The New Adventures of Chip Choker: The Preamble

Chip Choker was a boy. Well, he was nearly a man, but looked and behaved like a boy. His story is very interesting. In fact, it is so captivating that I have decided to devote a three part-series on him (or more depending on when he reads this blog).

Chip had huge eyes.In fact so huge that they protruded out like a frog's. His classmates used to tease him for this. He wore a pair of spectacles which magnified his eyes even more. Once, he was slapped so hard that his beloved glasses fell down from the second floor onto the wet patch of mud below. He didn't complain, but hid behind a huge mound of irritation. Couple this with a giant furry ball of curly hair on the head, and you get a sheep capable of reading books. Coincidentally, he uttered words which rhymed with "Baaa!Baaa!", like "Maaa!Maaa!" during times of distress.You, the reader might think that:Well, what is so special about that?All kids pass through a similar phase of life. You see, Chip was different. Atleast, he yearned to be different.

We will explore Chip's extraordinary life gradually. Join me, and you can rest be assured to be spellbound, enthralled, and plain dumbstruck.

Adios, and more to follow.

The Three Stooges

Recently, I was asked this wonderful question by someone about three ideal travel companions on a road trip. I present my three stooges in a simple conversational style here.

"There are three simple rules that I would follow while choosing my traveling companions. The first is the resourcefulness of the person, for I am pretty sure that a road trip would not be without roadblocks. Next is for pure amusement value, for the trip would be long and quite boring.And the last would be a comprehensive travel guide to help me understand the places that we would be traveling better. I present one person satisfying each of these criteria, and in some ways more than one.

The first person is my father. Growing up, I always admired him for the way that inspite of great personal hardships, he ensured that all of us kids were provided with the best comforts, good food and a shelter over the head. I remember him to be provident and resourceful through the way he made the best use of what was available or given to him.I took this as a life lesson, and followed some of the principles I had learned when I came to the US for my graduate studies. Among many of his personal examples, there are several which stand out. I remember him to budget his resources very well. Handling of money was one of them, and I always found him to be able to spend money on the right things like basic necessities while eschewing unnecessary expenses. I also found him to be a very reliable person, one whom even a stranger could turn to for solving even the simplest of problems. As a traveling companion, he would be the perfect person to help me sort out any roadblocks which I could potentially encounter on our trip. Some of them could be straying off our prescribed route, encountering flat tires, among other things. I am sure that with his vast experience of dealing with problems on a regular basis, and his own road-adventures in his younger days, I would feel in safe hands. Another facet of his would be this penchant for being adventurous which would be ideal to infuse enthusiasm among the rest of us throughout the trip. Also being of the same blood brings together some common characteristics and personality traits. We share a common sense of adventure, and he would be able to support me in taking decisions on which places to visit. He would also give me a boost while voting on these decisions. Overall, he would satisfy to the minimum two of my companionship rubrics and would be an excellent choice.

The second choice would be Robin Williams. For his sheer genius at making people laugh, and for his non-stop loquaciousness I would invite him to travel along with me.Trips tend to be boring, and we could use some amusement to keep us going. I see him as an icebreaker, and not only would he be able to help each of us converse with each other but he would be at his anecdotic best while telling people weird and wacky stories of our trip. I also feel that he would be a perfect foil for my father who lacks some basic appreciation of humor, and they would make quite the odd-couple. Robin, in tune with rigors of a popular celebrity, is also an accomplished and widely traveled person. We could use many of his experiences to good use in our trip, and we could maybe even get five-star celebrity treatment at various places. A nice, long and relaxing massage, followed by an overnight stay at some of the finest hotels (all at Robin's expense, mind you) is something which all of us would welcome after long hours of travel in a day.

The third person that I would take is Tony Wheeler, the founder of the Lonely Planet series of travel guides. He is one person who has traveled extensively across many countries, and we can see his expertise by just reading his guides. What better way to appreciate what you are seeing than from the encyclopedia himself. I hear he is also an automative engineer, which would help us incase our car broke down along the way.Tony, being a widely popular person among travel-junkies (even across continents), would give us pointers to places where he would have been, and where he would have friends. We could use some first-hand guidance along the way rather than relying on maps and atlases, and we could not have asked for a more suitable person. Tony, I believe, is also considered to be a very jovial person and that tilts the balance sorely in his favor for he satisfies all three of my companionship rubrics."

A CEO's Tale

It was hopeless. A deadlock. I had spent the entire day in trying to convince Sergey and Larry that the takeover of Google was probably the best thing that happened to them, and it was best for the industry. Now older and probably used to bulldozing others into submission rather than being at the receiving end, I could understand what they were going through emotionally. But as the chairman and CEO of one of the world's largest software firms, and as someone who probably looked like a lone ranger on the planet Jupiter to two tiny guys standing on Earth, I had to do what would be better for not only this industry but also to instill stability in an otherwise rocky financial market.

Aboard my private jet with them, I was trying to gather my thoughts together. Larry looked lost in own thoughts. I was tempted to think that he was reminiscing his better days. I saw him looking outside the window. He chirped, "Well, it does look like a bright and sunny day today!". Sergey looked grumpy, but his eyes soon lit up when the beautiful stewardess got him his favorite chocolate sundae. I hoped that they would listen to a voice of reason now, rather than acting as 30-something spoilt billionaires that they were not so long ago. I set aside the official papers that I was holding and just observed them from across the table.

"How is the sundae?"

"Good. No better. Oh heck, best I have tasted in a long time."

"It has to be."

Larry, who was quiet till now, interjected.


"Where is my strawberry-topped vanilla milkshake?"

"It is taking some time to prepare. Worth the wait, you will see."

"Hmm-mmm."

I had to thank my stars that Chef Ashwin was flown in specially from Venice for this. He was expensive, but hell, the best in the business.


"Who made this? Heavenly, would be the right word."

"Aw, you will meet him soon."

Right then, a bespectacled chef with a majestic hat came in. He was HIM. The greatest chef of all time. Personally bringing Larry his milkshake.

Larry looked inquiringly.And reluctantly took a sip.

"Holy Google! It is FAN-T-A-STIC!"

The great chef took a bow. I snapped my fingers, indicating that we wanted to be alone. He took the cue and left.

I am always a believer in trusting one's instincts. The fact that there was a sudden change in the atmosphere was irrefutable. I sensed that something very very important was going to take place in a few moments. Larry looked at me with the slightly twitchy look which he always gave when he seemed excited.

"Well, Sergey, old chap, let us put the man out of his misery."

"I agree."

"Boys, boys. Thank you!"

And the rest as they say, is history.

Whoosh! A Tornado...

"I was ambling on the walkway near my apartment. It was 10 pm. My body was aching from a gruelling Karate class, the only part of my body not paining was my nose. Now a nose is supposed to be very sensitive. Especially mine. I could sense something was in the air. In the distance, I could see sirens blaring. I am a bit hard of hearing, so I mistook the sirens for a police van. It was a cold night, dark and dank. There was no purpose in my walk, yet I was walking towards my department building. The torrential rains the evening before had generally dampened my spirit. But I was still walking, floating as if I was drawn to some strange source of power. The truth was, I was scared. I did not know what to do, neither was I trained to know what to do. I hastened to take shelter in my department. I was thirsty now, so I gulped some water from a fountain. Thirst quenched, I generally moved to my office. There was a biting, unpleasant feeling to the silence in the corridors. I did not move further. I decided to head back home. A car was honking. Honking is not allowed. I could see the vortex now. I started running, running fast, faster, and even more. I was slowly being sucked up the vortex, help me, help me!"

"dei yenthru da!", Tamil for "Get up, Man!", was the cry I immediately heard. I opened my eyes to make out the silhouette of my roommate. A dream! And a resolve to sleep with a pillow underneath my head...

Oh! For a whiff of sambar...

This is my first post in the world of blogging and I am pretty excited about it. I hope to contribute regularly.That said and done, I would like to briefly introduce myself. I am yet another graduate student from India currently in the United States of America pursuing my Master's degree in Computer Science. Now why would an overworked, orange juice-drinking,computer-staring, junk-food-eating student want to pen his thoughts here? I do not know the answer, and I am here to find out why.

The title of my post stems from my innate desire to love to eat sambar, a typical South Indian dish. By the end of this blog, I hope to explain this delicious predicament to you. You see, today completes my first month of stay in the USA, notions about which were formed over an intense four year period in undergrad, and to tell you the truth its all that I have expected it to be. I did travel here by one of the major airline carriers exactly a month back eagerly hoping to reach and acclimatize myself to the conditions here. My expectations were left in the open due to the wonderful mismanagement of the airline which resulted in me having to miss my connecting flight from Mumbai to Chicago and having to spend an entire day wondering whether I would safely reach here. I have always wanted to explore Mumbai, oh well, I couldnt as I was dead tired and was off to a long sleep in the airline-provided hotel room. So darn, I missed that opportunity.

I would like to digress a bit here and talk about some important practices followed in my family. You see, my family is pretty orthodox with many of the elders having stressed upon the younglings a love for the Indian culture and its traditions. I was also impressioned upon by this culture, but honestly, I can say that neither do I care nor have I made any attempt to significantly learn anything apart from understanding some of our traditional rituals and customs. Food, a major part of this culture, and the traditional practices of which are strictly followed in South India was also one of things to which I have been accustomed to since childhood. An example of this would be the practice of eating sambar which is the favorite food of most of my cousins and other relatives but strangely enough was never one of my preferred foods. As many of you would know, sambar is one of the easiest dishes to prepare and basically consists of dal, vegetables, tamarind and water and makes for a wholesome accompaniment to rice.

Now, continuing on the same vein, I would like to first describe my experiences here. It has been an entirely uphill ride here with experiences which have been fascinating and interesting. I have not yet had any bitter experiences and I sure do hope not to bump into one in the near future. The first thing that strikes me about the USA is that things are entirely local. People do not know or rather do not want to know what is happening outside their own cosy world and surroundings. I found a news channel devoted entirely to a village in Illinois! The next thing that hits hard on the head is that Americans are very hard-working and efficient people. Yet they desire their privacy in their homes, and is something they are very particular about. Hey there arent any doorbells here! Sheesh. Everything looks clean, atleast to my eyes, but I did find parts of Chicago to be similar to roads in India.Rules are to be obeyed here, right from crossing in pedestrian crossings, to following traffic rules and so on. I could go on and on about this but I guess the common man would already know all of this.

About the Indians living here, I did find many to stay in touch (or atleast attempt to) with their roots. But I also found many to have become Americanized, attempted to embrace the culture here even to the extent of having fake accents. I do not say that it is bad, I do find it a bit funny but who knows one may find me in a similar state a few months from now. Forgive me! I also find many Indians to be terribly depressed and homesick(which includes me). Ah, now we come to cooking. You see, I have surived on a diet of rice, frozen vegetables, mashed potatoes, cut onions, frozen corn, milk, orange juice, walnuts, bread, butter and peanut butter over the past month. My dad thinks that I am undernourished, but who can blame him.Parents are like that. I cant figure out(yet) whether I am eating the right food nor will I eventually do so over time!(Psst..I hope my mom and dad dont read this line)

I feel that I have to learn some traditional dishes like pulikachal, rasam, pulao etc the modified versions of which I have making over the past few days. There are days when I simply invent dishes. Surprisingly I have not used oil in any of my cooking till now. I think that I will eventually forget how good Indian food tastes like, the likes of which I have never bothered to learn to cook in India.

That is why,Oh, for the longing of delicious sambar...