What's in a name

Sometime back the artist formerly known as 'Apurva Jadhav' decided to alias himself as 'AJ'. What's in a name you ask, well the name Apurva is also shared by the opposite gender. In school during elocution his name would be preceded with 'Miss', history repeating itself during prize distribution and other such public displays of effectiveness. Recently I was in Pune and bunked in with Addi and Richa. AJ has a flat in the same apartment, and as we manoeuvered ourselves through the labyrinth of parking spots I came face to face with the writing on the wall reflecting his engaged status, reiterating the fact that he has matured to a point where he doesn't 'miss' his name, he 'misses' it. The writing on the wall.

'Flat No B-801 Mrs Apurva R Jadhav'.

Funny Drinking Facts

How far can you go????

1. Sober
Sober, Adj. Possessed of iron will, but often lacking a sense of humor. Helpful with doing dishes, finding cd's and lifts home. Probably in need of several stiff drinks!

2. Tipsy
Tipsy, Adj. The usual signs are a flushed face, stupid grin, loud voice and a profound love for mankind. The sufferer is incredibly deep, inelligent and insightful but prone to giggle.

3. Plastered
Plastered, adj. Extremely generous, loud and confident. Suffering from verbal diarrhea and a belief that he/she can drink anyone under the table.

4. Drunk
Drunk, Adj. Suffering from vision, hearing and speech impairment, with an insatiable appetite for pizza. Will do anything that moves. Possessing an illogical belief that he/she is gorgeous despite dribbling and slobbering.

5. Shit-faced
Shit-faced, Adj. Invincible but incapable. Suffering from extreme loss of balance, co-ordination and sex appeal. Liable to sleep anywhere. Babbling incoherently with loss of most bodily functions.

6. Hung-over
Hung-over, Adj. Suffering from near death like state, often catatonic and always with a pounding headache. Unbalanced with no sense of humor. Needs total silence and another drink!

Being Judged

A friend called me up and asked me if I could judge a contest she was organising at her business school. I replied that the only contests I have judged till now are dance competitions, but that I have taken part in elocutions, debates, extempores during my school days and that I was not particularly good at extempores. She said that I would fit in as a judge and she would get back with details.

For those of you who have taken part in competitions, you would know that there are huge expectations from the judges. Not just expectations from the audience and organisers, but from each and every participant who put in a lot of effort on stage. I've been there, and during the competitions that go beyond an hour, like dance competitions; would wonder what went wrong with the judges when the results came out. Thoughts like "We definately deserved better than second or third. Besides the junta that got first were totally crappy". When we did manage to win, we never wondered if the second/third place winners thought of the judges in the same way.

And then there is the order in which you are to perform. You are told that judges tend to give the initial participants less marks. Its like when the first participant comes up, you can't compare that person against anyone else so you never give them the highest marks even if they are really good. Then marks are churned out relative to the others and in the bargain you tend you forget how the initial performers performed. There is no 'replay' system, as a judge you are expected to be fair and come up with a result that is without conscious prejudice.

There was this one competition where I totally went numb when I heard the result. It was probably the biggest and most prestigious 'Elocution' competition in the city. You had all the best schools taking part, there were 16 in all and 2 participants from each school which made the count 32. By a draw of lots it turned out that our school spoke first and my chance was first, while my schoolmate would get to speak as the 17th participant. It hits you hard and all your teachers tell you to forget about being ranked amongst the top. The topic I was to speak on was partially worked on by me, so there were a lot of emotions from the past weeks that had gone into its making. Not to mention the endless hours of modulation, voice tone, body gestures, facial expressions with a conscious realisation of how much time had elapsed after each and every sentence. You do your best from your side and then you expect the judges to do their job.

As I mentioned, when the results were out I went a bit numb and the hall went silent as I somehow found my legs take to forward. I won by half a mark, with my schoolmate second and we won the overall trophy. I thanked the judges that night and hoped that they felt that they felt that they had done justice to all participants.

While preparing to judge the extempore/debate contest that a friend was organising, I got a bit hyper and wanted to have the breakup of marks before hand so that I can think about it and not wonder at the judges table, "What the hell does that mean?". I told her to give me the contact info of the other judges so that I can talk to them about the marks split and so that we can come to a consensus on how things should be judged. She then told me tht I was to be the only judge which totally caught me off guard. Yikes!!! Am I gonna be fair to the participants. I know that by being the only judge that would definately not be possible. I then asked her to send me the topics for the extempore so that I can think about it before hand and not be caught wondering what is being spoken about on stage. I was not a nervous wreck but was definately a bit jittery and doubtful of my abilities to judge. She then informed me that the extempore was just an intermediate contest in a series of competitions. And that teams were to be eliminated along the way, competiting on some other grounds to move up the ranks. On the final day they got one of their professors to judge along with me. And it went off smoothly.

Lage Raho Munna Bhai

After a deluge of phone calls and SMSes and co-ordinating the parallel threads that were put into motion to get tickets at various theatres in the city we finally managed to get 11 tickets, only to realise later that we had three extra tickets. Then started another deluge of phone calls and SMSes to get more people to join us, each one calling the next in circles to block those 3 tickets for friends, only to realise later that we now had 2 extra people. Shucks! So we had to send two people home.

Anyways I arrived with my roomie, AJ, 5 minutes late into the movie. As we manoeuvred ourselves through the dark recesses of the alleys and bylanes lined by people, dodging their expletives, we came face to familiar faces and then two unknown ones in our seats. We explained to them that they were in our seats, only to be emotionally radiated with the innocent look that their seats were the ones next to ours but on either side of the isle, and one of them would have to sit alone next to an uncultured primate. I quickly analysed the situation and decided to take one of their seats and sit alone while AJ took the seat next to them. I then got some SMSes from those familiar faces I was talking about.

SMS rcvd, "Why is the engaged guy sitting next to the single chick ?"
To which I replied realising the same...
SMS sent, "I know and I did the decent thing of keeping those two girls together."
To which I got a reply.
SMS rcvd, "No you could have put the settled guy alone."
Ok now this one definately seemed to be questioning my time proven tactics of hitting on someone... Abilities that have stood the test of time, shaped by tumultuous winds, simmering rock splitting heat and torrential rain. I then decided to let my friend in on my thoughts and future plan of action, justifying that there was indeed a pattern to the randomness of events that had just occured. I shot back.
SMS sent, "Hafta move slowly. Let them not think I'm desperate."
Just then the movie hall resonated with the song, "Samjho ho hi gaya".

Interval time... I stand up and move across the isle in slow motion, like a man on a mission, and oh yeah very slowly, according to plan :-) and stand face to familiar faces only to be moved, moved in more ways than one, by the fact that those two unknown faces were with us to start with and that the seat that I was in was also ours. Hmmmm.... back to the seat next to the uncouth primate.... Lage Raho Munna Bhai...

Bole tho, "pal pal pal pal har pal har pal aise katega pal har pal har pal".