Deepanjan Nag's Magnum Opus

I’m paying the price for allowing a friend to use my credit card to purchase a laptop 2 years ago. He has often failed to clear the monthly dues on time and this has resulted in not only fines being levied but a lot of annoying calls being directed at me from the call center. Since this friend has been in Ranchi for the past few months, accessing him has become rather difficult. Thankfully, we are nearing the end of our installments and this headache should be over soon. I had to visit the Standard Chartered Bank ATM to drop one of the installment cheques this afternoon. Walked to Big Bazaar after the payment and bought a boxed set of 25 DVDs. My ever-growing music collection had become too large for the hard disk and I had to house it externally.

I’m so much in love with the Galileoscope . It costs a paltry $15, but shipping costs add unnecessary flab. Shipping to India would be insane. I think I should settle for nothing less than the Celestron C65.

Given the gaffe-prone Government of India trying to repeatedly curtail the rights of its citizens in the face of technically challenging adversaries, it wasn’t hard for me to fall prey to a very misleading news article a few days ago from the sensation-hungry Times of India . Here’s the article . In effect it meant that all email ids of Indians must be hosted on Indian servers. Not only that, the ids MUST end with .in and not anything else, like the ubiquitous .com. Are these guys kidding me , I thought. Nowhere in the world has such a ridiculous ruling been implemented. It’s technically impossible to achieve and circumventing it would be child’s play. I know most of our ministers are poorly educated, but they aren’t really illiterate!! They aren’t really thinking of designing a mini-Internet just for Indians, are they?!! I was immensely perturbed. A search dispelled the cloud. I heaved a sigh of relief and restored my faith in our netas . I couldn’t help thinking of what happened...

I discovered her giggling and sipping into a Frooti this morning. I pretended to want it. She would have none of it. I chased her. She ran and sipped even faster to exhaust the supply. Soon she was out of stomach-space and offered me whatever remained of her drink. I sipped a little and offered it back. She giggled but refused. I emptied the drink. We don’t speak a common language. We don’t need to. Sometimes I feel the world would be a much better place had we never crafted languages that only serve to spread suspicion, jealousy and hatred. The language of the heart is enough. Adults may be more knowledgeable but children are wiser. True wisdom comes from a lot of unlearning.

Padmashree is an award given by the Government of India generally to Indian citizens to recognize their distinguished contribution in various spheres of activity - Wikipedia This clown displayed his ‘distinguished contribution’ by asking his wife to unbutton his jeans publicly at the recently concluded Lakme Fashion Week . Next time he may ask her to go a step further and give him a ****job. Who knows, she too may be in the reckoning for the award for her distinguished contribution! Obscenity was never so profoundly rewarding. This is a personal blog and I’ve usually refrained from commenting on all the antics that hog media attention. However, sometimes I just can’t help breaking protocol.

This junk award is worse than I thought.

This isn’t about Santosh being told early morning that there was a courier for him at the door.The poor chap dragged himself out of bed only to learn that Mani had just bamboozled him! This is about Abhishek sending a well-meant email to some of his friends informing them of ATM cards being accepted at ATMs of all banks without incurring a charge – starting April 1st. Well, this is according to an RBI directive issued last year meant for implementation from today. It was all over the news then…and it’s all over the news yet again. It’s obvious that some people would still miss out on this information, which is perfectly understandable. What’s not so understandable is why are some people dismissive of new ideas without even checking the facts first. These established fools are so secure in their ignorance that they could even proudly hit REPLY TO ALL and retort that it’s only an April-1st prank. Even GMail was launched on April 1, remember? Unfortunately for this quintessential fo...

Santosh is back after his 3-week vacation.

Pampered myself to an Amul TriCone. The fool that I was, I blindly believed its QP (Quoted Price) of Rs.20, though the MRP was only Rs.15. Exactly the same thing must have happened yesterday as well. Who says dishonesty doesn’t pay? It pays big time.

Andromeda is switching itself off all of a sudden right in the middle of work. It’s not the gradual shut down but a sudden off, like a TV being shut off. Last night was the 4th or 5th time in 1.5 years that it happened. My guess is it’s the overheating that’s to blame. Each time the anomaly happened, Andromeda had been working for long hours and had become very hot. I guess AMD machines having a problem with overheating isn’t an entirely unfounded allegation.

  Since I don a new look every year, I thought it best to remind my readers of my present visage!

Remember a previous half-hearted effort to keep some posts secret that would be made public only in the distant future? Well, its time has finally come. The probable date for lifting the veil is 1st Jan , 2040 . A special category ‘ secret ’ will be used to identify my most intimate thoughts too inflammable for their times.

Finally…after all those attempts! Wish I could join her for lunch. Jahnvee & Jay leave for London tonight. I hope to meet them soon.

I tried to call many times but could get through only once. And even that one call was disconnected midway. :(

It was precisely 50 years ago that Miles Davis recorded Kind of Blue , which went on to become the best selling Jazz album of all time. The world would never be the same again.

I don’t quite remember which side it was, but this was the first track on one of my all-time favorite cassettes. It’s the instrumental rendition of Gentle On My Mind by Boots Randolph. If I’m ever asked to name my Top 10 nostalgic tracks, this would be one of them. Beware, the mp3 file is externally hosted and the editing is flawed.

This photo, snapped by Ritam, found its way to the NYTimes . One day when I’m rich enough to splurge, I hope to buy this car…not only because it’s inexpensive but also because I’m indebted to the TATAs for everything. For its price, the Nano looks incredibly cool. Ritam has been trumpeting since morning!

Blogs seldom mention me. And so when one does, I jump to the opportunity to mention the mentioning! Here goes.

…as witnessed by Ritam tonight.