Arranged Marriage - Part 3

It is very similar to Arranged Marriage - Part 1 just that guy family goes to girl and same thing happens. No difference.

Hope you have enjoyed.

Arranged Marriage - Part 1

This story is divided amongst 3 parts:
Part 1: Where girl family comes to meet to the boy family
Part 2: Boy meets the Girl with some other family members at the neutral venue
Part 3: Boy family goes to the Girl family.

PART 1:

Lot of you must be in that phase now where everyone near and dear you and those who are really not interested in your life do ask you that question "When are you going to get married?" so basically to shut up their mouth and not being asked more irritating questions, I reply them very nicely "This Year!" and they shut up and go. Really found this the most amazing answer for the most asked question in the mankind history. They are just really happy when they get a positive answer, well just try to answer in negative or neutral well they bug you again and keep on asking you more questions till you feel like ripping their hair off or just walk away (which is rude by the way).

Well my parents think, now I am old enough to get married and must do so quickly well they are more excited than me. So finally we decide who to meet a girl's family who visit our home to see where do we stay how is our house and other things like ask me few questions. This is how it goes.

There are around 4 family members of girls side who comes with a middle man (well there is always a middle man who knows both side of the family and they are very keen to get each and every single guy/girl who they know with other single girl/guy who they know). They all get seated, now the head or the senior of the group introduces everyone who they have come with (which you tend to forget after 10 mins into the meeting) and then some talks happen where the middle man tells good things about the senior (aka Father) of the single guy/girl. Now talks range from where they stay, politics, food, travel, some other non-sense while the guy just sits and looks around the room or finding a way to run away from that room (which will never happen).

After all the non-sense talks finally they start to ask the guys some questions, where are you working, what profile do you hold, what exactly you have to do there, why you did not do MBA (well for, non-MBAiets you have to face this difficult question all the time). After 5 to 10 minutes of talking they again go on some family history and their roots and then more about current events etc etc.

Well during the time the family will be served till they beg not to get more food and some are gracious enough to see the house by showing that they are not getting the network but move around the full house. After an hour of more boring talks finally family decide they have had enough and need to move so they can discuss more with the other members of the family.

End of Part 1. Await Part 2 coming soon.

Marriage Proposals

There is a time in life when your parents start to ask you the most dangerous question which most of you dread to hear the whole life and those are:

1.       When are you planning to get married? 

2.       Do you have any bf/gf or should we look for a boy/girl for you?

3.       You know Mr. XX son/daughter got married. When will be your turn?

And these are the times when you want to just run away from home and look for solace. The worst lots are person who do not stay with their parents but visit them after every 3 - 6 months and your conversation are on mostly about when you are going to get married.

Now fast forward a bit...you buckle down to your parents regular questions and start to look for a girl/boy (this is for who do not have bf/gf during that time)

Step 1: Create a profile up on websites or your caste has a matrimony group. Your parents duly fill up the form. With all details and an amazing profile photo of yours *smiling*. Parents tell all relatives and friends that you are ready for marriage. 

Step 2: Ok for the lucky few, you get 1000 proposals and you have to select few where you can meet them. The order in which person (from now on guy and girl will be referred to as a person) is shortlisted are

1.       Looks: Fair gets most views, darker people lesser until the person selecting is dark they are not much of a chooser.

2.       If the person is shortlisted in looks then comes studies, it is similar to job market MBA's in finance gets higher priority then comes other big education CA, Doctor, Engineers, then BCom, MCom etc

3.       You then shortlist yourself into what does the family do well the parents are more interested in that. 

4.       Then next part where does that person work or is in a business, in real world person likes stability and first priority goes to the person with a job. 

And after the full short listing you come down to 10 or more.

Step 3: Your parents will start to get connected with the friends who know the family of the shortlisted person and try to find the history and geography of the selected person and family. Now the number comes down to very few.

Step 4: Now your profile goes to the person who you liked and selected. Now the waiting part starts, you are not guaranteed that person will approve of you. But let us talk the best scenario, that person approves to a meeting.

Step 5:  Parents decide to meet at a neutral location such as a restaurant and you reach there all ready decked up to impress. The person walks in and almost you get the first impression and in your mind you decide what to say, what not to say. This is mostly like a date where you come to know about a person but with interruptions from parents if they decide to join.

Step 6: Best case scenario, so the person likes you and you that person, you continue talking on phone and meet once or twice a week to know that person better. Now here where the family are getting happy that yes there is hope. And some in few weeks and some in few months decide to slide the ring in the finger.

Now here comes my point, it is all so amazing and interesting but then we are playing a roulette betting on a number and hoping that ball lands on that, some are very firm that they want that number only while some are ready to play between the colours making them have more options. 

But in the above process what we miss to see is that a BCom person is a much better than a MBA person but what is written on paper makes us go woo before even meeting the real one. And I am a believer of you know the person the best if you travel with them, take them to some resort with common friends different rooms everyone is happy but take them for some rough terrain trip and the real person is alive. This is where you know how that person will react in a real life scenario with you and friends. And 1 trip is not enough no....you will need more than one, like some are good judge people and some just take time (like me). 

I seriously hope my parents make me go through the above process.......

Agra - Tourist and Touts Delight

Image via Wikipedia

It was nice sunny Thursday afternoon when we confirmed on the plan of going to Agra from Gurgaon (this is where i have being staying for sometime now). Come saturday morning we wake up with our general laziness and pack our bags for the big trip to Agra and Fatehpur Sikri.

We reach Faridabad/Ballabhgarh Bus Depot which is on the Delhi Agra highway and we were on a budget trip we get a Madhya Pradesh Parivahan and we enter we see no place to sit. Never do that by mistake, never take a bus which is going to another state from your preferred location you will never get a seat. The ticket cost Rs. 120 till the outside gate of Taj Mahal after a smooth ride and good lunch at Baanke Bihari hotel which would not be my first choice to stop but note: this is where all the State Transport Bus Stops. We get down from the bus @ 5 pm after some time we realized we were a bit too late. Read below to know more.

Taj Mahal is open till 7 almost but last ticket is at 6 pm and it gets dark and no point in going inside. Well let me move back a bit, we got down from the bus and there was a smiling rickshaw (auto for Delhi people) wala waiting for us.
Now comes the best salesman pitch you can ever hear.....(let me call him Bunty)
Bunty: Good evening sir, where do you want to go?We: Taj Mahal, how much?
Bunty: Sir, only Rs. 10
We: Cool, lets get in,
Bunty (after getting into the rickshaw): Sir i would like to say that no bags are allowed in Taj Mahal. Where are you staying?
We: A friend of us told us some place (saying the hotel names reading from the sms which I had received)
Bunty: Sir, those place are not good, I will show you a better place and then you can go to see Taj Mahal once you put the bags away.
We: How much will you charge?
Bunty: Sir only Rs. 30We drive in some bylanes, mini lanes of Agra and reach a place Baluganj where we find Lavania Vilas in our budget well over our budget but in our effort to reach Taj we made the deal, put our bags and then on our way to Taj Mahal.
Bunty: So sir, Agra is a very beautiful place and there are so many things to buy and see such as Saris made from Banana and Bamboos
We: ohhhh! (we were delighted because we have never heard of saris made from banana and bamboos)
Bunty: Sir, Agra is famous for Leather shoes, there is a small market for shoes also.
We: Ohhh! (shoes, that too leather all men like it)
Bunty: Then I will take you for dinner. What would you like to eat?
We: Well, what is famous in Agra?
Bunty: Sir, everything Indian, Mughlai, Chinese etc etc
We: mmmm we will think about it.
Bunty: Now sir we have reach Taj Mahal but as the line is too big outside, I shall take you to a person who will give you the tickets but you have to pay Rs. 5 extra.
We: Rs. 5 no big deal ok.

We did our Taj Mahal trip and awwed in wonder, stories from the guide (who give exams to get UP Guide License). Tool lots of photographs and then, sir you should buy mini Taj Mahal, we go in UP handloom shop just outside Taj Mahal and bought 1 mini Taj Mahal for Rs. 100 and after just 10 steps the same product was sold for Rs. 50 (note: do not buy anything in the first store check out other shops compare and then buy)

Bunty: Sir, how was the trip?
We: It was nice. Bunty: Now sir the famous sari store.
We: Bunty, how much is the whole trip going to cost us?
Bunty: Sir, only Rs. 250



Well if you read from the second line of Rs. 10 we paid Rs. 250 and if we had taken rickshaws stop by stop it would not have cost us Rs. 100. Agra is a small place, decide a place and get down there and say bye bye to your auto rickshaw wala. Because it is like a spider web, but the spider is a smiling rickshaw driver who with good talks will take you to places which he intends you should see. If you want to read we ended up buying Saris for our near and dear without us having any knowledge of it coming up in the next post.

So as my title says, Tourist and Touts delight, there are so many things to see in Agra which millions website have shown but there are only few who write the real thing and this is the real thing.

Once Upon A Time in Mumbai - Review

This is a story of a time when Peru (Guava) used to cost only 25 paise.

Sultan Mirza a person who had come from Chennai aka Madras that time to Mumbai made sure he made friends instead of enemies in his line of work which would make it easy for everyone to work. He was one of those guys who did not like bad things to Mumbai aka Bombay.

Then comes in Shoib Khan who with the attitude it is "My Way or the Highway" wants to reach the top and want to go there fast by hook or crook.

That is the background of the main character, now the movie well I was expecting some fundoo action or else some smart moves by main characters but what I got in the initial part was a Love Story of both characters which was totally baseless in the movie. What I think is director was short of story and wanted to add glam and bore the audience added Rihanna and Mumtaz. Well Rihanna aka Kangana does not know how to act (this is her first movie which I have seen) and Mumtaz aka Prachi Desai was really OK!

In second half, I thought more action would be on the way but no it was just same boring stuff and then the expected happened Shoib Khan goes to rival gang and does not like what Sultan does to him. To all fairness what Sultan did was slap Shoib, I thought now some gangwar will happen who will have the upper hand etc etc but no, Sultan wants to do a rally, I mean wtf yep he did give a good speech but no use sir.

For the background score Mr Pritam just ripped of Marlyn Manson Beautiful People song and songs were not required in this.

So all my hopes got dashed where I was expecting to see a good movie but it ended in a duh! and Bore! and and...the movie could have got over in one hour if the romance would not happen.

NASSCOM Gaming Summit 2009 – Tour Diary

An article by my colleague Arjun Nair about our trip to Hyderabad 2009 GDC

The year 2009 will be remembered in the history books of Indian game developers as NASCCOM finally blessed the gaming industry with its very own “GDC-like” event to be held every year henceforth.
The NASSCOM Gaming Summit 2009 (which I’ll refer to as NGS09 henceforth because life’s too short) aimed to bring game developers across India (and some from abroad) under one roof where they could exchange ideas, stories on game dev, case studies, visiting cards and generally show off their development talents.

Here are the highlights of the event:
•    We got off our plane at 8 in the morning at Hyderabad Airport - a stunning piece of architecture that manages to make Mumbai Airport look like a Dharavi slum. It made for a great first impression at the very least!

•    Ernest Adams, legendary game designer, set the tone and mood of the conference by both being frank and witty. I was surprised to see that his presentation consisted almost entirely of text – so much for the theory that successful people use eye-pleasing presentations to engage the audience! Obviously, Adams hasn’t heard of it.

•    It was refreshing to see developers giving case studies that were both honest and in-depth. This is precisely the kind of exchange that Indian developers need in order to grow and learn. Games like Pahelika, Hanuman and Gajini were covered by their respective developers and its quite interesting to see the different approaches and thinking taken by them in the development of the games.

•    When FX Labs were concluding their presentation on Gajini, which consisted entirely of “Things that went right”, someone asked them, “What about things that went wrong?”. Imran Khan, VP, FX Labs said, “Can’t think of anything that went wrong”. That should be a first in game development! Anyone who’s played the game care to comment? ;)

•    During the BioShock (the 2d and 3d mobile games) presentation, VLC media player managed to crash spectacularly during playback of the video of the 3d game and hung the laptop. A surprising number of people recorded this event on their phone cameras for posterity. Sanity was restored by the combination of the good ol’ “three fingered salute”, Task Manager and Kill Process method.  I suppose that’s one way of grabbing audience attention!

•    The most number of laughs (arguably) in the conference were elicited when Purnima , in the course of her presentation, showed off a video (taken in the IG office) demonstrating developer ignorance about the Game Design Document. She went around the office asking people, “What is a GDD?” and the responses were hilarious! If you haven’t seen the video yet and need a good laugh, do yourself a service and ask Purnima for the video.

•    A note on food and drinks at the venue: The non-veg, esp. lamb gosht was fantastic but I have it on good authority that the vegetarian food wasn’t up to the mark. A good thing I’m non-vegetarian then eh? Also, I had probably the best Tiramisu (a sweet pudding in case you didn’t know – I didn’t!) ever! Apparently there were a beer party in the evening at 6 but unfortunately, I can’t comment on how that went since we had a plane to catch. You could say though that everyone left the event in “high spirits” in more ways than one.

Nitish Kumar - Business Reformer of the Year

Was watching TV yesterday morning when on Times Now News Channel ET Awards was on and Nitish Kumar CM of State of Bihar got the award of Business Reformer of the Year...please do watch the video and how he is wooing the Businessmen to come to Bihar. And also taking a potshot at Pranab Mukherjee

Road Trip - Konkan Beaches

Planned 3 days ahead on what to do for the big X'mas weekend and a good friend also leaving for USA early next month so decided to head down south to the beaches with his dog named Kasper

Day 1:
Started at 3 am so that we get empty roads and reach early to the first destination which was Dapoli. Around 300 KMS from Mumbai, Dapoli is a small town with beaches namely Murud, Kurde and Harnai 10 Kms away from it. To reach Dapoli you have to take NH17 and take a right turn from Khed town which looks like a diversion and then drive through the hills for 30 Kms to reach Dapoli.

Murud: Super white sand and water is clean which makes you go in without a second thought (ie until and unless you don't like water and the same sentence will be repeated in the next blog also). Here you can go for Dolphin Spotting, wind surfing and speed boat at a reasonable cost.

Karde: It is the empty cousin of Murud beach and driving to that place is pain in the ass as the roads are bad but reaching there you feel like you deserve that drive. There are lots of places to stay near the beach which looked quite good and neat. More of a family area and away from human settlement.

Had breakfast and Lunch just next to the beach.

Around 3 pm we started driving back and stopped on the way to shop for Cashew nuts which are cheap and good compared to Mumbai (as my mom told me).

The Wall Project - Mumbai

King of PopImage by kapil_b via Flickr

On 15th and 16th August BMC decided to make Mumbai more cooler by telling the Mumbaikars to draw what they feel and they did with super enthu and created some wicked wall paitings.

Now they decided to make it even more better by calling out Mumbaikars for painting the remaining walls and this time I would not miss it. So after partying on Saturday night and starting Sunday morning with hangover was not a good start but went through it and reached Mahim station where two of my friends were already waiting for me with the paints (i am no great painter tho). The theme which they had decided on was teach Mumbai. So wall was divided by BMC team from क to ...

So we got च, छ, ज and we made चाबी, छत्री and जहाज . The best part of all the painting and drawing was we got to meet people with cool imagination and some awesome drawing quality. I loved to draw the background paint and added few things here and there in the photo. I am all praise to BMC who helped each and everyone who were painting and had all the colours available.

So some of photos and how it is please feedback on how it looks.

MidNight Buffet - Parabola (Rodas ECotel Hotel)

As many would say not the best nor near the best amongst the buffet and I would seriously agree with them but this is one place where you can get food after 12 pm. So you hungry and insomniac soul who just want to sit and eat their very very late dinner in Powai so this is the place.

Cost around Rs. 350+ per person this place gives you almost everything 2 soups, 6+ starters, 6+ main course and at times an live kitchen. Service is good but not that great. Also note that they do not refill the food which is finished so make sure you do reach there by 12 or else you might miss some of the food as the place is packed (coz there is only one around)

Also check out the menu card of Parabola here

So a 2.5 star rating for Parabola

Solar Taxi

Year 2007, month October, I meet these 2 germans who have landed in India and staying at my friends place. We met at Shisha (Bandra) small talk and things then drive down to Mocha as it was a dry day. Talked in length in what they plan to do and what was their itenery.

Cut back one week before i meet them, i had sent a mail across to Solar Taxi website about me helping them in Mumbai and meeting up and showing them around.

And as we speak and they say Solar Taxi, I told them about the mail, they said they have received some but as one says world is a small place and with new research that there is only 6.6 degrees of sepration between people.

We went out for hikes, eating out and some walks and the german guys were so generous and funny that they learnt few Indian things. Lemme talk about the guys....one is Martin Gottschlk and other was Thomas Gottschlk, looking at them they are two very different to each other no brotherly traits...Martin is a shy kinda guy with tongue in cheek humour and Thomas is an outgoing personality, likes to dance and ready to eat anything.

On one of the hikes i get an invitation to go up north with them as their guide/translater, really excited I go to my boss and saying about the whole story he says show me the itenery.

The itenery was
Day 1 - Mumbai - Valsad
Day 2 - Valsad - Baroda
Day 3 - Baroda - Ahmedabad
Day 4 - Ahmedabad - Udaipur
Day 5 - Udaipur
Day 6 - Udaipur
Day 7 - Udaipur - Jaipur
Day 8 - Jaipur
Day 9 - Jaipur
Day 10 - Jaipur - Delhi

My boss said to come back from Jaipur as one project was in its critical deadline stage.

Remainder stories about my journey to be told later...

Beat Box - Bauchklang

Listen to these guys sing (oops i mean Beat Box) their way...into people hearts. I was supposed to go their show but then it turned out to be show was going on and i was sitting in office playing games (testing games).

Bauchklang are an European group where these guys don't have any instruments..just their microphones...looking into the mail from Blue Frog i just went on youtube to check what they do and they do some fine performances.

I hope they shall be back in Mumbai soon and perform on Sundays....i hate it when they plan to do things during the week.

Enjoy the song....