Sunday, September 21, 2008

Rendezvous with the past

does it some times happen with you that more than one totally unplanned things happen around the same time all of them still related to one common thing?!

ok lemme explain...about 2-3 days back, i some how suddenly got this urge to watch "Rockford", the Nagesh Kuknoor movie. I have been wanting to watch it for quite some time, because it is about this kid in a residential school. A setting familiar to me, courtesy my own 7-year stint in a Sainik School. Finally now i decided to act, managed to get hold of the movie and watched it. The movie itself was just about OK, those were early days for Nagesh, so technically it was not all that great but you could still see these little heart warming moments that you often come to assocaite with his movies. And yes, I could relate to quite a few things in the movie and it was a nice little trip down memory lane.

About a couple of days later, i was driving some where on a lazy weekend and i get a call from this friend from my school with whom i have been in touch on and off. He tells me that there is a school old boys' meet happening in bangalore that same day and he has been co-ordinatng with some 7-8 other guys who will all be coming and asks me to come too. That was a pleasant surprise to me and I instinctively decided to go. 3-4 such meets happen every year and it has been 10 years since i left school. For various reasons and sometimes for no reason I had not been to a single meet till now!!!!

So i reached the venue of the meet, Officer's mess at DRDO township in Bangalore. I was the first of my batchmates to be there and started searching for familiar faces in the decent crowd that had gathered there. Cellphones anyway have made life easier these days, so i gave up on the search and called up my friend and he said they were still on the way. "Come on guys, we are from a Sainik School!! Punctuality is supposed to be ingrained in us from the time we were 10 yrs old, sometimes by well meaning teachers and at other by screaming, cane wielding army men!", I said to myself. Some more roaming around and I finally found a couple of faces i could recognise, one was a bathcmate and another a junior. And others started trcikling in. Thats when i really started to go back into the past. Majority of my batchmates who came there were from my house - Chalukya House! Sid was there (he is Major. Siddarth now), Kitty, Mallan, Anand then there were Tuffy, Chacha, Mahesh - one batch juniors from my house again!!

Ah it had been 10 years since i had seen any of these people. And these were the people who had a role in making me what I am today. I spent probably the most important 7 years of my life with these guys all the time - 24X7!! These people know some of the most embarassing things about you that u probably did as a 10 yr old kid!!! There was a function going on there, but we went out, and remembered some very fond memories of the good old days - about other friends, teachers, hostel superintendents and house masters, seniors and juniors, school routines, the old slang...man it was fun!!!

It indeed was an evening very well spent and took away some refreshed memories from there...and i couldnt stop smiling all the way on my drive back home...guess old memories tend to do that to you!!

cheers,
chandru

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

My attempt at gymming - yet again!!

first things first, i think i have taken a bit of a literary liberty with the word 'gymming'...not sure the word exists, nonetheless you get what i mean :), purists be damned!!!

There is always a time in one's life when you take a long look at a full sized mirror and think that you could do with some repair and maintenance work on that body of yours. There was a time when i used to be very lean, almost like a skeleton and now even though I am not really heavy, I have accumulated some fat around, thanks to desk jobs in air-conditioned offices, comforts of the lift, pizzas and all sort of junk and good old laziness. So this desire to work out and burn the fat has always been there. But what has been sporadic is the actual willingness to go to a gym and walk the talk. In the last 1.5 yrs, this has happened for about 4 times. And each time it has lasted for exactly a week :P

Now I dont know if it happens to everybody, but with me after every session during the initial days, i feel very proud of myself and as if I have acheived a great deal. And so I decide to reward myself with a break from the work out for the the next day!! Then one of these days, the one day break becomes a big barrier and I dont feel like starting it again the next day, and then goes the whole enthu down the drain. And thats how another of my attempts at "being fit" ends.

So, like I mentioned in the title of this post, I am currently on my fifth attempt. This time I have raised the stakes a notch higher. I have taken up annual membership of the gym I am going to and have paid up quite a sum towards the full year's membership charges. Now I am hoping that the thought of having invested so much will drag me to the thread mill. But knowing myself as well as I do, I wouldnt bet on even that keeping me motivated enough :)

As of today, it has been about 15 days since I registered and I think I have done about 7-8 sessions. Not bad going by my previous attempts. Lets see what is the fate this time.

By the way, guess where I should have been right now instead of sitting on my laptop typing this post!! Yep, in the gym, lifting those stupid weights making weird faces ;)

So there you go, its not difficult to guess where this is headed. Anyways, lets hope I succeed this time. I sure will keep you posted.

cheers,
Chandru

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

The Great Indian Cricket Tamasha!!!

have been wanting to start a blog for ages now, even created blogs - twice - but never could get myself to write anything. There are other reasons also, lemme see if i can put them down some other time. But here i am now, my first ever ramblings. And IPL probably isnt too bad a place to start with.

I had been to the opening ceremony-cum-inaugural match. First things first, the opening ceremony was brilliant. Laser show was good, fire crackers awsome!! The Washington Redskins Cheerleaders were there too for good measure. Although i must add, i am sure this wouldnt have been anywhere close to being as spectacular as some of the other opening ceremonies, say Olympics for example. All the captains were paraded before the crowd and no prizes for guessing who got the loudest cheers!! Sachin-God-Tendulkar! Now this is the reason I am sceptical about the concept of city based teams working in India just yet. Dada also got huge cheers when he stepped out for a round of practice. Here cricketers are demi-gods transcending the boundaries of team, city and pretty much everything else. Compare that with fierce home support that city based teams in the English Premier League draw. Leeds United are among the most supported teams by attendances in the stadium and they currently play their football only in League One, which is two levels below the premier league. So how well IPL does in that respect? Lets wait and watch.

And the cricket itself on the opening day was a disappointment. I have not committed my 100% loyalties to any team yet, but for the obvious reason that I live here in Bangalore, I am rooting for the Bangalore Royal Challengers. They had a disaster of a match first up. First conceding a mammoth 220 odd runs and then being bundled out for 82!! I for sure dint enjoy it one bit, although Brendom Macullum displayed some breathtaking display of attacking batting. And it was almost hilarious to see Rahul Dravid and Wasim Jaffer walk out for the royal challenegers' pursuit of 220 runs in 20 overs!!! I like Dravid, he is in fact one of my favourite cricketers, but then it was visibly so out of place that situation.

All in all the whole first day of IPL left me with mixed feelings. It has only just started and great things are being said about its own future and also how it might end up harming the future of the other forms of cricket. Should be interesting, these 44 days of IPL. Lets see how it all develops from here.

I will try to keep writing about various things...again lets see how it goes :)

thanks for stopping by...

cheers,
Chandru