I'm High....uhm....or maybe Low...

If there is one thing I hate, it's a writer's block...and this from a person who writes just once or twice a month is all the more shocking. The past few weeks have been quite eventful. I ended up with a sore stomach which resulted in a low bp. Yep...quite bad and the funny part of it, it took a visit to Costa Coffee for me to realise I wasn't feeling well.....I'll explain that in a bit.

Low bp reminds me of a certain day in Abu Dhabi in my 12th grade. Abizar, Akshath and Vikas (I think it was him), tagged along with me and we headed to a pool joint nearby. We thought of playing for an hour before we headed out for dinner and then back home...a routine evening after school......turned out that it wasn't really routine as time progressed.

We started playing and a few shots (and no I don't mean shots of vodka or tequila) later something was weird and I was flying....rather it felt like I was. Two seconds later, my right hand went off to sleep, followed by my right eye and gradually my speech was going astray. It took me a minute to get back to my senses, but something shocking happened just after that.....I pocketed a ball!!! (Oh yes...that is shocking since at most times I would just help the opposing team by placing the white right where they want it to score). My friends were alarmed...shocked I say...shocked! I could actually see Akshath's eyes pop out....thankfully the sockets that hold his eyeballs were stable enough to not let go of them. Two shots more and I was actually pocketing balls...ofcourse my winning streak didn't last long (sigh...it never does :( ) and I was talking normal....or so I thought....

We decided to quit the game....uhm....alright let's stick to reality for a bit...we ran out of cash and the guy running the place wasn't really interested in giving credit to 4 pesky kids who rarely came to his joint. He asked us to make a move or listen to some arabic poetry...hehe the only few words I recall in arabic are "Salam aleiykum, Valeikum As Salam, Shukran, La, Na'am"....with the limited vocabulary of ours, we figured it was no longer poetry when the amplitude of his voice reached alarming level.

Our favorite shawarma store was round the corner and two shawarmas later I was no longer in a state of trance...yet something disturbed me...we decided to kill time by taking a walk around the block and probably meeting up with a friend below his place nearby. That's when things started getting funny.....I spoke....or I thought I did...I had no idea what I had said.....frankly I never do, but this time around, neither did my friends...they just looked at me and had a puzzled look on their face...hmmmm....got me thinking....and then few more sentences followed...I believe I was arguing with myself on something....a couple of laughs later (when Akshath finally got back his breath) I said "Guys, If I fall down please do call a fire station"...."A What???" Abizar screamed out...."A Fire...uhm...oh an Ambulance...and take me to a restaurant maan...I need a panadol"....a loud laugh later Akshath realised I was talking about a Pharmacy.....I was then dragged into a cab and dropped back home....shut the lights and hit the bed...mom was worried as always and ten minutes later I headed to the bathroom and puked twice......

The next morning I was back to normal.....now why did I bring this up? hehe I just realised that was exactly what I felt the other day when my BP went down. I was walking wondering why DDA designed the footpath with an inclination of 45 degrees and I couldn't understand why the video store was making a big fuss about something called "Paisa"...headed home and a friend called up and asked me to go out with him to the market. I thought I could use the air and we headed to the Costa Coffee nearby...since I was feeling extremely weird in the Cycle Rickshaw (hallucinating basically) I decided to visit a doc and say hi....well the hi was followed by a lo....a lo bp and a ban from coffee for a week :( Turned out I was just extremely tired and had lost a lot of water and electrolytes thanks to Diarrhea...hehe interesting...I hadn't realised......Oh well...I guess I never do.

Back and kicking now and I still have absolutely no idea what I should write for this post.....hmmm...guess I should just get back to you guys when I think of something more relevant.....ofcourse there are a few things I wanna get out of my head...but I can't seem to get the right words for it....sigh...guess the low bp is acting up again ;)

Audio Detour

A couple of months back I met up with a senior of mine online after a reeeeal long time. It's almost 8 years since I last met him, and from his pics...he hasn't changed much. It was absolutely great catching up. We were in the same house back in school (Spring House ROCKS) and swam for the swim team as well. He had told me then that he plays for a band and it wasn't surprising since he was part of the Band back then and played real good!


Now for the catch....when he said band, I thought it was something like the bands we had in school or like most here in Indian colleges...play popular tunes and modify some a bit and mark them as your own creation....sigh...guess again! Wait...why guess?? Check them out for yourself. The band is AudioDetour and my pal's name is Agul. He plays bass guitar in the band and they sound awesome! You can listen to their tunes at their site. Do check it out, it'll be worth it...trust me!


Damn my pals are awesome...wonder what happened to me! :) oh yeah I remember...we'll leave that for a later discussion...



A Little about them:

"About AudioDetour


AudioDetour is a four member band that strives to create a new musical experience that blends genres from two different corners of the world. The band has been and will continue to experiment with different sounds and feels of music that complement traditional Indian poetry.

The members of AudioDetour are:

Sai - Lead Male Vocals/keyboards/arrangement/mixing
Gary - Rhythm/Lead guitar
Agul - Bass/Rhythm/Lead guitar
Silpa - Lead Female Vocals

AudioDetour has been together for over two years and it all began when Sai took a leap into the world of composing. Having dabbled in it briefly, he turned his dream into reality by acquiring the precious music equipment that is the life of AudioDetour's studio today. Gary, a passionate learner of his instrument, was looking for avenues to explore further. Agul was active in the local circuit and quickly made name for himself as a dynamic bass and guitar player. A walk into Sai’s studio is all it took for these two guitarists to get serious about their passion. The three ended up working on their first song. Silpa was a popular performer of popular Bollywood numbers and Ghazals at local events. After being introduced to the band through a common friend, Silpa decided to lend her voice to AudioDetour.

Alongside composing and recording music, live performances have become a major part of AudioDetour’s journey. These performances have resulted in massive support from Indians and Americans in and around the United States. AudioDetour has also been featured on a couple of radio shows and podcasts including a popular show on BBC Radio.

The songs featured here are drawn from AudioDetour's debut album, "Transitions, Reflections and 9 kilos of Aachaar". The album contains 9 songs, which try to capture a gamut of emotions, from fun to romantic to pensive. Genre is not a boundary for this album, for which influences are drawn from carnatic, hindustani, rock, blues, and many more."

Share Auto Miseries

It was a lovely morning today. I was finally able to wake up at 6am although the cold was unbearable. Got up from bed and turned on the Water Heater. Now since it is pretty cold, I usually leave it on for around half an hour before I take a bath. Went back to bed to escape from the cold and well...yep...you guessed it, I slept off and woke up at 8:15am...oh crap...there goes my cab :(....and what's worse? This was my first day in that cab!

Got ready and headed out by 8:45am and got in one of those Green Delhi autos to Kapashera border. The cold was as always unbearable and got me numb in a few minutes. At the border, after switching Auto Rickshaws to one of those share autos found here I was moving again......but not for long.....

For the unenlightened readers, the Share Auto I'm talking about has 15 people stuffed in a contraption designed for 4. I'm usually stuck in a position where a leg, both hands and my head would be outside the auto with just one leg barely hanging in. Today was my lucky day and I got a seat up front.

The auto suddenly stalled and the driver pulled over. He asked the two others sitting in front to get out and overturned his seat to see the engine. Now for the surprise, the accelerator's cable had broken and he was determined not to lose his customers. He pulled out the cable (or what was left of it), pulled it a couple of times to ensure that the acceleration was working fine, routed it over a couple of loops in the front and finally tied it to a point up front. This was kinda confusing at first and well it freaked me out. He asked everyone to get back in and.....brace yourself for this....he stepped on the wire and sped off!

So I reached my office safe and sound...blogging this out to you guys...hoping the guy did spend 15 bucks and got that cable repaired...

A Sleepless Night....

A serious case of blogger's block has been looming around me and a couple of my blogging buddies. We constantly visit each other's blogs and notice that the other hasn't blogged and procrastinate blogging on our own. Today, I'm breaking this habit and finally penning down my thoughts.

I had a wonderful New Year's Eve, the jobless (uhm...let me rephrase that, lifeless) person that I was, I went to work on New Year's eve and spend the turn of the year working on keeping two of our switches up. Uhm...to the non-technical audience, I was just making sure you guys could call your loved ones and say "Hey!! Happy New YEAR!!!" :) yep...lame but hey, I wasn't the only one there :) hehe..so there are more of us who don't really have a life. A heavy fog had hit the city then and my cab driver had an awesome time stopping every few seconds to step out and ensure that we were still on the road....and occasionally to walk around and check where we were :) After a gruelling two hours of searching for streetlights, sign boards, and insanely blind bikers speeding at 120 in a fog of visibility 50m, he finally got me home. A short nap later, I learn that most of my friends got wasted the previous night hours before the turn of the year. Hehe...so I don't have a life, the rest had way too much of it to stay up to enjoy the countdown...so hey...guess it evened out :)

Well, speaking of night activities....guess I'm getting used to the fact that I do dumb things, I fail to notice them these days. The other day I had a night activity and was to reach an Exchange at Tis Hazari at 9:45pm. Since there was this huge confusion about cabs, I finally didn't get one and was asked to get to the exchange on my own. The miser that I am, I decided to use the Metro. Left home at 8:30p and walked towards the metro station at Dwaraka Sec 10 (This is the second last station on the westward direction of the Blue Line). My plan, arrive at CP in 45 minutes, catch my connection to Kashmere Gate through the Yellow line, get the last train out of Kashmere Gate on the Red Line to Tis Hazari just in time to get there by 9:45 or 10p. Oh well, with Delhi's well known punctuality, being 15 minutes late would actually be too early!

Sigh...little was I to know that the world was conspiring against me already. I reached the station around 8:50p and well guess what happens, no train....5 minutes pass.....10....12....and finally a train pops up...yep, I had forgotten that the frequency at this station was 12 minutes and I had just missed the previous train.


A whole 40 minutes later I get a call from one of my colleagues asking me where I was and that they were leaving Tis Hazari to the site as we were getting late. I'm sure all of you have been in situations like this when your mind just fails to perform a task that it has spent over 23 years perfecting....thinking! I jumped out of the train at the next station and jumped into a rickshaw and headed to the site....uhm...now for the punch line...my dearest readers, I didn't know where the site was :) I'm almost always sleeping just before I get to this site at a place called Shaktinagar. It's in a place I haven't ventured into during the day and hence I was pretty sure I'd get lost. The rickshaw finally entered Shaktinagar Circle (it's also the market there...read my prev post to understand what they mean by "markets" here)...and yes you guessed it, I was lost...we asked a couple of people around if they knew where I wanted to go...yep sounds demented, but we tried giving it a shot anyways...finally we were informed that we were on the wrong side of Shaktinagar, and we would have to travel another 5-10kms to the right place. Time's ticking away and my colleague rung up when I hadn't reached. Thats when my dearest brain decided to work for the first time that night, and I gave my phone to the rick driver and he gave him directions. Cold winds had me numb but hey I was finally there after a whopping 20 minutes!

Scheduled Time of Departure - 8:15p
Actual Time of Departure - 8:30p
Expected Time of Arrival - 9:55p
ACtual Time of Arrival - 11:00p (Oh yes...even with Delhi's norms for punctuality, I was LATE)

Sigh...guess some things never change!