flight home: PART 2

So, after much hassle and headaches, I managed to board my flight to Visakhapatnam (after having missed it the previous day). Like I said in the part1 of this blog, that I was one of the last persons to board the aircraft.
I had to sit right at the front of the plane, the very first seat, staring at the wall with a strange drawing of a puma with two tails (which apparently was the cabin interior manufacturing company’s logo). I was pretty comfy on my seat and was enjoying the final phase of my journey back home. The captain (an American in an Air India flight… the irony.) announced in his usual authoritative yet friendly manner, that we would be landing in about 15minutes. I looked out of the window in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the always-beautiful vizag coast line. Unfortunately, all I could see were thick dense clouds. In face I could not even see the wings of the flight, so dense were the clouds. Usually, this would trigger a panic attack thinking whether the flight will be able to land or not. But since the captain had already announced that the flight will be landing shortly, I sat reassured and home-sweet-home isn’t too far now.
A few seconds later, the flight started experiencing quite a lot of turbulence. It almost felt as if we were riding a bullock-cart on one of our good ol’ muddy-kachcha roads in India. Now, those who have traveled frequently by air know that turbulences are common in airplanes and they die out pretty soon, often within seconds. My co-passenger (sitting beside me) though was surely not a frequent flier as was evident with the look of terror on his face and suffocatingly-tight grip on the arm-rest that had turned his knuckles white. He was ready to pray one last time and even gave me one of those ‘now-would-be-a-good-time-for-you-to-pray-too’ look.
About a minute filled with turbulence and tightly gripped arm-rests plus and my neighbor’s terror-filled expressions --the radio crackled to life and the captain announced with some slight jitter in his voice, “Ladies and gentlemen, due to the unexpectedly rough weather over vizag airport, we will not be able to land there today and we are now enroute to Chennai, where we shall decide the next course of action”. That’s it, I almost felt God smiling up at me and ticking away a point on his list of ‘Smaran’s patience test’. My smile faded away at the bat of an eyelid to match the weather outside (read: dark and gloomy). Agony and anger filled up inside me as other passengers too started their trend of long exhales, shrugs and sighs.
The flight landed 45 minutes later at the Chennai airport. We all waited patiently inside the plane as we were not allowed to disembark and walk into the airport. Although some passengers (including me) did get out in the pretext of feeling ‘suffocated’ inside …I even took a small stroll around our rather small aircraft which ended with the chief-cabin-crew lady glaring at me with her huge bindi on her forehead that made her look like a Hindu-demon-Goddess. The pilot and the passengers were hoping that the storm in Vizag would die down and we would be on our way back without further delay. Sadly, this did not happen. The weather over Vizag airport was only getting worse. We eventually were allowed to switch our cell-phone back on. This was when the plane erupted in a cacophony of calls, with each passenger calling up their near and dear ones to inform them about the situation. I could distinctly figure out the same sentence (plane could not land in vizag…we are in Chennai now) being repeated in 5 different languages. It was actually pretty cool :)
About an hour and another round of refreshments later, we were finally told that we would be accommodated in a hotel (courtesy Air India) in Chennai and that we would be flown out to Vizag on the same flight the next day.
We were taken into the Chennai air terminal and were asked to collect our bags from the claiming area. Another shock/ patience-test waited for me here as I discovered to my mounting sadness, that my main bag (check-in) had not traveled in the flight as it should have. At this point, my patience level had overshot the boiling point. I was at peace with myself…..basically because there was absolutely NOTHING I could do about it. After having lodged an official complaint for missing baggage, I was whisked away to a ‘three star’ hotel which from the outside looked like my school. It was painted in a weird bright yellow, that is pretty reminiscent in the buildings of Chennai. All meals, I was told were courtesy of Air India. This, my friends was the best piece of news I had received in the past three days. I immediately and shamelessly gave a big grin to the front desk guy as soon as he said the food was free. Hehe.
The rooms, thankfully were really nice and had all the basic amenities including those tiny complimentary shampoo bottles that I so love to use. I have this habit of using the shampoo and based on the smell, I would guess from which shampoo bottle was this so called ‘sample’ taken.
Over the next 19 hours, I did not venture out into the city of Chennai (which I would have loved to), I slept and got over my jet lag, gleefully devoured the paid-for-mutton-biryani and chicken chettinad (reminding me of my roommate Vivekananda Reddy’s own recipe) for lunch and dinner and almost finished my novel that I had started reading in Frankfurt Airport.
My co-passengers, who I kept bumping into in the resturaunt, looked somehow thrilled at the fact that they were in a new town and did not have to pay a penny for it. And none of them, had ventured out of the hotel. Ha!
We finally were taken to the airport the next day at around 8am in an old, rickety mini-bus that was noisier than the airplane’s turbines itself.
I finally made it to my destination around noon, minus my main baggage, and almost leapt into mom’s arms with such force that she almost tumbled over.
And so, I came to the end of a missed-flight, Delhi’s-cheap-hotel-staying, turbulence-experiencing, free-food-gorging, noisy-airconditionless-bus-riding journey that led me to my home two whole days behind schedule.
It was an experience of a lifetime and I will pray that none of my friends ever run into such a situation.

Special thanks to:
The New Delhi Air India staff for their utter chaotic handling of their passengers.
The new Terminal 3 at New Delhi airport for their malfunctioning screens
The AirIndia staff (NewDelhi again) Mr.Harpal who made sure I got a ride to the nearest hotel for a ridiculously high taxi tariff.
My NewDelhi-Vizag flight captain, for having ‘tried my best’ to land at Visakhapatnam
And the ever-efficient and alert AirIndia Baggage staff for failing to load all but my suitcase into the flight.

Scores:
God’s patience-testing game: 0
Smaran                               : 1

HA!

Flight-home : PART 1

Yeah…so I finally reached Home sweetest home (read: Visakhapatnam, India)on 21st May, a whole two days AFTER I was supposed to reach- after a taxing and arduous journey that tested my patience to the highest possible limit.
The adventures began after I landed in New Delhi’s newly built Terminal 3 which is being touted as one of the best airport terminals in the world. Well, I for one would like to beg to differ. The terminal apart from being all swanky and shiny, has it’s own set of design flaws. For one, if you need to get from the International terminal on the first floor to the domestic flights terminal on the second floor, then you have no other option but to cram yourself into a small elevator along with other i-want-to-go-first passengers. The lift itself is tiny and can hardly fit three passengers and two luggage carts. Apart from the Bonsai design, it also happens to travel at a speed that would make a desert-road-crossing-armadillo glow with pride at his own speed.
Then after the passengers finally make it to the domestic flight terminal, the boarding of the flights span three floors. My flight being on the ground-minus-one floor for which I had to travel almost a mile and take four escalators to get to. With all the twists and the turns of the path, I was almost at one point- led to believe that I was entering the ‘Chakravyuh’ out of which there was no way out.
An error on the terminals countless Television sets (that display the flight’s status), resulted in me missing my connecting flight to my home. Imagine my shock when I was told the next Air India flight was only the next day (24 hours later). So I had to make my own arrangements for lodging in a city where I hardly knew a soul (no…AirIndia did NOT freakin put me in a hotel on their account). The hotel search itself was filled with sweat, lots of shoulder-shoving, lot of tanning and a whole herd of Delhi’s famous expletives.
Spending a night in a so called ‘guest-house’ I again set out to the airport the next day at 3:30am. I had to go through a lot of tussling and arguing to ascertain my eligibility of being given a free seat on that day’s flight. The authorities (let me take a pause here and unabashedly tell you that The Air India staff at Delhi’s Terminal 3 are undoubtedly one of the worst managed and co-coordinating staffs I have seen) finally gave me a seat and said that I won’t be required to re-check in my luggage (I had checked it in for the previous day’s flight…the one I missed) and that It will be automatically loaded since I am boarding the flight.
I was one of the last people to be handed the ticket and I imagine I broke Usain Bolt’s world 100metere records about thrice on my way to make it to the flight. The plane took off after about half-an-hour’s delay and I was finally on my way to my final destination. I was excited to be visiting my family after almost a year and was smiling widely for a very long time until my co-passenger started giving me the stares thinking I was some maniac who was going to do something bad and was being happy about it.
Little did I know that I had more adventures in store and that my journey was not going to end in such a smooth fashion….
I think I’ve slightly overshot the word-limit on this blog, beyond which people tend to either start dozing off or leave the blog page to rather see what Rakhi Sawant is doing these days. So I will continue this blog in another part…that will be coming out very soon…(not that anyone in this world cares at all…. Hehe).
Until then..
Peace!

My Weather Woes

I gazed out at the sky one afternoon to see Mr.Sun shining away to glory. It was mid-April and I thought to myself “well,it looks pretty sunny so there’s no need to wear the extra hoodie”, and I stroll out happily humming a tune of a song by Westlife.
I rushed back inside fifteen minutes later having frozen my hands off my body and shivering intensely. The temperature outside was freezing even with the sun shining brightly.
That was just one of my encounters with the weird temperature phenomenon that residents of Rolla keep experiencing from time to time.
There have been so many instances, when the weather has been hot enough for me to have to switch on the air-conditioner in the afternoon. But the same evening, the mercury decides to plummet like a stone and we end up turning our heaters on. Allright, so I am new to this place and even to this country. I had researched enough about the weather in Rolla, but frankly- nothing had prepared me for days when the temperatures fluctuated like a sine wave.
I mean, wasn’t summer supposed to have arrived by now and started frying car-roofs and our heads? I even went and bought myself a nice pair of flip-flops (a branded one) one the second day of April but I have had almost no chance to put-them to use so far. I might as well sell them off on e-bay and hopefully make some profit (with some clever marketing techniques).
It sometimes even feels as if God has handed over the weather-department to an imbecile who loves fiddling with the Rolla-weather-knob. And I bet he has that evil smile on his face every time a Rolla resident scurries into his house to pick up a hoodie or an umbrella.
And now we’re experiencing torrential rain? In the last week of April? Wow! The only guys who benefit from this kind of weather fluctuations are the weather-guys who have more work and thus earn more during this period. Is it all because of the so-called ‘Global Warming’ that the world is talking about and having expensive conferences on tropical islands but actually end up doing nothing about it? Maybe.
Possible side effects of this kind of weather include: loud cursing while looking at the sky, have a permanent scorn on your face, venturing out wearing a hoodie with an umbrella dangling from the your shirt, not being able to decide what kind of footwear to buy/wear and possible near-hypothermia amongst others.

End-sem-terror!

Well, another lengthy snowy spring semester is almost nearing completion at Missouri S&T, as we see the trees sprouting new leaves and the grass growing greener by the day. The spring is bringing with it the bright and beautiful tulips, the sweet smell of warm grass and of course- A MYRIAD OF ASSIGNMENTS AND TESTS.

Oh yeah! The ‘torturous test and assignment filled period’ is rearing its ugly head at us again with its deep-crimson eyes and a devilish smile. It’s that time of the semester again when the professors are relentless in doling out assignment after assignment and when they don’t even care if we have an exam that very same day.

Just as I begin to appreciate the warm climate and the sparkling Schuman lake view outside my window, the darkness of the tests and the projects clouds over my head and throws my mood back into that deep dark pit of ‘academic terror’.

Students now begin to realize that they aren’t anymore in a position to ignore the assignments until a few hours before the submission deadline because we have far too many assignments to be completed.

The coffee sales go up as students load themselves up with caffeine, in their quest to stay up through the night. Sometimes, I feel there’s a new Newton’s law in town, that says “the toughness (read: degree of solvability) of each assignments is directly proportional to the duration of the semester completed so far.”

The pressure is building up and each student is dead worried about his grades now. He or she will be thinking about various strategies to better their grades

This is the time when those super-studious individuals who score straight A’s and still say “But I didn’t study at all for that test ..I don’t know how I got so many bad marks” can be yelled back at with guiltless hatred and can be passed the ‘rude finger’ gestures.

I myself am tied down with three assignment submissions on a single day followed by an exam two days later. I thought about writing on a more entertaining topic this week…but my mind is so ‘academicated’ right now that I wasn’t able to write about anything else.

I fail to understand this merciless semester-ending treatment wherein we are all put in ‘pressure pot’ situations and the stress-levels rocket up to the skies.

Do feel free to contact me if you have any bright ideas on ‘how to raise a dead grade’ or any such related material. Your ideas will always be welcome. NOTE: Lame remedies like ‘work hard and you’ll get there’ or ‘don’t worry about the grades…they’re useless’ will not be appreciated, and might earn the ire of the writer of this article.

So, if you happen to bump into an unshaven guy scurrying around campus into the library or the nuclear engineering building, just ignore him and tell yourself that it’s just another guy who has been engulfed in the flames of the end-sem-stress .

Wish I could wish you luck for your exams/tests/assignments/presentations/projects/other ugly terms, but I myself need all the luck I can garner and yes, I am selfish bastar

The Chronicles of the Indian Railways

Episode 1: My APPY story

So, we all know about how convenient the Indian Railways network is when it comes to visiting our ‘but-I’ve –never-met-them-before’ relatives in Cochin, or the great-grand-father in Bhopal. The Indian trains are a vehicle for all occasions, all age-groups, and all seasons. It does not discriminate based on caste, creed, sex , the density of your facial hair or how hard you can sneeze in public.
Having grown up in India and having changed over nine educational institutions due to our constant shifting all over the country, because of my Dad’s transferable job- I’ve had more than my share of adventures with the Indian railways.
I started traveling alone for the first time (on a regular basis) when I was in my college. I had shifted to another city and was living in a hostel. So, come holidays, I’d gleefully pack up my ‘stuff’ in a bag or two and head home to eat my mom’s hand-made parathas and ‘gaajar ka halwa’.
So, there was this one time when I was heading home for my winter vacations, when all the guys in the hostel had unanimously decided to turn into bears and go into hibernation. The Guys really started competing fiercely in the ‘who-can-sleep-longer’ competition which became a rage during the winters.
This incident revolves around the soda called ‘Appy-fizz’. I don’t know how many of you have heard about the drink ‘Appy’ (Apple juice) but I think it was quite popular. Well, it sure was popular with my taste buds since I used to gulp down at least one pack a day (one pack a day is high considering the fact I was in hostel and the finances were required to be managed very sharply…sharply enough to make any gujju proud). So, about a month before my journey date, this new version of ‘Appy’ called ‘Appy fizz’ had come out that just mixed the appy drink with soda and came out with a bubbling-fizzy version of Appy. Needless to say, I fell in love with it. Since, it was priced more than twice the normal appy drink since it came in a bigger bottle, I used to have it rarely. The train journeys home were always a chance for me to spend lavishly since I knew my ‘funds’ would get refilled as soon as I got home. 
So I happily bought the bottle of that golden fizzy drink right before boarding the train. As always, with me and with most other guys in the country, I checked who my co-passengers were and to my utter disappointment (as usual), I found that I was literally surrounded by aunties. In fact, I was the only other guy in the bunch of eight seats in mys section of the coach. Oh! The other male was a eight month old baby happily gargling away his own spit on his mother’s lap.
So as with all Indian Aunties, these aunties, although seemingly from different regions of India , started yapping away in full glory with an enthusiasm that would have put a pair of 13 year old girls to shame.
At that time I belonged to the under-privileged population of the society that did NOT own an i-pod which served as their best friends in the aforementioned situations. So I sat there looking at the passing farmlands out of the ‘window seat’. I suddenly felt thirsty and twist-opened my bottle of Appy Fizz to have a sip or two. As I did so, one of the aunty’s eyes fell on the bottle. Her momentary glance, quickly returned in under three seconds and turned into a full-fledged glare.
The conversation that followed between me and the glaring-aunty will be written in direct speech in the lines below to maximize their impact :

Aunty: “Beta, what is that you are drinking”…. She said this in a tone that clearly had hints of annoyance.
Me: It’s a new drink aunty. It’s called Appy Fizz.
Aunty: But it looks like whisky no?!
Me: No aunty, It’s just apple juice with soda in it.
Aunty: (clearly not convinced) It surely looks like whisky to me, give me and I will taste it and tell you.
Me: (appalled at aunty’s suspicion) But Aunty, it’s a cold-drink soda. It’s available in most shops around the country.
Aunty: Then let me taste it no?! You won’t have any praablem if I had a sip of it no?!
Me: Ok. Here you go. (And I handed over the drink to the lady).
Aunty : (first sniffs it and puts up distorted looking expression …then she very reluctantly takes a sip …a sip that wouldn’t even be enough for a sparrow to get a taste of that liquid in his tastebuds) AAK!! This IS BEEEEER! ….ayyyyayyooo….
The glaring-Aunty then managed to 'rainbow' (yeah I used it as a verb) her expressions that ranged from shock, to appalled to sheer surprise.

Now, I don’t know how she knew what beer tasted like, or how she quickly converted her precious accusation of my drink being ‘brandy’ to calling it ‘beeeeeeer’…but I surely was confused and did give her my best stare.
At the aunty’s shriek, all the other aunties raised their eyebrows so high that for a moment I thought they heard my glaring-aunty say that I was Rakhi Sawant.
I had had enough nonsense for the night, so I dutifully took my bottle back from her and tried explaining for the next 20 minutes that my drink contained absolutely no alcohol or beeeeer in it. I showed her the ingredients list, showed her the green dot in the square that indicated that the consumable product was vegetarian and many other things.
Glaring-Aunty finally got over her shock and let me stay in my berth and did not make me leave. She however did threaten me by saying “I shall tell yaar parents when they come at station”.
I couldn’t believe what had happened in the past half hour and I couldn’t stop laughing about it later. I did manage to consume my ‘beeeeer’ when the lights turned out and disposed off the bottle as soon as the last drop was in my mouth.
So guys n gals, next time you board the good ol’ Indian Railways for a trip home, make sure you buy ‘safe’ products that have ‘anti-aunty-glaring’ ingredients in it….otherwise you might end up in a soup like your truly. :)

Peace out!

Facebook'ed

How many of you get up in the morning and the first thing you do is check your Facebook account? How many of you check your Facebook accounts at least 10 times a day? I can go on with these kind of questions but I’d be just beating around the bush. Truth be told, I too am a huge fan of the popular social-networking website ‘The Facebook’ and am quite addicted to it. In fact, I might answer all the above questions In the affirmative too. So if you think I am going to go on and trash about Facebook saying how it is slowly becoming a part of us more than television or how it is almost as addictive as drugs, then don’t worry because I am NOT.
I have done quite some reading about the birth of this website and its evolution into one of the most visited websites on the planet today and I cannot help but be in awe. I mean, look at the facts here people: A 19 year old ‘computer geek’ launches a small website out of his Harvard dorm in 2004 and within 6 years, the website sits at the top of the ‘social networking’ bunch of websites, enjoys the loyalty of 57 million (and growing at the rate of 250,000 new members each day) users from across the globe, is worth $82.29 billion as of today and is one of the biggest internet companies in the world. Those numbers are really hard to ignore and one can’t help but gawk at them, like I do.
The popularity of the website has been rising and does not see any signs of slowing down. As if this was not enough- the movie ‘The Social Network’ which was based on the story of birth of Facebook went on to become one of the favorites of the critics and also earned a total of eight Oscar nominations. The movie that shows the founder of Facebook – Mark Zuckerberg in grey shades though out the movie, engulfed in lawsuits almost as soon as Facebook is launched and as a crude and unsocializing person, has even become one of the frontrunners for this year’s Oscars. The movie, even though about computer programming and coding doesn’t really have an awkward moment filled with techie-gobbledygook. It is fast and ruthless and has some great performances by the lead actors which only compliments the movie’s credibility.
The success of the movie, which hardly showed anything good about Mark Zuckerberg didn’t even manage to put a dent into the company’s image and Facebook continues to encompass the internet and its population. On the contrary, people like my parents who were unaware what Facebook and the whole ‘social-networking’ ruckus was about now know about it. And like them, more people who earlier didn’t know about Facebook now do know about it, ultimately ending up at the website’s gates to become a member and start their ‘socializing’.
Adding another feather to the cap, and again boosting Facebook’s image, was Mark Zuckerberg being named the ‘Person of the Year’ by TIME magazine or the year 2010. He beat out competition from the likes of Hamid Karzai- the President of Afghanistan and Julian Assanage- the controversial founder of the international whistle blowing Wikileaks organization.
Zuckerberg has been described as a torchbearer for a whole generation and I cannot disagree with that. He has managed to connect a twelfth of the world’s population though his single website, and has more or less, changed the way people interact and relate with each other today. We had heard of couch potatoes, bookworms, video-game addicts and soon might have to come up with a new term for people addicted to facebook. Maybe ‘facebookED’ might be a good term to describe that. Not giving a Facebook account today is scorned upon by teenagers and can lead you to being ‘unfriend’ed from society itself. Words like ‘Poke’, ‘Tag’ and ‘Unfriend’ have shot to fame because of this social-networking behemoth. Facebook has provided a new method of socializing and it’s all on the internet. The person doesn’t even need to get up from his laptop, doesn’t need to shake hands (can instead just ‘poke’) and doesn’t even need to be in the same room as the person he’s meeting with -to be able to socialize.
It took me a couple of hours to finish writing this article, which included researching all the facts and figures related to Facebook. And am eager to see if there has been any activity on my Facebook page or whether anyone has ‘liked’ my latest profile picture. So with that, I am sub-consciously directing your attention to your own Facebook pages. Go get ‘Facebook’ed!!

2011....resoluuuuuuutions!!

FIRST of all....to all those whom I have not wished already-- HAPPY NEW YEAR!! :)

now....
well...
Another year has come and gone....
I wanted to blog about how the year was and all that but that will be a looooong blog and having been on vacation since two weeks now has resulted in me becoming amazingly and 'involuntarily' lazy.

So, I'll just go ahead and write down my list of resolutions for the year 2011....
I'm not one of those pessimistic persons who say- 'another year....whats going to be different?! ...years come and they go...!". NO!!..I am an optimistic guy and will say "One more year....full of twists and turns, surprises and shocks, adventures and incidents....hope the goods things far outnumber the bad ones!".

So here are my resolutions:

1- Get fitter! (specifically-- improve my ever-falling stamina ..)
2- Gain at least 1.5 kgs of muscle before my sister's wedding and my trip to India. (gain muscle and not FAT...they're two different things....but my mom and most others hopelessly use them interchangably...)
3- Initiate Parkour 3.0 ....get better, better and better at Parkour. Possibly shoot my first PK video in US.
4- Go Skydiving!!! yeeeeeeeeeeeeeah!!
5- Like most other students in the world--- " do well in studies." (I know that most of you must be rolling your eyes up at this one...lol)
6- Get a Tattoo.
6- most important::::: LOVE the people I love today EVEN MORE!
blah
blah



20-adopt a mosquito...


lol....
just kidding!


that's all I guess...

lemme know which ones you think are possible...give the numbers. :)

Peace!!