Mayank's Blog

There are couple of reasons why I pre-ordered Chetan Bhagat's latest - its price is less than a cup of decent coffee making it an impulse purchase and more importantly the book's claim that it is an "unlove story", whatever that means. Bhagat had pioneered the trend of bubblegum IIT college love stories targeted at teens and college-going population which inspired a generation of wannabe writers. But you can chew bubblegum only for so long. After some time you have to spit it out. With this book Bhagat threw away the bubblegum only for it to stick to his shoes. The story starts the same way as have Bhagat's previous books - in a college and more specifically in an IIT. For initial few chapters you would be forgiven if you think you have picked up one of Bhagat's previous works by mistake. Bhagat is still obsessed with fair skin, women's churidar kurta and how she arranges her hair. The English is still pedestrian which Bhagat justifies as t his is ho...

When I asked one of my friends for his comments about my last post , this is what he had to say -, " as an MBA i know hw imp ads are so i dont quite agree wit u " (reproduced verbatim from GMail Chat History). This was the same guy who had a great sense of humor when he was working as a programmer. He quit his job as a programmer and bam!, his sense of humor went away. Now this presents a burning question in front of us - why do all good programmers need to have an innate sense of humor? It is an established fact that computers can become boring , especially to a programmer who keeps talking to it day after day without getting any response or appreciation. It never happens that you log in to your system and the computer chimes, "Hey Bro! Where have ya been? How 'bout a cuppa coffee before you begin?" If it happens, it means that it was written by a fellow developer who had his manager breathing down his neck to complete the project. Enjoying such greeting is ...

It is a stormy night. A flash of lightning shows an old dilapidated house in the middle of nowhere. Thunder rumbles across the sky as the pretty blonde girl inside the dark house looks terrified. Suddenly there is a knock at the door. She picks up an axe and with trembling hands, opens the door. Just then the lightning flashes again and in that flash,  looking at the visitor,  the girl's face turns ashen-white. "Uski safai meri safai se behtaar kaise? Rin Supreme apnao..." I switch off the TV and bang the remote on the bed in frustration. Yet another commercial break. Despite the fact that we all hate advertisements (except may be when someone posts a hilarious video of one on a social-networking site and we choose   to see it), ads are present everywhere. From TV, internet, newspapers to billboards, everyone is asking us to buy something. The unbearable part is when they appear out of nowhere just when we least expect them to be. In case of TV or internet, there are m...

Now that the FIFA World Cup is over, I finally summoned up the courage to write this article. If it offends sentiments of any of my readers, let me be clear, I was not talking about you. ;) "Who are you supporting - Spain or Netherlands?", I was inundated by numerous chat messages when I logged into my laptop on the eve of the FIFA World Cup finals. I had a tough time convincing my friends that I was not supporting anyone (gasp!) and that I do not even watch football (more gasp!). My only knowledge of football is at most limited to Paul, the octopus or  Larissa Riquelme promise . Before you fall off your chair unconscious by my brazen honesty, I will explain you my reasons. I was not born in any of these two countries (or for that matter any nation playing in the world cup) and also I have never visited them even once. I do not identify with their culture, food or language. I don't have any friends or family in those two countries. This makes it kind of hard for me to h...

When I came across this poster for a new Hindi movie, the title of the movie confused me. Now I know that ‘Luv’ is clearly misspelt, but ‘Storys’ got me thinking. It took me over a minute to clarify my doubt. This brings me to the point - what were the producers/directors thinking when the named this movie? Is normal, correctly spelt English just not cool enough? Or were they having a space crunch trying to fit in all the words in 160 characters? This SMSing of English leaves me baffled as it just not stops here but has percolated into our schools and offices. We all know about email signatures – the “Thanks & Regards” ones which no one really means but writes anyways. It is just standard practice. But there is a senior manager in my office who abbreviates ‘Regards’ with just ‘R’. Now if you don’t have the courtesy to even type out the entire word, then why insult the recipient of your mail with that letter ‘R’. It’s like saying “Oh! I don’t really regard you but I am going to mak...

Who the hell is Chetan Bhagat to challenge Aamir Khan? Aamir is a big star. His last film ' Ghajini ' raked in more than Rs. 225 crores worldwide. He has millions of followers. People idolise him; he is a youth icon. And then who is Chetan Bhagat - who is this guy?

For the past few days I am suffering from what is famously described as the " Writer's Block ". Wikipedia defines it as "a condition, associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work". I am not able to decide what to write about, not due to dearth of ideas, but because there are too many ideas floating around my head. Should I write about how I saw a small kid climb into his school bus with a Harry Potter like broom in hand and wonder how the good old Chandamama has gone out of fashion and circulation? Should I write about Sachin Tendulkar completing 20 years in international cricket? Should I write another movie review? Should I write another article about the idiosyncrasies of women around the world? Should I write about how I too have started using these heavy-weight words, generally reserved for MBA students? Should I write about the problems faced by overworked IT professionals? Should I write about h...