Wild Discovery

“Even Zarvana Bhaban and Gurugun Idly Shop are totally commercialized, and they don’t even know what south Indian taste is”, shattered my ideas of great south Indian food, at the remark of a very senior (and hence incredibly credible) source of mine. Quite despairingly though, he had to rush for a meeting and we didn’t happen to meet for the actual whereabouts of great south Indian food.

Enter another source, not as senior, but knows the buttons of his phone. “Oru guest irruke, nalla south Indian food vennum” were the words I thought I heard.

“OK sir, I shall try this place definitely tomorrow.”

So this place, the ‘Mylai Karpagambal Mess’, tucked away close to the Mylapore Shivji Temple, fell at the end of my 3-odd km jog, through the morning chores of the vegetable vendors, the corner snack vendors and many others (this is otherwise along either the RK Road or the TTK Road, rife with the rich-white-collar-I-need-to-get-in-better-shape individuals).

0650AM: “Are you open yet?”

“Time.”

“How much time?”

“20 minutes.”

I go jog another km, and by the time I am back, this place is completely transformed, with the fragrance + smoke of the incense sticks pervading each corner of a tungsten-lit dining hall.

Out of the 10-odd Tamil words that I know, I had to yank out a couple that would help me ask him ‘what was hot and could be served immediately’. This was thanks to him asking me whether I wanted chilled or room temperature, on me asking the same in English.

Exactly 63 seconds later, there it is, pongal, with cashews and black pepper, with a finger-touch of ghee on top. I had not forgotten how divine it is to have pongal with vada and sambar and chutney, and so have made sure two big crisp vadas with small coconut pieces and black pepper embedded, awaiting being a part of the treat.

Looking around, I infer it is a sin to ask for spoons etc, and decide to be a part of the crowd, gorging using my hands.

“Hot; careful”.

This was new. I had never been to a place where I paid for the food and still received this homely warning. Maybe it was because of my clothes, that told him I didn’t fit, and needed extra instruction.

Almost guessable towards the end: no tea; only coffee or milk. I try the former, much to my delight – getting what I think must be the authentic coffee Discovery T&L crew go gaga about.

0731AM, I am out, on my way back to my room, planning to take an auto whose driver I think says “dbd bdbd anjun idhu naallakurtnangilam first poittrukkam” when I try to bargain.

Stomach full of celestial treat – no mood to haggle more.

Here I am, getting ready for office, and of course, to convey extreme gratitude to our Sir, Mr ALS.

Are 'goo'd things in life free, forever?

Sign in with your Zoozle account: ______.xxxxxx MB of inbox space, and counting!
I always used to wonder – how do they afford it, man?

The number after the decimal point kept increasing, and never in the last 3 years I have been on it, had the idea of connecting this to the number that appears AFTER signing in come to me – “you are using 2790 MB of your 7298 MB quota”.

So, I got about 0.9 GB, or 900MB of mail every year. And going by the numbers that keep changing on the sign-in screen, the space addition is like this:

4 bytes per second ,
that is 14400 bytes per hour ,
that is 345.6 kB per day,
that is 126.144 MB per year.

Solving a simple linear equation to find out when the inbox space will be filled up (126 MB per year above the current space of about 7GB, and 900MB of incoming mail for that much period) tells me, it would be about 8 years, when my mailbox will be full.

Now, I have been using my zmail pretty sparingly (I have other mail addresses, and also an office address which I happen to use extensively these days), and also for all I know, the rate at which the space increases, has been declining (I remember about a couple of years ago, the space shot up from 2GB to 5GB in nothing).

So mine could be a below-average case.

Considering an overall average case being 5-6 years (taken to fill an average z-mailbox), here goes:
What if zoozle asks for say US$ 0.50 (yes, just 50 cents) per month to keep the mailbox intact? And we are not even talking about the associated services that come with the zoozle account!

Would you pay it, rather than shift (literally forward each of the mail) the entire mailbox to some other (existing/ searched for) address of yours, which is free (at least at that point of time)?

Would almost-millions of people who hold this z-mail account pay it?

Do I still need to wonder?

Confessions of a Frequent Flyer Mind

Fastforwardasmuchaspossible: Drive from home to airport, get printouts of tickets, get ALL baggage screened, help scurrying elderly find the right X-ray counter, stand 53^rd in the check-in queue, get boarding pass, switch off mobile, take out laptop, do security check, restore items, call mother, go to seat, remember not having asked for aisle seat (yet again), adjust AC duct in vain, all at 7AM.

As Nury Vittachi once said (don’t worry if you do not know him, I knew him only after I went to Dhaka), life flying a lot is not easy. And I am not even a businessman.

So it was this one ViceJet flight, from home to Delhi. On arrival, after having struggled through the usual “whether luggage first or loo” crisis, I find my bag indeed forsaken on the baggage belt, gaping wide open, some unmentionables trying to get out of it, despite all the plastic-bag packing of those.

Wondering worth how much I have lost if the father-gifted perfume is flicked; I look helter-skelter for the ground-handling manager. And there he was, with a walky-talky, seemingly controlling the operations happening around.

“Please wait for 5 minutes, sir, I shall help you with this” he sprayed at me, when I complained in a look-this-is-the-calmest-I-can-be-now manner. “Why don’t you sit there”, he pointed at a chair in the waiting area.

For a change, my instincts told me something useful, and I took his cell number. After a wait of about 15 minutes and about 2 frenzied calls to him as soon as he used to disappear from the crime scene, he finally came to the rescue.

Upon confirmation that it was only the broken lock, I knew how relieved I must have looked, looking at him.

Now came the crucial part. The c’-word. “The lock cost 100 rupees, right? I shall just send someone and get you a new lock sir.”

And send, he indeed did! Calling the main counter, he explained the situation to them, sent a boy to them to collect the cash and buy a lock for me. I was kind of impressed.

Twenty minutes later, I have lost my patience. Efforts to check in to my next flight over the phone have gone in vain, and I do not want the lock to be the cause for not boarding my next flight.

“Look boss, just pay me the cash, I will manage the lock myself.” This time I was authoritatively instructive. A feeble attempt he made, to call the boy back only with the cash, only to find out that the boy had not collected the cash from the counter at all!

I was in my argument gear, and convinced him that it made perfect sense to pay me the cash from his pocket and keep that the boy returned with.

To my and the by-standers’ extreme despair, the ground manager had nothing but INR 70 in his pocket, and I insisted that he pay me that, and indeed, to my I-do-not-know-what-feeling, I-t-o-o-k-i-t-a-l-l!