A trip down the memory lane

I am just back from what I can describe as a hypnotical 2 day experience where all the past students of 1980 KV Hubli batch went through the same experience as Brad Pitt in the movie “Benjamin Button”. In that movie, Brad Pitt goes through reverse aging where he keeps getting younger and younger. We all completely forgot the 30 yrs that had passed since we had last met, forgot that we were in our mid 40s and suddenly were behaving like the 16 yr olds still in X std. I haven’t blogged lately but felt this was too big an opportunity for me to pass up. And so, here it is, for the benefit of everyone who was part of this experience so that they can relive it and for those who missed out so that they can do it vicariously.


For me in particular, this whole experience (spread over 3 months) has been like listening to a symphony with every note building up the expectation of the next until it reached its crescendo on Dec 13. It was back in Aug and I had gone to Hubli to visit my mom and I received a phone call from an unknown number and the guy on the other end introduced himself as Vijay and my knee jerk response was ‘Which Vijay?” He tried jogging my memory but it turned up blank until Suresh Shah who was with him gave me a clue about Vijay’s mom (a teacher in Kannanda School next to our KV) which instantly brought back his face and all the things I remembered of him. Funny how, the brain recall works. That was like a huge surprise for me and it followed, with me getting calls from Maqsood and getting up to speed on Jayant, Chandrashekhar and most of the guys who were in Hubli. At that time, the plan was for me to come back to Hubli within couple of months and get together for a drink with these guys. However, things changed in Oct when this whole alumni meet got mooted and things took a whole different turn.

The alumni meet started a flurry of phone calls and emails and in a very short period of time we discovered so many of our past friends. Yashwant should be majorly credited for this accomplishment. Soon we were at both receiving end and giving end when it came calling and surprising our past friends for the first time in 30 yrs. You could see the excitement building up in everyone and we couldn’t wait till Dec 13 and started arranging meetings in Bangalore. Raghu, Shivanand, Yashwant and I met at Hotel Atria and caught up on so many things. Shivanand hadn’t changed a bit even after all these years and still looked young to go to school. After that it was a meeting of Yashwant, Shivanand, Raghu, Pratibha, Roopa, Suryaprakash and I in Jayanagar along with some of the family. Surya definitely surprised all of us with his Telly Savalas look. Pratibha looked exactly the same as I remember since I had last seen her. On the same evening, I ended up speaking to Sridhar and that was another huge surprise and it was Archana who had hunted him down. More phone calls followed and the phone call with Archana lasted almost 45 min and I don’t remember of us having talked to each other so much when were in school! I guess it was her infectious enthusiasm that she used to have in school that she till carries today. Apparently by Dec 13 she had spoken to everyone for about the same length of time. Her enthusiasm was apparent in the way she was going about collecting and publishing all our contact details and keeping the thread of discussion alive. Our journey tickets were booked and all that was needed to happen now was for the sand in the hour glass to run down.

On Dec 11 when I was packing my bags to leave home for Rly station, my kids were joking around with me looking at how I excited I was. Shivanand, Raghu and I were supposed to travel together but Shivanand ended up missing the train. Raghu and I caught up on lot of things on the train. Dec 12, local newspaper carried an article about the alumni meet and there in it, was published a photograph of our standard (B section) and it was simply amazing to look at it and identify our friends. Needless to say the orchestra was beginning to peak and all I could think of was meeting the folks. The first person I end up meeting is Jayant Raichur aka Lux and just couldn’t identify him but then it all flashed back. After that it was Vijay, Chandrashekhar and Maqsood in Suresh Shah’s optical shop in Hosur. Maqsood was another surprise with his clean shaven head. Suresh was the same old guy with a thousand watt smile and spontaneous and unpretentious talk that immediately puts you in a comfort zone. We then went to Girls English School and met Sujata Joshi who clearly was so surprised that she just couldn’t hide her excitement. It was then time for some lunch and planning for the boy’s night out for Dec 12 where more were expected to join. Jayant and Vijay took care of all the logistics and we ended up at Jayant’s guest house on Dec 12th evening. This is when things really took off. Manmohan Badiger, Shashikiran, Rangangouda, Vivek, Jayant Bommanhalli and Ravindra joined the crowd.

One can imagine what a party that was with 13/14 guys meeting after a long pause with lot of booze and food. With few drinks down the throat, all the interesting colorful stories and jokes from the past started coming out. We came to know the interesting stores behind some of the love marriages of guys who were assembled there. Also, came to know which guy had crush on which girl back in school. Some of these were real surprises! Of course, there were few girls who were lucky enough to have had multiple boys fallen head over heels for them (all names withheld). One particular girl who was good at everything from beauty, academics, sports, extra curricular turned to be with no guy having had a crush on her. The reason turned out to be a real complement to her. She was so good, everyone considered her way out of their league and did not fancy their chances even remotely in their private thoughts. Its what happens in American high schools where the most beautiful one is often not approached for the Prom dance for the fear of rejection. By the way, no brownie points for guessing the person.

It was 13th morning and the excitement was clearly in the air. Everyone was neatly dressed in formals and we all drove down to the school. I saw a familiar face but wasn’t sure because the person looked shorter than I pictured her. It was Meera Katuria and no, she hadn’t grown any shorter, but I had grown taller since the school days, and she was the same jovial self and looked very gracious. Archana was the next one I ran into and she was dressed and looked pretty as she always has been. Next I bumped into Pratibha and Roopa (with 4 out of 4 hit ratio) and that was when I started wondering, "boy did we really have some good looking gals in our batch or what?". It turned out not only did the girls from our batch were pretty back then but even on this day after 30 yrs compared to all the other batches.

As I started to look at the old faces, some of the teachers were recognizable like Shiroor teacher, Manjula teacher, drawing teacher but some were not like Kertal teacher. But I was amazed to know that Kertal teacher who was my 1st std class teacher still remembered me and Raghu as some real mischievous characters. I then went and introduced myself to Mr. Deshpande sir and told him about my classmate and his son Manohar. He was gracious enough to then walk me to Manohar’s mom and introduced me. Allepanavar sir has changed a lot (with the paunch gone) and looks like I am going to be his neighbor shortly here in Bangalore. Madhukar sir although did not recognize me but remembered me and Pratibha once I jogged his memory. It was a huge ego ride for me to know that some of the teachers still remembered me (even if it is for the wrong reasons). Some of the other teachers who showed up were Anjaneyalu, Prasad, Shyamsundar (Maths), Satyamurthy (physics), Suryanarayan( Chemistry), Trivedi (English aka Kir), Drawing teacher, Music teacher.

The function itself was not that long and I was really glad to see that the alumni committee not only honored all the past teachers but also the lab assistants (Patil and Wally), cleaner Oblamma, peon Kulkarni (the guy who used to ring the bell) and the office clerk Hippargi. A lot of faces showed up at the function and the memorable ones are Karuna Pavaskar and her sister (who still looks exactly like the way she was in school), Sunita Gudi, Jabeen. Karuna is the same old self, charging from the front and with an endless energy to chat. She gave a very charged speech and I was speechless. Our 1980 batch had the highest representation with close to 30 people and probably made up 20% of the alumni who showed up. Some of the other names to run into were Mohan Badni, Sadanand H, Mahesh Saunshi, Mustaf mulla. After the felicitation, our entire batch of students went on the stage and sang some prayers and songs from the past for nostalgia. We finished it with “Chalte Chalte, mere ye geet yad rakhana” and that capped it off well. Kudos to Vivek for suggesting that song and Pratibha, Archana and Roopa for singing it so well. The function was followed by lunch with north Karnataka food (bhakri, brinjanl playa, zhunaka etc). Our Yashwant Sirdeshpande and his drama troupe enacted “All the best” for audience enjoyment and have to give it to Yashwant and his talent.

It was 3:30 pm by the time the play ended and the next item on the agenda was to drive down to the old school in Hosur and spend some time for old times sake. The look of the old campus has changed for worse with apartments having come up close to the school and the playground size being reduced by some additional school building construction. The labs were in a dilapidated state and overall it was disappointing to look at what was once a vibrant campus. However, we did enjoy spending time there walking the corridors and taking lots of pictures. Our classmate Monica Das sang the song "my heart is beating, keeps on repeating" just like she once did in the CCA period and she still has that lovely voice. We left the campus by 5:30 to go freshen up so that we (only the 1980 batch) can reconvene for an evening dinner and drinks.

The evening rendezvous was at Hotel Athithi. We all spent some real quality time with each other talking about family and sharing our journey from after we left school till date. Life stories are always very interesting and it reinforces the diversity of almost everything that is in the nature. We all promised to make an effort to meet once every yr (sometime in May) and sincerely hope that all of us can keep that promise. After dinner and drinks we bid goodbye although I did not want to and wanted the evening to continue. I kept wondering as to how many folks are there in this world that get to relive the past with their school mates after 30+ yrs and with such affection and love where everything was 100% genuine. I could not wonder that we all must be special in the eyes of our creator who brought us together once in our childhood and rejoined us again. WOW, this was some real heady stuff and all I can say is, one must have been there to have felt it and experienced it all.

Pratibha, Roopa, Suryaprakash and I took the bus back to Bangalore. We kept chatting in the bus until other passengers asked us to shut up and go to bed. In the morning Pratibha and Roopa got down first at Yashwantpur and Surya and I got down at Lalbagh. After I bid goodbye to Surya and headed down home in an Autorickshaw, I started having this feeling of void that I haven’t experienced in a really long time. The last time I felt like this was when I left US for good leaving behind all my friends. I dragged myself out of the auto and hauled my luggage inside the house and looking at the familiar face of my wife, the smile returned to my face.

All my life, I have been very fortunate in that God has given me more than what I deserved and this is especially true when it came to friends. With this gathering I can confidently say that I am in touch with all my friends since class I till my BE. All I can say is "God thank you and keep it coming".

Realization of one of the dreams (Farm House)

One thing I have always loved is outdoors and have always pictured myself living in a place sorrounded by trees, plants, water falls, lakes etc. It is hard to create such an environment for yourself on a permanent basis unless you are living in a national park in US or a village in India bordering western ghats. However, I have come close to realizing such a dream for myself and my family.

When I moved here, although it was in the back of my mind, did not ask any agent to look for a farm house. However, the other day out of blue came this proposition if I was interested in buying a farm house? Out of curiosity, I said I am open to take a look (my interest was more to see what they look like and how much do they cost). . The place was off of Kanakpura road and I was told right next to Rishi Valley School. Since I had heard about this school, I thought it will also give me an opportunity to go see that too. Little did I realize how lucky that day was going to turn out and couldn't help later thanking God for providing with this opportunity. The place is 2km off of Kanakapura road. The side road seems like goes nowhere into this rolling hills (just beautiful greenery on both sides) and then at the end of the road stands Rishi Valley school. Right next to the school is this 20,000 sq ft of land. with tall shrubs acting as fence. Once Bhavani and I stepped inside, we instantly fell in love with the place.



The beautiful landscaping and a really antique looking house was just the perfect thing I could have asked. Although the house was built just a year back, they had carefully planned it to look like a house straight of a small village. They had even used the same pillars that were once used in village houses to give it that authentic look. Inside it was little more contemporary but still had some touches of a bygone time. One visit was all that was needed for me to decide on that property.

After that I took several people on different occassions and everytime there was only one comment that "I was very lucky to have found a place so close to city yet so rustic, so peaceful in the country side".

In India only a current agriculturalist can buy an agricultural land. For someone like me I had to get a permission from the government. It turned out that the agent who was facilitating this deal had a contact high up in the government using which we got the permission in 4 days as opposed to some people bribing 1 lakh and waiting for couple of months. Every time these things happen, I look up and say "God, Thank you". The way this whole thing happened reminds me of few other big things in my life where almost nothing was planned from my end, just went with the flow and result was simply beautiful.

Once the deal was concluded, I had to arrange money some in the form of a loan, some over the table and some under the table. That process itself was a challenge to manage having to make several trips to banks and lawyers. Since I had hired a competant attorney to help me vet the document, I also learnt quite a bit in terms all the terminology, the different documents that exist and what to emphasize. Our agent was the single factor who made this happen since he really took lot of pains to go secure the kind of documents that the lawyer was asking for and furnishing it to him.

I also was pleased to learn the use of computers in e-governance. I am sure it is just Karnataka and Andhra who have done lot of work in this regard but still worthwhile. All the previous documents have been digitized and stored on CD-ROMS. So, finding for an old document and getting a copy of it is lot of faster although you still have to bribe the person. All new transactions are done using computers, where the documents are scanneed, photographs taken using a web cam and thumb prints also captured using digital devices. All these become collaterals in making sure the transaction is genuine or atleast there is a way to trace it back to the correct people. All in all it was good to see some use of technology in these kinds of state govt. offices.

The sale deed happened on Dec 16, 2004 just ahead of our 15th Anniversary. Now that I have the property, I need to do lot more work in improving the landscape. More on that later. For now I am sitting back in a more relaxed mood after 2 months of running around (although, I have to admit I was very lucky and had a fairly easy time as compared to the horror stories that you generally hear in India where even after you have bribed everyone, they make you run from pillar to post)

Delightful Diwali

Diwali turned out to be a really delightful festival for us. We decided to invite all our close family to come celebrate with us and much to our pleasant surprise every single one of them turned up. We had quite a few guest for few days and it was real family bonding amid the exploding fireworks. Because this was the first Diwali for kids here with an opportunity to blast fire works, I went overboard with the purchase of the fire works. Inspite of the fact that I had quite a few kids in our house they still could not finish all the fire works that I had bought for them. We still have a bag left.

Anirudh and Anisha truely enjoyed blasting fire works, especially the rockets and flower pots. The coolest one for them was a simple pistol with a roll cap to play cops and robbers with neighborhood kids. We have about 7-8 kids in our neighborhood all of about 7 - 10 yrs of age and they had lot of fun blasting fire works together. Luckily for us there were no accidents and everything turned out to be really enjoyable.

Looking forward eagerly to Holi now.

India will turn you into a unnecessarily rude person

You must be wondering what do I mean by the title. Most people on whom you rely on for service lack professionalism to the core and especially evident in services where education does not matter. Examples of this are, servicing your appliances, carpenters, plumbers etc. There are other cases where big companies operate their tech support teams and you will find most of them will put a pea-brain to shame. I am talking about companies like Citibank, Tata Indicom (phone) etc. As long as you owe them money, the attention to service or detail is at its highest. The minute they have to provide you the service for the money that you have already parted with or have to issue refund, things are 180 degrees out of whack. So, everyday you are praying to yourself that hopefully nothing goes wrong in your day that requires somebody to come and assist you. Because of the way they behave, the next time you will start off very aggressively and so end up becoming rude for no good reason. I don't need extra incentive to be rude to someone but even I get challenged. You can only imagine people like Bhavani who are so composed but are required to scream at people. If you want to hear more interesting stories ask someone like Sathish who had to deal with lots of such people in order to build his house. Not only are the stories good entertainment (after the fact and over a beer) but you can only imagine the persons state of mind when they are going through it.

So, beware of people who paint a very rosy picture of things here because you do have to deal with some ground realities. The solution, hire a house manager and let him deal with all the hassles.

Problem of Theft

While in US, I was so used to keeping valuables around the house (including cash) and that has costed me dearly here. In US, even when we had cleaning maid come in, the cash was never touched. Many a time we had things outside of our house (like the office bag with laptop) or kids bikes all night and were never stolen. However it is amazing to see what people steal here and how. I have in the 3 months lost 3 mobile phones (costing around $400 total), a Ray-ban glasses ($70) and had it happen inside the house!! We naturally suspected the house maid and filed a police complaint. When you buy a phone here, it comes with insurance but claiming that is such a hassle I have not bothered to claim the insurance money. The police came and took her to the station and questioned her and she kept to her guns of being innocent. Obviously I did not have the heart to proceed further due to lack of proof and asked the Police to let her go. I felt really sick that day thinking, what if she had been really innocent and I made her go through the agony. Since then, we have become extra careful and follow the housemaid every step of the way, which is a huge waste of our time. Recently, like everyday, we kept the trash can near the gate for the trash lady to pick it up. However that day she instead of keeping it back inside the gate left it outside. The trash can disappeared in no time. Because we live in a very established neighborhood, these things are relatively infrequent. I can only imagine what it is like if you live in one of these upcoming layouts. People here have lost all sense of morals. The lesson, watch your back and trust no one unless you really know them. The problem with theft is more than financial loss, it kind of hurts you that somebody invaded your privacy and that is a problem hard to reconcile.

Sports Meet

I ended up taking Anisha to Kanteerava stadium for inter school atheletic meet as she was representing her school in the under 8 girls 200m and 4x50 m relay. The meet was organized by KPMG and there were about 170 schools that had signed up sending in a whopping 5000 kids. It was quite a scene seeing so many kids from so many schools. The traditional marchpast was very good and I was impressed by the size and efficiency of the organizers. One of the things that surprised me was a sea change in how schools/parents/kids approached these things. Most schools had their own colorful sports uniforms and many kids were dressed up in spikes for the races. I couldn't help wonder about when I participated in sports and ran on barefoot. There were many kids from govt schools who were participating in the races on barefoot. I was wondering what went over these kids minds seeing their more affluent competitors (since I certainly know what would have gone through my mind if I was there).

As most of you know, a 200m race goes round the curve and in order to compensate for the curvature, they have kids in the outer lane placed ahead than the kids in the inside lanes. Anisha was in the second inside lane and while she had bent down to take off, a thought went through which unfortunately ended up being true. The thought was, most kids of age 6 do not realize that they are all running the same distance although the participant on the outer lane seems little ahead of you at the start itself. As soon as the gun went off, the kids got off the block and when she saw the kid in the outer lane already so far ahead, she lost hopes and slowed down. She came crying saying that the other kids got a head start and I did not have the nerve to explain to her the geometry of why. I really felt sorry for her but the kind of girl she is, she forgot all that and went for her relay the next day. Her team mate ended up falling thereby affecting the team's chance. It was a good experience for Anisha watching and competing against so many kids and hopefully she walked away with something more than just memories.

Getting started with Investing

I recently decided to start exploring on how to go about investing in Indian stock market and so far have found the following two choices straightforward.
1) Sharekhan.com: This was suggested by my friend Sudarshan and is turning out be a real good company. Their web site is comprehensive enough and their service is excellent. The particular gentlemen I deal with is very responsive and never takes more than few hours to resolve any issue. Sharekhan is conveninently integrated with several online banks (ICICI, HDFCBank, CitiBank etc) to move your funds back and forth at the click of a few buttons. Applying for IPO as well is just an online process and ususally takes less than a minute to complete.
2) ICICIDirect.com: ICICI provides a 3 in 1 account (savings, demat and trading) just like most US brokers and is pretty easy to operate and move funds around. For those of you who do not know what "demat" means, it is holding shares in electronic form at your broker instead of physical share certificates under your mattress. For folks from US, it has always been in demat form and so no biggy except that you get confused when you hear this term for the first time.


TCS (Tata Consultancy Service) put up thier IPO and that is going to be my first investment here in the Indian markets. BTW, one of the interesting facts for those following Google IPO is that all IPO's now in India are being run on the dutch auction format (the same kind Google is planning) and so was surprised to find out, the general awareness on how this works.