Three Things is Too Much!

Yesterday was a good day. I said Hakuna Matata before I went to sleep. And that doesn't happen very often these days.

I had appointments with a couple of companies for the afternoon, so I didn't do much in the morning, was psyching myself for what was to come. One good thing about life is that it has only so much it can offer, and soon comes a time when you are doing the same things again. And again and again. My friends in big cities will agree to this. So it is when I meet people, to discuss business with them, the "Play" button needs to be pressed and I'm more or less on autopilot. Last April I was roaming around in Ahmedabad, looking for investors and asking for their partnership for the Diploma Project of NID, this April I'm just finding businesses and making calls. The rest of the things just happen. Not much has happened mind you, I'm yet to sign MOUs, if I ever get to sign any.

So at 2:18 sharp I leave for Grafico, a husband-and-wife venture into web, print and corporate brand identity business. They are the minds behind MachuPicchu, a lounge coffee shop, I meet Mr. Ashit Parikh and we have a good meeting, half an hour later I leave after asking Mr. Parikh if he is in any way related to a Prof. Suresh Parikh from Sardar Patel University, Vidyanagar, who is my father's professor and guide and lifelong friend, but he said he didn't know the professor but knew a photographer whose name was Mr. Suresh Parikh, from Baroda.

During our meeting, I spotted an external hard-drive on his desk, it was the vertical 500 GB Western Digital drive with a circular light in front and a morse-code type design on the egdes. I have the exact same drive with me, I've been using it since over two years now. I wasnt getting excited about the exact same piece of hardware, but I have seen my share of computer stuff and till now, I haven't seen that particular drive with anyone, so the child in me was a little amused at the co-incidence.

Next, Chavi Media and Communication, Balaji Plaza, armed with a small print-out of a google map pointing to its exact location I was sleep-walking towards it. After ten minutes of walking in the afternoon I decide to take an auto, only to find the laziest auto-wallas who flatly said no. Why? Its afternoon time, we rest at this time, they said and resumed listening to new ringtones on one's mobile phone. Finally I do find an auto, but cant find the place. So for twenty minutes we roam around Wayfinding: The Indian Way. Which is, by asking pan-wallahs and auto-wallahs. Finally an auto-wallah who happened to be standing at the very place I wanted to get off said "Never heard of Balaji Plaza." I spotted the building's name-board which was totally lost among the clutter of the shops' name-boards. I enlightened the rickshawallah and mused at the British Museum Search Method and the accuracy of it.

Finally, after an anticlimax of sorts, I manage to enter what was their office, and meet Sanjay, a very polite little person. I spot a wall clock on the wall. Its an Ajanta wall clock, the exact same design as the one in my house's living room since more than ten years. Thats the clock i saw thousands of times in my life. And it was there, on that wall. Ajanta is the world's largest clock manufacturer and has many, many designs. I had never seen this design anywhere, till now. Well hell, I thought. Thats two things!

The meeting goes on and we're discussing possible collaborations. He has no immediate needs of my skills except for this one thing he's not sure about discussing. A news site they host and update (www.tarkash.com, the seventh most popular hindi site in the universe), needs some fictional characters, and to show what he's looking for he shows me a sample. He opens a folder, in it are hundreds of random photographs. One photograph he is looking for, after a few minutes he finds it. I must desctibe it now.

She was a rocker-chick, wearing a black leather bra and black panties holding the guitar making the panties redundant, on her knees in an inverted-Y posture.

16th Frbruary, Lucknow, the time is 10 p.m. and I'm there with my friend and colleague Preet, with Aditi and Simran, who are from Lucknow, we are sitting at a Cafe Coffee Day, sipping coffee. My train to Gujarat was at 11:30 but had been postponed by 3 hours (at least, and the railways was sorry for informing this). A guy walks in, his name is Siddharth and he is Aditi's friend. We're clicking photographs which end up on facebook (one is my display picture right now), the girls push him into a photo with his sleeve rolled up so his tattoo is seen. The tattoo on his right arm is of a girl holding a guitar, on her knees in an inverted-Y posture. He fondly shows the jpeg file on his mobile to show what his rocker-chick looked like before ending up on his arm forever.

"Nothing happens by chance, there is no such thing as luck.There is meaning behind every little thing, as such a meaning behind this." - Richard Bach, Nothing By Chance

There she was again on that computer screen, ready to be morphed into a virtual reporter again. Its too bad that I read Richard Bach books in my teens, if I had recently read them I'd have hit the roof and dented it, now all this gets is a blog entry.