Gas cylinder & the old lady

I was reading the paper and was shocked. How did it go wrong? How did it happen? I didn't think that this might happen to me. The reason for this happened a couple of days ago.
         It was around 7 o clock in the night.I was planning to go out and a lady knocked at the door.She told she was from Indane gas agency and they were there to check the regulator for each and every house. As a dutiful citizen, i asked for her id card and other details.She showed the details and there was a paper cutting showing that because of an accident , indane has planned to check all regulators in the city.She showed us how to clean the regulator and how to check the life of regulator.She checked the regulator and said it's working fine.
          She told, at any point of time, the gas cylinder won't use 10% of the gas settled at the bottom and she has a pressure valve which when fitted, will suck the residual gas in the cylinder. The price of the instrument was Rs.1000 and it has ISI certifications. Performance improvement and increasing productivity of the cylinder, my corporate brain told. After finishing all the formalities, she gave warranty card and voucher  and left.
     Couple of days after, i was reading the paper and the first page read " Innocent customers cheated by guys posing as Indane distributors" and the "first paragraph" happened.
 The climax of the story happened later and i was left with lot of unanswered. An old lady in the flat didn't believe the indane lady and didn't buy anything. Nevertheless to mention, the indane lady seemed like normal government official, had vouchers,brouchers , bills and had warranty cards for regulators.
How did the old lady in the flat found out that the indane lady was a fraud?

She had only one liner for answer, just like sujatha's dialogue in a Shankar movie.

"WHICH GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL WORK BEYOND 5 O CLOCK"

However much we may be sophisticated , there are some things in which we can't beat the old school of thought guys. Another lesson learnt in another day. A 1000 rs lesson though :) 

Facebook syndrome

This post is not about what to do or what not to do in Facebook. This post is not about "any" type of disease that may come with facebook. This post is completely dedicated to special guys whom i will call hereby as "Facebook Idiots".
                          You may have encountered this scene a few years back . In a busy market area, a poor lady will be standing on the street and distributing pamphlets. The paper will proclaim that there is some organisation collecting money for poor children and if you don't donate money or don't forward the pamphlet to ten people, you will die instantly. A guy named X did the same and died of blood vomit, it will add. Most people on the street won't collect that pamphlet.I was curious enough to collect it and keep it and try what happens. But i didn't get that chance.
                If you are wondering what is the relevance between the above useless story and facebook. Well, both are same. A post will declare the following "There is a girl who is from tirunelveli and who beat Einstein in IQ. Since she is from poor tamil nadu, the world is ignoring her. Please share this and help her."
The number of times this post is shared is equal to the number of idiots you have on your friends list.
    Everybody might have heard of FIFA world cup.Have you ever heard of VIVA world cup? Yes, there is a VIVA world cup happening in 2014 and LTTE team is participating in the world cup. I am not lying. that's what my facebook post says and lot of people like that world cup too. I guess, the winners might get one VIVA bottle for free! There are 2k likes and 500 shares for this photo.


      Another major irritant on facebook is the "advices" post. An advice post typically starts like this -  "A successful man is one who..."  and there will be some attractive photo below that advice.If you ask, do sharing these posts a criminal offence or do they warrant such criticism?   These posts are fine as long as you are in teen age for they can be forgiven and time will teach them everything . However, a 25+ year full-grown adult sharing this posts beginning with "வாழ்க்கைனா (life is a .. ) purely irritates me .
 Life has indeed become a full circle from the streetside women distributing pamphlets to spam forward mails to the "great mokkai" facebook posts.

There are many more such categories and a single blog may not be enough to list them. If you have any specific category, list it in the comments section!

100 rupees and 70 rupees

I was in a dilemma to visit a shop. The shop i wanted to visit was in 2  shopping malls and both of them were equidistant from my place. I was wondering which one to visit. After much confusion, i visited the shop in shopping mall .  After finishing the work, i started from the mall .
                         The story took a dramatic turn after this. My half baked knowledge of chennai and the take-diversions (thanks to metro work in the city) some how took me to the second shopping mall . So, i decided to go inside the mall and do window shopping.
                     One interesting thing and one irritating thing happened while i started from both the malls. 
First the irritating thing.In the second mall, the parking ticket on weekend for 3 hours was Rs.70 . Please note that that was for parking the bike. Assume that you go for a movie and keep staring at the shops on the way, you will end up paying close to 100 bucks .For car parking, i assume it might shoot up to 150 rs. The stupid common man in me says that the government should have some upper limit for parking in shopping malls. Already movie tickets are capped at 120 rs. I am sure it can work for parking tickets also. Well, there is another side to this argument. If you want , pay the amount or else, use public transport.
     The interesting thing happened near the exit gate of the first shopping mall. I was coming out and noticed an old lady asking for alms to one gentleman. As i was casually passing by, i noticed a shocking thing. Guess what? the gentleman was giving a 100 rs to the lady beggar. I was shocked.What prompted him to give 100 rs to the beggar? Perhaps, she was not a beggar? or She did some car cleaning or some other work so that the gentle man is rewarding her? With questions popping up in my mind, i crossed the old lady and after walking 10 feet, i stopped. The stupid common man in me told that i could not sleep that night if i didn't know the reason. Street culture has taught me, whenever there is a fight, you should stand in a corner and watch it. Whenever there is a rally on a road, you should watch it. So, i decided and walked to her. I asked her why he is giving you 100rs. She said , there is some function in local mosque for giving flowers or something related to flowers and hence he is giving alms when asked. A new one learnt for the day i thought.

if you are/were a chennaite , you would have guessed the shopping mall 1 &2 . One was Spencers and second one was - express avenue.

The quest for a HELMET

                 This post is about the story of a helmet. My helmet of 2 years got lost somewhere. The funny point is, it took 2 days for me to identify that i am riding bike without helmet. I tried to recall the places i visited in the last few days and tried to find it in Sherlock Holmes style. As i said, i only tried. For a man who couldn't remember what he ate in the morning, i resigned to this helmet finder task on the first day itself.
                       After couple of scoldings from wifey, i got emergency approval for buying the helmet.And the real story started from there. In a bid to show myself as a sincere helmet loser, i planned to visit bike showrooms and our roadside showrooms.I went to the Hero showroom and asked for helmet. The guy showed me with prices ranging from 800-1500. I finally selected one model and when i tried to put it on, an interesting thing happened. The helmet won't go into my head. I tried various models and nothing fitted my head.Such a big headed guy i am!
        The quest continued and i went to road side shops. they looked almost identical to the show rooms both in build and quality. However, i didn't like it. then another Honda showroom. Same story . Helmet didn't fit into my head.
              Two things came to my mind. One is the quality of the helmet. None of the helmets looked convincing enough in quality both in showrooms and in roadside shops.Not sure what the ISI quality is for. All looked like china made with some cushion stuffed in. Even costly helmets didn't look like the good ones.Costlier helmets had cooling glasses fitted and more than one moving part in the helmet. They are designed specially for the Another is the size of the helmet. Don't know why the helmet won't fit my head. Is it such a rocket science to design a helmet in varying sizes.. I am sure i am not a weird creature with a weird head.
      Finally, i got a helmet in a shop which suit my size. After showing it off to people in my desk and in office, i returned home to find that my old helmet was still in my own shelf. Considering the time and effort, i out into it, that was quite a big bulb !

Satyam-eva Jayate

I have thinking for a while to write about this topic. This topic is not about the Aamir khan program, you can be assured of that. This post is entirely dedicated to "thecinema.in" i.e. Satyam Cinemas.
                Not sure why i fell in love with this theatre. My tryst with this theatre started exactly a decade back.We were going to this theatre during our college days and some where down the line, i have become accustomed to this theatre and today, i could not even imagine seeing movie in any other theatre. Even if i go to some other theatre, i would be complaining to my wife that for extra 20rs , i can watch the movie better in satyam.
           May be the craze first started with a friend of mine who used to watch every movie in the theatre on every weekend and slowly, years later, the bug caught me. It was 2006 and the much hyped movie "Sillunu Oru Kaadal" was supposed to release that friday. A couple of our friends, determined to watch First Day First Show started at 5 o clock from our college and reached the theatre. We were shocked to see a huge crowd standing there and atlast, we got ticket for Saturday night show.
           I have another proud distinction. Have you heard anybody of getting black  ticket at Satyam cinemas? We wanted to see Anniyan movie for the second time and we went and stood in the "10rs queue". Till date, they religiously follow this 10 rupees ticket policy as per government directive.The ticket got sold and we asked some guys and got the 10rs ticket for 50rs.
       Tuesday nights were reserved for booking tickets for friday movie release. Once i shifted to pallavaram, going to Satyam became a herculean task thanks to the mount road traffic.I devised a new plan to catch a movie at Satyam. Guess what? The 8 AM show on Saturday morning!  I have to sacrifice the saturday morning sleep but that was acceptable to me.One more advantage it provided was, saturday morning tickets are easily available and you can book tickets online on wednesday morning. The peters road saravana bhavan will provide breakfast for the day.They have now stopped 8 AM show. I am not bothered since i have moved closer to the city.
    Another advantage of being in chennai is ticket prices are cheap at 120 rupees compared to bangalore. One problem with this theatre is any movie, however mokkai, it may be, will always run to packed houses on weekends.I read somewhere that  the english movie "AVATAR" ran for 100 days in Satyam. Not sure how many tamil movies managed that feat in the last few years.
After sometime, Satyam has opened multiple screens such as Escape. Still, i hate Escape and it gives me a feeling that something is missing. An apt dialogue will be that of Crazy mohan when asked how much he loves chennai and his locality Mylapore.
He replied " I love chennai and mylapore so much that i feel home sick even if i go to Mambalam or Adyar"
Ditto for me when comparing Satyam vs its other theatres.

The tale of 2 cities within Chennai!

This post is all about the tale of 2 cities. Cities which are completely different from one another. Cities which are a part of same city i.e. Chennai. Yet they continue to baffle and surprise me. For starters, i hereby declare that i have shifted from the Pallavaram-Chromepet belt to the Mambalam belt.
            One can keep on writing about them. One feeds the OMR - IT junta while the other feeds the government apice Mount road oldies. Rewind a couple of months back, on any weekend which falls immediately after the salary day, i will be working as a loadman , buying monthly groceries at a supermarket such as reliance fresh/spencers/nilgris. Rice costs 65 rs per kg in my old city and there will be lot of people standing in queue. The length of the queue will be more than the length of the queue in PDS shop which sells rice at Re 1 . Only cards and sodexo coupons will be exchanged.
          Fast track it to last week, the same loadman i.e. me, searched for reliance fresh in google map and went there on the  same weekend falling after salary day. No prizes for guessing, there was not even a single person there. As usual, the loadman did his job and returned home. Later, i came to know that the street side veggie vendors and our famous annachi shops sell the same items at very much lesser price. Good quality rice starts at 50 rs i learnt.
          Another thing was traffic. The worst traffic i had seen earlier was Velachery signal traffic. Any day you start early from office at 5 30, you can reach home early. After shifting to new home, this appavi software engineer tried it once and was royally screwed at every signal starting from tidal ,madya kailash and all other signals.Traffic experts told me later that government offices close at 5 and any travel around 6 o clock on mount road should be avoided. Another day, another lesson learnt. Try to reach velachery signal by around 8:30 and all of the 1 lakhs of software engineers will gerao the junction. With same feverish feeling, i started at 8:30 few days back and what greeted me on mount road was near empty signals(by chennai standards :) ) . Thank god, the pondy bazaar crowd don't have night life shopping habit!
      Street knowledge tells me that maids cost less here compared to the OMR belt. Mambalam neighbours give you the strange-what-creature-are-you look when you say that you work in OMR. They are more curious to know who are the members in the house while i didn't know my next door guy in my previous city.The patti next door is more curious to know whether the old lady in your house  is your mother or mother-in-law. You will find that lengthy train-like houses where you can see the toilet door from entrance and you will be amused to find a TVS 50 standing in front. Every small shop you will find some mama  bargaining for something. Inner roads are narrow and one guy jokingly said, any 1 inch deviation while walking will make some 2 wheeler to ride his bike on your back.
           Life throws up surprises and teaches you lessons even though some times, you don't have intention to learn. In one way or another, this has thrown me out of my comfort zone which i have been enjoying for years.

      

Kannadasan

One of my favourite poems. I remember reading this poem for the first time in 12th standard.  I was searching this online for quite long time and after almost 10 years, i found this again.

Still i remember this poem and my favourite lines

புகழ்ந்தால் என்னுடல் புல்லரிக் காது          

இகழ்ந்தால் என்மனம் இறந்து விடாது!         

கொள்வோர் கொள்க குரைப்போர் குரைக்க           

உள்வாய் வார்த்தை உடம்பு தொடாது

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                         காலக் கணிதம்

                         ===============

கவிஞன் யானோர் காலக் கணிதம்
கருப்படு பொருளை உருப்பட வைப்பேன்!
புவியில் நானோர் புகழுடைத் தெய்வம்
பொன்னினும் விலைமிகு பொருளென் செல்வம்
இவை சரி யென்றால் இயம்புவ தென்தொழில்
இவைதவ றாயின் எதிர்ப்பதென் வேலை
ஆக்கல் அளித்தல் அழித்தலிம் மூன்றும்
அவனும் யானுமே அறிந்தவை அறிக!
செல்வர்தன் கையிற் சிறைப்பட மாட்டேன்
பதவிவா ளுக்கும் பயப்பட மாட்டேன்

பாசம் மிகுத்தேன் பற்றுதல் மிகுத்தேன்
ஆசை தருவன அனைத்தும் பற்றுவேன்
உண்டா யின்பிறர் உண்ணத் தருவேன்
இல்லா யினெமர் இல்லந் தட்டுவேன்
வண்டா யெழுந்து மலர்களில் அமர்வேன்
வாய்ப்புறத் தேனை ஊர்ப்புறந் தருவேன்
பண்டோர் கம்பன் பாரதி தாசன்
சொல்லா தனசில சொல்லிட முனைவேன்
புகழ்ந்தால் என்னுடல் புல்லரிக் காது
இகழ்ந்தால் என்மனம் இறந்து விடாது!

வளமார் கவிகள் வாக்குமூ லங்கள்
இறந்த பின்னாலே எழுதுக தீர்ப்பு
கல்லாய் மரமாய்க் காடுமே டாக
மாறா திருக்கயான் வனவிலங் கல்லன்
மாற்றம் எனது மானிடத் தத்துவம்
மாறும் உலகின் மகத்துவம் அறிவேன்
எவ்வெவை தீமை எவ்வெவை நன்மை
என்ப தறிந்தே ஏகுமென் சாலை
தலைவர் மாறுவர் தர்பார் மாறும்
தத்துவம் மட்டுமே அட்சய பாத்திரம்

கொள்வோர் கொள்க குரைப்போர் குரைக்க
உள்வாய் வார்த்தை உடம்பு தொடாது
நானே தொடக்கம் நானே முடிவு
நானுரைப் பதுதான் நாட்டின் சட்டம்!

- கவிஞர் கண்ணதாசன்