Thursday, May 28, 2009

The Sandwich Shop

Yesterday I got through something which really made me laugh on myself. So I thought why not let everyone laugh on me. Yesterday was also like a normal working day in my life. After spending one more day full of work in office I have taken my shuttle of 6.30PM, I am saying it my shuttle because I have registered for this shuttle but due to the work load I rarely get chance to catch my routine shuttle. Obviously the evening was happier for me as compared to that of other working days, as I managed to leave earlier or rather on time. The shuttle dropped me near my stop after an hour. I had to check some important emails and I remembered that my internet connection has been discontinued due to false billing. Actually the service provider's executive has given me three months free plan still they have kept my outgoing connectivity on hold saying that I have some overdue amount, disgusting! Anyway that problem has been sorted out and I am writing the post from my own laptop, a million thanks to the service provider. So let us go back to the bus stop where I was thinking that I had to check some important emails. I went to the cyber cafe which is hardly 100 meters away from my society. Next to the cybercafe there is a juice cum daveli centre. Dalevi is a typical Gujarati snack which you can find anywhere in Maharashtra [:)]. Daveli is prepared by stuffing smashed potatoes and pomegranate beans in pav (a kind of bread) and then some additional garnishing with cheese. It is quite natural for anybody crossing that shop to be tempted and I am of course not an exception. So while going to cybercafe I had decided to have dabeli on my way back from cybercafe . When I was done with the internet stuff, the turn of daveli came. But then I got a bit diet conscious and changed my mind from daveli to sandwich assuming that it will contain only bread and salad. I went to the daveli centre and ask him, "Bhaiya! Sandwich hai kya?" (Do you have Sandwich?). He nodded his head saying yes and I ordered one. Usually the shop is juice and daveli corner hence it took time for him to complete all his daveli orders first and I had to wait till that time. There was an old couple who had already ordered 5 davelies parcel. I thought that they might be having an evening walk and taking davelies for their grand children while returning back to home. I just smiled thinking of that and hoped them to remain as a couple for a long time. After their parcel got ready my turn came and the person, let us call him Ganpat, started making Sandwich for me. I asked Ganpat that how many slices of bread use to be there in a single piece of sandwich, "Three", he replied. While Ganpat was making davelies for the old couple, I was putting all my efforts to have control on my temptation for daveli and somehow I managed to do that and not ordered daveli in place of sandwich. Ganpat had started making sandwich for me; he had taken out three slices of bread, applied green chutney on one of the bread slice and started putting salad on it. The chutney reminded me of butter because butter is often used in sandwich. This thought has awakened my diet conscious mind and I thought that it would be better if Ganpat does not use butter in the sandwich. On the other hand my temptation also started pushing my thoughts and so I wished if Ganpat will himself use butter in the sandwich, I will not stop him from doing so [:)] . Now both the threads of my mind started working simultaneously. At one hand I was ok if he does not use butter and on the other hand I was waiting him to use butter. I was smiling on my condition and planning to pen down these emotions. Meanwhile Ganpat had taken the second slice of bread and applied chutney on it also. Oh no! No butter even on the second one! Ok! It’s good! Good for my health [:(], otherwise I would have ordered daveli. On the second slice of bread he started putting sliced boiled potatoes and salts on the potatoes after that. By that time one of the threads of my mind has virtually declared its win and the second started the planning to go in idle state. The sandwich was about to be prepared and Ganpat had taken the final slice of bread in his hands. I took out my wallet and counted Rs. 15 to pay for the sandwich. Suddenly the second thread started jumping with joy throwing a smile on my face. It was the finishing touch of Ganpat that had caused this sudden change in the mood of second thread. Like typical bollywood movies Ganpat had applied butter on the last slice and cut the sandwich in pieces. The sudden smile on my face due to the unpredictable win of second thread had made me laugh for hours. I paid Ganpat for the sandwich and had the sandwich. After that I started walking towards my home laughing on my foolishness and thinking about the fight of emotions and thoughts within a person.

So this was the Sandwich story, hope you have also enjoyed the sandwich.

Cheers,
Kamlesh


Sunday, May 24, 2009

Direct from Akhilesh's heart...[Part-1]

Akhilesh, my younger brother, has developed a new hobby of expressing his feelings in form of 'Shayari'. Here are some of them I have with me right now:

खुशियों के माहौल में कभी कभी आँखे छलक सी जाती है|
वैसे तो गम की कोई बात नहीं है, बस खुशियाँ ही रुला जाती हैं ||

कभी कभी दिल अचानक धरक सा जाता है|
किसी अनजाने के इंतज़ार में मचल सा जाता है||
अब इन्तेजार ही बन चुका है हमारा मुकद्दर|
शायद इसीलिए दिल अब सिर्फ मुस्कुराता है||

मेरे लिए कभी भी अपनी आँखों से मोती ना गिराना|
वरना लोग कहेंगे की प्यार किया या घाटे का सौदा||

आप जब भी कभी मुस्कुरा कर गुजर जाती हो,
सारा मंजर हसी सा हो जाता है|
यूँ तो आपको इसका पता तक नहीं चलता,
ये तो सिर्फ दिल है हमारा जो मचल जाता है|

You may miss me,
you may ignore me,
you may even forget me.
But one fine day when you wanna meet me,
don't search!
Just look at your shadow,
I will be there. Trust me!!!

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Cheers,
Kamlesh

Saturday, May 23, 2009

And the noodles are ready to read :)

Hi,

Let me introduce myself. I am Kamlesh, a Software Engineer by profession and infamous among my family members and friends for being involved (more than required) in my work. Apart from this blog I am owning a technical blog and a google group that too technical. I have realized that whenever I tell someone about my above mentioned ventures (at least for me :) ), some people say few good words about the initiative, some even join the group. But after that most of them become inactive or they forget about that unless I remind them. Few days back when I was reminding my sister about the same blog, she said, "Bhaiya! please write something interesting in your blog. The kind of blog you write is for those people who do not have time to read blogs and I or my friends are not interested in these technical details.". This is why the preparation of Hakka Noodles started.....

I discussed this with my wife (Yes! I am married) and decided to open a blog which will not contain a single technical word. I thought it would be even easier because I just have to go to notepad and start writing my experience unlike the other where I need to write, run and test the code and then post it. I have decided to use this blog as a platform where I can write my experiences of day to day life, where I can reveal some of the thoughts which come in everyone's mind at some point of time and where I can even put some good joke if its really good. So to summarize, the ingredients of Hakka Noodles were ready and I had to start cooking. I started creating the blog. Step 1, please enter the name of your blog. Oh! What's that, I had not thought the name of the blog, ok no problem I was sure I could do that within couple of minutes with my presence of mind (overconfidence you know :( ). So I started thinking about the name, the name which covers the gamut of my blog's content, the name which will change my so called J-Kamlesh (J stands for Java here) image, the name which can attract genuine people to the blog this time, nothing to just make me happy. Taking all this into consideration I found this a difficult job to decide the name of the blog in one go and I thought I might get a hunch while traveling to my office or during my work or while watching television.... so I have taken two day's break but, in vain. During those two days I have discussed many possible options with my wife and some of my close friends. Finally, today I have decided to finish this work as I had to utilize my weekend at least by kicking off the blog. I had kept pinging my wife and my friends the whole day (and also to mention blogger's database also). The whole day I tried to make consensus on the name. Sometimes we finalized on some name, but that name used to be already occupied by some user. I had spent 6 hours on this exercise. At last some of my friends got annoyed (I am soooooo sorry dear friends) and started accepting all my options :). We even had very funny suggestions in between. I would like to mention some of the suggested names which were either rejected by someone or already present:

justThoughts, simpleThoughts, commonThoughts, rendezvouswithlife, justsaidthat, justsaid, thoughtplex, chatpate-thoughts, kurkure-thoughts, meta-thought, thought-objects, bhelpuri, khichari, litti-chokha and Hakka Noodles (BINGO)

Hakka Noodles instantly attracted me because it was fulfilling my all the requirements. As a cuisine it is a mix of Indian vegetables and other chineese ingredients, which in some way symbolizes our modern society where we are also mixing our culture like that only. To give a second thought the name is eye catching and allows the flexibility on the content of the blog. And last but not the least it got the required consensus, including that of the blogger's database.

This is how the Hakka Noodles were prepared and I am serving the very first plate of it for you to read.

I would like to thank Asmita (my wife), Preeti (my sister) and my dear friends Vivek, Shekhar and Himadri for their co-operation in cooking the noodles. And the Hakka Noodles are for my dear son Aarush. Others are requested not to eat it, just read it.

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Cheers,
Kamlesh