I had a long discussion with some of my ‘gf-se-pareshan’ kind of friends where I was exposed to 101 reasons why you should never have a girlfriend. Every point from how you loose your independence to how you have to be at her constant beck and call was discussed.

Like a good manager (after all, I am about to be one), I firmly believe that no discussion is complete unless the arguments for and against it are considered. But here we had a slight problem. No one was ready to speak ‘for’ the motion. So like a true leader (yeah, I am about to be one), I took the initiative to list down 10 not-so-obvious reasons why you should have a girlfriend.

1.) Show Off

Well, for me, this is the best use you can put your GF to. OK OK, don’t frown. Second best. Happy J (Guys will remain guys and they will always approve that when you cuddle, girls don’t seem to have any bones ) Having a GF is a big status symbol and you are held in high esteem among your lonely and wretched friends. The respect you get is directly proportional to the ‘hotness’ of your GF.

2.) To Appreciate the Beauty of Nature (Pun Intended)

Tell me, if you are single, how many times you have visited a park or sat beside a flowing river? Well, if you have a GF, then you will be doing this and similar things more often and truly appreciate how beautiful has god made this nature (After all, you also need a secluded place to really appreciate her beauty)

3.) Emotional Cover

Ever felt so lonely when you have a fight with your boss, when some when else gets promoted and all along you thought it would be you, when you are pissed off as things are not going right for you. That’s when GFs come a lot handy. They are your emotional cover when ever you are in distress and pressure. And much to your amazement, I can tell you that girls are great listeners when you want them to be.

Perfect person to make you feel special and wanted and charge you up with positivity.

4.) Beat the Queues

Well, thanks to the government of India, women get preference in all and every queue. Be it your cell phone bill queue, electricity bill queue, water bill queue, railway reservation queue or for that matter any damm queue. GF is of great assistance in all such and related cases.

5.) To Take Someone to an Office Party

Now, this is something we have all experienced. The parties where you are allowed to bring in your partner are envious to ones who are singles. I have seen singles trying their best to thwart the HR’s attempt to organize such parties.

But hey, if you have a GF, you can proudly walk into such parties and avoid ‘oh-poor-fellow’ stares from other not-so-single people out there.

6.) A Personalized Event Organizer

No one can negate the exceptional quality of women to remember dates and their personal dislike in case you forget one. As some one said, the best way to remember your wife’s b’day is to forget it once. So who could be better for you to help you remember all your important dates than a GF? Be it the date of your next visit to doc, your cousin’s b’day, your assignment submission deadline. You name it and she remembers it.

The only caution you need to exercise here is to remember all dates that are important for her. Like when did you propose her, when did you first kiss her, when did you officially went on a date, etc., etc.

7.) Buy Gifts for Your Sister/Mom/Aunts

I know, any girl who is a good friend will do this for you but trust me when I say that GF is the best. She knows you, and most probably, knows what kind of taste your mom/sister/aunts would have as you would have discussed them with her some or the other times.

8.) Your Personal Fat-o-Meter

You won’t have to wait for your trousers to tell you that you are growing fat and by then, its already too late meaning far more hard work to get back in shape. Your GF can be the best fat-o-meter and will be the first one to tell you in case you are turning fat. How do they get to know that is still a secret which I am trying hard to find.

9.) Your Free Health Inspector

You won’t get close to bad habits, esp. smoking, in case you have a GF. Well, this may not apply to everyone but the guys that do get intimate with their GFs (trust me, not every one is allowed to unless they get the ‘married’ tag stamped on them) are the ones who are to benefit the most. How? Well, if you smoke or drink, you would have a bad breadth/teeth and she will not enjoy those intimate sessions with you. So you won’t have a choice but to give it up. After all, what you get in return is more important.

10.) Your Savings Manager

Guys, by nature have hard time saving money until they get married (then they have no choice but to save). GF can help you in this case as girls like to save a lot. If you are lucky enough to find a level headed GF, then she can actually teach you the basics of savings. Now, who would not like to have an inflated bank balance (even if that gets depleted later on to fulfill her wishes )

Gone are the days when we use to get up early to attend school,

Now we wake up early to make our managers a fool

Gone are the days when at 2 pm we use to compete to get the “window” seat
Now we have forgotten to have friendly competitions under the work heat

In a short sentence, if you want an entertainer with no brains to be used, if you want mind-less comedy which blows your brain veins, this is the movie for you.

Akshay Kumar has slowly and steadily established himself as the True King of comedy with every new performance being better than the previous one. Yet again, he’s rocking.

The movie has some very good moments like the starking contrast in which the ‘two’ kings are introduced. Sonu Sood, the ‘don’ king steals the opening shot of the movie by gliding in air using a parachute trying to catch his enemy and the ‘real’ king Akshay enters after some time, gliding in air but trying to catch a hen.

Another fantastic moment is the entry of Katrina Kaif. She has never looked so elegant and beautiful before. Her first shot i.e. her entry leaves you agape, with your jaws dropping and you wonder, how on earth can some one look so beautiful. Though she doesn’t know how to act and speak hindi, still she steals hearts just by her smile and ethereal beauty. The part I did not like was when she tries to do a Kajol (Suraj hua madham) in the song ‘Teri Aur’. She cannot carry that elegant black saree as good as Kajol does. But hello, she has other ‘important’ things to carry

Another highlight of the film is Javed Jafery. The dancing king is back with a short but amazing dance song which will blow your mind away. I always have been his dance fan and I saw him dance after a long long time in this movie and trust me when I say that he is still the King of dance. Those 3 minutes of the movie were the more entertaining for me than anything else. (Sorry Katrina ).

Kiron Kher gives yet another of her stereotyped ‘punjabi’ masala performance and deserves full marks for her role. But honestly, I would like to see her stretch her acting wings a bit more wider. She is capable of more mature and better performance than the single ‘traditionalist’ delivery she has been giving lately.

On whole, the movie has a flawed script and weak direction but the pure screen presence of Akshay Kumar with fantastic and commendable support from Om Puri lifts the whole movie to another level.

In the end, if you are not a mind-less and script-less movie fan, still watch Singh is King for a.) Akshay Kumar b.) Javed Jafery”s dance and c.) Katrina’s mind-blowing beauty (in that order).

BTW, there is another version of “Singh is King” running around lately. If you are the unlucky one to miss is, here is the promo poster for you.

True King

Hope you’ll enjoy it. I know I did.

Tough Days are nearly over !!

I have been working on an average of 14-15 hours a day for past 6 days and finally today is the last. I leave Mauritania at 10:45 pm tonight.

Living here was tough, really tough. I realized how my life would be without Hindi speaking people, without food, without girls. Oh my god, this was the hardest punishment I got for doing good work.

Anyhow, every stage in your life comes with some lessons. I learnt my set too on this trip.

You know, how some times we talk of bad luck. Well hear this and then tell me about it. Past 9 days, hard time and today being last day, I had less of work. So I kick off the work to run on its own and leave the office to visit some local jewelery shop near by to kill some time and thought would come back in an hour to finish up the remaining but very crucial part of work.

I don’t know the local language so was having hard time talking to the shop-keepers. Then, suddenly this sweet lady walks in the store to my rescue. She was from Florida and working for some NGO in Africa. She helped me with my talks with the locals as she was living in Mauritania for past 3 years. We roamed around for a while to various shops. Then suddenly she asked me if I want to join her for lunch.

Now, I want to go. Seriously. A cute and sweet lady wants to have lunch with me. Why would I say no. But the bad luck, is that I have to return to office to address that ‘fucking’ ‘crucial’ part of the work. I had no choice but to decline. It was like, I was in the desert for past 9 days, searching for some ‘water’. When I could not find it for 8 days, I thought, lets fast today. At least I’ll earn some ‘punya’. And when I fast, I finally reach an oasis.

!! SHIT !!

Anyways, that is life. Not always rosy.

Ok, so as usual, here are some more generic observations about this place:

1. You will hardly get to see a two wheeler in this city. But plenty and plenty and plenty of cars.
2. People drive cars of all range. Expensive BMWs, Mercedes, VolksWagon  to all dented crap hundredth hand car.
3. Most of the taxis in city are old 1970s Mercedes model which are ’some how’ still running.
4. The keyboards here are not the ones we have in India. For technical guys, we have QWERTY in India and these people have AZERTY ones. I had tough time typing on them.
5. People here are HUGE fan of Indian movies and songs. But they use Arabic sub-titles to watch our films. ShahRukh Khan is one of the favorites.

Finally, I end this last post from Mauritania. India, my love, I am comming !!

OK, this could have not gone better !!

Here I am , sitting in the most prized area of a Telecom Service Provider. Their SWITCH room.

Ok, for non-technical folks, here is what I mean. Every service provider has two main components. First, their ‘computer’ (very very big and high end) which controls the air-waves using which you talk on your cell-phone. Second, another very very big computer which runs the complex software which determines how and what all facilities you used and then charges the correct amount to you in a monthly bill.

Now, when I say big, how big do you imagine ?

Well, the computers in discussion are big enough to completely occupy a 5000 sq. feet space and tall enough to fit in a two story building. Hope that gives you the idea of the scale I am talking of.

BTW, these babies are DAMM DAMM expensive and first thing an enemy would think to destroy if your country goes to war with another country. So the security around these is HIGH.

Thanks to my job and my passion for Telecom, today I am sitting in one such highly secure building with those big computers all around me making huge noise. But ironically, I am not disturbed but loving the noise. The room or HALL as I should call it is so cold that I need a big coat to keep myself warm. The amount of heat generated by these computers is massive and you need an effective and efficient cooling system to keep these massive babies working.

I am already sweating in an environment which has 18 degrees as its temperature. You can imagine my excitement.

Today is the most happening day of may stay in Mauritania. They have their weekends on Friday and Saturday. So today, a Sunday, invites a lot of people outside and as I walked from my hotel to office, I could see many people busy in their daily duties. My initial impression of Mauritania being a ‘lonely’ country was changed.

I’ll end up with a couple of more generic observations I had:

1. As I already mentioned, Mauritania has Friday and Saturday as its weekend days.
2. Mauritanians, like Indians, are tea drinkers. Just that their tea is some sort of green herbal tea with no milk and tastes like peppermint. I liked it pretty much.
3. Men wear a typical over coat kind of thing which is way too loose for them to handle but is said to keep them cool in summers and warm in winters.
4. You should avoid looking at women at all costs.

Ok, thats it for this time. I have work to do.

Here I am, sitting by the pool, listening to great music, enjoying the WI-FI access to write this post.

As many of you already know, I am in Nuackchott, Mauritania for business purpose.  Had a long 24 hour flight from Mumbai -> Paris -> Nouakchott. Got in here last night 8:30pm local time, straight away went for a dinner with my manager and the Client. Came back, slept and just woke some time back.

Ok, lets make it short. Some general observations:

• When you look down to the city from the air-plane, all you can see is small discreetly placed houses and sand. Only a couple of roads are visible. A closer look while we were riding last night for dinner told me that though the roads are there, they are all covered in sand.
• Donkeys. The way we have cows, you have donkeys roaming around here.
• Arabic is the main language though people do speak a lot of French and a little bit of Spanish.

The hotel is great, probably the best available in the city. Things in the hotel, as expected, are far more than expensive. For example, a normal breakfast in morning costs 4000 MRO i.e. around Euro 12.5 i.e around Rs 800.

Sad part, I donot have anything Vegetarian available. Meat is like a staple fod out here. And no microwave in the hotel room makes it even more difficult to sustain. Hope I come alive out of this.

!! Amen !!

… and last thing I can think of is her potent smile,
her laughter driving me crazy, her hair flowing like Nile.

… and the last touch I can feel is the warmth of her hand,
her skin smooth as ever, on the evening we never planned.

… and the last smell I can remember is the perfume she used to wear,
her presence making everything perfect, with all the silence we share.

… and the last taste I can remember, is the taste of the kiss,
her hands trembled in my hair with every breadth that she missed.

… and the last sound I can remember, is the sound of her heart,
pumping with all its might, struggling to keep her from the start.

… and the last sight I can remember, is when she closed her eyes,
her calm face turning expressionless, the moment she dies.

Why should I move on, why do you think I am alone,  sir,
She is with me more than ever,  all my senses have indelible impression of her …

Ok, so here is what I promised in my last post !!

During a phase of my vaccation, I was flying from New Delhi to Raipur with Air Deccan. Its been long since I used their services (last I remember travelling with them was before its merger with Kingfisher) and boy, I was impressed. The Air Deccan has beautifully over-hauled itself to Simplyfly Deccan. Some of the major changes I noticed are as follows:

1. The best comes first. No more random seat allocation. Your boarding pass has a pre-assigned seat printed on it. Now only people who’ll rush into the airplane would be the ones who cannot control their urge to discover how beautiful air-hostess assigned to the flight is. I guess they should print the photographs of the air-hostesses on the boarding pass so that the curiosity dies and people can board the air-case peacefully.
2. The air-hostesses are far more prettier than what Air Decaan had, thanks to Mr. Mallaya. Well, this reminds of a popular joke which goes as: “I wonder what would Mr Mallaya be feelings after his teams pathetic loss at IPL”. “Well, I guess he must be feeling the cheer-leaders.” Ok, for the record, my air-hostesses were Priyanka (the Lead Air Hostess) and Priya (the more beautiful one)
3. The interiors of the air-craft have been revamped to suit the RED theme of Kingfisher. The total look and feel of the airplane is as hot as the ladies managing the passengers in it.
4. The seats are superb with extra room so that your ‘tashreef’ rests perfectly well. I think Simplyfly Deccan has the best seats (with leg room) available in their class of flyers.
5. The air-conditioning is perfect. Its feels pretty chilled in there. I guess its a deliberate move to make it extra cool so that the HEAT generated from presence of the extra-hot air-hostesses in there gets neutralized. But man, I am still feeling the heat long after the flight is over.
6. You get many free water bottles. A great change from giving nothing but not-so-good airhostess’s smile for free to giving HOT air-hostess’s smiles along with water bottle for instant cooling effect. When Priya was handing me over my 200ml water bottle, with 5 more of them in her other hand, I thought of a killer opening line and said, “Oh my god!! I hope lifting these water bottle don’t sprain your wrist. Here, let me hold it.” To my amazement, she smiled and said, “Oh, so sweet of you” and she handed me over the 3 of the 5 water bottles in her hand to pass on to my neighbours. I did not see that one backfiring for I meant holding her wrist.
7. Simplyfly Deccan has a cool in-plane discounted market from where you can buy great stuff at very cheap prices. I am sure Priya wanted me to buy her that cute diamond necklace for 3K bucks for she subtly leaned forward to ask me how will I take my coffee and when I told her that I like it black, she pretended she did not hear my response stretching her neck a bit more in my direction. I am sure (yet again) that it had nothing to do with the serving troley in front of her. Had I had a little more cash in my wallet, for they did not accept the Credit Card, one of the most wanted guy would have lost his single status by now.

Well, these were some of the many changes I noticed. But with the rising inflation, rising ATF (Airplane Turbine Fuel) cost, and rising cost of maintaining beauty (I am sure recently ‘committed’ guys can relate to it), I fear that sweet girls like Priya will no more be available for its getting extremely difficult to operate an airline. Fearing this, I whispered my Name and Phone number to her while de-planing and asked her to give me a call whenever required.

I climbed down the air-plane stairs and started to walk towards the terminal at Raipur when I heard some-one calling my name. I stopped and looked back. It was unbeleivable. Priya was walking towards me while calling my name. I was ecstatic. She came to me and said, “Mr. Deepesh”, “Call me Deepesh”, I cut her short. She smiled and said, “Ok Deepesh. I think you forgot your bag in there. I thought I should ‘call’ you and return it back. Have a pleasant stay in Raipur.” Having said that, she handed me over my bag and walked away. But hey, I was glad, at least she ‘called’.

P.S: I was dis-heartened that this happened before I entered the terminal. I wished for people who came to pick me to see this so that I could falsely boast of ‘pataofying’ an air-hostess. After all, Priya could not tell them the truth, like she cannot tell youif all this is true.

Finally, I am back from a long vaccation. But I also am sad as well. No body missed me (except Aria, I am thankful for that comment Aria). Bhuuuhuuuhhh

Well, it was a wonderful vaccation. I spent some quality time with my parents and then flew off to spend some great (but short) time with my cousins. From my mother’s family, we are 11 cousins in total. (Children of all my mamas and mausis). It was hell lot of fun to be together after a long time. Every time we planned a get-together, some one or the other could not make it due to some or the other reason. So in short, I enjoyed.

While I was at Gurgaon, my home town, I was robbed. Well, not by some mugger but by a strange habbit which the shop-keepers out there have developed. Whenever I went to sop for some household stuff (say bread, toast, juice, etc.) I always faced a common problem of change. No one was ready to tender the correct change. The shop keeper work in the multiple for 5.

For e.g., whenever I bought some thing for, say Rs 14, I always got back the money in the multiple of Rs 5 and toffee for the left over amount (Rs 1 in this case). For initial one or two times, I didn’t pay attention and gladly accepted the toffee, but then I noticed that the shop-keepers have made this into habbit and are making good enough money. When I refused to take the toffee in place of Rs 1 or Rs 2, the shop-keepers asked mte to get proper change.

But seems like they didn’t know me well for I pledged to make them taste their own medicine. I started collecting the toffees and on the last day of my stay, I went to one of them (we buy most of our daily needed things from his shop) and asked for a loaf of bread. “Rs 14 bhaiyaji”, he croaked in his toad-like voice. It was the moment I was waiting for. I pulled 14 toffees I had collected over the period of time and placed them on his counter. After having a short look at his stunned face, I turned back and started to leave for home when he cried, “Bhaiyaaji, ye kya hai”. “Wahi toffees hain jo aapne mujhe jabardasti pakada di thin. Hisaab barabar.”, I shouted without turning back.

Yesterday my dad told me on phone that the guy has been giving proper change since I left.

P.S: I had a great flight from Delhi to Raipur, anecdotes of which I’ll pen down shortly. This post was to break the long jinx of not posting anything.

While browsing YouTube today, I came across this ad. Its a very old ad of Complan and I remember watching this when I was very young. It was pretty nostalgic to see it again but the more important and amazing thing I realized yesterday was that the kids in the ad are none other than our Shahid Kapoor and Ayesha Takia.

Don’t believe, have a closer look for yourself.

[In case you are not able to watch it, please go here.]

This just proves one thing that Complan works wonders. I mean have a look at Shahid today. Handsome , Dashing, Cute and what not. Other than his height, he has every thing correctly in place. Awesome personality.

And please, don’t even get me started on Ayesha Takia. Being a guy, I should not even attempt that or the flow will unnecessarily drift towards unwanted description and ‘domains’ . But in short, she too looks awesome.

I guess this additionally proves two things.

1.) Complan does not help in growing height esp. in case of men. Shahid could manage just 5′ 7″ but Ayesha is ok at 5′ 5″.

2.) Complan helps women better than men. How? – Ayesha grew to be better than average Indian female in height as well as in ‘other’ dimensions. But Shahid is not that good in height but definitely in other areas.

Conclusion- If you have a baby girl, Complan is the drink. If you have a baby boy, Complan is still a must but try mixing it with some other stuff like Bournvita (for brains).

P.S: Now I understand why I am just 5′ 8″, average looking guy. My mom always gave me Bournvita to drink. Had it been complan, I would have been different, my life would have been different.