Friday, March 23, 2007

The Assasination of L518

Being clueless is one of those thing, which is not very comfortable to me. Still I dwell in all those states of being clueless and more often, if i come out of that state, then I often end up being pointless. According to me bieng pointless is still worse than being clueless. Because of the irrelevance of the things to which, i ponder a lot, i come up with a train of thought, which leads to ultimately nothing. Last Night while travelling back i was listening to some song and when my stop came, i stood up in a haste. The bus was fast and i was unstable, so while coming out of my seat, i felt a certain thrust genrated by pull. Probably some part of my cloth has stuck up somewhere in the seat, but without caring much i moved on. While i was moving back to home, i saw something very shocking and i was freezed for a moment, uttering four letter word in utter fury. I started to think of ways to get it undone, but i knew that can't be undone. In my fantasies i always dream of undoing things by not doing some of the activities in past, but practically speaking, they are just like me lost in the world of comics. Now since I have grown a little maturer and with my engineering senses always on, I thought in terms of what can be done now.

I starting remembering the day when I first went to the showroom to get this pair of Levis Straus and Co. Jeans. It was my first Levis' and that too L518. To all young dudes, the most prized possesion is a rugged pair of Jean. This one was no lesser than anything I can lose. This was a rugged vintage jeans, which has many signs of it being made specially for me. I have been wearing it for around two years and now it has taken a form, which makes it unloseable. I always thought that it is one of those few impregnable things, which i possess. While it stood by my side all the time, my good times and very much in my bad times. It has been to filthiest places to most poshe places, I know of. It was symbol of my being an ardent man, not giving up, but fighting hard to my own beliefs. Jeans are not Jeans they are cults to them selves, some times they represent revolt, sometimes attitude and mostly they represent nothing but arrogance.

Not manier times I think of losses as losses, but as my mistake, which if scrutinized strictly can be rectified. But getting my L518 torn is not such a forgettable loss. I wonder, what had made my such barbaric act of killing my own beloved possesion. They big scar on her face was much more than I can stand. It is left open in such a prominent place that it is mostly unmendable. "What not to do?" is what i am thinking? Life is to move on even if your pair of Levis is killed.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

MetalHead's Pligrimage to EDDFest.

Before i start anything, some terms need to be explained.

MetalHead: Metal head is a person, who listens to excessive Metal and considers Headbanging a religious practice. He goes to all gigs and rock concerts and headbangs and shows devil's horn, if he likes something or the middle finger otherwise.
Metal: Metal is a subgenre of rock music, which has very heavy guitaring and drumming and sounds like if some metal is being thrashed ruthlessly.
EDDFest: I can write and entire blog on Iron Maiden, but will explain briefly. Iron Maiden's Mascot is called Eddie or Ed Harris or Ed Hunter, so the rock festival in which Iron Maiden Performs is called EDDFest.

So here i begin. This was around 01:00 hrs at very-commonly-visited Pune Railway station , which needs no description, as there is nothing much about it. All three of us were dressed in black, as part of tradition of visiting a rock concert. We were have same bakarchodee and we were laughing(can call it roaring) like mad men on all kinds of weird jokes, till the train arrived. No, the bakarchodee didn't stopped in train for next one hour, and we were bothering people inside the bogie. As soon as, we settled down we noticed people around us were more wierder, dressed fatally and much more deadly, it took us less than a blink to understand that these are those metalheads and according to me all devotees, who were going to pay visit to thier deities. Somehow we managed to sleep. Next day, the day was boring, three biggest bakarchod of all times(this is no exaggeration) were silent and saying only things, which were barely necessary. Besides us were sitting two bengali guys and with thier getup it was mostly confirmed, that they are also devotees like us. By night 22:30 hrs we managed to reach Bangl00r00 cit. I called up deeban to ask him the address. The autowallah left us at some Mantri Elegance instead of Mantri Elite, so we have to walk, in the mean time Deeban has a chance to call Surender and do some bakarchodee(man, Deeban is again one of the biggest bakarchod of all time). By the time we reached Mantri elite, Deeban thought we have been robbed by autowallah and he posted the news on the network, which we knew.... we have to explain to everyone as to what really happened. So here we reached Elite, Man Deeban is a lucky bastard, he lives in the palatial comfort with all luxuries at his disposal. Gupta had a sore throat(okay, this is one of the reasons we had a quiet journey), so he went down to sleep. Deeban and Rajjo are old chums, so they were having bakarchodee for long, i joined them for quite some time, but after some time i also surrendered myself infront of the Mighty Sleep. Later Morning we had a grand Break fast, courtesy Deeban. Then we headed to Styx(pronouced as sticks), this is the best rock pub in the country, no competitions, hands down.
As we entered we saw many devotees, you won't believe me but 12:00 hrs in the afternoon and pub was full, and as then they played maiden, man the crowd went mad. Then they played "I disappear" by Metallica, "PainKille"r by Judas, "Symphony of Destruction" by Megadeath and "Master's of the puppet " by Metallica, Oh my gawd ! people were singing, headbanging and shouting, it appeared as if reahersal for the concert is going on. Then i noticed the Bengali dude of train with a real real hawt bong babe, all of us had our mouth open wide for a long time, until she realized that we all are staring her. We finished our drinks at styx and headed for domino's. Then we next went to YeswanthPur Railway station to put our bags at cloak room but to my greatest suprise they keep bags only upto 20:00 hrs, I said WTF man! We then headed to the sacred place, which was called Palace grounds. As we were about to enter the ground, the security asked us to take out our concert passes, Gupta shouted "Sir, I have lost my pass", Holy Christ Man! WTF! how can you fuckin lose the pass. I was mad, Rajjo was sad and Gupta, he started running back to locate the pass. God of Rock were favoring us, Gupta got the pass, I felt like tears in my eyes and wanted to slap him really hard. Then I and Rajjo had a great opportunity to fuck the Mighty Untamable Bakarchod Gupta, which we utilized to the fullest. We entered the Palace Grounds, it was ram packed with 20,000 strong crowd, full of people like us, it was scorching heat all over, sun was showing no mercy on the devotees, "but no one can deter us from doing what we believe", i suppose was the answers to every problem that stood infront of us.

After waiting for 1 and half hour in the heat, FTN appeared on the stage, crowd has some sigh of relief and every one started screaming and shouting. I saw 5 Delhi dudes, too young, full of energy, highly talented on the staged. The lead vocalist was very charismatic-on-stage and carries persona to control crowd. So he started with chants of "Maiden" and you can see the chants of "MAIDEN" everywhere. But this time FTN was sounding very bad, I think they didn't had sound check or something, but were sounding pathetic. In Pune they controlled, in fact owned the crowd, but they had little or in fact zero luck in Bangl00r00. There is a difference between an International Rock concert and Campus level rock competition, which was apparent here. The crowd in Pune at campus rock idol were college crowd, most of them were nu-metal listeners and loved "throats", very much and were there to do mosh pitting, without understanding much of music, but here in B'lore the crowd was much more mature and were listening to Maidens for long time and in short most of them were true rock devotees. Coming back to FTN, they made biggest mistake of starting with thier originals, as crowd had zero interest in listening nu-metal and gothic, so they were shown middle finger, FTN subsequently got raped liked anything. At last, they tried to sing Korn, but till that time crowd was killing them and were hardly listening. So FTN had to leave the stage like losers.
Next came Parikrama, they were sounding too good, clear and loud, which made me realized FTN were bad. Parikrama's Lead vocalist sounded like ACDC lead vocals Bon Scott, he made remarks like "This is the greatest day of his life" (to which i agree whole heartedly) and Chanted "Maiden" for some time. They played some of thier OC's which were pretty awesome. Then the band's Violinist played mostly same stuff with different speed, so the crowd went mad about the voilinist, as if he is some jimi hendrix of voilin. According to me, he sucked a big time, if you had heard a full time violinist, you will understand, what i meant, in country like India you will find violinst better than him in circuses, and if I talk class, then the classical musician who plays violin, are so good that violin starts singing by itself(okay that was a hyperbole). But , here the crowd was all metal people, so to them voilin was new and they thought it was simply too good. Anyway Parikrama finished with huge applause. They were indeed, very good.

Next came Lauren Harris Daughter of Steve Harris(i will revert back to him a little later), she was a real Hawt Babe, one worth watching English Beauty. But the songs she sang were totally out of sync with what crowd were here to listen, she was singing some alternative or pop rock or i donno what? But no body like it. Mind it, in India Metal fans are very explicit on expressing thier opinion and don't give a damn who it is?
So one can hear the chanting of "U Suck" and middle finger in the air, but she thought that all the shouting was applause, so she sang another 5-6 songs. Holy Christ, we were feeling like being killed. The wind was not blowing at all, people were standing too close to each other, i really felt the lack of oxygen and had to breathe with my mouth facing towards sky, dope and smoke was in the air, some of the girls started fanting and my feets were aching as if they will kill me. Rajjo and Gupta were in similiar state and we were thinking to leave the goddamn concert. Somehow Lauren finished, when she was leaving, i thanked god for having mercy on us.

Stage was all dark, revered silence all over, we we sweating, feeling like being screwed for nothing. suddenly i noticed drums were being beaten like military parade. I knew this is the time............ this is nobody else other that Nicko McBrain. Holy christ man!!!! i saw the drum set appeared like eddies' face and then i saw picture of Eddie in the Tank. Here was the band. Crowd went mad, people were shouting screaming and chanting "Maidens!!!" "Maidens!!!" all over. Iron Maidens and MegaDeth are probably the biggest and most repected name among the metal lovers in India(I am not talking about all those kids, who love alternative and punk). They are the pioneers of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, in my words they are the gods of NWOBHM. I saw five English Gentlemen standing like mighty knights. The first one who got attention was off course, Bruce Dickinson, the great operatic singer, whose voice has given greatest edge to Maidens. Second person whom i noticed was Steve "The Eddie" Harris, one of the most repected man in the history of rock, the man behind the band, one of the greatest bassist ever, along with all this he is the main songwriter and composer for the band. He was wearing his trademark 3/4th and his fingers were so fast on the guitar that you can not see them. I was too too happy to see him.
Bruce started singing "different world" form new album a matter of life and death and on the screen above them, they displayed tank and eddie look-alikes, while singing Bruce was running here and there and Dave Murray and Andrain Smith were standing together and holding the guitar like a gun and were shooting towards crowd. Man! what an awesome site was that. Then they sang "colors don't run" and "incarcination of Benamin Breeg", the crowd was humming the tunes. Bruce started talking now and when he said in his typical british accent "scream for me, banglo' '', crowd was shouting at the peak of their voice. Then the light went out and the next song was "The number of the beast", oh man! i had goose bumps all over my body. While he sang tropper, Bruce was wearing a red coat and waving Union Jack, then he sang "run to the hills" and then he sang "Iron maiden", which i didn't like since Bruce has totally different way of singing song, whereas that song was sung by Paul Diano originally. Suddenly lights were off, drum was sounding like i have heard thousands times before and crowd started waving thier hands in the air and sound of the "Ho ho ho ho ho!!!" was in the air. This was "FEAR of the Dark", crowd went berserk, absolutely crazy as Bruce started singing. This was the moment i was here for, i was jumping and singing. Everyone else was also jumping and i was pushed by the wave of people, which came from behind. Afterwards it was difficult to even breathe, everywhere you see people falling on each other and some trying to survive. As Bruce laughed in his Devilish way, i felt a wave of happiness in me. After this song he sang one more song form new album and one or two more song, after which they have shown the tank on the stage and Dave Murray was moving guitar all over his body insanely. Then Bruce made an announcement "we will come back again" and he said "you don't have to wait for 17 years". We thought it is over, with heavy feets we started walking toward the exit. But the crowd was not in mood for such a small exit, so they shouted "we want more". After sometimes, they all appeared back, I said "yes". They then played "evil that man do" and "2 minutes to midnite", then they brought a huge Edie on stage, who was dressed as a tropper and his eyes were glowing dark red. Finally they sang the greatest song ever by Maiden - " Hallowed be thy name". This song is one song which all Maiden fan loves and considers it to be sacred. So here everyone was singing with them and i was banging my head, throughout the song as a symbol of my repect to the band.
Those moments were most precious moments to me. I wanted to keep listening to them live for as long as possible.I heard that many people were in tears, some of them bowed to Maiden on thier knees, I know this sounds insane but for Maiden people can do that.

Well we were here on Yeswanthpur station, tired like anything and struggling for sleep. Somehow(God knows how), We left the B'lore with a sigh of relief, but the next day was hot and we were feeling like dirty pigs and were totally dehydrated. By now Gupta has regained his powers, so we were having good bakarchodee sessions one after the other. I was in utterly bad shape, but then i remembered my last B'lore trip, where i have travel on the bonnet(or whatever is the right word) of the bus, so i thanked god for all that he has blessed us with. Finally we reached Pune, with memories that will remain, throughout my life.
I know that the day when Metallica will turn up to India, i will be mad and will be more happier than this, but as for now, i am very much contended.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Typical weekends

My weekends are typical. Why? Because they are typical.
This is 16:00 hrs Friday evening and i will fire a mail : hey dood are you coming to my place.
So i will get a reply which may be yes or there is no reply at all: that means he is not coming.

Some how i just leave the company thinking, "Please god there should be no last minute assignment."
God sometimes says, "Son have fun this weekend"
or
My lead says " Anuz, we have a release tomorrow" and I say, "Oh No".

Some how if god had mercy on me weekend goes great.

They will ask, " hey by what time are you reaching?'
Me: "unhhhhhhhh.......... i will tell you as soon as i leave".

Okay so here I am leaving for the day, "yippee, don't have to come for next two days".

Me: "which movie are we suppose to watch,....... no not this one. "
They: "Okay so what else do you want to see?"
Me: " Let see this one, but i am not sure as we will be able to get the tickets."

We just leave for the theatre, without giving much thought about tickets.
At theatre we have same type of conversation every time.

He: " Man, Is he(the one who was invited by the mail) coming."
Me:(This time) "yeah, this asshole has to be invited every time, i will go and get three tickets"

now as i am trying to get tickets. My cell starts ringing.
Me: "where are you Maaadar(that means mother fucker)"?

He told me that he will be coming in next 20 minutes.
Now we two are waiting and looking around.
Me: hey dood, look she is fukin hawt.
He: nahin yaar she is shit.
now, i am silent, cursing my self for the pathetic sense of rating chics.

He: Look, Man that's what you call a hottie, a real hottie.
Me:(With eyes wide open) yeah, i just want her, at least once.

Mean while this other lazy fellow arrives.
Me: Let's get inside.
They: wait man, let me finish my cigarette.

We are inside the theater and now begins the storm of demonic laughter, everyone is staring at us, as to what the hell are we doing?

Me: man, next month this movie is releasing and i am going to come and watch this movie for sure.
One of them: Motherfucker, you are watching every other movie, and to all boring movie, you just say, that it was a good movie.
Me: WTF, man i only say a movie is good, only when it is good. Anyway you have no sense of movies.
Other one: Looking at some other poster, man, i am just waiting for spiderman to release, and my roommate, he is so mad about this movie, he has been counting the number of days for spiderman 3 release.
Me: I have to watch spiderman with my brother. As per tradition me and my brother always watch spiderman together and that too in Gwalior(My home town).
First one: Hey guys you know rat(nick name of some one) has made a new funti(Girl friend).
Me: Fuck Man, he is a lucky bustard.
Other: hunn.. he is good in making funties.

Me: oye, take out the tickets man.

We are inside the hall and we are the only people, who are laughing apparently for no good reason. We are still chating, consequently annoying others. As soon as the trailer of a new movie is shown on the screen, we starts yelling and starts clapping as if we are some 4 year old.

As the intermission approaches, one of us starts cursing the movie.
The other guy: What a fuckin boring movie?
Me: Whatever, look at babe man she is hawt and her funta(Boy Friend) is a moron. Yaar, why such hot babes are always with such morons and doods like us are roaming around with people like you.
First one: Dood, our time is near.
Me: we will keep on saying this for ever.
Then we start making really nasty comment about all the babes in theater.
Movie restarts and after that till we reach back home we are mostly silent or talking only what is important.

The First Guy: see you tomorrow at 10.
Me: yeah, bye.

Somehow struggling with myself i wake up and reach gym. Since this is a holiday, i can see yoga classes going on. Oh..... there she is, the real pretty chick with sexy vitals. I try hard to avoid getting caught by aunties in gym, while staring the babe. I don't understand, what the hell are they doing in gym. They are not even letting me stare the only babe in gym. Anyway, i finished workouts in gym, wondering when will i lift those heavy dumbbells of 20+ pounds. Every time i see those heavy dudes lifting dumbbell of 25 pounds each in both arms, my tongue starts rolling back and my mouth become dry.

I then leave for breakfast with my friend. Believe it or not for us it is religion to have breakfast at vahuman cafe.
Although cafe is an old cafe with old infrastructure, doesn't look like something grand. But this cafe is run by a Parsee uncle and kind of English breakfast they serve is fuking awesome.
We have a standard place to sit near window, which is at the last of the cafe. The point of sitting near window is that we can see everyone in cafe and if there is some hottie, then it is a perfectly located strategic location.

We orders typically same breakfast everytime we come.
Me: Man I just love this cheese toast, fuckin awesome man.
He: dood, this satish(waiter) is such a busy man getting him at our table like scheduling process in an OS(operating system, typical jargon engineer use.)
Me: yeah, it is so.
Him: hey man, don't you think in our group also few people are choclatee(Pause: now the defintion of choclatee, requires a dedicated new blog).
Me: Yeah, they could have been choclatee, but all of them have that worm of bakar(Gossiping around, okay this also require a blog , keep watching the space.) inside them , so they have fallen along with us.
He: True.
Now we are silent for some time, which is little unusual.

Me: what are we going to do after this.
Him: Let's see, let me smoke, then only i can think better.
Me: We can watch a movie in my flat.
Him: What all movies you have.
Me: Many.
Him: Motherfucker, name some of them.
Me: Blah blah blah.
Him: okay so we can watch this one.
Me: okay.

We leave the table, this is still the Saturday after noon. We have word with uncle, who is a parsee and owner of cafe, although he is old, but he crack all kind of non-veg jokes so beware.
Sometimes my action are just like that. While i was waiting for my friend to get his bike. I was looking at this bike, a very old Luna.
Him: you know this legendary vehicle belong to uncle.
Me: hmnnn...
I took out my cell and took a snap of the Luna. My friend was smiling at all this incident. He would be thinking in his mind, "what a useless bugger is he", but that does not deter me from doing all this.

Back home, i had one more business to mind, washing my clothes. This is such a nemesis for me. My entire day is engaged in washing clothes. Some body suggested to keep a maid, but maids are such a nuisance, that i just hate to have one.
On my PC heavy metal is playing; while washing my clothes i am singing along with my old speakers, which sounds horrible with the kind of music i play.(okay they are always horrible.)

Meanwhile my cell starts ringing. We will then have lunch while discussing all the genres of rock and gigs and Metal and chics and every damn other thing which exists.
I will go and sleep in my room after lunch and when i wake up, we are planning where to have booze and dinner.
Him: Oye, You know he(some of our friend) is also coming for dinner.
Me: so where are we going?
Him: Yaar, he want us to come somewhere near adlabs(a theatre).
Me: Great, Then let's move.

Now, here we are sitting in a bar and a restaurant, with three other people.
One of them: dood, You should have a beer.
Me: no, not rite now.
Other: guys, i have only one wish and that is to have beer with him(i.e. Me).
Now here at this point i have to be diplomatic and sensitive, i don't want to hurt any of these guys by saying that drinking sux, which i say every other time. but this was not the rite time. so to change the topic.
Me: hey dood, you went to your place, are your parents trying to get a girl for you.
now everyone else has chance to fuck this guy, so everyone is alert.
Other guy: Man he is getting old, he should get married.
Him: no, there is nothing like that.
Me: Motherfucker, you sleep in every other party, you have grown too old, get married soon, otherwise you will not get a girl.
Him: (typical tone), don't worry i will get married.

This goes on till 11 in the night. Meanwhile we will also have some intellectual discussion(at least we think so.).

Next day morning also all the things repeat in same manner, that is going to gym and vohuman. But after vohuman, we again plan to watch movie. But movie is at 3:00 pm and it is 12:00 pm so what to do in the mean time?
Me: Let's go to central(a shopping mall).
Him: what will we do there? Motherfucker, are you going to shag there?(he is laughin with his ass off)
Me: We will buy something.
Him: I don't have have to buy anything for now. Do you want to buy something?
Me: Nothing for sure, but will be good time pass.
Him: okay let's go.

We then just keep trying number of clothes and this discussion and that discussion going on all the time non-stop inside the mall. His cell rings and that's the signal that other guys are waiting at theatre for us. So we leave Central without buying anything.(that's what we do when we go to malls)

At theatre again!!! some people wonder how much movies do we watch? I told those people, we can watch four movies back to back in a single day, we are just crazy about movies.

Now again the conversation begin. This time we are four of us and 4th one is my roommate.
One of them: This theater is a rage. the best of chics of this city comes here.
My roomie: You know, there is a new bom-shell in our company in development team, but she is married.
One of them: Asshole, why the fuck do you keep tell stories of these married women to us?
My roomie: Yaar ,she is hot and i just can' t help stop noticing.
Me: Mother fucker, Leave her apart. Let's look that hottie in white top.
Again, we start talking all forms of nasty things about her and start laughing (in fact roaring) outside the hall.
After some time we are inside theatre watching this movie. This movie came out to be total bullshit.
Me: what the fuck ? This is the worst movie i have ever scene.
Other Fellow: This is an utter peice of shit. What is it that they want to show?
Me: There is no art, no good dialogues, no plot , just load of big star, no story, loads of hype. Fuck man! wasted 150 bucks.

Now the entire time goes criticizing the movie, and the aunties and uncles sitting near us getting irritated becoz we have started fuckin this movie, but we never bother.
Some how movie finished, now i am yawing like anything, all my energy is sucked. I am thinking "what a waste, man".
Suddenly some one says: Where are we going for lunch?
One of them: Let's go to nandu's(some cafe).
Me: we can better go to chaitanya(another cafe).
all other agree to this one easily.

We had lunch at this cafe and we all are mostly quite, since the movie was such a shit. No one want to speak. We return back and i go to sleep.

This is Sunday evening. not many of them(i.e. my friend ) are fond of this time, since next 5 days are not going to be fun. Well in the evening again, at least one of them will visit my room. And this time this one is my junior.

Him: Sir, Do you have any new movie.
Me: No dood.
Him: Sir, bring one.
Me: dood, not in a mood to bring one.
Him: and Sir, how is your gym going on.
Me: fucking good man.
Him: I don't see any change.(now he is having a good chance to laugh at me).
Me:(without any interest) i have gained some weight.
Him: you are becoming a fat-ass.
Me: Motherfucker, don't you have anything else to do.
Him: No.
Him: why are you getting senti(short form of sentimental, meaning angry here).
Me: Asshole, you had nothing else but to do all this bakarchodee(meaning useless gossip here).
He: no sir, I just love pulling your leg.
Entire time he is trying to some how fuck me(not literally, but verbally). Now i have to give a excuse that since he is junior, i just can't do the same, we used to do same with our seniors, so this is just a return of favor.

Now this is eleven o'clock the great weekend has come to an end. I am thinking that i have wasted two days, may be i have read something. Now i am lost in my thoughts and wandering aimlessly inside my mind. And next day i am up for office again.