Excuse me! Your shoelaces are undone.

My shoelaces come undone a lot and people get concerned that I would fall down. Strangely I have never fallen down because of my untied shoelaces. So this got me thinking, can shoe laces really cause people to fall down and if so how have I escaped almost every day. I did a 2 minute exercise and had this observation. Since while walking you never lift or put down both of your feet at the same time the only way you can fall is when you step on your undone shoelace. Moreover to fall down you will need to step on the shoelace of your other foot. Now when you plant your foot on the ground your shoelaces naturally tend to get thrown forward because of momentum.  Assuming that the shoelaces are thrown straight up in the direction you are walking and stretch to their maximum length, to make you fall down your other foot will need to land on the shoelaces. This means that your foot should not go beyond the distance that your shoelaces extend to. In other words in order for you to fall down your shoelaces should be bigger than or at least equal to half the size of your footstep. Taking that into account it is impossible for me to fall down since I have long footsteps. People who have smaller footsteps and long shoelaces however still may fall down and small children especially. This is not to say that tall people may never fall down. For example in sports where you run a lot and change direction and size of footsteps suddenly, you are still prone to falling down, because of undone shoelaces. In normal walk or run however there are very less chances of that happening. So next time you buy shoes/ shoelaces make sure they extend less than half the size of your average footstep. ;) Enjoy!

Arre bhai desai

No I am not talking to someone with the name desai. It’s the way I like to pronounce desi, with the “i” as in shine. There is a reason behind this and the reason is that I am confused, I am confused why is ‘i’ not just ’i’ but sometimes ‘a’ and sometimes ‘y’. A great man once said, English is a phunny language and he got it absolutely spot on, at least for us the desis. Till the time I was in india I was quite happy with my English, I knew that I was one of the people who make India the largest english speaking population in the world (we also make india the second largest population in the world),I believed I had a neutral accent, and I used to have no difficulties making people understand me. That’s true for all of us. The trouble starts when the desi lands in amreeka and it starts with your name. I have a two syllable name “vimal” which I believe is not very tough to pronounce and so I fail to understand how can people not get it right. First day in the university, first class and the professor calls me vymal (again vimal but with an i as in shine), which was kinda funny, but I don’t have any problem as long as you can identify me with that name, so for the professor I am vymal. Unfortunately that’s not the end of it, people keep messing my name up sometimes I get called vamal , sometimes vimol and sometimes vimaahh, Embarrassing. But that’s okay because I don’t want to correct people everytime they make a mistake. Like one of my friend’s mother in law, she struggled with pronouncing my name for like ten minutes and finally we decided she would be calling me Jack. That’s just one side of the story, as much as it bothers us, it’s also embarrassing for others when they mispronounce our name, like this one time, a lady in a class was trying to explain something, she wanted to give an example and she asked a student what was his name. “Sanskar” he said. Now then, if vimal is so difficult you can imagine sanskar. After struggling for some time the lady gave up and apologized.

Now that you have come to terms with your new names, you want to go out to eat. But it’s not as easy, for some weird reason amreeka has turned all the world’s logic on its head. The innocuous cheeseburger is not what it says it is, it actually contains beef, certainly a no no for desis. You want to pay for what you had at the restaurant? The bill here is called the check and the currency note is called bill. San jose is actually called San hose-ay. Rubber is not eraser but something entirely different. The desi is Kompletely Konfuzed now and he wants to talk to people. To his horror however clearly he speaks he can’t make people understand him. Initially he resists but he has to give in and start speaking with the amreekan accent, he speaks with a heavy voice and tries to drag every word as long as he can. Every sentence is littered with more “like”s than actual words. The “Damn” becomes ‘Deamm’, ‘Focus’ becomes ‘fokis’ and “r” now comes on with a rolling sound, but that’s not all, he is so excited about the new accent that he starts picking whatever accent he comes in contact with. American, British, Mexican everyone of them. The desi is becoming kool but now the people around him are confused, why does this guy speaks every word with a different accent. By the time the desi realizes this, it’s too late. He is speaking crap and he can’t go back to his Indian accent. It’s not all about the accents though. Things are a little tougher for those of us who weren’t very attentive in the English class at school. A few days back a friend of mine, was telling me an incident how a guy was pronouncing veggie like a wedgie and how funny it was. Little did she know that I didn’t know what the difference was. A general apathy towards the use of prepositions is also one of our characteristic so many of us have a voice mail which says “ I am not able to pick your call right now”. These sort of things keep happening with us and there are two ways to look at these. One is to think that everyone is trying to pick on you, the other is to realize that this is what we are and how we are then why not just enjoy ourselves and enjoy our desi-ness. I always see the lighter part of it. If nothing else then my desi-ness is at least good enough for a laugh or two.

P.S I am a desi and I love being a desi, it is just a funny recount of my and my friends’s experiences and has to be taken lightly. If at all the D-word and the post in general is offensive to you, then be my guest.

Jaane bhi do yaaro

Few days back I had one of the dialogues of "Jaane bhi do yaaro" in my gtalk status message.The movie is one of my all time favorite and this post is dedicated to it. It had one of the most memorable and funny dialogues ever seen in a movie. Some of the scenes are particularly hillarious. Most notably the mahabharat one, this one is so famous that people know all its dialogues by heart. The other one which I like is the conversation of ahuja with D'mello's dead body. The phone conversation between satish kaushik and naseeruddin shah is extremely hillarious too. This is small list of some of the really funny lines from the movie.


mujhe pata hai, aapki aankho mein kya hai...ek model banne ka sapna
Thoda Khao thoda feko mazaa aata hai
good morning sir, good morning ashok.
humari baatein to nahi suni tumne? hain? behre ho? haan.
Kisi desh ki unnati ki pehchan agar kisi cheez se hoti hai toh woh hai gutter. Woh gutter ke liye jiye. Aur gutter ke liye mare. Marte hue unke aakhri shabd the, gutter
Commissioner D'Mello ki yaad main ek din ke liye sheher ke saare gatar band kiye jaayenge, isliye meri aap logo se prarthana hai ki aap log peene ka paani pahle se bhar lein
oye! oye tera puncture hai.
ye sports car hai , ismein austin ka pahiya kaise fit ho sakta hai.
abe shaant! gadadhaarii bhiim! shaant!
draupadi jaisi sati nari ko dekhkar, maine cheer haran ka idea drop kar diya hai!
oye chup oye, arjun singh!
dhanush tod diya, tees rupaye ka nuksaan kar diya, main nahi karta naatak waatak, bhaad mein jao tum sab.
this is too much. ye akbar kahaan se aa tapkaa!

An hour in a class

I hurry to the class and reach a minute late. I have no interest whatsoever in the class, but I've taken it because its a requirement. A discussion on some obscure topic is going on. I quickly go at the end of the lecture room and grab a spot in the last row. I missed the India vs Sri Lanka match last night, so I open my laptop and log on to cricinfo.I start reading articles at cricinfo, finish all the new articles, check the time .. still half an hour to go, I pretend to look at the white board, its too bright cant look at it directly .. so i am back at my computer screen, alternating between orkut and gtalk, wishing somebody will scrap me or ping me. I write a couple of scraps but everybody seems busy. No reply. I check the time again... 20 minutes to go. I take a look around in the class, the girl beside me has her head down and is sleeping, another on my left has her head up and is sleeping. The chinese guy in the first row, just yawned. Thats bad, if you have to do that, you should be in the last row like me. Swearing on the poor guy, I scan the class again. One guy has his hand on his forehead, cursing the time he took this course.I see another one scribbling something on his notebook, I don't think it is anything even remotely connected to the subject. Not everybody looks uninterested though, there are two guys on either side of me. who are discussing something with the prof. I try to listen and understand whats going on. No use, they are using some weird words and terminologies I have never heard before. I check the time again, still 15 minutes to go. Holy Babe! Has time stopped moving? I curse everything. I've ran out of cricinfo articles to read, what am I going to do? It is then, when I hear the golden words,"Do you want me to continue or should I start the next topic in the next lecture?".
In a very low voice I say Yes, please stop. Others like me who are bored to death, shout a bit loudly. I thank them, and run out to get some fresh air as soon as I can.

From Vista to Ubuntu

SO.. after struggling a bit I finally was able to install ubuntu on my machine. Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex, I like that project name.I was toying with this idea of using linux for some time, and for some wierd reason decided to do it now. The problem though was that I had Vista installed already and I wanted to have a dual boot system, which made things a bit complicated.

It took me some time to figure out a way to clear up space for linux, and I think the shrink option in Vista totally sucks, compared to the earlier partitioning tools. In between, I had the scare of hard disk corruption, and the time when Vista refused to boot. Ubuntu LiveCD came to my rescue then, and I backed my data up immediately, before anything else went wrong.Ironically, when I had my data backed up, everything went smoothly. So, here I am, with both Vista and Ubuntu sitting hands inhand on my machine, but since I am a complete n00b with linux, I have to learn a lot. The only prior experience I have with linux is with the Knoppix CD which I used a couple of times, before I lost the CD. The transition has started though, and I expect to learn someting from this new venture.