An Engineer's (poor) Fashion Taste

Yesterday, I went to a saloon to get rid of my devdas looks. And the enlightening conversation with the barber, on my fashion taste, forced me to write this post and to share my recent experiences with various shop owners. So, here it goes.

Time: 7:30 pm, IST
Venue: Arbit hair dresser, Sector-XX, Noida (the name has been changed intentionally on barber's request..and mein bhi uske pet per laat nahi marna chahta hoon:))

My hair cutting/shaving was due from a long time and I realized it when I received a call from honorable Ram Gopal Verma ji, requesting me to sign his new movie-remake of devdas. He is broke after his series of flop releases like James et al and so he was looking for a 'low-cost-real-life' devdas who can successfully replace the 'reel' devdas (read Salman Khan, who is serving some years of imprisonment right now for teasing paro). But considering my chocolaty looks, I politely declined the offer and told him that I would only act in the movie of Karan bhaiya and Yash uncle (the number of actors in their multi-starrer-mega-movies is so big that I am pretty much sure that soon I would get a phone call from them).
Anyway now coming back to the point, I went to this arbit-hair-dresser to get a make over of myself from sharukh-of-devdas to sharukh-of-kuch kuch hota hai. It had been around two weeks since I shaved my beard, so my beard was as long and dense as trees in tropical forests. When I entered the saloon, it was without any customer, and the barber looked at me in same way as McGrath looks at Harbhajan Singh when harbhajan comes out to bat. He made me sit comfortably on one of the chairs and asked "bhaiya, kya karana hai?" and I innocently replied "devdas se chocholoty boy wale looks ka make over karana hai". The barber with a 'mein-sab-samajh-gaya' smile replied " lagta hai aap TV bahut dekhte hai..btw jassi ka make over hone ke baad woh bahut acchi lagne lagi hai..but she is too good for armaan sir..mujhe yeh jodi acchi nahi lagti hai" and I fainted. When I recovered my consciences I saw him sprinkling water on my face with one hand and a razor in other hand. So, he asked if he can go ahead with the shaving and I granted him my permission. But for him, shaving my beard was as difficult task as a task of playing spin bowlers for a English batsman. He tried his best, changed the blade twice, but he didn't get any success. Actually, my beard is so hard that it requires some more research by Gillette & Co. to find out new material and manufacturing technology to make blades for people like me. I think Gillette should hire me for their R&D projects and before launching any new product they should test it on me and if the product passes the test, they can declare it CP certified :). So, after the barber tried blades of all the brands available in his saloon, he came up with a very good idea and said " bhaiya, aap french beard kyon nahi rakh lete hai..aapke uper bahut acchi lagegi". I knew it was coming because I have got this advice from many other victims of my beard also. I replied with a 'koi-naya-idea-nahi-hai-tumhare-pass' smile " yaar mein yaha hritik roshan banne aaya hoon..n tum mujhe gulshan grover banane mein lage huye ho". But he was also very persistent and was not willing to give up easily, so he said "why dont you try once..I am sure ki is colony ki ladkiya aapki deewani ho jaaygi". Now, this was something very innovative from his side, but i was also fully prepared and I replied "hmm..I have already tried to sport french beard once and the consequences were no less than a disaster..colony ki ladkiya to nahi but kutte zaroor mere peeche pad jate the". Now this guy became little bit aggressive and asked "aap engineer to nahi ho?" and said "hmm...yes". He with a 'ganguly-after-beating-australia' smile said "tabhi aap itne old fashioned ho..aajkal french beard is in..ek baar to try karo". I was slightly irritated but 'ek baar try karne wali baat' usne itne pyar se boli..ki mein to almost fas gaya tha uske chakar mein..but then I realized that if I allow him to do so, it would be defeat of whole engineering community. So, I asked him to do what I wanted and threatened him that if he would speak anything, I would not be coming to his saloon again. The poor chap was like ganguly-banned-for-three-matches-due-to-poor-bowling-rate.

I wanted to write some more similar experiences but this post is already very long, so I would be writing them in next post. Anyway I hate these kind of people who try to take advantage of 'seedhe-sadhe-bhole-bhale' engineers to force their own things and also criticize engineers for their poor taste. It was not the first time I had to go through it but 'kasam uper wale ki' from now on I would not spare these guys who try to bully engineers for their own benefits.

Better late than never

Its not the first time I am using this old adage as a mean to save some pride. I owe my life to the person who came up with this beautiful line. If this line has not been there, I would have committed suicide because of the humiliation that I would have suffered due to my tendency to procrastinate everything I (have to) do. If anyone dares to say me anything about me being late, I put a big smile on my face and reply "better late than never" and the person starts talking business (he doesn't crib about being late any more:)).

Anyway, I was introduced to this blog world by my dear friend chocky chinnu around two and half years ago. At that time, I had some more interesting things to do and moreover, I wasn't mature enough to see the difference between a blog (of chocky chinnu) and log file of my circuit simulation run (I thought both were useless). So, I (rather we, include some of my wingmates) used to advise him (read mock him) to come to the real world. Since then, time has changed, so I have to. Chocky chinnu, with his workforce, is busy in converting (add aayo aayo sound of aoe to get more impact) more and more friends of mine into dedicated bloggers. So now, I am left with no other option but to join the blogger community (like politicians, I always want to enjoy majority). I can rethink about my decision only if indian government passes a bill for the reservation for minority community (those who don't blog) in educational institutes/government offices . Also, after spending some time in semiconductor industry, I find blogs more interesting than logs (in short now I have matured enough:)). Hence, I decided to surrender to chocky chinnu's will and to start a blog where I can dump my crappy thoughts. I couldn't have thought of a better time (navratra) for this begining and I hope that its not the begining of the end.