Malegaon Musings

Okie this has been due for really long now, I srsly dunno why I keep delaying thots in my mind, may be works as a sort of filter...from July actually...the second month of my job and I was sent off to Malegaon for my rural stint. That’s the learning bed of FMCG, being close to your consumers and reaching out to them :)

After getting over the initial apprehensions of remoteness of the place, availability of veg food, the communal tensions and terror strikes the reason for which the place had come in lime light in year 2008 I finally take this road trip. My guide accompanied me to introduce me to the local team and the distributor of the town. It felt like a kid being taken to a hostel in a remote hill station for being too naughty or what.

Yes the journey was long and arduous especially the stretches between Sangamner to Shirdi and Shirdi to Malegaon..Pune to Sangamner was still a smooth journey. The total travel time was around 6-7 hours. The place itself is quite well connected though; a fact I realized when I started working from there and I was supposed to make trips to all the near by towns and visit the markets, visit the local DB of the town, clocking 150 kms of average travel per day.

The road trips were always fun and adventurous. Traveling in rickety state road transport buses for 4 hrs on avg per day with people looking at you with amazement used to be fun and tiring at the same time. I also had hens and trays of eggs stacked over each other as my co passengers under my seat or besides me in the ally sometimes!! The landscape was the savior; lush green fields laden with fresh produces of the season, the neat rows in vineyards around the Nasik belt, huge dams and small hills dotted with the most brightly colored houses I have ever seen in fluorescent oranges & greens were overall quite exhilarating.

The problem of staying & eating while in Malegaon was solved by this awesome newly built small hotel with amenities comparable to any 2-3 star city hotel but at throw away prices. It was like the jewel of Malegaon named Sukh Sagar. I would seriously recommend it to anyone for a very comfortable stay and good food who is visiting Malegaon by any chance!! During the travels to nearby towns the food mostly comprised of the most eatable and clean food available. It consisted of bananas, dal roti at road side dhabas, gujrati thali at some places and for once it was tea and biscuits in one godforsaken place called Ghoti!!

There is another good memory of this place called Ghoti, of almost tipping off the highway downhill due to very strong winds and heavy monsoon showers as the bus conductor had rightly told me that this belt from Igatpuri to Ghoti is called the "Cherrapunji of Maharashtra"!! It was absolutely scenic: a nicely washed dark tar colored high way running through this hill overlooking a small village down from the highway with a long train passing behind the village making the quintessential Indian Railways sound.

The list of the places visited in itself generates enough curiosity amongst the listeners with exotic names such as Sinner, Niphad, Ghoti, Ozar,Devla, Yeola, Kalwan,Satana, Devlali Camp,Pimpalgaon, Nandgaon, Chandwad, Manmad,Laslagaon..

In terms of learning also it was quite amazing to understand the psyche of a rural customer, the influential power of the retailer against his counterpart in a city, the art of selling by the local team in such areas and the importance of marketing and distribution in remote places where what is available is what sells.

Malegaon also holds the dubious distinction of having the largest Spoof Movie Industry with a remake of every Bollywood hit in its own style and flavor. You could not stop being amused at the posters of "The return of Ghajini" & "Mummy ka ilaka"...There is another funny incident of sneaking into a Govt School of kids one after noon. As the kids left their Science Lab class they funnily put the hand of a skeleton in his mouth looking it was suddenly shy of something!!

I think all my apprehensions were nullified by the end of the stint and in fact I think I have some very vivid memories of the stint apart from what I have just recollected: Me clicking pictures of my shoes at evening, kid shepherd boys grazing their flock, the courteous hotel staff and a reckoner with the fact that there's a long long way for us to go before we can truly boast of India coming of age.

I think I can cook.....

Yes..to my utter surprise I am not a bad cook..it started with the Euro trip. There it was the question of survival ( being a veggie), but today I have personally achieved a new landmark..It was a small party I threw for my old NSIT gang before I leave for job and also the wine from Bordeaux that I had kept for them was long due. So while looking for Vegetarian options with red wine on net I discovered its considered an "Oxymoron" in the gastronomical world!!! After searching hard I came across a few choices and Pasta Arabiatta was one of them. Well, so I thought why not cook it myself to add to the flavor of the party :) After receiving dreadful warnings of "don't dare attempt that" , " what are the back ups" I decided to go ahead.....Though I have to admit that it was quite an unnerving experience and I was quite tensed but thanks to YouTube..it saved my day...and to my pleasant surprise my pasta did really well and was quite a hit :) They loved it and whole wok with 1kg pasta was completely empty....thank you guys :) yey i can cook!!!

I miss the discounts on my voting mark...

In this off season it came as a pleasant surprise and I realised that each vote matters in more than one ways :) It was indeed an innovative tactic and quite responsible at that one...But besides the discounts I am genuinely missing the whole excitement now.

After all it had been my saviour in last so many days, well almost a month when the bore dome and the "un bearable laziness of being" had decided to kill me, it was the election fever that saved my days. I was hooked to it all day, skipping through the channels but it was CNN- IBN only at the end for most of the time..No particular liking for Rajdeep and his gang except that my cable guy sucks. But yes the guy did work hard for all his aggressiveness. I can't recollect the kind of excitement I had for 16th may in a long time now.It was as if my CAT or Engg or Board exams results were due or something...And then I was happy and the happiness increased by the end of the day..Firstly for a clear verdict for a National Party and secondly coz of the party I voted for (I should have no qualms in confessing that this was my first exercise of the suffrage and hence may be the anticipation..)

In fact I was happy and amazed at the same time. Democracy indeed has great power and we are amongst the fortunate to be a part of the world's largest which probably we don't realise and tend to neglect in our routine. So the reason I was amazed at was that there existed a National Consciousness amongst the electorate to do away with the regional factionalism/horse trading/cheap bargains and vote decisively in favor of a National party to take care of issues that concern the whole nation. I had not done any prolific analysis unlike some of my friends and predicted some of the results on my own but the few people I knew and talked to had given me a sense that there was a conscious effort to see some one positive, with a clean image, efficient and capable at the center and hence the choice was same for all of them. In fact more the rhetoric and negativism got louder , more people were determined to go against it. It was simply heartening to see the mood being reflected in the results across the length and breadth of the nation. This is the power of democracy where every vote does matter...I would also confess here my allegiance to the First party and First family of Indian politics as in the present times in my livelihood I consider them the lesser of the two evils. There is no denying the fact the sheer charisma in the name and also the conduct lately of the matriarch and the scions( both the son and the daughter) is an un deniable factor in the wave of support. But there's some thing more than just the charisma, its the sheer sincerity in their outlook and a desire to change the system of which they are a part of and often blamed for is working in their favor.

I see it a great moment for the Nation to decisively usher in the era of its own for once with out a single excuse. We have the power, we have the mandate .. there should be no stopping now. And I am hoping people concerned do realise there's no room for complacency and a mammoth task ahead which if accomplished shall change the destiny of this nation for ever...Till then I hope the " SALE" sign returns soon :)

I have become so numb!!!

I dunno what has happened to me..may be this is me as well that I had never known....I always knew I was lazy but this lazy!! man never thot so...so much has happened in last so many months...many old chapters have closed, new about to begin, have regained lost friends, parted ways with some. Life is poised for a new turn, times are the at their dramatic best..change of guard in US, world economy in doldrums, Pakistan- a failed state?, LTTE on fringes of extinction, and world's largest democracy smitten by election hullabaloo...well indeed quite a lot...
At personal level I have resorted to solitary confinement...nt exctly..am just sayin this...a lot is goin in my mind and yet it feels so empty...It feels am raring to go at something..but why have I held this time as hostage??
As always made a huge list of "TO-DO' things..but you only do what you gotta do..in my case it was just dance and some abstract readings on Net...Susan boyle, Loyalty programs by German sex workers, Roman history, Zoo Zoos, Obama completes 100 days, How a drag queen named Varun Gandhi swore on Gita, and all the election related diggings...

So I have become numb..nothing was compelling enough?? strange it is..thoughts arise and then they die....some linger on which I have just re collected..but in the end it was the lethargy that set me thinking, the penchant to break free from its grip, the realisation itself was the most compelling reason to get me back...

I just hope these are small phases that other mates also go through...and then they look for reasons to break free...for me it was the reason itself...So i guess I have a lot to catch up..
The completion of my Euro trip
Naukri Naukri naukri
MDI- End of a journey
Election Fiesta
The issue is there no issue in these elections!!!
How I learnt to be comfortable with my laziness and overcame my guilt...
so lets c how i manage to do so...

When was the last time you checked your contacts in your Cell phone?

Well I just did so yesterday and junked 66 contacts…multiple entries, some non existent and some I wanted to forget….so today when I was just sitting alone and still coping with my stupid cough I was just going through the contacts and saw this number. It’s an old friend’s number…well very old for that matter…lemme count…our friendship dates back to 1996!! Yeah it seems ages…when we were in VI std. and it was the time for all those childhood crushes...committing all the stupidity in the world you can possibly imagine.Things you just cant stop laughing at as you talk about them today or while telling to a third person. I mean... imagine sending a letter via mail with rose petals inside :) phew…I must have been really crazy then…

I’ll call my oldest (I claim so) friend “S” for anonymity but yes it still rings bells and just makes me feel happy that the number still works and the person at the other end of the receiver is indeed the person from the pages of history!!! Really...I guess so…just a disclaimer... of course the number does not date back to 1996…it was again a beautiful surprise what they call “serendipity” when we just bumped into each other more than a year back and somehow never called each other…that’s a different story..
So the moral of the story...go and dive in your contact box and just check if it still rings the bell !!!