The Mumbai Experience

Life goes on.....never looks back...

Staying jobless at home after graduation is the worst nightmare for any guy, i was not an exception. There were some jobs that we tried which shows the height of desparation in our lives. Pachu and me came across this ad for a job for freshers as trainees and went to check out more. We had this address on KR Road, it was a small entrance to a narrow staircase and there was a shabby looking office on top with lot of people moving around. A person who seemed to be in charge of everything had a look at our inexperienced resumes, made an effort to conduct a formal interview....and in 10minutes we were selected!!!!!We asked when we should report and he said we could start off then and there, and asked us if we had a two wheeler. Pachu had a hero puch at that time, and we proudly said YES. He said go and join the other group of 'trainees' and we would come to know of our scope of work. So we went out and saw that the so called trainees were all getting ready to go into the 'field', carrying huge cartons. Then we realised that it was a marketing job involving door-to-door visits, and soon our big bubble of enthu burst open. Then a guy asked us also to join them and carry some boxes downstairs...we looked at each other and decided it was time to flee.....

Empty minds are devils workshops - i had all sorts of ideas remaining unemployed, i decided to take up entrance examinations for probationary officers in nationalised banks & entrance exams for MBA. I didnt clear the bank exam but got through in MAT exam and got an admission offer from AIMA, New Delhi for MBA program. I decided to pursue my post graduation and enrolled for the distance education program. It took 2 years to finally get my MBA degree in Human Resource Management. By that time i had joined Asian Paints and was working in the admin department, i spent 3 years there, but failed to see any growth potential in the company. Pachu had joined a software firm called datacons and was already playing a major role of a team lead there. I was always expressing an urge to make it into the software field, and pachu actually spoke to his HR guy about me. I was called for an interview and i was really tensed up since i was very new to what i was about to take up in my career. The only question asked in the interview was 'Are you willing to go to mumbai?' and i said 'YES'. I was prepared to do anything to shift my career and i was selected based on the words of pachu who said he will take personal responsibility into my training in the field. Thus i took my first step into the world of IT without actually having any experience or any knowledge of the various software languages. I am really grateful to pachu even to this day for having taken such confidence in me and helping me out in shaping my future. Thanks dude!!!!

By the time i left asian paints and joined datacons, i also had one major task in life. That was to bring raghu out of his current job at High court ( i dont know what he was doing there!!!) and get him into asian paints...well we actually swapped out jobs....i went to datacons and raghu came to asian paints in a period of 2 months. Me and pachu always had this long term idea in mind to get raghu into the IT field....but the first step was to get him into something better than high court. So we had done that before it was too late.

I joined datacons and was straight away sent to mumbai for client support activities. I got new friends and got to experience the hard core software support job of facing the wrath of the clients right into the face. The few initial days in mumbai made me think if i had really taken the right step in life, or maybe i would have been happier with the routine job at asian paints. As days went by, i took up more interest in my job and it took me little time to gain confidence of others and get a good feedback on my work from my superiors. Well, i had made my ground in the software industry and was emerging a good team player. Here, i would like to bring my other good friends into my blog, without whom my life in mumbai would have been real dull and boring.

There was a period of around 6-8 months when i was in mumbai for a continous stretch and we were 5 of us staying in the old, about-to-crumble, stinking flat at tilaknagar(thanks to kiran for remembering this name!!). The flat was really awful, with a hall, 2 bedrooms and a kitchen(which we meticulously used for cooking our dinner daily). Anyways, my other good friends were kiran, jois, koona and guru. Now a lil about each -

Kiran was the uncle of the lot, though guru was the oldest, kiran gave all of us the elderly feeling with his constant brotherly 'LOVVU' and the 'i will take care of all' feeling. He had one enormous belly and we had a herculean task of cooking for him. He was married and his wife was at mysore while he came to mumbai, they were expecting a kid and kiran was always fighting with the managers to go back to bangalore. The snap here was taken during one of our most memorable trips to NY in May 2006.



Jois was the playboy among the 5, always roaming around showing his ill-formed biceps and having a good time away from his childhood love back in shimoga. He respected guru a lot during the initial days since both were from the same town (keri!!)and guru always threatened him to reveal his true nature to his parents.


Koona was our expert chef, he used to prepare the best curries(i think he used to mix some beer to this) and we always had a hearty meal when he cooked. He was the only guy who didnt speak kannada among us, and we never made him feel out of place by always translating to him....the best one being - 'gud mein haav baildaar'!!!!!!!!!!!!

Guru, guru, guru....what can i write about him....he was 'The Guru' for all of us, let it come to coding or madhwacharya or english grammar or buying technical books.....he was 'THE GURU'!!!!!!!Inspite of all the garbage around in the house, guru never missed his daily prayers and sandhyavandane, he was like a walking dictionary of information on madhwacharya and his tatwas.

All five of us, away from our homes and beloved ones, making the tough life look easy by always being there for each other and freaking out on all weekends. We visited most of the places in mumbai, and had a great time together with regular parties and movies. One of us used to come home early in the evening to prepare dinner for all of us, and when it was my turn to cook, i used to freak out with aalugadde-eerulli sambar ( only item i knew well ), and we never allowed kiran to cook, since we already had a lot of risk on our lives with the horrible pollution in mumbai!!!Everyday, we had to catch a train to VT station, and it took almost 45mins from tilaknagar to VT. Once we reached there, we used to have our breakfast regularly at Shivala restaurant, guru's common dialogue there was 'i have had enough idlis for 10 janmas', and still he used to have only idlis. Once we were finished, we used to go to our respective client places to face the shit of the day!!!Sometimes we used to meet up for lunch at Poornima hotel, one of guru's favourites, and again split up for work. Rama naik hotel was known for its high quality south indian food, and we used to frequent that place mostly on weekends.

While in mumbai, we made many memorable trips to khandala, lonavla & kelve beach along with our friends from mumbai office - karthik, prabhu, amresh et al. This was one memorable stretch of my life in mumbai, we visited Waterworld twice and had a wonderful time during both our visits. We planned for go-karting at hiranandani but were disappointed to find that it was closed on the day we went, but it was a place to see. During my other visits to mumbai, there were many other friends of mine - giri, phani, raghavendra, prasad, kemps, ashoka...to name a few, but we failed to stay together for a longer time at mumbai. Most of our days at datacons,we spent in bangalore and i should say, i had a real good learning experience with a wonderful team of friends and colleagues.

Datacons had an office in kuala lumpur, malaysia and were planning to expand their business to neighbouring thailand. I was supposed to go to bangkok, thailand to give a demonstration of our mutual fund product to a prospective client and was all geared up for my first trip abroad!!!!!!I was told that i will be accompanied by kumar and ramesh from KL and i would have to travel alone from bangalore. I reached bangkok in the evening, and was amazed at all the wonderful infrastructure and skyscrapers. I made my way to the hotel in a taxi and was pleased to see my colleagues already there, we brushed up on our demo and spent the next 3 days explaining our product to the client. The demo was very interactive with lot of Q&A happening and by the end of third day, we were all exhausted and ready to take a break from work. We hired a rental car and planned to visit one of the famous beaches which was around 2hrs drive. The journey was just mind-blowing, my first experience on such beautiful roads, and a painless and relaxing car drive. Me and ramesh went para-sailing and also hired a motor boat to ride on the wild waters. All i can say about these water games are that, one needs to experience to know how it feels, awesome rides!!!!I really wish i had those snaps with me now to post here ;-(

Well, seems like this blog has outgrown itself....I think i will take a break here, and continue with the Awesome Foursome marriages in my next blog. Maybe speaking of marriages will wake up these guys to take notice of my writing!!!!!!

Awesome Foursome - The Eat-Outs

Well, well, well....seems like pachu remembers our little ventures too well, guys i would like to recieve more comments and feedback to my blogs, they act as a source of inspiration and also indicates it is not just me writing and reading it myself :-) ...a sincere request.

Let me go back in time, to our good ole college days(actually i had left out a few happenings in my previous blog), a time when we were ready for the most daunting tasks and when we did things we thought coooooool!!!We, the AF(u shd know what this means by now!!) were brought up in the same kind of society where we didnt have much exposure to the riches of five star hotels, and the extravagant discotheques which were the IN thing in bangalore those days. We didnt get to stay out late in the nights at pubs and discos, all we used to do was have a late dinner and get huddled up in one of our houses watching late night movies and the usual guys talk.

When i give these a thought, i really dont see anything that we have missed by not doing things our other friends were ritualistic about, we had quite a few friends who used to get this saturday fever, those days, we had to go to college all 6 days and hence, it is not friday fever, never missed a saturday night at MG Road/Brigade road, roaming around and...i dont really know what they did apart from getting drunk!!But we had our own ways of enjoying our life and i think we did the most appropriate things at correct phases of our life.

I cannot just give such statements without actually providing instances of our ventures which lead to discoveries that we regard with utmost respect even to this date!!

First in a series of eat-outs comes the CTR, which stands for Central Tiffin Room, located in the heart of malleswaram, right opposite to the grounds. It is a nondescript looking place that, surprisingly, has a board that reads ‘Shree Sagar’ in Kannada outside the hotel but retains the price board inside with ‘Central Tiffin Room’ written on it. It is situated on 7th Cross, at the corner of Margosa Road. I love the old pendulum clock and the Bhagavadgita sayings that is hung on one side of the wall. It is a small, old fashioned, not-so-clean food joint, which we stumbled upon one of those days and had the best ever masala dosas. We had been to other hotels famous for masala dosas like vidyarthi bhavan and janata hotel...but CTR stands a class above all these!!!Raghu and me were particularly crazy about finding these new joints and trying out new stuff, and we always came back from CTR with our bellies full. Well, there is one more good reason to eat well once you go there - there is always a long wait before you can squeeze into one of those small wooden tables, and all that waiting will surely make you gulp 2 dosas and a plate of mangalore bajji without any problem. The mangalore bajji acts as an appetiser while you have to wait for your dosas!!!!I should add here, we have influenced our spouses to be hard-core fans of these 'benne masaal dose' now and we never miss an opportunity to take a plunge into the crispy golden colored dosas accompanied by the colorful pudina chutney and the delicious kai chutney from time to time.

Then there was this road-side stall famous for egg-omelettes at Bashyam circle, rajajinagar. We used to frequent that place a lot...though there was no place to sit there, we had to remain on our bikes/sit on the stone slabs next to the shop. Kishore's favourite there being half-boiled, pachu never liked such places, but me and raghu made the most of it, sometimes even finishing our dinner by having a variety of egg-dishes. Well, who says dont eat at road-side dhabas/stalls, as long as you have your immune system in place, you are in no danger, and no need to resist the urge to enjoy all sorts of food.

There was another such joint, which we visited only once, and can always remember the experience, it was called Gundappa hotel, as such, there was no hotel in place, and the name was just a way of spreading word among friends. It was located near Corporation area (behind pallavi theatre), there was this old ruin with a small hotel(??) next to it. We just couldnt digest the fact that it was so renowned in the locality, that we had to wait a long time before finding our way inside the so-called hotel. Once we were in, there was this long wooden bench(what we have in our schools for the kindergarten students), and.....thatz it!!!!There were people all over, there was a small verandah, a hall inside, and maybe a couple of rooms too, all had this long benches, with people hungrily pouring over the remains of whatever they had ordered. We found it a little too clumsy, but were already inside and had to take a bite. Well, we waited patiently on the bench, for someone to come and ask us what we want....instead this person comes out, and hands us a plaintain leaf with ghee-rice in it. Well, we accepted that as it was steaming hot, and smelled awesome, and gulped it down in a few minutes. Next there is this guy coming around and handing over masala dosas which are cut in half!!!!HEY....who is placing our orders here????Then later we realised that people are expected to come and eat whatever is given to them, there is no choice except - yes / no....you dont want something, u just sit watching others. They serve some 3-4 items a day, and i should say, we really enjoyed all there was that day.

Now, this other experience is what only me and raghu had, pachu and kishore were taking a safe bet not to join us in any such expeditions, but i should say, guys you really missed it this time!!!!!!!Everyone must have heard and visited the infamous MTR hotel near Lalbagh entrance, but a very few are aware of the fact that MTR opens up at 5am in the morning with the only entrance being the back-door, where you have to cruise along the kitchen, and catch that flight of stairs to an open hall with tables neatly arranged and already waiting to get filled up. These were the kind of news we were all ears for....and once we heard about it, me and raghu planned to pay a visit. Previous night, he came over and slept in my place, and early morning, we left on my bike at 4.30am to MTR, it was cold and breezy, but we managed to reach our destination after being chased by a few stray dogs and i should say raghu is particularly fond of these dogs(after getting bitten a couple of times near his primary school). Well, there we were in front of MTR, but it was closed shut and we wondered what we are expected to do, standing out in the cold. Right then we saw people going to the back, and we followed them to be lead into the hotel, we saw these people in kitchen, busy cutting vegetables and making their dishes ready for the day. They didnt pay notice to us passing by, and we entered this hall, which was almost empty except for a couple of old people here and there. So we just went and sat in a corner table,waiting for our food. Practically within minutes we saw that every table was filled up and to our most annoying surprise, we realised all of them were almost in their 50s or 60s, and we stood distinctly apart. Anyway that didnt discourage us from our endeavour, and we stayed put till this guy comes along and asks us that we have occupied their 'regular' table, now what is that supposed to mean???But he was kind enough to allow us to join them and hey let me tell about the food now....MTR serves this idli with this special 'avarekaye saru' ONLY from 5am to 6am in the morning( i think it is seasonal too), and we made the best of it that day, wow, mouth-watering stuff. Hey raghu, do u remember what else we had that day....i kinda forgot. After our lip-smacking breakfast we went around lalbagh, watching the early joggers and the laughter-club people having their hearty laughs at nothing.

I really wonder how raghu comes to know of all these joints, but it surely is worth visiting and enjoying all these different types of scrumptious food at various joints. I remember we had been to this Vishnu Bhavan, located in one of these clumsy localities of KG road, just below the famous kempegowda theatre. Raghu said it was famous for it's bread and banana jam...i said the place looks awful, but still we went for it, never repented later!!!!

So much for our eat-outs, do let me know if i missed out some of our other favourites, i will be expecting more comments, thoughts and ideas for my next blog. Hey, if any of you people find relevant snaps to post in these blogs, do send them to me. More in my next blog, keep waiting!!!!

Awesome Foursome - The Journey Begins

It is good to see our wives chipping in....hey gals, you need to wait for a few more blogs for the Fabulous Four to make their grand entre!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, here we were, the Awesome Foursome, so very unsure of our future, still having 5-6 years of our basic education to complete, dreaming and fantasising of good jobs and juicy salaries. Hey, it was time for me to change my cycle, i took a second-hand BSA Mach 1 from my school friend, bharath(wow i remember his name), i think i paid almost 450 bucks for that, what a deal. The cycle had no gear case, no mud guard, no carrier, just enough parts to make it run!!!Pachu rightly named it as 'Silk' (after silk smitha).

Raghu pursued his commerce studies, and kishore was in no need of any tuition classes to clear his 12th, so it left me and pachu to join Bangalore Education Trust(BET) tuitions for PCMB. For one full year, every evening after college, we dragged ourselves to Malleswaram 4th cross to attend the classes till around 8pm and ran back home just in time to see 'Chitrahaar' and 'Chitramanjari'(popular countdown shows at that time).

It was one of those days when i lost my 'Silk' which was parked in front of the tuitions class and someone flicked it. Pachu and me even went to the extent of going to the police station and giving a written report of stolen cycle, but to no vain. That marked the end of my cycling era!!!!It took a few more days/months for the other three to sell/scrap their cycles.

One of kishore's friends, taught us a new game with playing cards, i dont remember the name guys, do let me know if anyone of u does. We got so obsessed with that game, we used to bunk college and play it all day long. Sometimes we used to come up with crazy ideas, like once we decided to get hooked onto the local cable network. We straightened one of those shirt hangers and tried to make a hook off it, and locked it with the cable running next to the window in pachu's room. All we got was a blank screen with some blurred images running about!!!!

Another one was when we purchased this filmfare just for a free audio cassette of 'Roop ki rani, choron ka raja' along with it!!!It turned out that the cassette was just a 10minute audio clip of the songs. Hey hey, we were not to give up there, wait till you hear what we did next. We had this good mallu friend of our's who had a small audio shop in subramnyanagar main road. (his name anyone???). We went to his shop, asked him for empty tape, opened up that cassette and rolled it up. Then we even recorded some film songs over that and made good of it, Shabhaaash!!!!!!!!!!

Most of our nightouts were in raghu's place, his folk were always out (attending all different functions), and he used to call us. Good boys that we were those days, we used to take two BIG BOTTLES of #$@$@#@%...guess what...thums up!!!!!!!!Kishore and me were in charge of 'rasagolla' and pachu always ended up paying for the stuff. Kishore had complete listing of all these 'sweet-stalls' which were famous of juicy 'rasagollas' and never missed an opportunity to pick up a few for these nightouts. Pachu used to initially avoid these sweets, but couldnt resist when we three were enjoying late into the night. One of those nights, we tried to prepare Maggi for the first time in our lives...it came out great, except that we didnt boil any vegetables(u can imagine!!!). Egg omlets were common each nightout and the worst part was we had to wash the utensils so clean since even a slight smell here and there would be recognised by his mom.

Our 2nd PUC results were OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!Raghu had cleared his to continue his B.Com, kishore had cleared with good results to get an architecture seat in a renowned college in Bangalore, pachu got through into BE Civil, and I had FLUNKED!!!!!!!!!!!Pachu was busy consoling me outside KLE College gates, when my childhood friend, G.K.Praveen, made his grand appearance from nowhere, said he will enquire and there should be something wrong in my results(wow he did hv a lot of belief in my abilities)...and came back saying my results were withheld and i had NOT flunked. To everyone's relief, i got my results after a few days and landed up joining B.Sc. Agriculture(what the hell, did i want to end up being a farmer??)

All the four of us, started going in different directions in our academics, made new friends in our new colleges, learnt new things, realised these were important to make our career and started focussing on our future. Raghu was bent upon pursuing his ICW along with his graduation, he did clear the initial exams but later shifted his attention to a good job. Kishore had an extra 5th year of his architecture and so was the last to graduate among us. Pachu and me joined some computer classes which was a Hot Cake those days. Everyone was shifting to learn computer languages which we had never heard of till then. Pachu was the first to buy a comp and we were surprised to know how soon he learnt all the nitty-gritties of the system and started to turn out being a pro.

Raghu joined Indian Institute of Science immediately after his graduation, pachu got into a software company called 'Datacons' and pursued his new born interest in the IT industry, kishore joined an architect firm after his 5 years of graduation, and I stayed home for 9 months - Unemployed graduate life, applying to all sort of job openings and waiting daily for the postman to deliver an interview letter.

Well, there are a few more interesting things to remember before all of us got into our jobs, but i think this blog is already too long and i dont want u people to doze off reading the whole stuff. I will start my next blog going back a little in our lifeline and then continue towards our bliss marital life!!!!!!