Aapko chutiya banaya!

[VT Station, 6:30 PM - Saturday]

'Excuse me' - there was a certain apprehension in his tone...

'Sir, this might sound stupid to you - but I lost my wallet and I needed to go to Lonavla....and uhhh...the ticket costs 65 and I have only 25....so I was wondering.....if you....please sir....'

Being in Sales and Marketing for almost a year now - I've developed this strange knack of being able to read the tone of the opposition, more often than not.

I could hint a sense of honesty in this chap.

What was he doing in the 1st Class coach though?
But perhaps I would have done the same too - only guys in the first class dept. in Mumbai might be having a spare 40 bucks on them!

I wanted to test out Mr. Irfan (He'd introduced himself by now. He dealt in perfumes supposedly).
'Well Irfan, I'm biking down to Pune - want to accompany me? I'll drop you off at Lonavla?'

This would be a killer question for a novice in this game.
'Sure' came the reply. 'But I'm a little scared of bikes!'

That was enough for me to buy two samosas and break the only 100 rupee note which happened to be in my pocket and give Irfan 2-twenty rupee notes.

He refused the samosa!

Thanked me profusely - said there's God everywhere. Which is not the best of lines to use on a person like me! And then he left...

A by-stander passed an audible smirk - a typical mumbaikar sound which is an extremely popular sound in the trains. I don't exactly know how to explain this sound?!
After which he added - Aapko chutiya banaya

Banaya rahega...par insaniyat jaga di mere mein.

Am not sure if Irfan was one who belonged to the class of skilled-labour - but if he was....he sure was good at what he did!

Arbit thoughts

there's this strange emptiness
is it the ego which hasn't been quenched?

ever woken up one fine day
and wondered - where the fuck is my life going?
where is it headed?

does the unknown excite you?

i'm scared
i'm angry

but what is it?
there's this strange emptiness

where are you? who are you?

My Latest Posts at WATblog.com

My latest posts at WATblog.com:

• 5 Must Reads for the weekend
  
  
• Is Google really the best search engine around?
  
  
• Google Desktop - Now in Hindi!
  
  
• A look at IndyaRocks and the latest at BigAdda
  
  
• Matrimonial shoot-out: Shaadi vs BharatMatrimony vs JeevanSathi vs SimplyMarry
  
  
• Batchmates.com - Largest Cyber Alumni Platform? But for how long?
  
  
• What's on TV? Check the schedule and plan online
  
  
• Social Networking in Hindi Soon?
  
  
• Mapping the Blogosphere
  
  
• 5 Recommended Reads
  
  
• Youth behaviour on Orkut - Users deleting scraps (Co-Authored)
  
  
• India Advertising 2.0 - Part 1
  
  
• The Burrp's getting louder and getting revamped too!
  
  
• eBay to acquire StumbleUpon, Google launches direct competitor
  
  
• Too many players chasing the CAT? (A review of CAT/MBA related websites)
  
  
• The Best Things In Life Are Free, at least on the Web!
  
  
• Railways getting extremely Net-Savvy. Pizza delivery in trains soon!
  
  
• Orkut just keeps getting bigger and bigger by the day in India!
  
  
• Hutch Pink Ticker
  
  
• Icecream goes the Interactive way!
  
  
• अब आप हिंदी में ब्लोग कर सकते है
  
  
• Google acquires DoubleClick for $3.1 Billion
  
  
• Tribal DDB makes a 'Protected Entry' in to the Webby Awards Nominees list

Cheers!

Biking in Mumbai!

Oh it's fun as well as painful! Love the fly-overs...especially the Byculla fly-over is awesome! Hate the traffic jams. Was caught at the Chembur Priyadarshani crossing for around 20 mins!

Yesterday I covered more than 100Km of city riding!
(Ghatokopar-Chembur-Sion-Dadar-VT-Colaba-A lot of Colaba-Parel-Bandra-Kurla-Ghatkopar)

The bike ride to Mumbai was obviously with the usual thrills one can associate with my Pune-Mumbai journeys. Took a wrong turn some where near the Panvel turn and ended up taking the NH-48 instead of the NH-4....to JNPT (Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust) and then had to back-track almost like 40Kms and cut through Navi-Mumbai to get to Ghatkopar!
Crazy stuff...
Total journey was 180Km instead of around 130Km. Took me 3.5hrs instead of 2.5 hrs.

But nice experience of course!

Would be again biking across the city tonight to catch the Chelsea-Liverpool Champions League match :-)

A bump, a sorry and a smile

9:45 AM Ghatkopar Station
Damn! Late again. Why can’t I leave home 10 minutes early and go comfortably in a Slow train – as compared to getting mashed, bashed, abused etc in a Fast train!?!

9:46 AM Hell
Well after 11 months in Mumbai, I’ve gotten quite used to the so called jam-packed hell of a Fast train, during morning rush hour….but getting used to hell doesn’t quite make it heaven you know?
The daily dose of pushes and abuses.
No! Everyone doesn’t get quite as many abuses as me. Why? I like to carry a back-pack containing my laptop and other stuff rather than those regular laptop bags.
I can list 10 reasons why I do that, so don’t ask me why!

9:51 AM Somewhere between Ghatkopar and Kurla
I spot Mr. MusicLover. White shirt, sleeves rolled-up. Economic Times in his hand. No he wasn’t reading it. I assume he must one of those working in a Financial broking company where ‘carrying’ an Economic Times is a necessity – reading is not!
Nokia N93 in hand. Must have been a new acquisition. How can I say that? Because he was not doing anything on it. It was more like a show-off element I’d say. Like look – I read Economic Times and I also have this flashy cel via which I can listen to music!
A very nouveau riche attitude.

9:58 AM Departing Kurla Station
I spot Mr. Quirky. Why quirky? There was this certain strange weirdness to him. The face – the face had this shrewd contorted look. The eyes were hazel. They lacked the softness you associate with hazel eyes – these were sharp wicked eyes.
He had his eyes fixed on Mr. MusicLover. And by fixed I mean fixed….continuously fixed. As if he was studying him, sizing him up….or was he trying to flirt with him?
Trust me, one finds all sorts of characters in Mumbai locals.

Dadar station. 75% of the coach clears out. The remaining 25% included the three of us. More people poured in.

10:12 AM Approaching Byculla Station

Mr. MusicLover queues up at the exit, takes his ear-phones off and puts them in his left trouser pocket along with his prized phone.
Mr. Quirky takes his place behind him.

10:13 AM The Bump

From behind…

A second later….
‘I’m sorry’

They walk in opposite directions

Four seconds later The Smile

A little later…Mr. Quirky admires his prized new possession – the Nokia N93.

Almost gotten gorgeous! Tragic!

Why does every pune-mumbai trip have to be so tragic?

Just got a call from Channel-V an hour back asking me if I was free tomorrow – why? Well they wanted a photographer for clicking auditioning beauties for their Get Gorgeous beauty contest!

DAMNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!

It required me to be in Mumbai early tomorrow morning!
What a weekend to be in Pune! Have prior commitments here :-(

Wonder if I’ll ever get such a great opportunity for mingling with soooo many gorgeous gals? Could have done with some money too and of course could have been the first break in my photography career!

Well the journey wasn’t too interesting. The 1 hour wait to catch the bus prior to the journey was disgusting.
Friday evenings are real pain to catch a bus from Dadar.
Infact Saturdays are better! Why are Saturdays better?
The working puneri junta in Mumbai who work on Saturdays tend to stick on in Mumbai – rather than getting just a few hours in Pune.

Well was a 1 hour wait to catch an AC Volvo. Took another 2 hours to get out of Mumbai. Got off at Pune University at the stroke of midnight. Must thank Rohan for picking me up there. Followed it up with some nice tandoori chicken at chowpatty….

Awww damn…..imagine the number of gorgeous girls I’ll be missing out on!

Planning on taking my CBZ over on Monday, so its ought to be an interesting post!

Back to Mumbai - in record time!

Well overdose ho gaya tha of these mumbai pune journeys over the last few days....
Well had gone to a friends house for lunch on Sunday.

Was again trying to explain the concept of Web 2.0 :-)

Anyways this was how the conversation ended...

So uncle, off to Mumbai today evening?
I have to catch a flight to Jamnagar tomorrow morning at 11 - so i'll be driving down tomorrow morning around 7, what about you?
Same here uncle
What? You've got to catch a flight to Jamnagar at 11?
:-) I meant I'll be leaving at 7 too.
So you want to come along?
Wouldn't mind!

I was actually planning to bike down to Mumbai....wanted to explore Mumbai on my bike before the rains...when that'll become impossible. Btw...it rained in Pune...the first rains...auspiciously on the day of the Bengali new year. I even got poetic and penned down a few lines....which i'll share the first day it rains here in Mumbai.
But well needed to get the bike serviced etc....so decided to postpone biking plans to next week...

7:15 AM
Hyundai Accent
(Yeah i know, it was meant to be 7...but I do have a problem with waking up on time! especially Monday mornings)

5 min halt to fill up petrol

Home by 9:20 AM!

Well nothing much to write about.....Uncle must be thinking 'How does this boy manage to talk so much?'....i think it was a non-stop jabber right since we left...cos i didnt want to fall asleep!

The next Pune-Mumbai trip is sure to be exciting....i've already gotten the parking in our building sorted out!

Cheers!

A tire burst, an ethical sardar and a Web Techie – Mumbai-Pune!

Mumbai-Pune-Mumbai-Pune all in less that 48 hours. Yes, made 2 to-n-fro trips in the last 2 days.
Grandmom passed away day before, so I decided to come to Pune to be with mom for some time. Was Thursday evening, didn’t want any trouble en-route, so promptly decided to take the ever-dependable MSRTC Shivneri Volvo! Little did I know, what was in store.

Well, was just reading some stuff on the laptop…un-eventful journey…at least half way!
Was wondering as to what I was going to blog about – since this was such a boring journey….the only eventful thing was the chilling AC!

And then it happened….like a mini earthquake and then a boom followed by a bang!
I thought we’d crashed into someone in the front…but it was a tire which had blown and the bus had crashed into the road divider.

Oh o…..
Well, exciting part was I was going to have something to write up – depressing part apart from getting late was that I was not carrying my camera. The odds of catching me without my camera are less….but had left it at my place for charging the batteries.

There was pandemonium in the middle of the express-way! Only thing was no one stopped there to help…it was just the 30 of us. It took nearly 30 mins to assess the damage and decide on a move. I was part of the core management team out there :-)
Well, a back-up bus would take at least 2-3 hours….the damage supposedly wasn’t too much and we decided to change the tires and see if it would be possible to go ahead.

It really pissed me off when me and another chap were the only ones helping the poor driver change a 100Kg tire! A stern – Can we please have some light here….got me 14 cel screens beaming at the tire.

Changing tires is not a joke, especially if it’s a mega bus! It took around 1 hour to change the tire and another 30 mins to wrap up stuff and hook the burst tire back up under the belly of the Volvo…that’s when we all got back in….the sweet aroma of burning rubber lingered on. The driver brought the engine back to life….and the bus refused to budge. One could actually feel the tension in the bus. 30 chaps…praying to god…egging the bus to move….the engine purred and then roared….3 min 47 seconds after it had been brought back to life….the bus finally decided to roll!
Slowly at first….a little faster after that….but the driver had decided to go easy on the gas.
Slept off soon and woke up after the bus had crossed my place….had to walk back for around 20 mins. Reached home quite exhausted around 1AM

Had to get back to Mumbai the next day. Mom was catching a flight from there and I was to accompany her. Change in travel mode: Indica – AC – Cool Cab!
This was the first time in like a million pune-mumbai trips that I was going to travel in a cool cab….that too in total comfort!
We had a pretty aged Sardar-ji as our driver. My mom poured on the sweetness right from the start. Rather than going straight to the airport, we wanted to go to Parel…pick my sister up from her hospital and then to the airport. Took us some good amount of convincing – till he said it’ll cost extra and that we had to sign a piece of paper too and call the cool cab office and let them know of the diversion! Here he had a chance to make a quick buck, but he just didn’t seem interested. Well mom was impressed by his driving for some reason (I doubt the speed-o-meter went above 85 km/hr during the entire journey) – so she enquired if she could avail of the same cab during her return journey – to which she was greeted with a stern ‘No’. He only queued up at the official Cool Cab line. Nice to such people still exist.
Well nothing else worth mentioning about the journey…except for perhaps a delightful pizza at the food stop.

Saturday evening…time to make another of these trips. This time I just wanted to go to pune n chill. Needed a mental break….was quite a mess in the head.
But! I love adventure of course….so tried out the 3rd mode of commuting. The ever-reliable Deccan Queen (train)!
Office is at colaba – it takes more time getting to vashi from there…than vashi Mumbai! And one actually gets to save some time in the train…or so I thought!

No! no train accidents this time around. Was rather an uneventful journey. Read the 5kg 500 paged Times of India. Subscribing to TOI provides the perfect ROI I feel. One can actually make a profit by selling the raddi. Anyways, the paper kept me busy for around an hour n a half….the remaining was spent talking up to this jobless techie…who was in mumbai searching for his dream job. Pretty smart for a small town chap….knew delicious, flickr, wikipedia, youtube n other web 2.0 stuff!
Time flew, I love talking about my work!

Got off at Shivajinagar stn at 8:10…exactly 3hours from Mumbai. Wow! Will reach home early - I thought. But a certain Mr. Ambedkar was having his jayanti celebrated on the streets and the ensuing traffic jam ensured that I reached my home at 10pm!

Well I love these journeys….a friend asked me today, ‘how can you tolerate so much traveling?’
I guess it’s the only time I get to relax n chill ;-)

Google the Master Killer and the necessity of SEO

I was reading some stuff up about my new infatuation - SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
and came across this rather interesting post

It talks about a co. which got killed cos' of google! :-)
or perhaps committed suicide cos' of google, would be a better term...

Heres an excerpted portion of the story below:

Over the past months, however, organic traffic from Google.com dropped from an average of 1'000 or so visitors / day to exactly zero. In sympathy, sales dropped along side, resulting in perhaps one or two sales per day or less, mostly from people who stumbled over the site by chance or by recommendation. For some reasons our pages were either removed completely from Google's index or have been tagged "supplemental result" (for a possible explanation, see below at "Other consequences"). Obviously, we could still pay for ads but that would never make up for the loss in traffic and, hence, revenue. Also, while we realize that Google owes us nothing, we are not inclined to reward Google for dropping our site. The little traffic coming from localized versions of Google or from Yahoo and MSN doesn't convert to revenue at all. We didn't find a way to remedy this situation because, although being a multi billion dollar company, Google doesn't seem to have a phone number.

Anyway, the resulting revenue from the current sales is far too low to maintain this site, to continue development of the software and to provide customers with good, useful, timely, and free support. We have therefore decided to call it quits and release all our barcode software into the Public Domain.

[Complete story at: http://www.pro-barcode.com/background.html]

Well this company obviously must not have heard of SEO companies....
but this also made my mind wander into what might be another of google's masterplans!

Why I say another is because - a particular video about google's masterplan on youtube has gotten an amazing amount of views off late.
Have a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zKXCQpUnMg

Anyways, as you would have read in the above story - the incredibly dependency on google.
What if google one fine day decides to intentionally kill off such sites...and perhaps ask for huge amounts of money for a re-listing?

Pretty incredible eh?

Or what if a co. figures out a way to externally do so? some dirty work to get companies totally de-listed from google?
They can pretty much make a fortune - just scaring companies off!!!

Ha ha...sadistic and as ridiculous as it sounds...its possible!
At least it has gotten me crazily interested in SEO!

Insights into the Web 2.0 World

Well a lot of my friends have been asking - Eka! What exactly do you do man? And what is Web 2.0?
Well have a look at this video @ YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

It beautifully explains what it really is....feel free to ask me questions after that!

Well apart from that I have introduced RSS feeds for this blog and also a button for socially book-marking blog posts. I'll explain these in greater detail in one of my later posts! As to what folksonomies are and what exactly is a RSS feed!

Well been blogging at WATBlog.com are here are some of my latest posts there:

Compete measures your Attention
Well to explain this in short - Till date web analytics and stats revolve around page views and hits a website receives. But what is happening is that with the advent of Ajax and flash, people are not having to keep refreshing pages etc...so Compete has come out with a new parameter - which is of measuring the attention span of a user on a website and engagement levels of a website.
Click here to read the whole post...

Search Engine Marketing growing
The search engine advertising and spends are on the rise as more and more realize the value of targeted search engine advertising. In this post I just review the current scenario and draw some comparisons with the SEM scene in India.
Click here to read the whole post...

What's cooking in the Social Networking scene in India?
Well all of you have obviously heard of Orkut! But did you know there are at least around 20 more social networking sites in India?
In this post I talk about some new-comers in this segment and what some of the other players are up to.
Stuff about SirfDosti, DesiMartini, Hikut, Yaari, Minglebox, ApunDesi, Snehah etc
Be sure to check out the whole post...

Blogging in India - A WATConsult Research
A unique research report about blogging in India. Covers the top 18 Indian cities. Some interesting figures revealed - like, 2-3% of all the online users of a city have a blog!
Click here to read the whole report...

Influence of TV Advertising - DesiMartini.com
In this post I just talk about the impact of television advertising for a web 2.0 product. While web 2.0 is all about pull marketing - how in our country a Push is also required.
Some criticism of DesiMartini too.
Click here to read the whole post...

Alexa Watermarks traffic graphs:
I think I was the first one to write about this....should have book-marked it in all the social engines! Well Alexa is a web analytics site where one can obtain data and stats about pageviews and traffic reach of almost any website out there on the internet.
Also mention a little about their tussle with Statsoholic
Read whole post...

Blogger.com out of Beta - But how cool is it?
World over people prefer WordPress to blogger....but definitely not in India. Perhaps because of it being associated to google or perhaps cos' they have the perfect URL.
But Blogger is definitely popular - as we found out in our earlier research report too.
Well in this post, I just review the simplicity of blogger...
Read the whole post....

Google's April Fool prank:
You would have definitely heard about this one....if not...be sure to check it out!
GMail Paper and Google TiSP

Well stay tuned to WATBlog.com for more on the Web 2.0 space!

Cheers,
Eka

Distinctive Connoisseur of Bourbon Whiskey!

Well thats what this certificate in my hands says:
JIM BEAM certifies Ekalavya Bhattacharya as a distinctive connoisseur of Bourbon Whiskey.

This was after attending a 'Unravel your Bourbon' session.

Its 2:30 AM....i'm supposed to be pretty high! Honestly speaking, I've never had whiskey - apart from the occasional sip or 2 of dad's chivas. Well consumed 6 neat large shots of whiskey today followed by 3 in cocktails!

This is how it went:
1st - Some Canadian Whiskey - spicy!
then - Jim Beam White - smooth!
then - Jack Daniels - smoky!
then - Johnnie Walker Red - this one was quite strong!
then - Teachers - beautiful!
finally - Jim Beam Black - fulfilling!

Followed this up with - Jim Beam Black and coke and then a crazy drink cocktail called Manhattan followed by a Jim Beam White and sprite.

Quite an alcoholic adventure....and sure to remember this day forever....the day i lost my whiskey virginity....over and over again!

Have a client meeting at 10:30 in the morning plus an important presentation at 3pm. Jim Beam bless me!

Though am sure, at 21 I must be one of the youngest whiskey connoisseurs out there :-)
It's quite an art and i'm going to master it - now that the paint is on the canvas

Hic! Cheers! Hic!

P.S: Chelsea are through to the semi-finals of the champions league...and are still set for a quadruple this season. Theres a chance of 3 crucial Man U vs Chelsea ties in the coming month. That'd be - the league decider at the Bridge....the FA Cup final (If both manage to overcome their semi opponents) and the Champions League Finals (Again if both manage to overcome their semi opponents).

IIT-K and a 2 MBPS connection

Posting this sitting in the visitors hostel of IIT-Kanpur indexing almost the whole of YouTube on my hard-disk :-)
Well getting download speeds of 200Kbps+....unfortunately all peer-2-peer sharing networks are blocked, orkut is blocked....so downloading YouTube videos!

Journey here was quite cool - took the Pushpak express from Mumbai. Jobs4Freshers.com the the second of our companies came in the top3 in some show-casing competition here....gave lots of gyaan on the web 2.0 scene. The female species are quite a rarity here.
There was a music show last night - which has everything from classical sa ra ga ma, to ghazals to rock n metal.
Enter Sandman by the local IIT-K band (Called : Metalligasms I think) and Brick in the wall were pretty cool.

Witnessed yet another upset by the Bangladeshis - this victory would have definitely infused some new life into the English and perhaps Windies too.

Have also gotten a chance to play around with my digital acquisition last month - The canon S3 IS...will update this post with some pics later.

Gonna be a painful return journey. Travelling 'Sleeper Class' back to Mumbai! Lets see how one survives that.
Well am back to indexing all possible videos for another 2 hours.

Cheers :-)

The co-incidental Khosla and uska Ghosla!

'So have you seen Khosla ka Ghosla?'
'No yaar....really wanted to see it...but just happened to miss it', I replied.

'Well you should definitely catch it, I've seen it 4 times and its just toooo funny!'
'Well lets see...I like the song chak de phattey!'

Well fast forward 12 hours.....10:30 AM Monday morning....Parihar Chowk, Aundh, Pune
Vehicle: Metrolink Volvo
(Well I don't usually take a metrolink volvo - they are shit expensive! especially on monday mornings, but well i wanted to work on the laptop on a presentation while travelling)
Managed to bargain from 230 down to Rs 190/-
Which included a promise from the conductor's side that the bus will take the ghatkopar link road after vashi and it would be easier for me to reach ghatkopar, which is where i apparently hole up in Mumbai!

Anyways, bus rolled soon.....out came my laptop. Some interesting stares from people around. Wow! What a professional!
Naw...this wasn't for show-offing, it was a genuine attempt at getting some long pending work done.

Well as co-incidence would have it - The Khosla family decided to intervene and Khosla ka Ghosla started up in the small lil tv in the bus - with me sitting waaaay behind.
Well as you can imagine - the work I was planning to do happened to get indefinitely postponed.

Funny movie, definitely worth a watch....perhaps not when you are traveling in a bus with an important presentation to work on - but Boman Irani is too good as always. Some versatility that chap has. He's ensure he doesn't get stereo-typed with any role.
The Khosla tribe was pretty cool too......

Well rest of the journey was un-eventful - the bus didnt take the promised link road to ghatkopar, well got off at Sion and went off to office directly. So guess it was a good thing.

Will be off to IIT-Kanpur this weekend to batofy some gyaan to the junta there....so no mumbai-pune to write about but it'll be an interesting journey. We've not gotten AC seats so imagine traveling Sleeper Class in the hot UP-MP sun. Gonna get roasted!

Cheers!