This is your ... errr...captain

Took a flight here on the splendid Emirates airlines. For roughly the price of an ipod, I got pampered by the stewardess (intrguingly named 'Dragana'), got to watch two and a half movies on a tilting lcd screen, and developed double vision thanks to the copious Dewars Whisky plied by the said Dragana. But the thing that prompted me to write this post is the way pilots talk to us passengers when the plane is - how shall I put it - irrevocably in the air...More

Slightly inebriated post

Howdy, folks. This is Monsieur Shenoy reporting from the flight deck at 36,000 feet over Mysore. The corpore sano is at sea-level of course, but the mens sana is flying, owing to a liberal dosage of fine single malt whisky...MOre

My Miss India rant

If you ever find me wandering about on the streets gesticulating absently and talking to myself, you can tell yourself Naren has lost his mind at last. Unless of course I have got a blue-tooth headset, but that's most unlikely because I have no clue how to bind one with my phone...More

Troubles of my life

My computer seems to be suffering from Alzheimer's. I use this very nifty OS called Puppy Linux, which works like a dream on every computer that I own, but of late refuses to recall any of my usernames or passwords on the one that I use at home. I strongly suspect one of my sons to have fiddled with the settings...More

Let us work towards better copra production

More

Ah Life!

I've been hitting a rough creative patch lately, thanks to the economic and political situation and the fact that my pants are getting tighter. They are not supposed to do that. They are supposed to see their owner diligently sweat it out in the gym...More

Mommy will they make me Poet Laureate? - 1

We'll be having elections this spring
There'll be rigging and booth capturing
And loonies and crackpots
And Nepots and despots...More

A day in the life of a married man

Life as a married man is seldom simple. I just happened to tell her that I wouldn't be home for dinner as I was dining with friends at X restaurant. She remembered that it was close to Y shopping mall where we had bought that fancy bracelet...More

Dressing up for the Oscars

Pick one", said a rough voice from the shadows, "and make it quick, before my trigger finger gets really itchy". "Hahahaha!", the voice added sinisterly, and my connexion says nothing has curdled her blood...More

On the importance of digging up roads in Mumbai

"What this city needs is more roads and fewer excavations", said a Latte, who had evidently thought deeply into the matter. "They can't foresee ALL public work requirements. It is a growing city and public works are alway important...More

What do you do when your boss tells you to milk his buffalo

Section 13 (f) : It is hereby clarified that notwithstanding anything enacted anywhere else included the Republic of Papua New Guinea, no officer of the Indian Railways shall order his employees, subordinates or contractual workers under his jurisdiction to milk...More

The Soofy thing - Part I

As is usual in the Indian Railways, weirdos abounded. Our next door neighbour was an elderly gentleman who had, for this PhD thesis, selected the delicate topic "Toilet in three tier AC is better than Toilet in two tier AC"...More

When a dork attends a fashion show

I'm not normally this candid about my flaws but I'm in an unusually honest mood tonight. Must be the republic day spirit. Or a Ramalingam Raju moment...More

Quick post about the Mumbai Marathon

I was mistaken several times for Usain Bolt (I completed 10 meters in 9.68 seconds, equalling Usain Bolt's record). The young man on the right (#2045) is gazing in awe. Check the rippling muscles

Mr. Systematic

Excuse me!", I wanted to ask him, "If you didn't want it in the first place, why did you ask me to look for it?" But I didn't, of course. Because I was weak kneed with relief. A lesser man would have peed in his underpants...

Being president is hazardous to health

Anyway, let me get back to our main topic of this post, the hazardousness of being president. I am one of those speedreaders who looks at the headlines and any pictures shown in the article and automatically divines what the author wanted to say in 2000 words...

New Years, on making sense of

We like to usher in the new year every year. We are deeply paranoid that the new year might just lose its way and wander off into another century and then, where would you be?

In which I have a meal - and other unusual stuff

Here I must resort to aphorisms and mystic couplets like the old masters in the upanishads who had to answer all those questions like "who am I" and weren't allowed snappy answers like "you are someone who could use deodorant"...

The weekend that was

Their competing product costs some 12,000 rupees, occupies several gigabytes of space, crashes oftener than George Bush on a bicycle and works at a speed which makes road construction look exciting. So naturally, it is the most successful corporation in the world,......

Watching the News at Vadodara Railway Station

don't get to watch much TV, primarily because I don't carry enough weight in the protocol line-up. On the odd occasions that the TV does happen to be unoccupied, my mind is. Occupied, I mean. Not with much, of course, just the usual "what's it likely to be for the next meal? Broccoli or Lettuce?".......