This space is about my first boss, Shrikant Choubey, who has now officially revealed that he would be moving on to his new assignment in a few days... Although we all knew about this, his announcement was something which I personally wanted to get delayed... Not that he is a great friend or anything like that, which makes me too attached to him; just that there are a few people with whom I would always want to work; and definitely Shrikant is one of those...
They say first bosses have the biggest effect on one's professional personality in the long run... We all try to be like our first bosses... We all tend to think what would they have done in a similar situation... We all want to follow their footsteps... We all learn from them, remember their first appreciations, and their first firings, their directions as well as misdirections...
It was an honor to have Shrikant as my first boss...

Bangalore trip

Seems like I am really liking this idea of using the virtual space more often than not... My blog entries below are really giving me a great way to recollect the details of some of the memorable events in last few months, and this also tells me that I should not miss any in this blog... I missed writing about my cousin sis' marriage, two engagements of my closest friends, my trip to nagarjuna sagar lake, my feelings on my bro's 10th results, my office outings (especially to Lahari resorts) etc. etc. this year... Just hoping I would be able to write more and more events and that should help me feel good when I read back after a few years...

Now, this is about the Bangalore trip last weekend. I reached on Sat evening and it was nice to get the welcome by Chaurashiyas, Mittals, Kothari and Goyal... The only point to be noted here is that there is no "s" at the end of Kothari & Goyal as of now... Here I will be just writing down a few details in chronological order that happened over my time spent with them:

• People greeted me with a nawabi styled welcome.
• Once again Deva failed miserably, when I gave him the "remote control of my life". The night was supposed to be full of Whiskey; and all he could muster up was just two pegs for both of us.
• I had some paneer and sewaiya which was prepared by the ladies that afternoon.
  
• Four men were sleeping besides me that night, which reminded me that I must try and find some girl in near future.
• Next day morning, Ankita prepared a nice tea for me...
  
• We went to Hoge Nakkal and I had some of the best Vadas in the last 25 years of my life on the way at a restaurant.
• Without being specific so that I am not labeled a racist, Hoge Nakkal did not have the kind of people I normally like to see.
• The dash under the water fall on the cane-boat was nice.
• Some of us changed clothes on the way back to Bangalore in the car itself.
• Our lunch was at 5pm
• Deva and Shakku were so irritating that Ankita, who had plans to come to Delhi and Bagalore again in August just to see them again, is reconsidering her options and has already started thinking of reasons to give. In fact, she may not even come to India just to ensure at least the distance between India and Abu Dhabi is maintained between herself and the irritants.
• Ankita prepared another tea for me on my request, which was strongly protested by the women rights activist, Maa Shakuntala Devi(l), but my perseverance won at the end
• Kothari was not sure why his face and throat were swelling, if they really were swelling. Some people said it was ghengua, while others just dismissed the thought.
  
• We all went to Royal Orchids, where surprisingly Piyuss had some sort of membership and we sat at the Gazebo.
• I was told that Mittal's love story wasn't as simple as everyone had thought. I need more details on this, since I had missed this part on Saturday.
• Mittal told me that I had called him "An Egoistic" on the last day of our college, and that had been trying to correct the same since then.
• We all played a game to ask questions to anybody in our group. While I asked the real questions, others just thought they knew the people already. Possibly we now know where Kothari belongs to and calls as his home place(somewhere in Nepal).
  
• Donno about others, but at least I spoke to Ankita for the first time for a longer session than a few seconds/minutes that evening. Others seemed to know her already.
  
• Ankita tried to do a bit of face reading, which was only 50% correct.
  
• The food was great at the Gazebo especially the Chicken and desserts.
• After coming home, I was guilty of playing my part in damaging Shakku's lungs.
  
• We watched the CDs of Piyuss & Shakku's wedding. Was great to see a good coverage of myself. But not too great to see that my shirt was completely wet with sweat. I wanted to copy the CDs but forgot.
• Mittals brought a nice gift for Chaurashiyas, which was tested by Deva, the techie. I wonder, when will I start getting such gifts??
  
• Again a night with four Men; and again the same thought as in point number 3 above.
  
• Next early morning, Mittals, Kothari & Deva left for their destinations.
• I also left for my Bangalore office that morning.
  
• I came back at about 8pm and found Piyuss and Shakku waiting for me. We all went to Royal Orchids again, but to their Chinese Restaurant this time. Incidentally, Shakku had come back pretty early from the office (her normal timings are 4pm to 1am) so as to spend more time with me.
• I tried to teach the Chaurashiya family about how to use ChopSticks (something I had picked up well in Vietnam and hadn't forgotten), without much success.
• Piyuss ordered a nice white wine for us, and Shakku taught me how to drink it. It was disgusting to know the correct way of drinking wine.
• The food was again great especially the rice and Thai curry.
• It was embarrassing while leaving the place Shakku was holding both mine and Piyuss' arms.
• We all changed clothes after coming home and went to the roof. Maybe we were drunk, but we called Shashwat, Deva, Kothari, Toi, Dhvani and tried to make them feel as if we were really really really drunk.
• Again guilty of playing my part, this time for both Piyuss & Shakku, in the lungs damage exercise.
• We did our usual bitching on our regular subjects.
  
• When we came down, it seemed that the abstinence of Chaurashiyas was getting too much for them to handle; still they made me sleep besides their bed and thus had to keep abstaining at least for another night..
  
• We slept very late, maybe at 1:30am after I was told that I had fallen asleep while talking in the middle of a sentence.
• I had a flight to catch in the morning, so I left early.
  

I hope I have covered most of the events. If something is missed now and I remember it later, I will keep editing and adding to the above.

At the end of it all, I came to know a lot about Ankita; lesser about Vikas & Kothari; nothing much about Deva, Shakku and Piyuss (getting too much used to them now)... But enjoyed in their company as always...
Love you all guys,
Muahhh to all the Men named above and Namaste to all the Women named above.

Our daily conversations

She had called twice... My cell phone was on silent; I came to know only about an hour later when I saw the missed calls... And I immediately called back my mom, or maa as I have started calling her in the past year or so...

Even though we talk daily now, she would always ask about my day, my food, office, workload, friends, health, exercise, next trip to delhi etc. etc.... I would also try to ask her about her day, her daily chores, about her husband and daughter, her plans for Dee's engagement... Even though the answers to most of these questions are same and repeated everyday from both sides, none of us seem to stop asking...

When I was small and cute and had red kashmiri cheeks, I remember calling her Gaatajio... Probably that was a twisted form of Geeta-ji, which I heard from everybody calling her... I used to wake up in late afternoons and would start crying if Gaatajio wasn't around... I would look for her and start screaming Gatajiiooo if she left me without her company in a public gathering... In my class 1, my elder sister taught me that I had to stop calling Gaatajio as Gaatajio and call her mummy instead... I was also taught to start sleeping in a separate room and not with mummy... I assumed I had grown up... I couldn't cry from then on if mummy wasn't around...

It has been a few years since I am outside home mostly... And if I don't speak to maa for more than a day, it feels something's missing... Sometimes I wonder if it's really worth being so far away from her... I get to see her once in 2-3 months... Is that enough, I ask myself??? Maybe that's what makes me want to speak more to her... and ask her the same routine questions, again and again; sometimes i repeat questions even within a single converstaion... I always thought she felt strength with our daily talks... But now, I know it's the other way round... Talking to maa brings a calmness in me...

I am going to see her at the end of this month when I go home for Dee's engagement... Waiting for the month to get over...