The Chennai I trust

I was cursing myself for not having installed a helmet holder on my bike when my friend, mahesh, asked me to leave it on my bike. This puzzled me and i asked him, what if someone steals my helmet(hey, its expensive and in a city where the helmet rule is strictly enforced, i had my doubts). But mahesh assured me that none would steal it. When i came back, it was there and i have been doing this ever since that day. I trust fellow Chennaites not to steal my helmet :-). But sadly, i wouldn't trust their driving skills which makes me wear a helmet in the first place.

Tale of two cities

People often ask me which of the two cities, Bombay/Madras, i like the most. Ab initio, this question is inherently flawed. One cannot compare the two cities on the same factors. Culturally& topographically, they are poles apart. There are certain things which are so unique to Bombay that it can exist only there. For example, i for the better part of my stay in Bombay stayed in a hostel,SYMCA, on Grant road. My street consisted of a hostel, a bar, two temples, a school and Bombay's biggest whore house bang opposite to it. They all live in harmony. You wont find all these institutions on the same street except in Bombay. Nuff said about its never say die spirit and how fast paced the life in Bombay is. The one thing i admire about Bombay is its appeal to hard work. You work hard and work smart in that city and you are bound to go places(Its s\a struggle considering there are a million like you aspiring to do so but that's what makes it challenging to live there).

Chennai on the other hand is city which has shaped my values/ideas. Having spent a good 18 years in it, its my first love!. But i find Chennai too conservative for its own good. The so called Tam-Brahms(the community from which i hail) are too rigid and discriminatory. This aspect of it needs to change(saying this cause a care a lot about my city). Chennai is arguably the best metro to live in India( I have stayed in Delhi, spent the better part of my under-grad student life in Bombay. Bangalore is way too developed for its own good). It's got a good balance of commerce,culture and opportunities.

This brings me to another question which people often ask me- After law, will i be working in Chennai or Bombay. To that, all i can say is, to fulfill my aspirations, it's best if i stay in Bombay for the next 5 years.

A dose of Murphy's law today morning

Today morning felt real good. I got up, brushed my teeth and decided to study Economics. I searched for a book on the subject but couldn't find one in my house(what else can i expect a house filled with engineers :-(. I was very keen to start it off today so i called up my friend, Anirudh and asked him to suggest me a book on the subject. Anirudh promptly replied that the best book to him would be the Schaum Series on Economics. I called up all the famous bookstores in Chennai to procure a copy but none of them had it:-(. I contacted the publisher, Tata Mcgraw hill and they reverted back stating the book is no longer in production.

Determined to source the book, off i went to Odyssey Bookstore which is located close to my home. I walked upto the sales rep, and told him the title. He in turn contacted some chap at the Non-fiction department. The non-fiction chap contacted someone else at the Businees/Management section. Ultimately, one of the rep got me a book on Shaun Micheals-the wrestler :-). Shaun Series on Economics turned into Shaun Micheals, the wrestler in the span of five minutes!!!!

Got back home, called up Anirudh and told him my dilemma.He promised me that he will source me a copy. I had my lunch, took a power nap and forgot about Economics.

Come next week, i will again have this urge to study Economics and the same story with a different date will follow.

The year ahead and the Bangalore Ultra 78kn

Have been doing this every year and hopefully will materialize this time around. Will make it happen. Things to do before the Dec, 2010

1.Get a Job in the MFI sector- As a human being, i believe that i should bring about a change by assisting the poor in helping themselves. Have always wanted to do it. Hopefully i will be able to feed/fuel myself while doing it :-). Micro-finance is an idea whose time has come.Period

2.Run minimum 3 half marathons- This is something i am quite confident about. Have signed up for mumbai half on Jan 17th. Auroville Half on feb-14 looks good(haven't registered for that). I am reserving one for either the Shimla or Delhi Half organised by Runningandliving.com.-This one is long due. Promised my good friend and metor, Mr Rahul Varghese,CEO-Runningandliving that i will be doing at least one of their runs in 2009. Couldn't keep that promise. Shouldn't break it next year.

3.Bangalore ultra- 78km in November- This one is to test my limits- physically and mentally. Need to find what i am made up of and Bangalore Ultra is just the right venue for it.

4.Cycle 5000kms- This can be done if i average 400-500km on a monthly basis. Cycling to work is an option(if i get a job) i am looking at to achieve the target.

5.Improve time management skills- Well, simply put, if i need to achieve all the above, this is a pre-requsite. Need to utilize my time more efficiently. Easier said than done. Will try and reverse that age old adage.

6.Public relations-SWOT analysis needs to be done- I must confess, i am bad at this. Too self-centered for my own good. Need to be a lot more accommodating. Till now, have done things my way without analyzing the other side of the coin. This should be challenging and interesting. This well help me a lot and make a better at people management.

7.Be regular at updating this blog:-). Hey, i have a follower and i cant let her down :-).

8.Should or Shouldn't i?- This one is a bit tricky. Have kept this to myself for quite sometime. Should i confess or not?. Need to decide and decide fast. If the former, then when-post i get a job?( a man with some money is always appealing). If not, i should tuck-it into a tiny space inside my cerebrum and move on!.

9.Yoga,rock climbing,swimming and a new language- Yoga looks like a good bet considering i have learnt it recently. Learning swimming and have signed up for rock climbing. A new language should be tough to incorporate but as the saying goes, Impossible is Nothing

Phew, thats about it for next year. Will get it done by December 2010. :-)

A new entrant

I finally have a follower to my blog:-). My first:-). Sounds juvenile but wtf, its my blog!. The follower happens to be my good friend Tanisha Deshpande. Welcome aboard Tanisha. Hope you have nice comfortable reading experience on Flight AB 123. This is the captain, Ashwin Bala and i promise you, we will serve you the finest on wine,woman and song(not necessarily in that order). Hope you enjoy your stay and feel free to give your valuable feedback. Over and out

Big Fat....Gym

We have often been foxed into joining a gym by those attractive advertisements which feature men with sculpted physique and women in a thong. Take the case of the carbohydrated India. He takes a look at the flier, imagines himself having a ripped body and then coughs up his hard earned money(which was the main cause of his belly fat) to join a gym. Having paid, he goes to the nearby Reebok/Nike store to buy gym apparels. While at the store, he makes a foolhardy promise to himself that,by the end of the year, he will be 2 sizes down. Once inside the climate controlled environs of the gym, he finds himself in the company of men with similar aspirations. Within a month, he is termed as a "regular" at the gym, has his own workout buddy and makes the minions who work there, play his favorite number every time he goes under the bench. This becomes a routine aspect of his life for the next three months. At the end of it, he realises that he hasn't lost a pound since he joined and gradually loses interest in it. Disgruntled, he doesn't renew his membership and stops visiting the gym. This process repeats every 6 months

Maa-Lay-Rice-Yaaa!

I am down with malaria. Apparently female anopheles mosquitoes have this huge crush on me. I have been smitten by them twice in less than six months. My mom is in Boston and is weeping her heart out. Don’t worry ma, will get well soon. The disease got me an opportunity to go back home and devour some home-food. Used it as a bait to get me a flight ticket( for a change, I didn’t incur my fathers’ wrath when I informed him about my travel plans) . My dad has a huge bias when it comes to his son flying. He always insists that I travel only by Indian railways. This got me thinking and I wanted to find out the opportunity costs when I fly.

A one way flight ticket to Chennai (If booked a month in advance) would set back my dad’s account by 2400 INR. A train ticket to Chennai(3rd AC) will cost him 1350 INR( assuming Mamta Didi was kind enough not to increase it since the last time I travelled by railways). I stay 5 minutes away from the airport and hence traveling cost is nil. I get to reach home within the 3 hrs and hence I end up saving close to 200 INR on food and other expenditure if I had to spend the entire day in Mumbai. The railway-station is quite a distance form my residence and it will cost me close to 100 INR to get to it. Once on it(the train), I usually end up spending anywhere between 250-350 INR on food/water/magazine. The journey from the station to my house works to around 110 INR. To sum it up-

One way trip to Chennai by flight-2400/- INR
One way trip to Chennai by rail -1350+200+300+100=1950/- INR

The difference of 400 is negligible when compared to the extra day I get to spend with my parents. Hope my dad realizes this!

We, the people

Was doing some random analysis today-

Searched for the following and wanted to know the number of hits Google could match

India+Poverty- 16,500,000

India+unemployment - 11,900,000

India+Corruption- 9,670,000

India+Illiteracy- 671,000

Moral of the story- Though not illiterate we still remain poor, corrupt and unemployed.

Why Agassi Why??

Agassi, the great, admits to taking crystal meth( a recreational drug) in his yet to be released auto-biography titled "OPEN". Have always been a big fan of him and it does pain me to hear a revelation as shocking as this. The worst part is, i hear a new, image tarnishing story every other day. Last week it was the meth, this week it's a combination of his fake hairdo+tanking a match to avoid Boris Becker in the 1996 edition of the Australian open.

At this juncture, i must say that my reverence towards him remains unchanged. He was and still remains as one of the best athlete, the sport has ever seen. Guess its his way of letting it out. Must have been tough on him to conceal it all these years and even more to come out in the open now. For all those "See- i told you he was a bad guy" ass-@#$%^ out there, do you guys have any idea the amount of work he has does to promote the sport and help the underprivileged??..this article does justice to what he does- http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=3072006&page=1.

I am not here to justify his actions, no one can. I just hope the ATP doesn't make an issue out of this.

It's that time of the year..My promise to God

Dear God, my exams starts tomorrow..Are you listening?. Here is the deal-Need your presence in exchange.
I am sorry -

1.For all the mistakes i have done till now.
2.For not remembering you when i didn't need you
3.For professing that you don't exist just to be cool
4.For staring at the comely girls who come and visit you
5.For dropping 1 rs in the hundi and praying for 1,00,000
6.For ringing the bell too hard at the temple

Wont let that happen again!. I promise.

CWG, Delhi, 2010

The customary baton relay for the Delhi games commences today. The baton is set to travel all over the world(70 countries, 1,90,000) starting from the forecourt of Buckingham palace, London. DD, the father-hen of broadcasting in India when it comes to national sporting events will be providing live feeds on the Internet. The link to the live feed- www.cwgdelhi2010.org/batonrelay2010. I hope the games village get completed before the baton arrives in Delhi. Better part of the stadiums meant for hosting the various events are still under-construction and most of them behind schedule. My friend from Delhi told me that the site for the Valendrome is being used as a dump yard!. Will be a big embarrassment if we fail to deliver on infrastructure. The games are a dress rehearsal for our Olympic bid hopefully by 2024. If that seems far away, dig this, Beijing(Olympiad-2008) was ready for the games even before Athens(Olympiad-2004). The president of the Olympic committee had to be flown in to Beijing to make them understand that they were causing an embarrassment to the chaps at Athens.

The world is watching and we better deliver. If we want Usain Bolt to participate( Suresh Kamadi, the organizing committee head for the CWG-Delhi is quite confident of Bolt's participation at the games), we better provide him a track to run!.

Verity Rise- Now what does that mean?

Think he intends to convey that he serves variety rice(for the uninitiated that includes-sambar rice, lemon rise, Bisebelabath). And he goes on to say that he serves both pure veg and non-veg. I saw a board the other day which said- "Free home delivery, No Parcel service"..Wonder whom do these chaps consult before making their presence felt.

The Great Divide-An open letter to all

Let me tell you guys a story. A story which hit me hard and asked me to question my convictions.

My maid visits my house every other day to clean the mess which i accumulate in her absence. She is arguably the most hard-working individual i have met in a long time. For the last two weeks, she didn't turn up for work. She had informed me that her daughter was down with fever and that it wouldn't take her not more than a day or two to get back to work.

Yesterday vengat, my roommate,(this happened while i was in Chennai) met me on Google talk and said that our maid had returned . I was relieved. I was about to write something in praise of our maid and how we were blessed to have her when vengat wrote back- Ashwin, her 12 year old daughter is no more. I was stunned in despair. I went numb for five minutes.

This is what came to my mind in those five minutes-

Last week i was down with a bad stomach and i cribbed about not having the luxury of home food even though i ended up spending quite an sum day after day to satiate my hunger.Even for a muscle pull, i refused to do anything but to see the doctor my friend recommended.

This is not only the case with me but its the same with each one of you. We are too accustomed to luxury that we have taken things for granted.

Picture this, my maid thought a life threatening disease was nothing but a simple fever. She didn't have the wherewithal to take her daughter to a private hospital neither could the govt hospital treat her daughter properly. She probably wouldn't have heard the word insurance and i don't blame her for that- How do you expect her to pay a premium for something which might be beneficial for her in the future, a asset which doesn't give her daily returns.

At minute 6 i decided, i will let this happen again. We should not let this happen again.

Regards,
Ashwin Balachandran

India Shining

India Shining or Indian Shining?, your call.

And the award for the best caveat goes to--

Came across this warning in a net cafe i visited recently..As lucid as it can get!

Wonder where God is during exams

Like most of me fellow earthlings, i get overtly devotional during exams. Its that time of the year when the visits to the temple are directly proportional to the marks i pray for. Little do i know that God had left the building when i was whiling away prime time which was meant for studies. A quote which comes to mind every time i seek god- " He who seeks god at the eleventh hour dies at nine". God are you listening, its not even 8 on my watch. So please if you can hear me, do help me out this time around.

And they say the system is screwed up

A lot of my relatives have made America their home. Most of them left for pursuing their higher studies and decided to chase the American dream and I am sure they succeeded in doing the same. My brother left for the US in 2007 and completed his MS from Arizona. He often says that life in the US is more relaxed and citizen friendly than what we have India. This constant ranting/comparison made me wonder- Is India that backward or are we just exaggerating its cons. While doing so, I encountered an incident which affirmed my belief that, we the people are the perpetrators of the so called screwed-up system. Here is what happened.

On diwali day, I was returning back home after visiting my grandparents. My Uncle, who is an ardent fan of the “Americanized” way doing things, was the man behind the wheels. We had to make a U-turn to enter into the lane which leads to a temple (the destination) and there were two ways making the turn, one of which was not the right way to do it(the designated u-turn was 100 m ahead). Nonchalantly my Uncle asked me to check whether the cop who usually stands to apprehend the wrong-doer was present or not. I was dumb-struck by his question. Here is a man who would drive down 10,000 km to do things the right way if he were in America, asking me to abet him violate a simple road rule, which if done in the right way would set him back by 0.000000001 litres of petrol and a nanosecond in terms of the time taken .

Are we a bunch of hypocrite? or are we a bunch of hypocrites!!

We never
1. Follow simple rules
2. Go out and exercise our franchise on the polling date
3. Refuse to point fingers/pass the buck.

We, the people, to a great extent are responsible for the muck we are in. So lets stop blaming and start acting.

Arguably, the best short film i have seen

Came across a short film directed by Sean Penn-Yeah, you heard me right. This chap can act,produce and direct and be sucessfull in all three of them. Take a bow, ladies and gentlemen.

It happens to be one of 11 short films directed by 11 directors from 11 different countries each giving thier own version of the 9/11 attacks and how it has affected them. Each films lasts for 11 minutes and 9 seconds and shot in a single frame. A symbolic way to represent the tragedy which took place on the fateful day. 

I was floored by the film. The best short film i have ever seen, yet. The screenplay was stunning and the cinematograhy was out of this world. Hats off to you Mr Sean Penn. I have always been a fan of your movies but now i like you even more. 

The link to the movie-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm8LfW1N7rQ

Go and watch it. It's a must watch for anyone and everyone in this planet!.

 

Welcome to the world of Ashwin

Started this blog to pen down just about anything which comes to my mind. A place where i cant rant,rave and rumble and get away with. So here's me, uncut, uncensored and unabridged