Cricket, my heart beats for you!

From the urchin's street corner version to the casual backyard game, from the soft tennis ball version to the proper gentleman's game on a turf wicket in a lush green field, now, after so many years, I have played it all. And boy, is my heart a-flutter!

I am no great cricketer, but I like to think I can bat and bowl at a decent level and for me just playing the game any which way is like a sip of elixir to a parched mouth. And what better place to find elixir than in the sporting capital of the world - Melbourne, the heart of the best cricketing nation. Boy, am I glad my association with IBM has brought me to this corner of the globe.

It was bound to happen. In Melbourne, you just have to play atleast one sport or game. If you aspire to be counted as anything that is. Involve yourself in some game and you feel the pulse of the place flow in your veins and all of a sudden you have so many friends.

Well, yours truly and his mates were getting bored at home so we got a Table Tennis table and set it up in the courtyard of our apartment. I play regularly (read at least an hour everyday) and the fun it lends to an otherwise monotonous life is fantastic.

What wouldn't have got any more than passing mention if I had had written this piece a few days earlier is the fact that I did play some backyard cricket and some cricket on basketball courts and tennis courts all along. I have been to a few games here including the ICC World XI vs Australia match at the awesome Telstra Dome, the former Docklands Stadium. I have watched Pura and ING Cup games at the lush Junction Oval just across teh road from my apartment.

Then came the announcement about the corporate games in Victoria and I am honoured to be part of the team to represent Philip Morris International in the state level corporate Cricket 8s competition.

Our team now trains two to three days a week during the lunch hour. It is a nice feeling to get those pads on and wield the willow again after a long time. I hope to get going well and put on a good show for my team, fingers crossed.

I remember all too well the electric series I played in when I was in Mumbai and working with Patni Computer Systems Ltd. My good mate Damu captained us wonderfully and we, rank underdogs, almost staged a great upset winning seven matches in a row with our final victory coming of a last ball six! I am sure the kind of adrenaline that flowed then will flow again soon.

I am excited, if you haven't noticed yet. :-) And that is because, a lot of TT notwithstanding, my heart truly beats for cricket. In the land of the greatest batsman of all time, the great Sir Don, I am really excited to get to play good cricket. It might only be 8s and only a weekend competition with a few 'not ptoper' rules, but it is cricket and that is enough for me. I shall always root for the game and cricket will never fail to make my day.

* * *

As a closing note to all my readers, I am glad I did write again after a long break. I am back in blogosphere! :-)

Chickpea Cholay a.k.a. Channa Masala

Hi,

Here is some information to help any new cooks with making Channa Masala. Atleast this is how I do it. Any enhancements and suggestions are welcome.

Ingredients:

Basic ingredients:
A couple of handfulls of Chickpeas
A large ripe tomato cut in quarters
A large red onion cut in quarters
A couple of green chillies
A pinch of jaggery
A small clove of garlic
A bit of ginger
A tablespoon of Sunflower oil
A teaspoon of Garam Masala
A couple of teaspoons of Cholay Masala
Salt to taste

For the seasoning:
2 teaspoons of cumin seeds
2 teaspoons of Mustard seeds
A pinch of turmeric powder
1 tablespoon of Ghee (clarified butter)

For the garnish:
Washed and finely chopped fresh coriander

The Procedure:
Step 1: Firstly, let the chickpeas soak immersed in water for a couple of hours. This will make the chickpeas easier to cook.

Step 2: Cook the soaked chickpeas in sufficient water till they are soft. The best way of doing this is to use a pressure cooker and cook the chickpeas in it for 4-5 whistles of steam. Alternately you may use a pan on a stove or the microwave if you are adept at that. :-). Drain the water and keep aside the cooked chickpeas for now. Make sure the chickpeas are fully cooked by testing one with your finger.

Step 3: Making the Gravy:
The key to the flavours in the dish is the gravy. Grind the cut onion and tomato in a food processor/mixie in a puree. In the process of the grinding, add the chillies, garlic, ginger and jaggery to the puree and grind to a fine paste.

Get a pan onto the stove. Warm a tablespoon of sunflower oil in it and add the puree into the pan and sizzle-fry it. The aim of this exercise is to take away any of the raw sharp flavours/smells of the onion and garlic. Add required water to maintain the gravy at a reasonable consistency. Keep the gravy to a boil for a few minutes. (In case you added extra water boil it off!)

Step 4: Putting it all together:
Once the gravy is cooked at the proper consistency, add the cooked chickpeas into it and continue to cook. Add the Garam Masala and the Cholay Masala. Make sure you stir the gravy occassionally to keep it from sticking onto the bottom of the pan. Add salt to taste. When cooked enough, take the pan off the stove.

Step 5: The seasoning:
Warm the ghee in a pan and add the cumin seeds, mustard and a pinch of turmeric in. As the mustard and cumin seeds splutter, take the pan off the stove and add the spluttering mixture into the gravy. Please be careful not to get some of the spluttering ghee on your hands as that can be a little un-nerving! Ladle out some of the gravy into the spluttering pan to take out all of the ghee in it. Mix the gravy well.

Step 6: The Final Garnish:
Finally, get the cooked, seasoned Cholay into a serving pot. Garnish the Cholay by sprinkling some finely chopped coriander onto it.

Serve the cholay as a side dish with chappathis, pooris or rice.

Hope you enjoyed this recipe. Bon apetite!

Bitten by the Tag-Bug!

Morning... Just awake... only barely...
Knock knock... who's there?...
BANG... CRASH... dust and bright light... a booming voice... "You have been tagged by your Pal!"
Mortification... So it was true after all... I try to turn around wanting to run for my life... Petrified... can't move... Astonishment... fear... confused... helpless... futility... resignation... "What do want me to do?"

Him: Answer a few questions.
Me: First tell me why this is happening!

Him: Pal has tagged you with the book-bug.
Me: Pal! He gets many ideas!

Him: Do you like to read?
Me: I love to read.

Him: What do you read?
Me: I read everything from comics to magazines and short stories to full novels. True stories, fiction, fantasy and accounts.

Him: What languages do you read in?
Me: I prefer English, although I have read a little in Hindi too.

Him: What are you currently reading?
Me: Inca Gold by Clive Cussler.

Him: How many books do you own?
Me: Too many. Running out of space to shelve them.

Him: Where do you buy books?
Me: No single place. I have bought at Crossword, I buy here in Melbourne from a second hand store, from Munna-Bhai in Mumbai...

Him: How do you choose a book to buy?
Me: I look for the reviews most of the times and my friends point me on to a book they have found to be good. Sometimes I just read blurbs at a bookstore and pick one up by intuition.

Him: What is your most recent buy?
Me: A compendium of three books in one hardback by Archer.

Him: What do you pplan to read next after Inca Gold?
Me: The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason. I have borrowed it from the St Kilda public library.

Him: Is that a good library?
Me: It is paradise to any book lover. A fantastic collection of books and CDs and DVDs and audio books too. And guess what, it is all free for any resident of this place.

Him: That is impressive, enough cause for envy amongst your friends.
Me: Yes, make sure you tell Pal.

Him: Do you gift books?
Me: If the person I am gifting likes to read or even would like to start reading, I would choose a book straight away.

Him: What was the last book you gifted?
Me: A set of two leatherbound classics to my best friend at her engagement.

Him: Any book that left a lasting impression on you?
Me: Many in fact. One specifically would be Acts of Faith by Erich Segal.

Him: Is there a book that you could not finish?
Me: A few. One comes to mind immediately: Five Patients by Michael Crichton. I am not made for such types of narrative I guess.

Him: Name a few books you would recommend to a fellow reader.
Me: The Class by Erich Segal
Malgudi Days/Swami and Friends both by R. K. Narayan
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
The Mill on the Floss (un-abridged) by George Eliot
The Black Arrow by Robert Lewis Stevenson
The Client by John Grisham
The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller
...and many more

Him: Which do you think is the best movie made out of a book?
Me: This is tough to answer. There are many to begin with. And there are different themes. I would leave this to the opinion of the individual. I will say only that I believe the charm of a book can never be truly captured on screen. Imagination that brings a book you read to life is your own while a movie is the imagination and interpretation of another, however good it may be.

Him: You have done well so far with all the questions. I have no choice but to leave you in peace now.
Me: In fact, come to think of it, I enjoyed the interrogation. Only you could have un-petrified me! Now get lost will you!

More light... dust... a chill blast of air... suction... mist... a warp... and suddenly quiet... I can move... I go to the kitchen for a glass of water... and to make some breakfast... Come to think of it, Pal, good on you... you have set me thinking. :-)

Locked Out!

Every once in a while we do something daft and make a fool of ourselves. When it happens, we dont fell good at all about being in a spot, but later on the story brings a smile on your face and giggles on others'. :-)

Why am I saying all this? I did something daft for a change. I certainly did not plan it but it happened something like this. The apartment that I live in has an automatic spring lock that locks the door when shut. You need to then have the key to open it from the outside.

Suffice it to say that keen on going to play a few games of table tennis, I picked up my paddle and rushed out of my apartment forgetting to take the keys. I had a good hour playing TT and when it ended, I couldn't find the keys to my apartment on me! Anyone who would have seen me at that moment of discovery would have seen a Merry Melodies donkey with a balloon over its head saying "DUNCE"! That is exactly how I felt anyway.

I tried to go down to the reception hoping to find the spare key, but to my chagrin, the staff had all left. The one member of the staff who lives in one of the apartments here happened not to find her spare keys and I was out there wet with sweat on a chilly winter evening and the temperature was falling below 10 degrees. Brrrr....

Necessity is the mother of invention they say; I say desperation is the gateway to all sorts of ideas. I started trying to find out a way of entering my apartment without a key. My apartment is on the first floor and I cannot hope to climb up a sheer wall on the roadside without any number of misfortunes befalling me (no pun intended) so I had to smother that idea even as it had begun to form. Then I spotted my bedroom window. This might be more plausible. First I had to remove the netting. This I managed to do without much ado after a few minutes of pulling, pushing and sliding until it eventually came off in my hands. That accomplished (without anyone spotting me and mistakenly calling the police) I had to figure out a way to undo the spring latch on the inside of the glass window to slide it open. I needed something thin and long that I could insert through the small gap between the jamb and the latch. I borrowed a pen-knife from my manager's home and he came out to help me in my efforts. We tried hard but we were not able to reach the latch with the small pen-knife and we could not find any other implement to help our cause. I had to give up after half an hour of trying and all of a sudden I started feeling the cold again.

My manager was good enough to ask me to sleep at his house for the night and I had no other option anyway so I accepted. My major dis-satisfaction now was I could not get to the nice soft chappathis and sprouted moong masala that I had cooked for dinner before going out to play. To add to the misery, I had invited another colleague to dinner and now I had to tell him that he would have to find dinner someplace else. Talk about adding insult to injury!

I sat in my manager's contemplating my not-so-comfortable position, with Manorama making wise-cracks in Thillana Mohanambal on the telly, when thanks to Dame Luck, the resident staff called up to say that she had managed to find the spare key to my apartment. How happy I felt, I cannot express in words.

So the story ended in a "happy ever after" note with me able to go have a nice shower and dig into my dinner and tuck myself cozily into bed.

Hope you dont ever forget your keys and wish you a nice weekend. Ciao! :-)

Ballarat & Blood on the Southern Cross

Sunday, 22 May 2005
Back home and resting

Hello all,

I have a long story to tell, so I shall get to it right away. I took Friday off from work and decided to go travelling. It had been more than a month since my trip the Grampians and I was getting quite restless. Work had kept me on a tight leash and I had to break free and chill out. God bless my manager for he let me and a friend of mine off on a Friday. I set about planning a trip for a couple of days such that we would be back late on Saturday evening.

Friday morning arrived, beautifully sunny with a clear sky dotted with just enough white fluff to shield the glaring sun when driving and Pravansu and I set off on our journey. Fuel tank filled and tyre pressure checked and corrected, we were all set to drive to Ballarat, our first destination.

The drive would take us an hour and twenty minutes. With Kishore Kumar singing out of a CD, the mood was just right. The holiday bug started buzzing around our ears. Ballarat is one of the oldest towns in Victoria. The town came into existence after a large amount of Gold was found to be present in and around the place. In 1850, Ballarat started as a miner’s settlement over Sovereign Hill and grew rapidly in size as word of the gold spread and people from far and wide came rushing to make their fortunes in Ballarat Gold.

We reached Ballarat in good time and made our way to the information centre where a friendly member of the staff helped us get reservations at a nice twin share motel for the night and also helped us with directions to the attractions in town. Our first visit was to the newly built Aboriginal Arts Centre. It is a small but dainty collection of art and artefacts made by the aboriginal peoples of the area. The Centre showcases the life and history of the aborigine people and has a lot of lovely didgeridoos, boomerangs and paintings.

The main attraction of Ballarat however is Sovereign Hill itself. The government has preserved the whole town in its 1850s splendour. Complete with people in 1850 costumes and shops and homes operating the way they used to in the ‘50s, Sovereign Hill is a unique experience that brings you face to face with living history.

A typical day on Sovereign Hill

The Red Hill Mining Company operated the largest mine on Sovereign Hill. I went down the real mine shaft and the tunnels on a tour and the darkness and the damp and dusty heavily laden air was quite spooky. Imagine tunnels several hundred feet deep into the ground where in some places you can only walk single file and bent double. In these depths and treacherous conditions worked the miners of a bygone era churning out 8-10 hour shifts with a single break of twenty minutes! It is no surprise that the average life expectancy of those miners, because of the unhealthy conditions that they worked in without any protection to speak of, was less than 60 years. After going deep into the tunnels, having learnt from the guide all about how the miners used to dig for gold first with just sledge-hammers and a tap and later using pneumatic drills, how water from the lower depths was pumped up continuously to keep from drowning the miners and how the quartz containing the gold veins were transported to the top manually by young boys aged 11 to 15 on carts (laden with half a ton of the rock), we rode through the dark tunnels on a track buggy into blinding sunlight. What a fantastic experience indeed!

Strolling thought the town we bumped into a file of red-coats marching about town making sure all was in order. The executioner got hold of me for getting in the way and I almost got his broadsword in my middle. Luckily for me, before he could strike, the governor’s carriage came by on Main Street and his attention was drawn for a moment and I managed to slip free to safety. That was a close shave indeed and I ran on till I reached the other part of town where I found musketeers practising firing their long muskets. I certainly did not want to get into the way and turned off towards the sweet aroma that was coming out of the building on my left. It was the confectioner‘s. A large sign outside read “Brown’s Confectionery Factory”. I walked in and was welcomed by a jolly person (his sweet s were as sweet as him, he claimed). I saw him make a mess of the place and himself as he made his famous raspberry drops. I tried one out and it tasted wonderful , just like he had claimed. I purchased a bottle of raspberry drops and bade the sweet maker goodbye.

Down the far end of Main Street I came upon the Wheel Wright. He was glad to show me how he wrought wheels and the spokes and the cogs from timber using machinery that ran on steam. The wheel wright makes the wheels for the carts and carriages of Sovereign Hill apart from shipping some to his customers abroad.

Near the mine, the smelter showed me how the nuggets were smelted and purified from the mercury in a retort and then poured into casts to make ingots each worth $50,000! Liquid Gold at 1200 degrees Centigrade is a sight to behold. The dazzle and shine will take your breath away and you cannot help but feel you want to possess it. I can understand now how Midas would have felt when he had the power to make gold out of anything by mere touch.

For recreation miners used to bowl at a nine-pin wooden alley.The alley is totally different from what we see today. It takes two people to play, for one rolls the heavy ball with both hands down a channel towards the skittles at the far end and the other replaces the fallen skittles after a throw and sends back the ball on another channel. After a few throws my arm started feeling sore and I gave it up.

I needed a bit of rest and I stopped by the stream that was flowing down Red Hill Gully. There were many busy panning for gold dust in the stream and I tried my luck as well. My luck aint anything to speak of, so I got no gold. The sun was slowly dipping down the horizon and what a day it had been for me. I shall not forget this day for a long time to come. What a life these people led in the 1850s! Hats off to their ingenious methods and discoveries.

The day was over but there was more to see. When fully dark Sovereign Hill turns into a theatre set, the largest I have seen, spread all over its 25 hectares. A multi-million dollar sound and light show called “Blood on the Southern Cross” takes you through the life and the fight of the miners against the government for their rights. The bitter struggle between the government and the common miner folk and the bloody battle that ensued are depicted in spectacular fashion under a starry sky. The miners group against the government under the banner of the blue Southern Cross. The action unfolds all around you and you are caught in the middle of a story more than a century before your time. It goes on for about 80 minutes as you are taken through different parts of the town on foot and aboard a buggy train. The climax where buildings a razed in a fire and shots are fired all around you spilling blood on the Southern Cross blew my breath away.

This day has been an exhilarating experience for me and one that will remain fresh in my memory for a very long time to come. It has been my pleasure to have shared my experiences with you and I hope you too can one day come to Ballarat and live the experience. Until my next blog from down under, I wish you all peace and happiness.

Of Vistas and Kangaroos - The Grampians

April 17, 2005
Warrawee Cottage, Halls Gap, The Grampians

Oooooh! It is cold. Boy, am I glad to be holding this steaming cup of tea. It is just dawn outside and it looks like a lovely day from my window-side seat. Here I am, comfortably nestled in a cushioned armchair sipping good tea and thinking about the nice time we had yesterday and wondering what the day holds in store for us today.

There are six of us. With two Ford Falcons, both boots full of stuff and a cheer in our hearts we had set off from our apartments in St. Kilda, Melbourne last morning. That was Saturday, the sixteenth of April 2005. After taking a couple of wrong turns and finally managing to get back on track we followed the Western Freeway to Ballarat, the gold-mining town of yesteryear and on past it, through Ararat and to Halls Gap.

Halls Gap is a small township sitting on the entrance to the Grampians. The Grampians is a dense natural forest area with a lot of mountains and wildlife. Halls Gap sits in a small Gap between Mountains forming a gateway to the spectacular scenery of the Grampians. I wouldn’t call it even a township, for it is just a congregation of a few buildings. There is the Visitor’s Information Centre, a grocery cum utility shop, a bottle shop and a police station. A Petrol station and a cricket oval provide a finishing touch to the town. There is a nice park with a few swings and slides for kids and serves as an ideal spot for a picnic lunch.

At the visitor’s centre we were helped by a nice lady. We picked up enough local knowledge and decide where we wanted to go. We collected maps with driving directions. Our first and most pressing need was however to find suitable accommodation for the night for the six of us. We had not bothered to book ahead, knowing this time of the year is not tourist season yet. We came expecting a few rooms at a motel or a Bed and Breakfast establishment and I am understating our surprise and joy in saying that we were overwhelmed when the kind lady at the visitor’s centre asked us if we wished to rent a lovely cottage all for ourselves. The price was good and we jumped at the chance.

So here we came to Warrawee, an orange painted wooden cottage with a first floor a long drive and garden. A neat porch leading to the front door and a barbecue grill by the back. Inside, the cottage is an epitome of homeliness and comfort. A tastefully set up living room and fully equipped kitchen, nice bath and toilet facilities and service area, two Queen Bedrooms and a third bedroom with single cots, make up the house. A nice balcony in the first floor looking out in the elevation is a nice touch of class.

So here we set down our stuff and set out to explore some of the attractions of the Grampians.

The Boroka Lookout and the Ried Lookout are very nice spots on the edges of the cliffs overlooking spectacular scenery. The lovely blue of the distant lakes and the rising mountains with vales in-between lend a refreshing feeling of goodness and beauty. The one snapshot that would stay in my memory for a while is the soft blue of Lake Wartook lying snugly between two arms of the Grampian Ranges. I might have a picture here of it to share with you.

Lake Wartook from Boroka Lookout

Our hearts light and fluttering, having taking in these spectacular sights, we carried on towards the Mac Kenzie Falls. The Mac Kenzie Falls is reputed to be Australia’s highest waterfall, though in reality it is not too high; I would put it at something between 60 and 70 metres tall. There is a narrow and quite treacherous track leading to the bottom of the falls where the water collects in a wide pool in dark rock. The track starts of rugged and rocky and slowly the gradient increases until it becomes very steep and very narrow. To make things even more tricky, the lower you descend, the more wet and slippery the rock underfoot becomes, not to mention the thick roots of the cliff hanging flora trying to trip you every step of the way. The brave and careful who overcome these hazards are treated to a spectacle like none other. The vista opens up a gorgeous and raucous waterfall that gets smothered into a placid pool set amidst a rocky cul-de-sac. I fell in love with this idyllic setting and will cherish this visit for a long long time.

MacKenzie Falls

On our way back (after pulling ourselves up the same way we went down, becoming quite weary in the process I might add) we stopped by at the small kiosk a the head of the track. The jolly kiosk-tender supplied us with tea, coffee, ice-creams and biscuits at a reasonable cost. I even picked up a nice small (real) boomerang from his shop window. We had had a great time so far in our trip, but there was one small detail missing. It feels quite awkward to concede the point but the fact remained that I had not seen a single kangaroo in Australia yet in my two months of stay here! I lamented my tale of woe in the passing to the kiosk-tender and voila, I hit pay dirt almost immediately! The garrulous shop-keeper told me that I was standing in the middle of Kangaroo land. He showed us a spot on our way back home that he reckoned would be the best place to see a really large number of kangaroos. This spot turned out to be the Cricket Oval in Halls gap! It was getting on dusk and the air was cool, perfect for the kangaroos to come out for a graze and what better grazing ground than a lush green cricket oval!

I saw a few dozen Kangaroos in the Oval. We stopped our cars and let all our travel fatigue ebb away strolling in the midst of these mild-mannered and quiet marsupials. This was probably the best finish to the day I could have hoped for. After a while (several photos and hopping matches later), we began to feel the chill of the night and headed away to Warrawee Cottage. A couple of loaves of bread, some butter, jam and hot cups of milk later, I tucked myself into the cozy bed and let my eyelids droop off leaving my mind wandering the green fields with the kangaroos of Halls Gap.

The sun is up now and I am eagerly looking forward to today’s adventures in the hypnotic Grampians.

Until my next blog, au revoir!

ANZAC Day

Helloooo!!!

Alright, Friday evening and am I glad the weekend is nigh! And it is a long weekend too. Monday, the 25th of April is a holiday in Australia and New Zealand.

The 25th of April is commemorated as ANZAC Day. ANZAC is the acronym for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps and this day has its roots buried deep in history from long ago.

Anzac Day commemorates New Zealanders and Australians killed in war and to honour returned servicemen and women at Gallipoli during the First World War. The ceremony itself has been continually adapted to the times, but has also steadily acquired extra layers of symbolism and meaning.

War memorial window, St Andrew's Church, Cambridge.

The Gallipoli campaign, in which New Zealand made its first major effort during the First World War, had its origins in the stalemate which had developed on the Western Front by the end of 1914. Following the initial free-flowing operations, the opposing sides found themselves facing each other along a line of trenches which stretched from Switzerland to the Belgian coast. The power of the defence having already made its impact felt, statesmen in both camps were at a loss as to how to proceed. In these circumstances the need for an alternative approach was patent.

On the Allied side the search for an alternative was encouraged by the opportunities presented by superior seapower. With the German High Seas Fleet contained in the North Sea, the possibility of launching amphibious attacks on the enemy was particularly evident to the British First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill. Impatient to use British naval resources, he advanced a series of proposals, among them an assault on the Dardanelles-the nearly fifty-kilometre-long strait separating the Aegean Sea from the Sea of Marmara, which at its narrowest point, the Narrows, was less than two kilometres wide. The object would be to pass a force into the Sea of Marmara and threaten the capital of Germany's ally the Ottoman Empire.

At the War Council in London, Churchill urged an attack from the sea on Gallipoli at its first meeting on 25 November 1914. This was rejected as such an operation would be too risky but the issue was soon brought back to the foreground by developments in the war. With the Turks advancing northwards in the Caucasus, Russia appealed for action to relieve the pressure. The War Council approved the proposal on 15 January 1915.

The landings were originally scheduled to take place on 23 April, but weather conditions led to a delay of two days. Even if all had gone to plan on the 25th, the force would have struggled to secure its objectives, especially within the time allotted. But the plan was thrown into disarray even before the troops began landing. The Australian spearhead was mistakenly directed about two kilometres north of the envisaged landing place, nearer to Ari Burnu at what was later named Anzac Cove and on a much narrower front than envisaged in the plan. The reasons for this have been hotly debated over the last eighty years, with tides, faulty navigation by the landing fleet, belated changes of orders all being canvassed. An unauthorised alteration of direction northwards by one of the midshipmen commanding a steamboat, which pulled the whole line of tows in this direction, is the most likely explanation.

As a consequence the troops, on landing, found themselves confronted with far more formidable natural terrain immediately inland than they would have faced at the originally planned landing place. As they pushed inland through this difficult country of tangled ravines and spurs, the various units were split up and inextricably mixed. Only a few small, uncoordinated parties managed to reach the objective, Gun Ridge. These problems were compounded by delays in landing the remainder of the 1st Australian Division, the last of which reached shore four hours behind schedule. In the meantime, the first elements of the New Zealand and Australian Division had also begun landing soon after 9 a.m., and they became intermixed with units of the Australian division.

These deployments were made more serious by the defenders' vigorous response. In the landing zone itself there had only been two Turkish infantry companies and an artillery battery. Although these units used their dominating position to inflict substantial casualties on the invaders, they were too few to prevent the Australians from landing and pushing inland. However, exercising near Hill 971 was the 19th Division, based at Maidos and commanded by Mustafa Kemal Bey. Using his initiative Kemal rapidly deployed these forces to meet the threat posed by the ANZACs, units being thrown into battle as soon as they reached the position. A counter-attack in mid morning drove the Australians back from the 400 Plateau. Kemal then turned his attention to the right of the ANZAC position, where New Zealand troops had joined the Australians in the front line.

A fierce struggle ensued for the Baby 700 feature, but by evening the ANZACs had been forced back from it and the Nek. In this fighting about one in five of the 3000 New Zealanders who landed on the first day became casualties. The Turks had succeeded in securing the high ground. Far from rapidly gaining their initial objectives on Gun Ridge, the ANZACs found themselves in danger of being pushed back into the sea.

This is the history behind the day. I find it pretty fascinating. My interst in this history was really kindled after the barbecue we had in office this afternoon. We all stood in line to get our "rations" like the ANZACs got then. We each had been given a coupon book that granted each a portion of bread, vegetables, one biscuit and a cup of tea. We handed over the coupon to be stamped and collected our food tray and ambled off to find a shade and contemplate our next next assault. Ooops...sorry I got carried away a bit... We had the food and then got back to work actually. :-)

Talking about work, I remember now that Monday is not a day off for me after all! There is some urgent stuff I need to work on and so have to be in office on Monday. Aw shucks! Anyway, I still have two days to take it easy.

Okie folks, I shall leave you all to mull over the ANZAC campaign all those years back. To close, here is the dedication that is stated each year in a dawn service by one of the survivors from the war or a close family member, the last verse of Laurence Binyon's 'For the Fallen':

"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them. "

Until the next post, adieu!

Dr. Kanagaraj passes away

Dear friends,

I am stunned beyond words and numbed beyond reaction after reading the sad news in my mail about the passing away of one of KCT's best Mathematics Professors, Dr. Kanagaraj.

For all of you from KCT who knew Dr. Kanagaraj, this must be a rude shock indeed. From what I gather, he had left KCT a year or so ago to pursue better prospects. He had travelled to Africa and had been there for most of the time since. It was in Africa (I know not where yet) that he sufferred a massive heart-attack and succumbed to it on the 18th of this month.

In his mail my friend has mentioned that he was having health problems and had planned to return to India shortly.

Please join me, my friends, in praying for the dear departed soul of Dr. Kanagaraj. I am sure we have many moments to remember and cherish from our interactions with him during our days in KCT. Under his tutelage the entire student community of KCT had been blessed with a wonderful Maths Teacher and he was a frontrunner in making KCT's Math Department one of the best in engineering colleges of repute in the State.

I shall remember him as an honourable gentleman with great intellectual capabilities.

May God provide his family and near and dear ones the strength to bear this deep loss and gently ease their profound grief.

That such a strong man should suddenly be called by God to his Kingdom prematurely is still beyond my limited scope of understanding. Times are strange indeed.

I sign off with a heavy heart.

Ram.

The Greatest Farewell

Hello everyone,

The last week has been a poignant one for not just Catholics but also for millions of people all over the world, for the passing away of Pope John Paul II from this world into the welcoming arms of The Almighty has left behind a lacuna that would be hard to fill easily. As the voting Cardinals are gathered in Conclave to elect the next Pope, let us try to understand how Pope John Paul II came to be one of the best loved Popes in modern times.

A Brief Biography of Pope John Paul II:

Born on May 18, 1920 near Krakow in Poland, Karol Wojtyla would become Pope John Paul II, the spiritual leader to approximately one billion Roman Catholics and one of the most influential persons of the 20th Century. His mother Emilia Kraczorowska died in 1929, his brother Edmund in 1932 and his father in 1941.

Karol Wojtyla first became interested in becoming a Roman Catholic priest in 1942. During WW2 he worked in a quarry and a chemical factory in Nazi-occupied Poland to avoid being deported to Germany. The Nazis forbade seminary studies, so Karol had to pursue his calling to priesthood in secret. He was ordained in Krakow on November 1, 1946. On June 26, 1967 Wojtyla became the Archbishop of Krakow.Cardinal Wojtyla was desceibed as an important contributor to the Vatican Council II, which modernised the Church and granted parish priests greater autonomy.

On October 16, 1978 Karol Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II and greeted the crowd from the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, the first ever Polish Pope and the first non-Italian Pope elected since 1523!

Pope John Paul was seriously wounded when a 22 year old Turkish gunman shot him at St. Peter's Square on may 13, 1981. The pontiff was gravely wounded in the abdomen and was hospitalised for 77 days, during which time he repeatedly prayed for the soul of Mehmet Ali Agca, the gunman who sought to assasinate him. Just over a year later, he visited Agca in Rome's Rebibbia prison and forgave him for his sins.

As Pope, John Paul II proved to be a conservative and was of the opinion that any form of artificial birth control was sinful. He has openly condemned cloning and experiments with human life. Pope John Paul II, during his pontificate, made 96 trips abroad meeting the Common Man in every continent. It is estimated that he has been seen by more people that anyone else in history earning him the sobriquets "the Pope of the People" and "the globetrotting Pope". He spoke eight different languages learning Spanish after becoming Pope.

The Pope worked to reuinfy Roman Catholicism with the Armenian and Eastern Orthodox Churches following a centuries-old schism. During his pontificate the Pope ordained thousands of priests and presided over 138 beatification ceremonies including Mother Teresa of Calcutta and 49 canonization ceremonies creating 472 new saints. In his homily for the service during the beatification of Mother Teresa, the pope wrote: "I am personally grateful to this courageous woman whom I have always felt beside me. Mother Teresa, an icon of the Good Samaritan, went everywhere to serve Christ in the poorest of the poor."

After a prolonged illness that began with breathing difficulties from the flu in February and Parkinson's disease Pope John Paul II departed to heaven aged 84 on 2 April 2005.

*************************************************************

As I sit in front of my TV watching the funeral unfold, I cannot help but thinking that this man really has had a following in life and even in death. Millions of people gathered at St. Peter's Square and billions all over the world watched on TV I am sure. The feeling of grief was unanimous. The presence of world leaders from different countries was proof of the power the pope wielded and the presence of religious leaders from various faiths proved to me that it is the man and what he does that matters and that religion is only a means of keeping you on the right path.

I am sure the world would find it hard to replace this pope with one as good, but having said that I am also sure that someone has it in him to live up to the requirements of the office.

There are many Cardinals in the reckoning for the papacy and in the next week one will be chosen ending the Conclave. So who would the next pope be? An Italian by tradition, an European or an African or a South American? We will know soon, but whoever it would be would have a challenge to live up to, a standard set by the dear departed John Paul II.

But for now, it has been one of the greatest farewells in history to one of Vatican's greatest popes.

Sources of information: The Washington Post, ABC News and the internet.

Dancing with the Stars

Hello!

I am a regular viewer of this fabulous dance show on Channel 7 here. It is called “Dancing with the Stars” and it is a competition. Couples dance to different types of music and do different classes of dances in each round to prove their proficiency in all forms of dancing be it the Waltz or the Tango or the Salsa. One thing is certain, it is a treat to one’s eyes.

I have been avidly following the fortunes of many of the good performers (and I am not exaggerating when I say all couples in the competition have shown amazing skills) and like anyone would, have grown to have a soft corner for some couples. Well, they melted that corner with their stunning dancing to make it soft!

Tonight’s show, the equivalent of what could be called a quarter-final, with four lovely couples proved an exhilarating experience. It also left me a little unhappy. I will tell you why.

Given that all four couples in tonight’s “test” have consistently pushed the bar of excellence a notch skywards in the past weeks, one does always discern a little, if only miniscule, more icing on some cakes than some others. You know what I mean.

So let it be recorded that I feel for the charming Jason and the lovely Luda having to exit the competition. Mark and Holly have always been the professional dancers who have it in them to enthral any audience. They are the best dancers I have ever seen in a competition like this one. Tom and Kym have improved on their weaknesses by working hard and have grown in stature as a couple immensely and have impressed a lot of people. Ian and Natalie have always tried very hard but Ian is not the greatest dancer around. They did perform quite well certainly, but they still did need a miracle to not get eliminated at such an advanced stage of the competition. That is exactly what they did get! Half the points that the participants score are given out by the judges (professional dancers themselves) while the other half is accounted for by the number of votes each couple polls from the viewing public. To be fair to them, Ian was totally stunned to be told to be back next week for the “semi-final”.

Two things for us to take away from this tale:

1. Never to give up even when you are down. Down is never out. Fortune smiles on you when you least expect it but you should not have lacked in trying. As the famous song goes, “Zindagi ek safar hai suhana… Yahan kal kya ho, kisne jaana?”

2. Life can be sometimes a blossom and at other times a prickly thorn. Jason and Luda showed me how to laugh and sing through the spring and to smile through the autumn.

As a closing note I would like to commend Jason and Luda for the fantastic attitude they have brought to the fore throughout this competition apart from their fabulous dancing. You may not be in the competition any more, but to me you are still deserving winners and when I look up at the sky I will see you dancing with the stars!

Down the Great Ocean Road

Dated: 15 march 2005

Hi everyone,

Last weekend was my first in Australia and a long one at that too! Monday was a holiday for Labour Day. What would I do then? Go out of course!

I found out from local people here about the Great Ocean Road. If the name definitely caught my attention, in retrospect I am glad I chose this location because what I saw simply blew my breath away! The Shipwreck Coast is aptly named indeed.This beautiful stretch of road lies south-west of Melbourne and hugs one of the most rugged natural coastlines in the world all along its length.

A complete dossier on the Great Ocean Road is available on their website: www.greatoceanroad.org and I urge to you visit this well built and very informative site. You would read about the history and all the stories relating to this part of natural beautiful Australia in this site. I have uploaded some beautiful pictures I shot myself on this trip on imagestation and have sent some of you the link.

I went on the trip with a few colleagues and since I did not have a car then, we went on the guided tour bus. Apart from the awesome beauty of the place itself, I enjoyed thoroughly the continuous running commentary of our bus driver cum guide. The highlight of the day was the Typcal Aussie breakfast that our guide had prepared himself and this included lovely Australian herbal tea and some crackers with vegemite (a jam of sorts made from vegetables, but with the look of tar) and succulent home-made honey cakes. We returned after an exhilarating experience at night stopping by in the quaint old village of Colac for some evening refreshments.

I thoroughly enjoyed the trip and am certain I would be making a trip again down this lovely route soon, only next time by car and including an overnight stay somewhere in the beautiful and quiet Otways.

A must go trip for anyone visiting the southern parts of Australia, the Great Ocean Road. Until the next post, Das Vidaniya and may the Lord be with you. :-)

Kangaroo Jack from Melbourne

Hello everyone!

I had a long but quite comfortable flight to Melbourne. There was a long stop-over in Singapore and in my Singapore-Melbourne flight, I mostly slept. It so happened that someone I knew from IBM was on the same Bangalore-Singapore flight. So we passed the time together in Singapore airport. Singapore airport is a fascinating place. It is so beautifully designed and comfortable.

I converted some Aussie dollars for Singapore dollars and had a cup of hot cocoa for S$4.00! One S$ = Rs. 28/-. Well, I felt quite full in my stomach after that drink!

My flight SQ217 landed at the Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne. I caught a cab from the airport and the taxi driver, after a little bit of searching found the address and I met Sathish Ganesh there. He leads the onsite team and is a nice guy. Already met couple of other veggie guys too.

It is overcast and temperature hovers around 16-20 degrees. Quite comfortable actually.

My apartment (a temp 2 bedroom one) is lavishly furnished. It is like the designer apartments that we see on TV interior design shows. A state of the art futuristic apartment. I will send pics later. In a week I will move into another apartment (a 1 Bedroom one) and that will be my place for a long time come.

I plan to get and stock provisions this evening. I am told all Indian items are available here from a SriLankan store nearby.

I have to open my bank account here in a day or two.

I came to office here just in time for a photo shoot of the whole team. I got a PMI T-Shirt and a place in the team photo.

Will keep you posted from down under regularly.

Hakuna Matata! No Worries!

Best Friends

Originally Composed on: October 01, 2002.

This poem is dedicated to and in reference to my closest friends Damodhar, Vijay, Dilip and Mohan for we have been together since the second standard in school. We have spent some of the best and worst times in our lives together and will many more. Then I cannot leave out Ashwin who in the short span of four years has left an indelible mark of camaraderie and teamwork in my heart. There is Vishy and Srikanth, who are much more than just friends - in fact, these guys are as close as family. Then all these guys in my class especially those with allegiances with the "ROOM" where we have had many a great moment preparing for and planning large scale events - with these guys I share a special bond of friendship. In this circle of friends, I have learnt to love, to give and to understand others amongst many other things. I have learnt to be more responsible. I am truly lucky to have such a circle of friends around me to buoy my spirits when I'm down and to bring me back to ground when I soar too high. I am indebted to you guys.

Too long ago it might seem,
A passing early morning dream.
You wouldn't have known the hand you lent
To me was God sent.

Then we joined hands,
And have travelled far-away lands.
In stark reality
Or wondrous fantasy.

Each other we've long known,
Over the years together have grown.
So many times we've stuck together
Through calm and rough weather.

Through good times and bad,
Through happy ones and sad;
Always your shoulder you did lend-
You are my best friend.

Whatever fate might have in store,
I'll hold you in my heart's core.
Along with the message you send
What it is to be a friend.

- The End

The Promise

This poem is dedicated to all those brave, selfless soldiers, who willingly and most happily put down their lives for the nation in the Kargil War. I am a very proud son of this nation; made proud because of all those fathers and brothers, sons and husbands who have sacrificed in the supreme sense of the word - because I am an Indian.

He promised he’d be back today
And take me out.
He said it would be this day,
When we could scout.

He promised me a hundred times,
To take me into the wood.
He said, “In a world of crimes,
It does you a lot of good.”

I remember him in his uniform bright,
Sling over his shoulder the rifle,
Setting out to protect all that’s right,
He looked at me; smiled a trifle.

He hugged my mother and her eyes glistened,
With no trace of pretence.
He kneeled ere me and I intently listened
To his promise, in all innocence.

* * *

It was late, dark and raining,
When came that knock.
He grimly said something, his colour all draining,
Which hit dear mother like a rock.

A young lad am I; yet I knew
I had lost father dear.
We had to start again anew,
As the shroud began to clear.

Slowly I looked up to my mother-
Her hands and face pale;
Looking frail as a feather,
Unknowing to lament her tale.

“I shall not, my father, shed a tear;
Your’s is a supreme sacrifice.
To uphold good and duty, I shan’t ever fear;
Your son, my loving father, I promise.”


* * *

There’s No Place Like Home

Originally composed on: October 3, 2002

I was born in your arms tender
And opened my eyes to your splendor.
Within me I heard a song,
“This is where I belong.”


In ways loving and soft,
To me you have taught
The first lessons of life
And ways of battling strife.


With you I find solace,
My heart in pain ablaze.
A place of tranquility,
Revered in sanctity.


Far away from home,
When I have to roam.
I yearn for all the comfort I find
In you that I left behind.


Whatever you might say,
Whoever be you may,
Human, wizard or gnome,
There’s no place like home.

- The End

METAMORPHOSIS a.k.a. The Brotherhood of Insanity

Originally written on: Sept 20, 2002

You know what? I think I am going mad. Actually, I’m pretty sure. It’s one thing to lose hold of yourself but quite another to appreciate the reality. It is an altogether different, albeit bizarre feeling than any other, to know it and then to analyze it and write about it. Let me warn you that should you choose to continue reading beyond this point, you really ought to have a cast iron hold over your sensibilities.

It is a mad, mad world stuffed full of madder people. Madness is an epidemic and spreads like a raging bushfire in the Central Australian desert. It is also a vice that grips you and throttles the very last ounce of your resolve to fight it. The mire that it is pulls you deeper with every renewed effort you make to oppose it.

You never realize it until you are in it up to your neck and it’s only when it rises to your nostrils and asphyxiates you that you know you’ve been sold a dummy. Of course, it is too late then. You have long before stepped over the line of no return and yearn as much as you may; there is no prospect of going back.

In your last effort, however feeble, to get away from its tentacles, you clamor in pain and wonder why it happened to you. Why did you change and not know it. Every new day, you changed as did people and the world around you. Why did the sweet, little innocent thing everybody in the neighborhood loved to fondle and pet turn into a scheming and conniving Mata-Hari, always looking to cheat thy neighbor off his or her legitimate dues? It didn’t stop there did it? Oh no! You had to prove to the world that there’s none better than you, no matter what the ask. For that you had to use methods fair and foul, mostly foul, to upstage your unassuming victim.

This being a world of paradoxes, the victim is not always the hunted. Not hapless, he is just like you. Every good turn may or may not beget another but one bad will beget many worse. The hunter becomes the hunted and then has to escape the snare he himself set up, only by the skin of his teeth. Nary a chance that in the process you don’t lose a few years of your life and a little sanity. I tell you, it is a vicious circle. The pity is you get so engrossed in your drama of one-upmanship, that you don’t even realize the physical, mental, emotional and (in-) human metamorphosis that has happened to you.

Shakespeare aptly wrote, “All the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” We could, at least choose our roles or perhaps the way we execute them. We proclaim until our throats bleed that we belong to the unique brotherhood of the human race. That, amidst all differences, we are the same. We united in our efforts to overthrow powerful dictators. We unite in an effort to protect the environment. We unite in support of our cricket team. Yet, ironically, even as we repeat our oneness like somnambulists in a delirium, our throats literally bleed in cutthroat rivalry and competition. All’s fair in love and war. Really? Is there no love lost between you and me??

I forewarned you that I am slowly slipping off the rocker. I am sure, by now you are too. That makes two of us in a unique bond of difference in this world that is full of surprises.

- The End

Musings from The Garden City

Hi Folks, here I am again, back in action after a break of a couple of months.

In December 2004 I made a career move from Patni Computer Systems and into IBM. And so I came from the economic capital of the country- Mumbai - to the IT capital of the country - Bangalore.

It has been a couple of months now since that move and I have been in Bangalore during this period. I have come to like many things about this city and dislike some too.

To start with, this beautiful city is known as the Garden City, thanks to the greenery you will find here. There are innumerable gardens in and around this city dating from the days of Haider Ali. The city is pretty well planned and neatly laid out and is spreading far and wide continuously. It embraces modern buildings coupled with old time architecture and the blend is quite a treat to one’s eyes. You can pick up interesting facts about the history and fascinations of Bangalore at these internet sites.

http://www.bangaloreguide.com/About/history.asp
http://www.indiaexpress.com/bangalore/eureka/history.html

Come the IT boom and all the major IT companies of the world setting up shop here big-time, the city has taken quite a beating and continues to buck under pressure still. I see before me a beautiful city being split at its seams in terms of what it can withstand and support. The un-ending traffic of two-wheelers alone is enough to suffocate the city. The carbon monoxide pollution caused by the traffic and the omnipresent dust (thanks to the rutted roads and the heavy construction of sky-rises everywhere, is spoiling the wonderful climate that this city enjoys. A quiet and peaceful, almost lazy city has suddenly been transformed into a boiling cauldron of ethnic and cultural diversity in a span of just over five years!

Speaking about traffic, I must warn the visitor to Bangalore that on the road, any space you can insert your bike into is yours, if the other guy doesn’t go there first. If he beats you to it, you have the right to horn in any obscene fashion to give vent to your feelings. And of course you can overtake on the right or the left, push the other guy off the road to get ahead and then throw a few expletives at him for not falling off his bike and sit on the horn at a signal as soon as the countdown to green reaches the 10 second mark. Those white and yellow lines on the road are for decoration purposes only (they look good in aerial shots for movies) and have nothing to do with driving rules. When there is no space on the road, please go ahead and use the footpath beside; the pedestrians will jump into the adjacent ditch to let you pass, lest they be run over by you. Of course you wouldn’t do anything that treacherous, but it is better they don’t realize it. When you take a corner, choose the shortest way to get into the side street. Take a left turn at the left extreme of the road and a right on the right extreme of the road. On the occasional you crash into the guy coming from the other side of the bend, you have an opportunity to actually use all the expletives you have learnt and the public will have a field day by crowding all over the place and totally obstructing traffic in every direction while the poor guy you hit lies bleeding on the road on his mangled bike. As they say it’s all in a day’s work!

In Bangalore, you can find a conglomeration of people from all over the country and overseas. Diverse languages are spoken, the primary being English, Hindi, Tamil and a bit of Telugu with Kannada, the local language, being used only by the locals, who are easily out-numbered by the population flowing in from other states thanks to the number of IT jobs available. Living here, you can easily identify with the mosaic of cultures that India is with a generous smattering of the West thrown in.

Food is a subject I can go on and on about and there is much to talk about food here in Bangalore. For someone who has spent a lot of money on total trash in Mumbai, I am treated to some really nice fare each time I eat out. Bangalore offers a wonderful variety of North and South Indian food at astonishingly low prices at decent eateries at almost every street corner that I wonder what an inane fool I must have been to have spent Rs.25 per dosai in Mumbai with that awful so-called sambar, when I can get a better dosi here for only Rs.10! But I have to say that the sambar is not up to the mark in most places here too. I guess, for really authentic sambar, one must go to a city in Tamil Nadu.

The city’s public transport system is quite confusing at the best of times. Routes on the city buses are written only in Kannada script. Sometimes even the route number is in the Kannada script! If you look carefully, as you are wont to do in a new city, you will notice that there are different route numbers written on the front route board, the rear route board and the side of the bus. Which route the bus is plying on at that moment is anybody’s guess! To add to the misery of the already confused commuter, there are several types of buses that ply the roads here with different fare systems. The common type is the one familiar to any Indian, with front and rear doors and a driver and a conductor with a whistle that he often blows next to your ear leaving it ringing for a while. Some have an entry/exit only at the front and there is no conductor to service passengers. The driver collects money and gives you a ticket as you enter. Nothing wrong with the system except that the poor driver has nothing better than a tin can or a cardboard box to take his collections into and this he puts on top of the engine cover. With a huge torrent of people pouring through the door at any stop, who can blame the hapless driver for stopping the bus in the middle of the road, or at an intersection to collect fares? Some other buses have pneumatically operated double doors at the center of its left side that are operated by the driver from his control panel. Buses may stop at designated bus stops or in the middle of a swirl of traffic, whichever is easier. Commuters are requested to co-operate and board and get off in the most appropriate place, thank you. If the conductor is not too keen on giving you a ticket, you may pay him only a portion of the full fare and he will accept is gleefully. Tickets checkers? Who, pray are they?

IT has brought a lot of expendable money to the city’s very young crowd. A walk on Mahatma Gandhi Road (you obviously have heard of MG Road? Well, it is actually named after the father of our nation) would be enough elucidation of this point. Where there is money to be spent the giant corporate vultures land in numbers. A splash-a-dash of color and a carnival atmosphere get thrown in and you gape at it all in wonder! Huge crowds of youngsters earning far more a month than the collected earnings of their parents in a year and not knowing what to do with it all throng Café Coffee Day, Barrista, MacDonald’s, Pizza Hut and the like. Brand is the mantra here. I wonder how many people behind me on the street are smirking at the label on my bottom that tells them the pair of jeans I wear is, well, not from what they might find a favorable style house! If I dwell too much on the topic I am sure to develop a complex, but such is the change that is happening to Bangalore. The number of pubs in this city amazes me. They definitely out-number the gardens and Bangalore can earn a new sobriquet after all – The Pub City!

Having shared with you information that range from the normal to the have-to-live-with-it categories, it is time I scare you with something totally outrageous and despicable. With large numbers of “IT people” living and working here and more coming in every passing day, real estate is booming. Prices are sky-high already and aiming higher still. Taking the maximum advantage of this phenomenon are house owners willing to rent out an apartment or a portion of their house as Paying Guest accommodation. The willingness of people to pay high rents for small apartments has given rise to a large number of incredibly small apartments built as extensions over existing structures. The avarice of the landlords has been fuelled to such an extent that they do not shy away from demanding a hideously high sum for a rat-hole of living space. On top of this, there seems to be an undercurrent of understanding between the landlords and brokers that it is very difficult to cement a deal with the landlord of an apartment, which apartment you could easily settle for through a broker in that area. The catch is that the broker earns a piece of the pie for himself in the deal, which is usually one month’s agreed rental value, for taking you to the house you have spotted on your own!

These are my first observations and experiences from this city.