Sid-O-Scope

When I first stepped into London, I was a bit anxious. After being misinformed about almost everything about London and then Googling for ending hours here I was on in the heart of British Empire. Here are few things that are absurdly confusing (OK not absurd, maybe a cultural shock or maybe just absurd) in London. 1. They greet you with 'You Ok', 'Everything alright'. The people in London don't greet you 'Hello' or 'Hi', they say, 'You ok', or 'Everything alright'. Now that is fine in normal London sense of way but the moment someone asks me that, I am like, 'Stop face reading.' 'No everything is not alright, starting with this form of greeting.' 2. Chips are Fries and Crisps are Chips New Mucchad mascot for the blog. No that's true, you ask for Chips and they give you fries. Even in Mc. Donald's were universal code (OK maybe not universal) for Burger is, 'You want to make it a meal with frie...

A while back I moved to London. The transition was smooth, I packed a box of seven clean underwears, a packet of bakarwadi (it's a pune thing), few clothes and was on my way to the land of Queen (real one). It was a new experience altogether. First thing that stuck me was how many people had wrong advise about traveling to London from India. As goes the unspoken law of char log kya kahenge, my journey to London spread across the community of people I knew (and didn't know) and they had to meet me to talk to me. How do these people even communicate? Do they have some whatsapp group that we don't know about? Or do they like have weekly conference call to get status update from each other. "Oh my son just got a job with Xx salary, what about you, report." Anyways these people kept popping everywhere with advise in abundance. "Oh be careful about immigration officers at Heathrow airport. They provoke you," said one wise fellow, "They have a right ...

Part 2 of 3 of Landing in Thailand. Read the Part 1, Getting Stamped about preparing for the journey from India. There is one thing you should do when you travel to Pattaya (Thailand) if you are a hardcore vegetarian (who cannot bear the smell of meat and prefer separate utensils for food), don't travel to Pattaya. Although I do not know why vegetarians leave their own house if they have so much food problems, if you still do wish to travel to Pattaya this article gives few tips on how to survive. I should tell you at times like these, the fact that you are an Indian acts like a thing of pride. Doesn't matter that the passport you had visa stamped few minutes ago was made by paying something extra to an agent or the fact that your driving license is responsible for the most corruption in your homeland, the fact that these documents are there in your pocket gives you a warm comforting feeling of your belonging. Last time when I left I had stepped outside the Bangkok a...

The thing about prophecies is, they tend to start a war more than prevent it. If Kansa never heard the prophecy of Krishna we would never see the battle. If Voldemort never knew about the potter boy, we would be saved seven horrible movies. But the thing about prophecies is that they exist. Over the period of time, I have come to believe that someone somewhere is jotting down prophecies about me in an language illegible by human. You know something is amiss, and bam that thing is amiss right then and there. There is not a single moment of doubt in my mind about the prophecy of railway and me. Murphy had once said, if there is a fifty-fifty chance of getting something right, there is a ninety percent guarantee you will get it wrong. During my junior college days there are people who sleep on the railway platform who used to watch me run after a train almost every day. Sometimes I even ran after it from front. This made one day, a homeless guy come towards me and said, 'You...

Life is one long journey from one station to another, just like a daily office employee waits for the next Borivali fast local impatiently at Dadar station, you wait impatiently for the next train to take you closer towards your destination. Just like the office employee, you know the train is going to come, it comes by everyday at the same time (almost the same time), the announcer has even announced that it will come but still mind has its doubts about the train and life. The journey of life takes you on every road, sometimes you start towards the east trying to get away from something, only to find that something ahead in front of you as you return from the west. Then there are those steeps which throw doubts in the strongest of the minds. You accelerate harder and harder hoping that the steep will be overcome but eventually realize a small reduction in gear is all it takes to go over that steep. The satisfaction you get as you reach the top, you know its not the mount Everest, b...

Reservation is a funny thing, everyone wants it, everyone fights for it and after standing in the line for 2 hours to get the caste certificate, after proudly getting admission in the most premiere college in the state for 10% less than cutoff and after carrying the responsibility of 300 years of misery and slavery of the entire tribe, the candidate walks the shallow halls of a professional college, only to realize, he was hoodwinked. His entire caste told him this was the path to success, the sure-shot way in which the upper caste earned money but here, there is nothing. Nothing at all, shallow halls that remind him that he was nothing compared to everything in place. When it comes to earning the right, there was no caste system. Everyone was and is miserable. The upper caste remained upper because the lower caste never thought otherwise and now 300 years later when he got the chance to make it right, he realizes it is a long way to go because the essentials of why the ...