Hurray! The other flat in the guest house has gym-equipments in the hall. I found out yesterday morning itself. After coming back from office in the evening, I gymmed. Loved it. Nice, I say. So far the only way I had been working out here in Orissa was by doing push-ups on the floor and pull ups by hanging over racks and shelves. I was missing lifting dumbells evern since I came here but now things look bright.

I took a different running route today and ran for a little over 45 minutes. As I was on the return journey, a school going kid in white uniform, riding a cycle, smiled at me and gave me a thumbs-up. Nice, I say. It always feels nice when strangers smile at you. It feels nicer to smile back. As terrorists are working their ass off to induce terror, it’s smile that we need on our faces. It’s smile that we need to let them know that such mother-fucking acts won’t terrify us. It will only makes us hate them. Fuckers. Talking about smiles, a caricature usually does that well.

In my free time, I have been finishing off caricature requests. Loads of them had assembled over a period when I didn’t have too much time to myself. Many requests are still pending but I hope to clear all of them by this weekend. All the best to me.

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PS: I am not sure if the person responsible for this Shitoon wants credit. If she does, she must let me know.

PS2: Idea originated from google talk chat with TMS

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The good news for the day is that papa got a promotion. He now is a scale three officer. The bad news for the day is that papa got a promotion. Now that he is a scale three officer, he will be sent to a bigger branch, away from home. He works in a public sector bank. The new branch could be anywhere, definitely away from the house that he built few years back. There is quite a possibility that his new posting could even be in a different state altogether. Let me not speculate. Let me just wait. For the next news.

The weather here is so perfect (not just in the morning but during any time of the day). The economist, who was working in Bhopal before she was sent here, keeps telling me it’s humid here in Bhuv. I keep telling her that she should see Chennai.

My fourth day in Bhuv. Hmm. I finally ran. Forty minutes. Must have covered a distance of about 8k. Yesterday, when I had some free time, I browsed through the Google map of Bhubaneswar, located my guest house on the map, and traced a route for myself on the National Highway no. 5 (NH5). My guest house is very close to NH5.

When I finally ran today, I ended up exceeding the marked route. Why? Because I had given myself a total running of time of 40 minutes, but ended up crossing my marked boundary in only about 12-15 minutes. I guess I had miscalculated the distance on Google map. So I just kept running away from the guest house after reaching NH5 till I had finally run a good twenty 20 minutes and then returned in almost the same time, completing a total of 40 minutes of running time.

I so want to buy some cool gadget that tells me my speed and all that when I run. These running accessories should come one by one. Thank God, I finally have at least my own pair of running shoes. If you have been a regular reader, and have kept a track of my running escapades, you might be surprised to know that I got myself shoes only after coming back from Andaman, that is in June. Papa gifted them to me after having seen me run 10k in Andaman with his own eyes. Before that, I simply used to put on any available pair lying in the hostel-wing and hit the road in insti. The wing was always full of shoes, some new, some discarded. Man, I have run so much on borrowed pair of shoes that now when I get into my new Reebok, I almost feel like a King. A prince may be.

In this context of borrowed shoes, PD, a branch-cum-hostel junior and a good friend deserves a special mention. They were PD’s shoes that I used for a long long time. I never knew that they were his when I started running long distance back in September last year. I always thought they belonged to Tak, my batchmate cum hostel mate, who had a room next to PD. Every time I would cross Tak in those shoes, I tried my best to walk past him as fast as possible, before he could realize that I was in his shoes. And every time I walked pass PD, I would only smile at him and he would smile back at me. I never knew why I always got such a broad smile in response.

It was only after a few good months, and I guess some time in the beginning of this year, when PD finally told me, smiling, that they were his. I was so shit embarrassed, but smiled back. From next week, I could be seen in another junior’s shoes.  Thanks PD for triggering my running career. And wherever those shoes are, tell them that I miss them.

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The following post was written yesterday at about 9 PM, some time before I had my dinner

Since Chennai office happens to be my base location, I have been put in a guest house in Bhubaneswar (Bhuv), for as long as the assigned project requires my services. Yes, that means I don’t have to find myself a house or anything or even worry about cooking or traveling. Everything has been taken care of.

My room

My room has a nice bed that can easily take two persons. But it’s here just for me. I have an AC, a TV, an attached bathroom that’s big and clean. There are mirrors in bathroom and in the room. The mirror in the room is big enough to have a look at my full body profile ( I am sure Tiwari understands why I have mentioned this fact separately ). There’s a cute wooden table and a revolving chair. There’s a shoe-rack and there are big cupboards. Like my room, there are two more rooms in this flat where I am and would be staying. And like this flat there’s another flat on the same floor. A cook cooks food of choice in the kitchen in my flat. The hall has separate TV and AC and sofa and space. The view from the common balcony is good. This apartment is an eight floored residential apartment, new and spacious. Not bad, hmm? And yeah, how could I forget, we have wi-fi here in the guest house (though right now, as I write off this post, I don’t yet know the password to access the connection that has been detected by my laptop). Not bad at all, hmm?

The weather

I went for a stroll in the evening some time back. A Sunday evening stroll in Bhubaneswar. There was a light drizzle. Romantic weather. Took some effort to resist the urge to light a fag. Was successful.

Market

The nearby market is dominated by computer shops. If every fourth shop is not selling computers, it at least is selling accessories or promises repair, if not of a computer, then at least mobile phones. In this regard, I can say that this nearby market is a comfortable equivalent of the Richie street in Chennai (for those who don’t what Richie street to Chennai is, well, never mind). The second rank goes to medical shops. They are quite a handful. Among other business centers that exist, I could find a gym that looked promising from the outside façade (very close by), a wine shop (promising from inside or outside ), a spa cum saloon, tour and travel operators (plans for a Puri trip?), tailors, barbers, cyber-cafes, bakery shops, couple of banks and their ATMs, an insurance (non-life) training institute, couple of coaching centers, a college on NH5 and last but not the least, an exclusive undergarments shop. I should mention here that a complete absence of clothing shops came as a surprise.

Roads

The roads are messy, at least in this area. They are broken everywhere and totally unattended. It’s difficult to see any motorized vehicle go over 30 KMPH over these crumpled roads covered with mud and flowing water. There is a clear drainage issue. Tha NH5 is very close by and since it’s a National Highway, it is in good shape and health.

First impressions of Bhuvneshwar

You got the microscopic picture. Let me go back to my first impressions of the capital of Orissa on a somewhat macro scale now. In fact, I would go a little back to my afternoon flight that departed from Bangalore. The two seats next to me in the aircraft were unoccupied, not only for the Chennai-Bang flight but for the Bang-Bhuv flight as well. So I removed the hand-rests in both journeys, and crashed off flat on three seats combined. When has Economy class been so spacious? Coming back to the first impressions of Bhuv, or rather Orissa, that happened when I was woken up by an air hostess in red skirt. She asked me get up and put on the seat belt as we were about to land in Bhuv. I fulfilled her request like a sweet child, as the two of smiled at each other; fake from either side. Once I was seated, I looked outside the window.

Just before you reach this place, you pass an area which is nothing but dense forest. As I looked down, I could see only trees and trees, lush green, everywhere, spread over miles and acres. Passing by this area, almost makes you feel that you are flying over a fresh green lawn. I had never seen such a huge forest cover in real with my eyes. The image has struck in my mind.

A rainy and at 27 degrees, a rather cool Bhuvneshwar welcomed me. I was picked up by the guest-house car. Amongst other things that I observed about the city, the first one that comes to the mind is the noticeable use of the Konark Wheel everywhere, be it the airport entrance or the compound walls of government buildings on main roads. I also noticed how almost every important building in Bhuv, has been built on just one stretch of road that starts off very close to the airport; the Reserve Bank, the State Assembly, The secretariat, The AG office, the Ravindra Bhavan and what not. The driver told me how the city has developed majorly only in the last five years. Before that, Bhuv’s boundary would show up in just a ten kilometers drive. Now, he says the city’s periphery has stretched to 35 or so.

The people

There are three more consultants here in the guest house, besides the staff. Two of them, like me, have come today itself. One is an economist. Unlike me, she has been to this place before. She is a year old in this company. It was nice catching up with her and discussing my project that was based, more or less on the theories of economics. I had never met any economist before in my life, but had always wanted to. I only hope that she doesn’t read Shitoon 55. She would be working on a project separate from mine, while the other two are on the same project. Both of them are senior to me and I hope to have a nice time.

PS: Sorry for my inability to express all the above in fewer lines.  I hate long posts myself. I only hope that the updates on how work proceeds in the days to come, come out short and crispy. By the way, a new header is ready and should be up shortly. It’s funny. At least I look funny in that. I am also wondering if I should rename my tagline as the ‘letters from a traveling consultant‘. Stay with me. Good luck folks.

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Coffee is costly at CCD here at Bengaluru Airport. Latte comes for 65 bucks and international for 100. I didn’t bother finding out the rate of the books at Odeyssey. I am in the departure lounge now and I don’t see any Odyessey here.

Convocation. It was an assembly of a bunch of excited IITians, all dressed in red gowns. SAC. Student Amenities Centre. SAC is the same huge auditorium inside insti, where all of us underwent orientation on our arrival to the campus in our first years. I still remember those millions of white floor-fans, placed between columns of chairs in SAC during the orientation, and later during several different events held at that place, the last being the Sharav Hostel Nite if I remember correctly. Many a times we had wondered how nice it would be to have AC in SAC. Finally, SAC has it. AC. In fact, the AC was made operational for the first time in my convocation. The 45^th convocation of IIT Madras.

Anshuman, Tiwari and myself sat together, laughed together and received our degrees one by one. Tiwari, roll number 50, myself 51, Ansh 52. It was just like the first semester. Here is a picture of the three of us taken during the last few days of the first semester. 2003.

We had made this lovely bridge, that had gained fame in a short while in the entire Sarayu hostel. How can I, or anyone of the three of us forget how Ansh put his entire weight over the bridge to prove to an absent-minded prof that our bridge was capable of taking the load of one full overweight ( ) human-being. Do you know what that prof had told us? Since he is standing on one leg, only half of his weight is getting transferred to the bridge. LOL. Did she ever learn physics. She was a Chemical Engineering prof, and over a period of time we forgave her.

The remains of the bridge still exist. I own one pier. Ansh owns the other. The broken deck was handed over to Tiwari, and I am not sure if it still exists somewhere. It was the bridge that we shared then. It is the company that we share now. We are now post graduates. Here is the picture of the post-graduate troika. 2008.

Ansh (closest to the camera in the above pic) called up just now. He is in Chennai. He hasn’t left yet. By evening he should be in Mumbai. He and some more friends had shown up at my place a day before the convocation. Tiwari and myself enjoyed cooking breakfast and lunch for everyone. The house suddenly looked all full and alive. If I feel sad at the fact that I am already away from Chennai, I feel sadder at the fact that Tiwari won’t have anyone in the house from tomorrow. The liveliness and the energy would be gone. Nothing in life is permanent, the more you live, the more you agree.

The five years that flew away, ended officially on the 25th of July 2008 when I received my birthday presents (two degrees). Three cheers to life.

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