Shalin Jain's little red couch

Nida Fazli and Ghazals

I am mad about Ghazals to the extend that I write some myself. There are tons of very high quality songs with soul stiring lyrical values. Nida Fazli and Gulzar are best at it. I was inspired to listen to Ghazal by hearing Nida Fazli's song "Garaj Baras pyasi dharti ko phir pani de moula" (sung by Jagjit Singh).

I was generally doing some shareaza lookup for ghazals and hit upon this amazing ghazal written by Nida Fazli (sung by Jagjit and Chitra).

Duniya Jise Kehte hai, jaado ka khilona hai
milgaaye to mitti hai, khogaaye to sona hai

Truly Inspiring!

By the way, here is the most recent ghazal I wrote:

Kyun mere dil ko jala rahe hain yeh log
Zakhm bhare dil ko sata rahe hein yeh log

Kabhi hasaate hein kabhi rulate hein yeh log
Mere khuda bade khudgarz hain tere yeh log

I was challanged to write this on spot in office when one of my colleague gave me the first line to begin.

It begins at home!

Bangalore sure lacks the much needed infrastructure as Calvin points out. Everyone breaks rule to the extend your moral values support. If you see/talk more about the corrupt guys up there, see more and more of that dirt, you fall prey to it. The *change* is right in our heads. Here is some things that gives me kick:

1. Stop for a red signal esp. if you are in Car. Ofcourse, when a cop is not around. You'll see other people stop too. If you drive away, others would follow.
2. Give pedestrians way. They might sure smile back at you.
3. If you break a rule, pay full fine. A few hundreds more would go into the system instead of the neighbourhood wine shop.
4. Do some positive blogging - talk about solutions rather than the problem. If there seems to exist none, there defn. is one.
5. Create awareness - if you are that nice guy who does not accept a polythene at a store and rather carry your shoulder bag always - pass on the tip to others. Keep couple of jute/paper bags under your car seat.
6. Feel the pride of an army man by obeying simple rules. You'll be a jawan for the rest of your life.

So lets share out some great experiences. Let's talk about 'us and the city' rather than 'they and the city'. Enjoy life!

By the way, I made chocolate pudding this sunday. It came out quite well. Lots more cooking to happen this week ahead! Love the cook-and-eat concept!

Recalling Sikkim!

Gangtok (which means 'hilltop'), capital city of sikkim, still lingers on my mind. A place abundant of beautiful hills and people.

We met Bheem at the taxi stand. A young (20) taxi driver with tons of enthusiam, we asked to transport us from the stand to our hotel, Golden Pagoda. We got a room with a market view for 600 rupees. Bhima was still waiting for us, he had suggested us a 7 point visit for 500 bucks. With just 1.5 days with us in sikkim we quickly agreed to and got started. Our second was well account with pictures in my other post "Heaven - 12,400ft above sea level!".

For people who wish to travel to sikkim here are some list of places to eat and stay.

(M.G. road is the hub of all activities in gangtok. All shops and life comes to halt at 8pm).

Top hotels:

Tashi Delek (has great views!!)
Double: 2500+ / Suites: 4500

Hotel Tibet (Tibetan Decor- great resturant)
Hotel Tibet (2-3 mins walk from MG road)
Double: 1100-1600
Phone: 203468 / 204962

Mid range

Hotel Golden Pagoda
on MG road, with a roof top pure vegetrian resturant
Double: 600-850
email: goldenpagoda 'at' hotmail 'dot' com

Budget stay:

Green Hotel on M.G. Road
Single: rs. 150 / Double: rs. 250-300

Places to eat
Cafe Tibet for fast food (gen. see college crowd there)
Hotel Tibet is a great place for dinner (little expensive)
Bakers Cafe, MG Road - amazing place for breakfast and cakes!

Ofcourse there is lot more to sikkim beyond Gangtok. Will write about those places when I visit them :)

OneIndia - No more STD

“Soon there would be no distinction between STD and local calls. There would be uniform rates and a ‘OneIndia' approach,” Dayanidhi Maran (Union minister for telecommunications and information technology) [Complete News].

This was some news! Great boost to the business segement.

Orkut! Orkut!

Google's another acquisition Orkut didn't impress me (as designer/developer) enough but the concept was well appreciated by many. Here is one orkut fanatic:

(credits: photography by Shalin, pose by munna)

Code, Kodai and me

I was digging into some CSS (code) that I wrote few months ago. It's nice to know that you can still write some 'code' and term them something as complex as classes (I hear a lot about it from the next cubicle at work). Well these classes are relatively (absolutely) simple. Usually, I am lot more busy at work. My mobile was already ringing. It's karthik, yet again.

kk: hi da,
me: hey kk, wassup?
kk: nothing da, busy aa? (typical south indian da and aa's)
me: well just thinking about a break, a weekend in Kodai.
kk: really?
me: yes, I should head to kodai road. correct?

kk: ofcourse, you would reach kodai road by 3:45 a.m. by train.
me: really? not 5am or something like that?
kk: Yes, 3:45 a.m.
me: well I can sleep on the platform till it's 5am and then head uphill.
kk: you on the platform? (he laughs)
me: yes, I can. I mean, I have already done something like this before.
kk: (still thinks i am kidding) dai!
me: really man, I slept on the floor at the Sri Lankan airport.
kk: (impressed!) tell me more about it..
me: why did you call? I would write about it sometime, tell me why you called first?

And another 15 minutes or odd and I got rid of him. But yes, I wanted to write about my swiss trip. I wanted to write a travellogue. I could only gather enough time to post some pictures on trekearth. But now, I want to write about it. Every bit of it, my flight, airports, people I met, food that i ate, toilets that i used (kiddin'), places I travelled, malls that I visited, evenings that i spent by the river rhine, german (lang.) that I fell in love with and so much more about me, switzerland, money (CHF), dreams and life.

My swiss experience - *coming soon*. (Thanks KK, I can really sleep on a platform).

First Portraits on D70

It's fun to use a DSLR. It's powerful and *quick*. Time to look at some results - so here are some.

Shrey (Ashwin Khariwal's nephew)

Munna (my colleague)

Shrey looking at me

Shrey out in the sun

Your comments are most welcome!

My new photography gear: Nikon D70

After 8 cameraless months I finally bought a Nikon D70 in Switzerland. I am looking forward to get into Sports & Wildlife photography. A lot of learning ahead. For now I am glad, I have a camera.

A new couch to blog

Hey! I am back writing on shalinjain.com with a new outlook. Please pour in your feedback and encouragement.

Singing Resume: An entry into Microsoft

A multimedia designer/programmer impresses microsoft and steals a job. All he did to get there was made his resume sing!

Turn on your speakers and have a look at this resume: paradoxware.com/alstudio/cv/en.htm

Book Tagged!

I was tagged by Suman kumar. Here I go:

Total number of books I own:
About 50

Last Book I Bought:
Snapshots from Hell

Last Book I read:
Goal II by Goldratt

Five Books That Mean a Lot to Me:

• Silences - Poetry by Gulzar
• Goal I
• Goal II
• Interpreter of Maladies
• The Quiver - Poetry by Javed Akhtar

I am tagging:

Mithin

Karthik

Rethas