My New Sitar

After staying away from sitar classes for more than four months while I was in Pune, I have started joining to my sitar master Saroj Mukherjee in Mysore. Last week I have bought my new Sitar from Mysore and it was nice to bring home this magical musical instrument. I went along with my master to the shop to select it and bought it for Rs.7300 after various parameter validations by my master. He later replaced the strings of this string with better ones and my net cost of sitar turned out to be 8k. It's a nice feeling to own a Sitar, though not many would even appreciate learning Sitar.

Brushing up the artist in me.

I completed a three month course on oil painting from a drawing institute named Grafitti in Pune, near where I stayed there in Jagtap dairy. This picture is the last oil painting I made before returning back from Pune. I liked it very much as a proof of my efforts to brush up my old talent as an artist while in school days. I have now framed it and looks pretty clean to be hanged on the wall at my home :)

My Lunch Group at Pune Infy

(from left)Nikhilesh,Me,Leena,Priya,Suwarna,Anvita and Subodh.

We are a wonderful group comprising of four software engineers (me,Nikhilesh,Leena,Anvita), a project manager (Priya), a quality analyst (Suwarna) and a Senior Project Manager (Subodh) and meet everyday for lunch at FoodCourt-2 in Phase2. Our daily lunch hour is spend talking over silly topics, pulling legs,PJs of Subodh and finally a long walk.
We also had good time together going for movies at E-Square and dinner. Sadly, Subodh resigned and yesterday was his last day at Infy. He gave us a delicious dinner party at Mainland China and we gifted him a shirt and a cup custom written with words of memories.He has invited us for a picnic to his village home town and hopefully we could have a nice time there.Anyway rest of us would continue having lunch together he group and keep the friendship alive.

Malgudi Days - the cute swami

Malgudi Days was a television serial which appeared long back in Doordarshan channel and the little stories set in a typical Indian village is loved by all even today. "Swami and Friends" was a popular series of stories around 'Swami' whose innocent pangs, wonder and mischief touched the hearts of the viewers. The picture shows the child character of Swami (master Manjunath) and inset pic shows the current photo of Manjunath (oops! same as my name)

Download malgudi series videos at http://www.stage6.com/Malgudi-Days---The-series

My new blog

Doesn't every city in the world have its own unique landmarks ? It could be a monument or a shopping complex or park or a palace or a temple or anything else. I decided to go around the internet looking for such uniques city landmarks and publish it in my new blog everyday. I hope I gather interesting photos everyday and at the end of this year, it would be a fine collection!

http://www.wonderlandmarks.blogspot.com

Chalo "Tum Tum"

I am here in Pune for a short term transfer to Infosys Pune for my project work. The first day to my office in Hinjewadi Phase 2 had me travelling in three 6-seater autorikshaws. The first one from my flat near Jagtap Dairy to Danke Chowk, the second from Danke Chowk to Hinjewadi, the third from Hinjewadi to Phase 2.

When I mentioned about the morning travel to my collegue, he said "So you came to office in Tum-Tum ?" I asked him "Tum-Tum ?.. Is it what you call the 6 seater auto ?" He replied "Yes.. its Tum Tum as we call it.."

I recollected my "Tum-Tum" experience- sitting crunchy, shaking sideways, jumping occasionally as the over packed three wheeler zips through the dusty traffic.

A Typhoidical Experience

Some diseases are worth having an experience. Typhoid is certainly one of those which keeps in us a lasting memory of the unfriendly bacterias who have conquered the forts of internal defense systems in the body.
It started in me with a slight shivering and fever. I took a day's off at office assuming to be normal fever. But hospital checkup made it clear that I was infected with Typhoid. It was then a week's stay back at home having only rice water as my stomach is fully disordered and no scope of any digestive mechanisms in place. My fever came down to normal from 102F a week back. I returned to office and continued my rest of days with work, and having food at restaurants.

Meanwhile, the colonies of bacterias had started recovering and was aiming for a second attack to break into my body defense systems. It happened after couple of weeks- me falling sick again with typhoid fever. Typhoid took me more than I cared for. Only after two weeks medication and rest at home, I came back to office work.

Now I won't allow the tiny tiny bacterias for a third attack. I care well for my food and drink only boiled or bottled water. I hope my body has acquired enough immunity to build the damaged fort walls for protection against any such unfriendly incomers.

Right mail at the Right Time gives you too Good Responses

If you had an old school friend whom you are not in touch with for a long time and then you send him a mail of Birthday wishes exactly on the fine morning of his birthday. It's going to bring happiness in his soul.

That's exactly what happened when I mailed all of them in my batch on the morning of Oct 16th - the first anniversary day of OctFT2 batch which was under my batchownership. I got too flattery mails praising my gesture and then there were circulation of good wishes mails. This photo was taken by few of batchmates in Infosys Bangalore when they decided to find time afternoon for a group photo to remember this day.

Touching moment

I felt touched after I saw this photo. It was taken when few of us, 'Soften' volunteers had gone to 'Chaya Devi Ashram' which is a home for oldage and orphan children. I had taken my mandolin and played couple of songs like 'vande mataram', 'mere sapno ki rani', 'jana gana mana', for the old age people there.

The photo clearly shows the glitter in the eyes of the old man and a shining lonely teeth in his mouth. Sometimes you don't realize the beauty of a moment unless it gets captured in the four borders of a photo. This is a clear example for that!

Daud - for a cause

We had a mini Marathon in our campus here in Infosys, Mysore on Oct 16th. It was to raise fund for the social forum, 'SOFTEN', now involved actively in helping the needy.

The event was a huge success with infoscions gearing up to run along. As a surprise, Anil Kumle, Sunil Joshi and few Ranji Cricketers were also running this fun marathon.

I too was involved in a way to this event in designing banners and posters for promoting it. This image shows a 6x3ft large banner designed by me, which was hung in the campus for the event.