From 'B. Manish' to 'Manish Bujranpally'

“Naam kya hai tumhara, beta?”
“B. Manish.”
“Yeh Bammanish kya naam hai?”
“Arey uncle, Bammanish nahi …. mera naam hai Manish… ‘B’ mera initial hai..”
“Acchha… yeh baat hai kya… “

This was a conversation between a non-descript uncle and me many years ago… I think it was probably around 17 -18 years ago… But, what’s so special about this conversation?? Well, for one, I was always very particular about my name being pronounced correctly…. Also, people who see me at first, often mistake me to be a Marwari… No offence in that… But it sometimes irks you when someone speculates about your background without proper enquiry…. Let’s leave this topic for some other article… Let’s come back to where we started…. My name…

Right from my childhood, I was very proud of my name… Manish… so fashionable, so modern when most of my friends had long old names…. That’s why this seven-year-old was ever so eager to reveal his name to everyone way back in 1990…. But there was a caveat to this whole issue… This guy was never comfortable with his surname…. Oh Man…. !!!! This surname is too big… too old fashioned… sounds like the name of a village… BUJRANPALLY… What the heck!!!... This was what I thought always as a kid… Since I stayed in a predominantly Marathi colony, I was always skeptical to reveal my surname when someone in the colony asked me about my “Adnaav” – Surname in marathi…

So, I decided that I would always call myself as B. Manish…. If someone asks about my surname I would say that I can’t pronounce it as it is too big… At that age, I thought this to be a master-stroke, a stroke of a genious because this strategy worked most of the times and no one bothered to ask me about my surname… I was very proud and happy on my intelligence… Also, since most of my classmates were Telugu people and as you know, many of Telugu people just use initial and rarely bother to use their surnames… This worked pretty well with me….

This reference as B.Manish continued for a very good time…. Up until my engineering 2nd year… B. Manish it was always everywhere… As my college mates would know, IT batch was the most notorious as well as famous as far as ragging was concerned… Oh yeah.. We kept on ragging juniors even in our 3rd year and 4th year… It was 3rd year 1st semester and one such day wherein I went to IT sub-junior batch‘s class and asked some totally petrified juniors to come with me… There they were… a couple of guys… half-a- dozen girls being escorted by me from 3rd floor to 4th floor…. Well, for people who don’t know much about our college, it is the great Deccan College of Engineering, a college in Hyderabad famous for everything except studies.. !!! It was a ‘magnificent’ six-storied building… Our class was on the 4th floor while the juniors were put up on the 3rd floor…

As soon as the juniors entered our class… Mere sabhi classmates un par toot pade… Not literally though… It was free-for-all… But somehow, I managed to bring a couple of girls and a boy near our set of friends… Pankaj joined me… Rajesh and Rajesh joined too… Kishore and Kishore came in from somewhere… Now, don’t think that I am typing names twice… Indeed, our class had two Rajeshs and two Kishores….!!!! Yaswanth, Kranthi and Satti were observing from a distance…. I was feeling very proud as though I had conquered the entire world…

As Pankaj asked the girls for BD, hey hold on.. it’s not the beedie used for smoking….it is BD for Bio-data… , one of the girls said that her name was Swetha Tadepally with the emphasis on Tadepally…. I couldn’t stop laughing… why the hell is she stressing on her surname… it is just another PALLY… typical telugu surname… but then whenever someone asked about her name she always used to stress on her surname…. I found this pretty funny… And the ragging went on for another 30 minutes or so and then they left..

Later after coming back home, as I sat thinking about nothing, something reminded me about the incident about surname in the morning…. I thought…What’s wrong with Bujranpally… It is a pretty good surname… yeah… I should be proud of it…. It is the name of my ancestral village and generally in Andhra Pradesh people have their village’s name as their surname… This made me think deeply about me, my family, my ancestors and finally my surname… I spent the rest of the day brooding over this...

A few days passed without much ado... Sometime later, a new lecturer joined our college and he was asking us to introduce ourselves… As he asked me about my name, I replied.. Manish Bujranpally… with the stress on BUJRANPALLY…. !!!!!!!

Pursuit of Unhappiness.... !!!!!!

A butterfly collects nectar day-in and day-out from the flowers. It is relentless in its pursuit. It never gets fatigued. It never gets flustered. It goes on about its job from flower to flower and gets nectar to its heart’s content. There is a certain sense of happiness that it derives from its work. A construction labourer keeps working day-in and day-out and I am sure most of you would agree, he is almost always in a world of his own, humming tunes, whistling at times, he goes about his work with a relentless pursuit. There is also a sense of happiness that he derives from the work that he does. A software engineer goes to the plush AC office, swipes in, checks his mail, talks to his counterpart at onsite, gulps in coffee or tea and starts coding or designing or whatever. But often every activity that I have mentioned above is preceded and succeeded by an unnatural grunting and cribbing about the pathetic work, about the pathetic salary and pathetic company. Not one activity is done with the happiness reflected by the butterfly or for that matter even a construction labourer.

I did not get a good rating at work. I don’t want to work. – This sentence is something which we have heard or probably said umpteen number of times. If your rating is good then – I did not get an opportunity to go to a foreign country. I want an onsite. – would ring through the baritone voices of the ‘Definitely Male Pulsar’ driving hunks or even from the angels driving ‘Why should boys have all the fun - Pleasure’. If you are lucky enough not to hear or utter this dialogue then you are most definitely going to hear this - I did not get a promotion. I want a promotion.

I can hear people shouting at me now for being preachy. I am sure you guys would be thinking – “Yeh saala Manish apne aap ko bahut bada gyaani samajh raha hai aur hum logon ko pravachan de raha hai.”
Honestly, if I was in your place, I would have felt the same. There is no denying this fact. But there is no denying the fact which I disclosed in the previous paragraph as well. I too have said the second statement often. But as they say – The higher you fly, the heavier you fall. I too had lofty ambitions of being at onsite. But as fate would have it, I got completely bored and ‘de-bedazzled’ and disenchanted with an alien land. As they say in Hindi – “Main to onsite se dum dabaake bhaga” !!!!!!

I have often seen some of my friends never happy with what they have. Always thinking about something which they don’t have rather than being happy with what they have. I have seen people going after frivolous things. I have seen people relentlessly pursuing for unhappiness. Yes.. Unhappiness. People have been so much obsessed with others that they tend to compare each and everything vis-à-vis others making their current possessions irrelevant and unwanted. Hmm… there is a need for some food-for-thought for everyone including your self-proclaimed gyaani… How we do this? I leave it to the individuals as everyone has a way with it. I just had to throw in a bit of petrol or gasoline (which my US counterparts would better connect with) into a raging fire within everyone. Let it burn and let it also burn my article with it. I would be there to douse that flame with some other article pretty soon!!!!!!!

Why I like this IPL?????

It is now almost the end of Indian Premier League season-2 and I must admit that I enjoyed season-2 more than season-1 for more reasons than one. Although I am not in South Africa, I still believe this was better. Reasons? Here we go….

First and foremost, this season all the over-hyped and ultra-glamorous sides are out of the competition. Yes, I am very happy to see the end of Kolkata Knightriders, Kings XI Punjab and Rajasthan Royals… More so, I am happy to see the end of Dildo, Bublee and Big Sister as Fake IPL player would say…  For people who didn’t follow the fake IPL player blog, Dildo is the nickname of SRK…. Bublee for Preity zinta and Big sister for Shilpa shetty….

But why do I hate these people? Well, the reasons are pretty obvious, isn’t it? What the hell does SRK know about cricket or for that matter even the Zinta babe and the Shetty babe… I agree to some extent that SRK has put in his hard-earned money into KKR team but it’s not the case with Zinta and Shetty…. Where was Ms. Shetty before Big Brother… She must thank Jade Goody for all the good that she has done to Shilpa shetty…. If not for those racial comments and the sensationalisation by the Indian media, Shilpa shetty would have been cooling her heels in some non-descript B-grade Hindi movie opposite Shawar Ali or may be in some Bhojpuri film opposite Manoj Tiwari… !!!! As the famous song in Hera Pheri goes…

‘Dene waala jab bhi deta… deta chhappar phaad ke…'

… This is exactly what happened to her and she found a bakra in Kundra…. And the rest, as they say is history….. !!!!

Coming to Zinta…. Well, I must admit that I don’t like the Wadia group because they have their lineage from Mohammed Ali Jinnah…. For people who don’t know about this, Ness Wadia, the ex-boyfriend of Zinta is the great grandson of Mohammed Ali Jinnah….. Also, people who have seen the move GURU would know that this movie is based on the life of Dhirubhai Ambani…. If you remember, in the movie, there is a character by name Arzaan Contractor or something like this… That character who tries to buy out Ambani is said to be none other than Mr. Wadia…. I have always had a lot of admiration for the TATA group and the Ambani Group…. I would have honestly liked to see Ambani-owned Mumbai Indians whip the Kings XI team apart…. But it remained a wishful thinking….

Next is Mr. SRK… well, I have never liked him and this dislike has accentuated after the treatment he has meted out to DADA…. This was the reason behind me hating KKR team even more….

Now let’s get on to the second reason as to why I like this IPL….. My team Deccan Chargers are through to the Semis…. My heart says that DC will win this IPL…. Well, there is logic behind this…. If you guys followed the unofficial ICL – Indian Cricket League, you would have noticed that the Hyderabad Heroes team ended up last in the first edition and won the cup in the second edition…. I hope that this would repeat even in the official IPL….

Also, if you remember Hyderabad and Bangalore were the teams that finished at the bottom of the table in last year’s IPL… It is good to see these two teams battle against all odds and make it to the semis….

Another silly reason is that all the four semi-finalist cities this time – Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai and Delhi – are the cities where I have been to…. I visited all these four cities and have an emotional attachment with Bangalore…. After Hyderabad, I would want Bangalore to win….. Let’s see what happens….

Whatever might be the result…. I am happy to see an even contest between bat and ball and have thoroughly enjoyed each and every match….

Finally, this is Mannubhai signing off hoping to see a Hyderabad vs Bangalore final with Hyderabad winning the championship….