAT ! you still haven’t done anything? This is outrageous. I am recommending Nadhi to have to you removed from this project.

Now, Karunanidhi 's clone aka NaDHI had a chaddi-dosth by the name of Yamuna Bavi, who also happened to be the Divisional manager. She was the most massive woman i have seen and with her ragged hair and messed up face , she only needed a club to look like a typical CAVE-WOMEN. She in turn had a sidekick, P Sairam, who was the Senior project manager. Together the four vicious mongrels got together and had me transferred to Mysore…Before leaving, Chandraprakash gave me an evil smile, showing that he had won the eventual battle. But his smile was short-lived, when Nidhi told him “Chandra , I want you to take over the modules assigned to Kiran and Indrajit(another guy who left the company) and in addition to the one you are currently working on. I want it all done by end of this week.” Later, ChandraPrakash was also booted to Pune for similar misbehavior).

I guess our companies Tag line should be changed to. POWERED BY ATTROCITY, DRIVEN BY STUPIDITY !!!

To Be continued....
- posted by Kiran @ 9:47 PM 22 comments

 
Episode 25 - Hardwork is the key to FAILURE - Part 2

2003,after my training at Mysore, my company moved me to Bangalore (my home town) after much drama. My initial project was the coolest time i ever had. I was very sick and missed a couple of days when the manager assigned work to every member of the project team. When I came back the next week, I was told that the module leader (Shaktivel) would not be coming for a couple of weeks as he had broken his foot in a nasty fall and that he would be working from home. So there I was roaming around the office campus like a guy who had come for a picnic, while my poor colleagues/friends were toiling away like software coolies (laborers). My friend Niranjan was also a take-it-easy character, though he worked at least once in a while, like say once a week. Often we both would sit near the coffee vending machine for several office hours, discussing how nobody else was working properly at work. In addition to that, we also took marathon lunch breaks (1.5 to 2 hrs) where our gang had lunch and sat on benches under the tree and gave ratings to figures walking around, and then after lunch, once again continued exchanging our opinions about peoples lack of commitment towards work . Needless to say we were both booted out of the project in 3 months and put into a different team. 2 Months into our second project, my company decided to do a performance review for all employees for the previous year(my previous time pass project). I was extremely nervous cause I knew that one guy from every project would be given a "D" grade.
It so happened that my close friend Niranjan's appraisal was one day before mine. I prayed to God vehemently for Niranjan to be the lucky recipient of the dreaded D. I eagerly waited to hear his sad news. He came out and told me that the Manager had given him a "C." The only reason he was not given a D was that there was a certain candidate who deserved it more than any body else.
Now, I began getting nervous...Expecting to hear the horrifying news, I did not even bother preparing for a presentation I was supposed to come up with. I borrowed Niranjan's presentation, made one or two small changes, and presented it. I made a presentation to my old team and told them some crap that i read line by line from Niranjans presentation. I was asked to stop midway cause my Project Manager Aarthi and some senior team members/module leaders Shaktivel and co , realised that it was was the presentation that they had seen the previous day from Niranjan.

My appraisal interview went as follows.

Manager: Kiran , What has been your most significant contribution to this project.
ME : Well, its been so long almost 2 months .So I don’t remember.
Manager : OH !! What did you like about this project?
Me: I liked the fact that everybody was kind and friendly
Manager : No about the project, What technical aspect did you like ?. .
ME: Oh ...eh...hmm…I liked the algorithms used.
Manager: Which algorithms ?
Me: errr...All Algorithms.
Manager: What did you like LEAST about this project ?
Me: (after deep thought) I did not like the front-end.(general look and feel).Especially the blue coloured screen.
Manager: (realizing that she had to put a stop to this stupidity).OK Kiran We have decided to give you grade D.
Me: (showing a shocked face) What?!
Manager: (surprised at my exaggerated surprise) Grade D = 4th grade. We give 4 grades A,B,C and D.
Me: But why?
Manager: Cause there wasn’t any significant contribution from your side to this project.
Me: Ohh.
Manager: Do you understand It is the lowest grade that we give
Me: Yes.
Manager: (still surprised) Do you have any questions about y you got this grade ?
Me: You have already told me that.
Manager: (softening a bit) Do you think you could have done anything different to get a better grade ?
Me: No. I cant imagine what else I could have done..
Manager: Are you sure?
Me :(With some hope) Have you taken into account my significant contribution in the first week of October? I think I did the .....
Manager: NO !! YOU DID NOT!
Me: (A silly, meaningless grin)
......
Later, owing to some discrepancies regarding the grading scheme, all candidates with a C and D grade were clubbed into Level 2 group, while A and B grade candidates were merged and titled Level 1 group. Level 1 employees were awarded a Rs.5000 increment and those in level 2 were given a Rs.2500 increment. Since I stayed in the company for just another month, I did not lose much when compared to my fellow software coolies who had worked their butts off the entire year for almost 16+ hrs a day.

TO BE CONTINUED...
- posted by Kiran @ 3:27 PM 14 comments

 
Episode 24 - Hard work is the key to FAILURE - Part I.

In 2002, I started to work at one of Indias most pathetic software compies . Well, who hasn’t joined this stupid company? Rumors are that this company has almost recruited 1/4th of Indian population. The fact that 1/4th of the Indian population is below the poverty line should therefore not come as a surprise. There were also rumors doing the rounds that the company had placed a warning sign that said “Trespassers will be RECRUITED"
Well, back to my days at work. My training in Mysore was one of pure joy—for my sadistic employer that is. Or if by joy you mean slow painful torture. On the first day, there was a mind-boggling orientation session, at the end of which we all felt more DISORIENTED and dizzy than anything else. We were hypnotized to sign unrealistic slave-labor like 1-year contracts. The companies big boys warned us that if we broke the contracts we would be facing the music. A smart guy (Vishwas BC) once asked if it would be ROCK music!!
Things always weren’t always this bad. They were worse. The food served was so bad that it would have made a great dare on FEAR FACTOR. Finding insects in the food we ate was the norm. In fact the manager of the restaurant secretly ate food at a different place rather than join his suffering subordinates. He saw me notice him eating at another place once and the genius took his glasses off so that I would not recognize him in his "disguise" !!
The only amusing part of my escapade at this stupid company was an incident which deserves mention. After our training , we were given a do or die comprehensive exam which we had to pass to stay in the company. One of my colleagues, Sandeep found the questions asked for the previous batch. He shared the questions along with the answers with 6 of us—his gang. The test pattern was simple and straightforward. 50 multiple-choice questions, to be answered in 90 minutes. The questions were the same ones asked for the previous batch, for which we had all the answers. I remember not even being able to pronounce some of the terms used in the questions (on mainframes) let alone understanding them, but was able to answer all of them .Thanks to Sandeep !!. After the exam began, Tushar was done in 4 minutes. I was next—5 minutes. Within 7 minutes, all 7 of us were done. As we left the room, the examiner P.Chandra - the round faced racoon smiled at us pitifully, thinking: “Poor souls, they must have screwed up the test.” Meanwhile, the rest of the class was sweating, biting their nails, their faces cringing in concentration, fidgeting with the questions, and wrinkling the question paper.
When the results were declared the graph indicating the marks distribution was like 2 mountains separated by a wide valley. The passing grade was 60. Our gang, all the 7 of us, scored a staggering 90+. The highest score among the remaining 30 students was around 75. Many of the remaining punters scored anywhere between 0 to 60. The toppers of the exam, (from our group of course.. duh…): Vikas, Deepa and Rahul went on stage, collected prizes, and gave inspirational speeches. “The secret to handle these extremely tough, brain tingling questions is NOT simple,” one of them said. “Study regularly by burning the midnight oil. There are no short cuts to success.” A little more of such bull crap, and I would have surely kicked their butts, nice and hard.

TO BE CONTINUED..
- posted by Kiran @ 3:50 PM 18 comments

 
Episode 23 - A Picture is worth a thousand words - Our Poli Katte Gang


=> Blade Basava aka Raghavendra





=> YeNNey Yenkta aka Giri






=> Long Lakka aka 90 aka Arvind






=> Rug Rudra aka Aruna





=> Churi Chikka aka Kirana






=> Mach Mara aka Ashoka








- posted by Kiran @ 7:51 PM 11 comments

 
Episode 22 - Devil incarnate !!!

My readers have commented that my exploits are suggestive of a dark personality. Well, let me introduce you to my evil, fat cousin. In comparison, I look like a saint.This incident happened when he was 12 years old. There was a lot ofcommotion outside our house one day and I stepped out to see what had happened.There were a couple of homeless kids hurling abuses at someone in our direction.My elder brother who was in the balcony of the second floor was in a state of shock and my cousin was rolling like a ball on the balcony of the first floor unable to control his laughter. I ran upstairs to the second floor to ask my brother what had happened. He narrated the following episode which had just occured. A couple of beggar kids, dressed in ragged clothes, were milling outside our house's front gate. Collectively, like a group of Opera singers, they howled "Amma Kasu Kodi Ammmaaaa!!" (O Lady give us some money. ) My cousin's mom (my aunt), unable to listen to their high pitch, decided to silence them with a generous 2 rupee note.She wanted my cousin to give the money so that it would cleanse some of his sins. My cousin, flailing his arms wildly, rushed toward the gate, shouting "Wait Don'tDont give these rascals any money. They will come again and again!".There was some oil on the steps before the gate, which my evil cousin didn't see. "THUMP! THUMP! thump!" My fat cousin slipped, almost did a complete somersault, before crashing into the gate. BANG !!. Unfortunately, he was unhurt, barring a few bruises. The beggar kids started laughing loudly and uncontrollably, saying "Ooo Dumma bidda" .(The Fat one has fallen). My aunt helped up the fallen beast. My aunt yelled at the beggars for laughing at her son and asked them to leave immediately. She left in a huff. But my cousin went near the two kids who had shouted at him the loudest, then took out an additional three bucks from his pocket. He told one of the kids "I will give you 5 Rs but i want you to beat the other guy up." The 2 beggar kids traded a couple of powerful slaps and pulled each others hair.It went on for 5 minutes. Suddenly they stopped, sensing something was wrong. The fighting duo and the rest of their uncouth gang looked around wildly. Where was my cousin? Nowhere to be seen. "There he is!" the smartest of them shouted, pointing to our balcony. Safe behind the railings, was my fat cousin, laughing like a hyena.He said "Nanna nodi nakthiraenro? Nanna Makkala."(You morons !! Pay the price for laughing at me ).The begger kids ended up being battered, bruised and bewildered for messing with the devil incarnate.
- posted by Kiran @ 11:22 PM 6 comments

 
Episode 21 - Sleeping Beauty

My problems did not end with mock exams during 12th (National college Basavanagudi). Fighting of sleep and staying awake in tuitions was harder than scoring in double digits in the mock exams. Thanks to the excruitiatingly boring lectures belted out at us by our "professors" We had to strive hard to create our own entertainment to lighten the drudgery imposed on us. There used to be a student named Imran who attended on an average 50% of the classes. So my friend MB.Ragu and I would place bets while leaving home at 6 in the morning, on whether Imran would attend the class that day or otherwise. The loser would have to pedal the bike all the way to the tuition and back with the other guy happily sitting in the back seat (carrier).
But after this initial excitement we had to spend the next few hours listening to the lectures from dodo faced dummies with extra small brains. My friend MB once dosed off in class and was rudely woken up by the professor (gururaj again) who asked him to name the element with atomic number 24. But MB was a simpleton who simply followed simple living and simpler thinking. He had no clue about the question. Since he was seated next to me. I tried to help him out by writing Cr (Chromium) in small print on the desk with a pencil. MB gave it a quick glance and said " Sir its CROCIN !!” He was blasted so bad verbally that he stayed awake for many nights!!
On another occasion when the professor was explaining half-life of isotopes, I was gazing out of the window during the lecture and admiring how skillfully a cat was balancing itself on a wall with its tail up. I began wondering how my life would have been so much better if I were a cat. There would have been no exams, tests or even boring lectures to attend. Just roaming around the neighborhood, chasing mice and performing balancing acts on walls. All of a sudden there was a silence in the class. I noticed that Gururaj had stopped explaining and was giving me the most evil stares. He asked me to meet him later and continued to explain the problem, which involved finding the product of half-lives of 2 elements. I was still disillusioned and had no clue of what was being taught in class but I noticed that he had written an equation for product of the half lives as T1 * T2 = ln (2)a1 * ln (2)a2. I figured that if I answered this question Gururaj would assume that I was listening to his stupid lecture and let me go scot-free. I thought that l , n and a were variables ..so i multipled them and said "Sir the answer is 8 * L square * N square *A square !!!" Gururaj was speechless. His face went blank like an empty square ! Chetan who was sitting in front of me turned back and said "Kiran, ln = log to base e and a1 and a2 are constants in the equation!!” But it was too late!!
- posted by Kiran @ 9:37 PM 13 comments

 
Episode 20 - Scratch proof psycho

When kids in India reach 2nd PUC(12th grade - Pre college) most parents force their children to take up special classes(tuitions), so that they can do well on their CET(exam similar to SAT). I being the lazy character that I was, joined the place closest to my home where classes were conducted by a moron called Gururaj. The place was infested mostly with fellow morons like me who believed that subjects like physics and chemistry were a curse to the human race. We had exams every 3 months and it was the most morose period of our lives cause none of us had a clue about any of the subjects. In the first exam that was conducted after the first 3 months,I had studied just 25% of the syllabus and had quickly glanced through the remaining 75% on the last day.Unfortunately there was a 20 mark question from the 75% that I had glanced through.The question read "With a neat diagram, explain the process of extraction of Iron" . I vaguely remembered the diagram and was somehow able to draw a complicated diagram on paper after great difficulty. But as soon as I finished writing the explanation ,I felt that the diagram that I had just drawn was for the extraction of Aluminum instead of Iron.With a heavy heart and one quick stroke I scratched the answer that I had spent 20 min answering.I was about to start answering the question again when I gave a quick glance to my neighbor's answer sheet and found that he had written the same answer that I had just scratched. I was in no mood to rewrite the same answer that I had just scratched.So I used my quick thinking and wrote a star on top of the sheet and wrote "NOT SCRATCHED !!".
The answer sheets were graded and returned the next day.There was one really smart chap called Chetan P,who had aced the MOCK exam while the rest of us made a mockery of it. I clearly remember Chetan getting 98/100 in the exam while the sum of the scores secured by remaining 14 of us was 97 with many of us securing scores in single digits.A classmate of mine ,Naveen being the optimist that he was, once asked Gururaj if whether the number '7' on his score sheet was his rank in the class or if it was his total score. Gururaj being the sadist that he was replied "BOTH !!".I looked at my answer sheet and my first instinct was to see if the moron had graded the answer that I had scratched. I found to my horror that below my statemnt "NOT SCRATCHED" ,Gururaj had given me 5 points for that question and then scratched it off and written "NOT GIVEN !!!! ". What a Psycho !!!.
- posted by Kiran @ 9:27 PM 12 comments

 
Episode 19 - Every dog has its day

When I was in high school my parents forced me take up yoga classes so that I would become healthy both physically and mentally.I hated this as I had to wake up early in the morning at 5am and leave home at 5:30am. I had a rickety old cycle which my uncle had gifted me.My parents forced me to use this as my uncle would feel bad otherwise.The bike did not have either a horn,mirror or a headlight.Back then I believed that my uncle had built this bike too. Some times there would be power outages on the streets and I had to whistle and sing loudly on my cycle hoping that others would not crash into me. But this would irk a whole lot of mad street dogs in our neighborhood which were always planning to bite me. I had to take up alternate routes every few days to confuse the dogs.
But life wasn't always this bad.On one occasion I was huffing and puffing on my way back just after cycling up a steep slope when another kid who had peddled really hard behind me and gained significant speed stopped peddling as soon as he overtook me.He turned back and started giving me a smirk which was basically trying to mock me for peddling so hard and yet being overtaken by someone who was not peddling at all. I was so angry that I asked myself "God !! what is the purpose of humiliating me like this ?"..When suddenly the pesky kid who was turning back and still smiling mockingly at me crashed into a bullock cart which was moving slowly in front of him.He fell down and started crying.I thanked god for helping me understand the meaning of life and complemented him for his wacky sense of humor. Ofcourse i did laugh loudly at the kid while passing him.
- posted by Kiran @ 7:24 PM 11 comments

 
Episode 18 - One way ticket to Hell

If you ever feel the need to see some good old fashioned fist/verbal fights just wake up early on a Monday morning and head to a railway station in Bangalore.You can increase your vocabulary manifold thanks to the choicy use of abusive words you will hear.You can witness people of all shapes and sizes fighting and cursing each other.The most common reason for most fights are morons who try to jump long serpentine queues to buy tickets.On one occasion ,I was standing in one of the lines to get a ticket to mysore(where I was exiled by infosys).A guy tried to barge into one of the queues and was getting thrashed.A middle aged short guy from one of the queues instead of minding his own business decided to join in on the fun and went in and launched a few blows on the 'queue jumper'. Later when a police constable intervened, and the commotion had died down the middle aged guy forgot where his position was in his queue and tried to force himself into the queue in some position where he thought he stood.But the constable thought he was another guy just trying to jump the queue dragged him to the back of the long serpentine queue. The guy was in no mood to wait.He stepped out of the Q and started asking people in the front of the queue if they were willing to buy tickets for him.He came to me and said in English .."Me want round ticket tanjore train"..I was dressed in formals that day and he must have thought that I was from out of the state. I asked him in Kannada "Yelligey"(where).And he persisted with his rotten English "Me want round ticket tanjore train.".I just took his money and went to the ticket counter and after buying my ticket ,said I wanted another ticket to tanjore.The ticket counter guy was surprised .He said ,"Are you sure cause we don't have one till day after tomorrow".I said I was sure.He was taking his own sweet time to find the right amount of change and I was in a hurry that day to catch the train and get to work. I asked the middle aged midget who was waiting a couple of feet away from me to pick up the ticket from the ticket counter and left in a hurry to catch the train.The guy tried to ask the guy in the ticket counter but the people around him thought he was barging into the queue and thrashed him. He pleaded with the people that he just wanted to collect the ticket I had brought.In the mean time I was running to catch the train to Mysore and I noticed that the name of the train was "Tanjore express".It quickly dawned on me that the poor midget just wanted a return ticket to Mysore on the Tanjore express.I was a bit worried that if that guy caught me on the platform he would beat me up and was cautiously waiting in the train. A couple of minutes later a colleague of mine who was also going to Infosys Mysore,told me that that the midget was dragged back to the end of the queue yet again by the constable and not allowed to collect his ticket !!!Phew !!!
- posted by Kiran @ 2:11 PM 5 comments

 
Episode 17 - The Hundred Rupee Episode

There lived a kid opposite to my house called Adi who was a stingy moron. He was so stingy as a kid that he wore the same pant for 6-7 years until he grew tall—and then—started using them like shorts. Had those pants not worn out with holes, Adi hadideas of trying them out as underwear too. This behavior seems hereditary—by hereditary I mean thatthis behavior runs in his whole family.Take his uncle, Bora, for example. When our city was beseigedwith mosquitos, Bora was the only one who rather than spend a few bucks on a bugs spray, fought the biting mosquitoes by biting them back. A laughing stock of our neighborhood, Adi’s family was, naturally, the target of many of ourpranks. When Adi turned 10 he invited me to his birthday party, and always i decided to save a fewtricks up my sleeve. I brought a fake Rs.100 note from one of the board games that I had. When Adi was not looking, I dropped the fake note on the floor and said aloud, “Somebody has dropped a 100rupee note here", hoping Adi would fall for it.Out of nowhere, Adi's father, Basavappa, pounced on the note like a gorilla pouncing on a banana and said "It is mine. It’s all mine." On examining the note closely He realized the trick. All the guests were stunned. The damage was done, and Basava was terribly embarrassed. He tried to save the last iota of dignity he had by saying: “Oh, Isee. Heh heh.(gulp).. Actually, I lost one Rs.100 note last week, so I thought this was it. If you come across it, please bring it to me at once. ” All the guests laughed at this exhibition of stupidity. Even Adi, being the evil son that he was, laughed his ass off and told the guests who came in later what they had missed.
- posted by Kiran @ 2:10 PM 2 comments

 
Episode 16 - Broken Arrow

Ever had a pesky guy in class who wud drive u insane with his superiority complex ? There was this guy called vandith who had the 3 qualities which i hated most in a person.He was short, had an attidude and wore golden framed glasses.To top it all i once noticed him laughing at me with his mouth wide open like a hippo when i was sent out of the class for throwing a chalk piece at my friend during class . I decided to punish vandith for his mistakes and went about coming up with a master plan. During the Maths period the next day i strategically placed myself 2 benches behind where He was sitting and moved one column to the right.I took a small stone some paper and a rubberband as my weapons.10 minutes after the class started i wrapped the stone with the paper and made a hard solid ball.I placed the stone hard ball on the rubber band and stretched it as much as i could and took aim. There was a big risk involved if my aim was wrong.If the ball moved slitely to the left of vandith it would have struck the most beautiful girl in class and if it went off target to the right, it would have struck the most ugly girl. I realised that a few sacrifices had to be made to bring down this ravaging villan. I held a silent prayer and requested god to help me with my aim.After seeking gods blessings i stretched the rubberband as much as i could and waited for the teacher to turn around.As soon as she did i fired the missile.I moved like a rocket with astonishing speed and hit vandith just behind his ear.The sweet high pitch sound of collision between the rock and his empty skull was a treat to my ears. He gave out a shriek which caused the math teacher (M.G.Geetha) to turn back and check.Later vandith turned back to check who it was.A friend of mine (Yogindra) was looking at Vandith and wondering why he was turning back.Vandith figured that it was yogindra who hit him and yelled "Mardhunga thugey Saley" (I AM GOING TO KILL YOU @#$@#).Poor yogindra was as perplexed as a pomerenian puppy.
- posted by Kiran @ 10:38 PM 10 comments

 
Episode 15 - My first trip to a theater with friends.One of those movies ;-)

When i turned 16 i decided that i was old enough to watch one of those movies in a theater. But did not have the courage to go for it alone. So i befriended a 19 year old dummy called lokesh alias lakka.He was the kind of moron who would give Bode kaddi superiority complex.He once commented that i was his 17th best friend !!!!!!.I did not bother asking him who the remaining 16 were.If this isnt enough to convinve you that he was brainless he once asked me to tilt my computer 45 degrees when it would not boot.(like the moron who would tilt his scooter when it would not start).
I did not have to put in too much effort to convince my parents that i had to meet a long lost friend that day.My dad who was in his 40's had started to bcome more absent minded than me.Infact i remember one instance when my brother and me were beating the crap out of each other over which tv channel to watch and my dad just stood there watching.When my mom later barged in and asked my dad y he did not stop us he said "OH ! I wanted to see who would win".
Well back to movie..i got really scared after reaching the theater cause i had delusions that some of my perverted teachers or some one i knew would be in the theater and this information would reach home,but it was a risk i was willing to take.After reaching the theater me and lakka took a seat in the balconey.I saw school students way younger than me whistling at the screen,which made me ashamed as they were younger and could whistle better than me. As soon as the lights were turned down one young prankster got carried away and spit chewed popcorn on the guys sitting in the ground floor and started lafing..He figured that since it was dark no one would notice him. A guy from downstairs who was spit upon quietly came up like a cat and suddenly opened the window of the theater in the balconey.A beam of light from the window caught the guy who was spitting in the act.He was dragged downstars by his feet and kicked till he pleaded for mercy and said that he had done it by mistake cos he was choking and had to spit it out and that the guy who spit earlier was getting away !!He got 3 bonus kicks for coming up with this ridiculus story.I had to leave the theater to avoid attrating attention just in case some one i knew saw me and reported this to my folks.Besides the movi sucked real bad and only had fat women doing folk dances. Thank god for internet today ;-)
- posted by Kiran @ 10:32 PM 6 comments

 
Episode 14 - Its Election Day ....

Elections always bring out the worst in people.I was no different. I was a pretty unpopular kid in high school, cause i had moved in from a different section.Not that i really cared about the sickos who were mean to me. I managed to get into trouble for the mistakes i didnt commit , Thanks largely due to sick charecters like Shashidhar who was white as a ghost and just as disgusting,Venkat who was thinner than a broom stick and had less personality than one, Madhusudan the cripple who was the perfectexample of an unsound mind in an unsound body.and ofcourse Basha Srikanth and Pinky, whose minds were more twisted than their curly hair.The latter was was surprisingly voted "Miss school",when she should have been voted Mess school.She was a total mess when it came to looks!!! I was later consoled when i was told that it wasnt for beauty but for decency in class that she got the award.
But these charecters did not deter me from having fun( at the expence of others ofcourse). Though it made it that much harder as i had to put in most of the effort and had very few people to share the burden with. My potential target came in the form of a gullible kid from the neighbouring class who moved to our class in the final year of high school for reasons best known to him.His name was Balaji.The day he moved in coincided with the class election day.Me and a couple of my friends , Shetty and Vinod ,befriended him and convinced him to contest in the election for the class Presidents post.At first he was obviously reluctant saying that he did not stand a chance in hell as he was new to the class and did not know any one.But we convinced him eventually by saying that this stupid class had no unity and also since this was the final year not many people cared as to who would be the president and would vote for the new guy cause they all hated each other.And that if he won he would have a golden oppurtinity to make friends that much quicker. This moron lapped up every word we said and when the class teacher asked for the names of the students interested in contesting for the election The new kid cautiously looked around.No one stood up.The reason for that was that there was a discussion going on in some of the last benches as to who should stand for president and they eventually decided to go with a tall stupid looking guy called Madhusudan(who was the president the previous year).But the new kid was totally oblivious of what was happening and felt that the reason nobody was standing was the reasons we gave him earlier.Balaji stood up and declared that he was interested in contesting. The whole class gave out a simultaneous "WHAT ?????????".A few moments later Madhusudan told the teacher that he was interested in contesting aswell.So there it was Madhusudan Vs the new kid. The teacher then proceeded by asking the students who were interested in having the new kid as the president to indicate their vote by raising their hand.To his utter surprise not a single student raised their hand.Even the 3 of us(Me, Shetty and Vinod) who convinved him to contest were LAUGHING at his face as he looked at us with total disbelief. In the resulting confusion he forgot to vote for him self and ended up with 0 votes and was the new unpopular kid in class!!!!
- posted by Kiran @ 3:19 PM 9 comments

 
Episode 13 - The Million Dollar Episode

Sure I have had my share of mischief but the following prank stands right up there.My target was an immature 22 yr old who was addicted to playing online lotteries.He was way dumber than Bode Kaddi.We realized this when he decided to prepare for CET(an exam similar to SAT which has multiple choice questions)by purchasing just a book containing the solutions to the multiple choice questions from previous terms ,without the questions or the explanation to the solutions.
The most irritating thing was that since he was not computer literate(Kannada medium I guess) he used to force me to accompany him and teach him to play frelotto(online lottery) each time at the nearby internet parlor. I realized that I had to put a stop to this.One day I teamed up with a friend of mine (Vishal Jumani) and created an accout under the name Mike Trelawny(Treasure island)and sent him a mail saying. "Dear Sir,we would like to congratulate you for being the winner of our lottery this month.You are the second Indian to achieve this after Hakemullah in 1996.So hats of to U and India.Please send your debit card number and we will deposit the sum of 1 million dollars in your account.Also you will have to ensure that atleast 100 people visit our site by next week failing which your prize will be withdrawn."At 12 in the night i received a call from him.He was breathing heavily and asked me ."Kiran ..If some one wins an online lottery,how do they claim the prize ?".I asked him if he had won anything and he said no initially.He probably thought i would take the money and keep it to myself.Later he said that he had won 5000$ and wanted to know how to claim it.He finally showed me the mail that I had sent and I had to really struggle to control my laughter.He told me to tell atleast 100 people in my college to login and play the game.I told him that I knew only 5 people in my college for which this genius suggested that I ask these 5 people to play 20 times a day.I told him to forget it and that I was busy as I had my exams soon.He sent a mail to my "Mike Trelani account with his terrible English the next day saying ."Sir after receiving the prize I am having exciting movements.Since I don't know how to use the internet please mail the money in cash to my address #131 kengeri ....bangalore".I decided to take it one step further and sent him a reply with an image(jpeg) of a million dollar note and asked him to take just one printout and redeem it at any HSBC bank.I am sure that he tried this cos I did not see him for almost a month after that..
- posted by Kiran @ 7:06 PM 3 comments

 
Episode 12 - Double Impact

I joined Vijaya High School in 1993.Life was vastly different from aurobindo but weird incidents continuded to follow me like a shadow.Skipping classes was the norm and only nerds went to classes.The rest of the guys spent their time in the park,or in the sports room. Me and a couple of my friends,Anand shetty and Ravi(from the nighbouring class) went to the sports room and found that all the sports equipment were being used and we decided to wait.While we were waiting Ravi who was a bit crazy, and me decided to tie Shetty's shoe laces together.Shetty resisted but Ravi was too strong for him.All of a sudden the new sports instructor barged into the sports room looking for students who had skipped classes,so that he could punish them.Ravi and I escaped through the back door leaving poor Shetty behind.Shetty tried to run but tripped and fell as his shoe laces were tied together and was soon caught by the sports instructor.He recieved several blows to his head and was forced to spit out our names.Me and Ravi were soon tracked down the next day and brought to his office.He asked us if we had bunked the class and Ravi being the jack ass that he is said "Sir nim thayannegu naave class bunk maadlilla"(Sir ,I swear on your mom that I did not bunk the class.)"The teacher yelled back "You idiot!!Y are you swearing on My mom ?.To add to that you are lying.I want both of you to Give me your address.I will talk to your parents.".Ravi said "Sir i stay in 3rd phase Jeevan Bheema Nagar.".I felt that my parents had been summoned to the school too often and thought that i would give them a break.I heard RAvi say his address as G1 bheemanagar and I said.Sir i stay in 4th phase G2 bheema nagar.At this point the instructor lost it. He charged at us and grabbed our ears(mine and ravi's) and banged our heads together twice.The 2 blows immediately made me spit out "6th main" and "5th cross" succesively, which was the place where i stayed....
- posted by Kiran @ 8:50 AM 10 comments

 
Episode 11 - Revenge of the Sick

1995 - Cricket(sport similar to baseball) has been the second most favorite sport of mine ,after the worlds favorite sport.And it use to drive me wild as a kid when people stopped me from playing.The kidsof our neighbourhood (me, Raghavendra,Adi,Black Ragu alias boda and Bode Kaddi) used to practice on the road regularly from 5-7 in the evening. There was an ugly shop owner on the road in which we played who always made a fuss about us playing on the road.But we turned a deaf ear to him and told him that had a tournament coming up and had to practice.But one day while we were playing the ball hit his window and broke it to a million pieces.He immediately came out and snatched the bat and ball away from us and chased us a couple of blocks shouting abusive words. Good thing we had practiced running in cricket, which helped us outrun him.We decided to teach him a lesson he would not forget.WE maintained a low profile for a couple of weeks and then decided to go for the kill.We waited till 11 in the night for him to close his shop and leave for the day.As soon as he left ,we locked his door with a suitcase lock and then stuffed 3-4 well chewed bubblegums in the key hole of the other lock that he had placed. The next morning me and my friends went to my friends balcony to get a clear view of his reaction at the same time ensuring that he did not see us.What proceeded made our lives fulfilling. It brought tears of happiness to our eyes to watch him struggle trying to open the lock.He was finally able to break our lock with a huge stone but later to his surprise he was unable to insert the key into his lock as the key hole was stuffed with bubblegum.He eventually had to break it aswell.We gave each other high fives and congratualated one another for carrying out a successful mission.
- posted by Kiran @ 2:08 PM 3 comments

 
Episode 10 - My cousin gets his due

Who hasnt made a crank call in their lives.Aaah those were the days when people did not know what caller id's were and people like me ruled the country.Here are a couple of quickies that i have been a part of.The common strategy was to pick a number from the telephone directory and throw caution to the wind.

(US = me and my friends)
EPISODE A
( US ) : Hi ! we are calling from Udaya Tv.We wanted to congratulate you for being the winner of our super bumper contest.
(Lady ) : (Excited) Oh really !!! wow thanks..
(US) : Dont you want to know what the contest was for
(LADY): Oh i forgot.please tell us
( US ) : The 'BUM'per prize was for the person who had the biggest BUM in the area.
(LADY ): @#$@#$@#$$ you little @#$@#$@#(expletives)

Episode B
(US) : Hi we are calling from philips.We want to tell you that you have won something
(PERSON): Wow...that is great !! what did i win ?
( US ): You sick @%#$@# thought u won something without participating !@#@!!@#! ..and abused him for a whole minute before hanging up.

The next day i met my cousin whom i hated deeply.He was unaware of the phone call i had made the previous day.I told him that i had a plan to make a crank call.My cousin was excited and said he wanted to do be a part of it.So i told him that i would dial the number and he could talk to the person.I dialed the same number that i dialed the previous day..

(COUSIN): Hi i am from philips.
(PERSON): YOU SON OF A @!#!@# @$# @#$@#$@#$@#$@#$@#$@#$@#$ %$#%#$%#$%#$%# (non stop cursing)
(Cousin) : stunned to silence
my cousin to this day has no clue as to y the person blasted him for just sayin that he was from philips.

- posted by Kiran @ 9:19 PM 4 comments

 
Episode 9 - When bears Attack

Every kid in India has 1 basic dream.To be on TV. I had this rare opportunity once thanks to a friend of mine ,Raghavendra whose relative worked in a local TV station.There was this TV quiz show for kids called ("Thet antha uttarisi" - Answer as quickly as you can) which was basically a science quiz and was in all likely hood unheard off by any one except the families of the kids who were participating in the contest.Each team consisted of 2 students, so me and my friend decided to form a team.The quiz was in Kannada and neither of us knew an iota of scientific terms in Kannada to even consider participating but decided to go for it since this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to be on TV.Besides another reason was that my friend had managed to get some answers(unfortunately not questions) from his relative before the start of the show.
The show started of with a bang and before we knew it we were trailing in last place after the first round with a zero as the questions were so complex that even though we had the answers we cud not map it to the questions.Finally in round 2 which was a buzzer round for fill in the blanks given the first letter of the answer things decided to look up.I was eager to get the answers right and held my hand on the buzzer.The first letter of the 1st question was 'B'.I looked at the answer chit that Raghavendra had brought and found the word bear written in it.The quiz master asked the question,which crop is grown by farmers in Malnad in summer.I quickly pressed the buzzer and blurted "BEAR".The quiz master was stunned.Not only was it ridiculous for farmers to grow bears in summer but bear was the answer to the next question which had not yet been asked,(Which wild animal eats honey).We got a -10 for telling the wrong answer.We became a bit buzzer shy and let a couple of questions fly by us to avoid suspicion.But soon we realized that we would be humiliating ourselves on TV so Raghavendra decided to go for it.The next question asked was "What is the alloy made from copper and zinc ?".Raghavendra pressed the buzzer and shouted like there was no tomorrow,"BEANS BEANS BEANS".The correct answer was BRASS but unlike last time this was the answer to the question that i had screwed up.The quiz master grew extremely concerned that were getting all answers ridiculously wrong but were right for questions which were not yet asked.We were in the last position with a score of -20 after round two , but thanks to round 3 which was a rapid fire for which we had all the answers in sequence ,we won the contest by a single point and did our mother land proud.
- posted by Kiran @ 10:59 AM 11 comments

 
Episode 8 - Never be nice to NRI's

In 1997 my uncle came back from US after a gap of 7 yrs.He had this annoying little 4 yr old kid who drove me crazy with his antics.He refused to share the chocolates his dad brought from US, and was the most selfish kid i had ever seen.
But one day out of the blue,he came over and said "Kiran , i want you to have this chocolate.".I was totally surprised. I mean i did trip him and made him fall the previous day and caused him to bang his head against the door but could it have changed his thinking so drastically.The chocolate was one of those black chocolates which i hated but still it was a noble gesture from him.I was about to eat it,when his 2 yr old sister came over and asked me for the chocolate.Since i did not care too much for black chocolate i gave it to her.Just as she was about to put it in her mouth,my cousin yelled "Stop sis,the chocolate fell in the mud when i was playing outside.which is y i gave it to Kiran".I was furious.I quickly got up and gave him a tight slap. He cried and ran to his dad and complained about this,and my uncle was furious.He asked me why i slapped his son and unable to think fast , i said what came first to my mind.i said "There was a mosquito on his cheek.".My uncle did not buy this obviously and warned me to behave myself.
My evil cousin later started lafing at me with his swollen cheek.I realised that a revenge was due....
- posted by Kiran @ 11:02 AM 4 comments

 
Episode 7 - Life is simple .....for a simpleton that is

Of all the people that i have made fun of , one guy stands out of the crowd for his outstanding intellect,well actually the lack of it.
Ask him his name and he will say Kaddi...Bode Kaddi .
He was a year elder to me but was always piked on by every body in the gang. He tried his best to portray the image of an intellectual guy but no one was ready to buy it.Here is an example of him trying to pull off one of his cheap stunts.In 1996 when he was in high school there was a severe power crisis and there would be regular power outages from 7-9 in the evening.
So Bode Kaddi would come out of his house stand on the road and and try to read as much as he could whenever a vehicle passed on the road with its head light on.Vishveshwariah must have felt so inferior in comparison.When asked why he was doing this,he said "The candle light in my house is not bright enough." Me and another friend of mine Raghavendra decided to teach him a lesson and once asked him,"Bode Kaddi..Y dont you get 2 mirrors arrange them to face each other.When ever a vehicle passes by with a headLight on , the 2 mirrors will capture this light and keep reflecting it to back and forth.In essense you can keep a book at the centre of the 2 reflecitng mirrors and keep reading .You can take it back home and continue reading.".Bode Kaddi was speechless.He said to him self .."Y didnt i think of this before ?" and he was even going back to his house to try it out when we couldnt hold it back no longer and let out a huge laughter so loud that it shook the neighburhood.BK quickly realised that something was wrong and said .."I knew you guys were lying becasue total internal reflection between 2 parallel surfaces is impossible as it occurs at the hypotenuse." At this point we had no option but to beat him up.
- posted by Kiran @ 2:47 PM 2 comments

 
Episode 6 - Good bye to middle school

I distinctly remember my last day at middle school.We had this drawing and painting exam which i had decided to take lightly and pay little attention to as it would not be included in my final score.The drawing section had 1/2 picture of TaJMahal and expected us to complete the symetrical other half.Many of my friends,actually enemies...well lets settle for classmates started of by measuring the dimensions of the image on the given half so that they could recreate the symetrical image on the second half.But luckily for me my brother had taught me a slick trick to tackle such problems.I folded the question paper at the center and then started applying pressure on the sheet so that the impression of the half image would be symetrically embedded on the other half of the sheet.and presto within 20 seconds i was done.I had just drawn the picture of tajmahal in 2 seconds flat..
Now the second section which was the painting section had the picture of a variety of fishes underwater in the ocean.People started coloring the fishes with all sorts of colors red, yellow, white green you name it.I discovered a quick way out and painted the entire picture blue.Well it was underwater right ? I returned my answer sheet in 20 min and the teacher was a bit upset but deep inside i am sure she must had admired my creativity.
A classmate of mine Pradeep saw what i did and decided to follow suit,but he thought that using the same colour would make the teacher believe that he had copied from me.So this genius decided to paint the whole picture BLACK !!!! As soon as she recieved his paper she changed from a mild cow to a raging bull.He recieved an array of slaps for copying my idea,She was so upset with him for exhibiting his stupidity by changing blue to black that she beat him black and blue. She then tore up his answer sheet and made him redo the whole thing only this time he was kneeling on the floor and doing it.
- posted by Kiran @ 1:20 PM 2 comments

 
Episode 5 - My first protest / Whats in a name ?

By now you must have got a clear idea of how children were beaten in school for the mistakes they made.Well that did not stop us from making more.It was an obstacle we were ready to tackle.
This incident happened in my last year at middle school.There was this sanskrit teacher(VijayLakshmi) who had been newly appointed and had not yet been trained by our old teachers to deal with us.
The class as expected was out of control with all stops pulled out.In the confusion the school attender came in with an announcement which read "The school will be closed tommorow on account of VijayDashami".As soon as the attender left a class mate of mine called Kashif hussain did not quite get the reason for the holiday and asked the teacher "Could you please repeat the reason why the school is closed tommorow" .At this point i instantly got up and told him loudly."Hey tommorow is a holiday on account of VIJAYLAKSHMI pooja" instead of VijayDashami.The whole class started tumbling with laughter cause that was the teachers name and i was an instant hero.
The teacher asked me what my name was and i gave her my name as V.P. kiran.Well there was another guy in our class with the same name but differnet initials and he was absent that day so i decided to make full use of it.Since that was the last class that day,I went home feeling proud of my accomplishments.The next day after the first period,our class teacher Manoramma barged into the room and grabbed hold of VP Kiran and gave him a tight slap and said "How dare you talk to a teacher like that". Poor VP was confused out of his wits and didnt knowwhat was happening.But the class monitor being the bitch that she is told the teacher about the mistake that she had made and explained what had happened the previous day. The teacher quickly trained her attention to me,and asked the class, "Can some one please give me a scale so that i can teach Kiran a lesson".To my surprise 10-12 students rushed with a scale.One student even rushed with a compass and divider.Boy were they sadists,after all the entertainment i had given them with my jokes.
But luckily the teacher choose a wooden scale and beat me on my shoulder 3-4 times.I was so angry that i yelled back at her and asked her y she was beating me like a bullock.,She was taken aback.No one ever had shot back at a teacher.One smart student even told me "Dont talk to her like you talk to your mother".What a psyco ?
Well i was later taken to the head mistrees and the ususal routine of having my parents come over and asking them to have my behavior analysed and to take me to a psychiatrist.
- posted by Kiran @ 12:44 PM 7 comments

 
Episode 4 - Once a thief

It happened in 1993 , my last year at aurobindo school.
A couple of my friends were inspired by a black and white kannada movie starring Raj kumar.(We had only 1 channel - Doordarshan back then so we had no choice but to watch this movie)
The movie had rajkumar donning the role of a thief. So we decided ot follow suit and formed a small gang of our own. We even had our own sign which only we knew the meaning of.It involved bending the forefinger and the thumb to touch each other with the other 3 fingers pointing upwards.We even convinced ourselves into thinking that it had all the charecters of the letters F-L-I-C-K in it.
We decided that since robbing money was a hard thing cause no one had any ,we focussed our attention on rare stamps,stickers , geometry instruments like companses and dividers.We more often than not ended up destroying the hard to store stuff ,cause we didnt know where to hide them and only kept the stamps and stickers.
I decided to just do the managing part and planning the strategy, letting my junior members do the risky part.We carried out more than a dozen successful missions until one fine day one junior member got carried away and made the fatal mistake of robbing an entire stamp book.All these days we were just flicking 1 stamp at a time.Looks like the screening process to recruit people was flawed,I should have had an IQ test to pick the right candidate with the required skills.
The student who lost the stamp collection went to the teacher and cried like a wounded puppy.The teacher asked the entire class to check their neighbours bags and report anything suspecious.It wasnt long before my friend was caught and a couple of thrashings later, he spilled the beans and made sure that the entire gang went down with him.Though i initially resisted by saying that he had no proof to prove that i was involved,i eventually had to succumb to the intense questioning and was forced to hang my head in shame.The funny thing was that i was ashamed that i got caught rather than being ashamed for being the mastermind behind the whole operation.Well for that i am proud of to this day ;-)

Well the teacher came up with the most innovative punishment i have ever seen in my life.Folks you might not believe this but it is true.She came up with a killer plan to split the birds of the same feather which had flocked together.After witnessing the blame game,she made us stand in a circle (all 8 of us)and made us turn to the right,so that each guy could face the back of the guy in front of him.Then she asked each guy to beat the back of the guy in front of him.The rest of the class found this hillarious.We were already angry with each other for blaming one another but the guy who started(was behind me) was a smart guy, gently beat me thinkin i would continue the same.But i was so mad that my team had let me down that i thrashed the guy in front of me.He got upset and thrashed the guy in front of him with more gusto.and the cycle continued with increased intensity each time and the poor guy who had started it was beaten to pulp.
- posted by Kiran @ 12:40 PM 0 comments

 
Episode 2 - Hit or miss

Hmm..This one dates back to 1989 when i was in primary (Aurobindo memorial school) and was caught laughing at my teacher in class.There was this teacher Gayathri who had teeth which extended outwards to such an extent that she looked like a horse.
Well it so happenend that she was one frustrated lady who was not married and she tried to vent out her frustration by beating young boys like us black and blue for the slightest mistake.
My friend Sumanth and I were summoned to her desk for talking and she took a duster in her hand and asked my friend to stretch out his hand. She landed a powerful blow with it and the shriek that he gave out was ear piercing. She then asked him to stretch out his other hand and gave him another powerful blow....the result was an even more blood curdling roar from my friend.
My friend with tears in his eyes started to tie his shoe laces. Back then i blieved that his laces came off because of the blow he recieved. She then asked me to step forward and sitting on her chair like a queen ,she asked me to stretch my hand out and raised the duster high up in the air ready to launch .As she started bringing the duster down with full throttle i freaked out and at the last instant removed my hand. As expected she missed and landed a powerful blow on her knee cap and let out a howl. My friend Sumanth, who was crying and at the same time tying his shoe laces, all of a suden started laughing loudly on the floor and was in splits. The whole class was in shock at what had happened. Everything seemed so surreal. The teacher quickly gatherd her wits and grabbed hold of my hand and launched 4-5 powerful shots on it, making sure each time that i did not remove it. She then got out of her chair and gave Sumanth, who was laughing on the floor a tight slap. My friend again stopped laughing and went back to crying mode.
- posted by Kiran @ 10:59 AM 2 comments

 
Episode 1 - My first new look

I was reading Calvin and Hobes the other day and one comic strip in particular, grabbed my attention. It brought back old memories. This incident dates back to when i was 6 yrs old. I was a pretty nervous guy as a kid and was scared to go to the barber shop. You could not blame me ,the guy looked like a child molester and was always trying to be nice to kids. I felt that there was something fishy about this guy and decided to stay away from him, by screaming my lungs out every time my parents decided to take me to him.
Unable to bear my screamings, my dad once decided to cut my hair himself. I asked him to try to make me look like superman. Not that it mattered cause my dad cut my hair in 3-4 min and since i was too short to look into the mirror , i assumed that i looked like superman.The next day my mom asked me if i needed a cap,I should have realised right away that there was a reason why she was asking me this.But i did said .."Naah, i dont need a cap that would hide my new hair style. Give me a red cape instead"

I was walked to school by my mom as always that day and people on the road started giving me stares like they had seen something out of the ordinary. I gloated .."Take it easy guys i am not superman. It is just the hair cut.". On the way i met my friend and his mom who were also on the way to school. My ego got deflated like a hot air ballon when she asked my mom "Yenagidhey magugey Roga ?"(What weird disease has your kid contracted ?). I said to myself "Look here lady ,You are no angel yourself". I touched my head and was i in shock. I could feel hair on some parts of of my head and no hair on the other parts at all. Oh my God !!!!! I ran back home at full speed and yelled at myDad
"Oh Dad, What have you done ? Look at my haircut". My dad, who was reading the newspaper, casually replied
"Isnt this what you asked for ?".
I said "No I asked for a Superman haircut.".
And My dad said "Oh i thought you said Spiderman.Dont worry next time i will do it right"
I went back to the hair dresser the next day.But i did take necessary precaution by wearing 4 shorts.
- posted by Kiran @ 8:36 AM 8 comments