Common-man & his Superpower

     With so many superhero movies, He-man, Superman, Spiderman, Ironman, Hanu-man, (these English channels pronounce Hanuman as Hunu-man) & noe the avengers which includes many super heroes, I felt kind of lonely, it made me wonder, who am I ?  Is there a superpower I may posses, perhaps unknowingly ? Can I describe myself completely when I say - I am common man. Does this definition encapsulate my personality, attitude towards life etc completely?  What is my character, my personality in comparison to these heroes ? Yes I am a common-man, although it rhymes with all super hero names, common man is just yet any man, you see in a crowd & pick anyone & define him, this definition totally explains me, & yet I once discovered my super power too - Its adjustment in life. Especially Indians get adjusted to anything & everything, that probably comes in their blood or learnt from parents. So I wonder sometimes, Is this adjusting attitude a kind of superpower?  On one hand it makes life easier & probably happier depending on the extent of enjoying on the compromised things. A typical common man optimizes on everything, on every thing he purchases, he worries about inflation, savings etc, going green is added now. Common man's life is synonym to simplicity, with no glam sham. Indians adjust on anything & everything. We many sometimes take it by default that we need to adjust on a particular issue without even consciously trying to be idealistic about our expectations. Indian standard time is always an offset ahead of the correct time. Official meeting happen late than scheduled time. Doctors make their patients wait after giving an appointment time. In Bangalore 'Swalpa adjust maadi' has become so common phrase meaning adjust little bit. The transport system runs late by default, say a govt bus arrives after exactly after half an hour of its scheduled departure time. People stand on the bus door with just one foot & hand inside, the trains are always crowded, even there was an instance when pilot allowed a kid inside cockpit.        

        I always wanted to be someone special, the monk who sold his Ferrari or the guy who purchased it. On the fantasy side, I don't know I always wanted to be Spider-man, just loved the pleasant & wonderful character in the movie.

The pic is from the movie- A Wednesday, amazing movie based on the concept of common man becoming furious & taking some action against terrorism. 

Shah: Mene Kaha Naa I Am Just The Stupid Common Man

The Other Day

This post has been published by me as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 21; the twenty-first edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton.

One night on the middle of road

                  From past two years in my office, I go out with 5 girls for lunch, you know what…they keep boring me by talking typical ladies stuff, kitty parties, what they did with their hair, nails, rangoli, mehandi, etc etc, I am more of a geek interested in electronics & physics, turning deaf ear towards them, but still they keep exaggerating & making nice stories out of more than ordinary life situations. One day I decided to bore them too with my story & here it goes :

                Thank god, the traffic cop was not looking today, I was overtaking from left on a footpath, was in hurry to office. There are sophisticated cameras installed in Bangalore every traffic signal now, which send the number of vehicle to blackberry held by cops nearby. The other day a traffic police stopped me to check whether I was drunk. I was returning home late night, after a star party at Coorg & some sightseeing on the way back to Bangalore. It was about 1 am & I was driving at normal speeds. Since my helmet does not offer wide angle view as Sony camera’s lens, I was surprised when a traffic policeman appeared out of nowhere & asked me to stop. Since I was too afraid of traffic policeman, as they threaten to take your vehicle or ask you to pay fine for some or the other rule violated. I thought I should not stop, instead keep driving, but realized I can stop as I had not done anything wrong this time. I was so tired staying awake previous night, tried hard to remember if I had broken any traffic rule. The traffic policeman approached nearer, he had dark complexion & held a black berry in his hand just like a revolver. I was so sleepy & exhausted that I had a sort of near death experience – he was like modern Yamaraja – the god of death whose appraisal depends on the number of souls collected in the year. Well in this case the traffic cop’s appraisal depends on the number of violations he filed. Here in Bangalore it’s so easy to find one or the other person breaking traffic rule all the time, ‘Where are you coming from late this night ‘he asked in commanding tone. ‘From a trip Sir from Coorg Sir, & going to my house now Sir’ I replied bit scared. Why had you been to Coorg? & remove your helmet. I said ‘Star party Sir ‘I said adjusting my hair. That’s not the style but normal tendency after removing helmet. You tend to forget your style in such a situation. Probably he was angry with this & asked What kind of party is that ?  Show me your license & have you taken drinks? No Sir, I don’t drink, & whispered that not lucky to be born to rich parents. Star party is one where sky watching enthusiasts hang out with telescopes etc watching the interesting things in sky. He returned the license & said “you don’t seem like rich dad’s spoilt kid, but why take the risk of returning alone late this night, we have so many complaints that people are robbed on road etc”. ‘Oh ok Sir, I will take care of your advice ’What do you do at a star party & what’s the deal about your parents ? Oh nothing Sir, I meant if my dad had more money I could enjoy luxury of drinking etc Sir, not that I want to, but just simply said. Look at you, driving a 220cc high end bike at this young age you can earn handful of money , you are tall & smart. You must earn money & fulfill your dreams Why blame your parents for this ? Would you be the same guy – nature & personality if your parents had a lot of money?  I wondered, that’s what ! I don’t want to be this guy, I want to be rich, instead of driving a bike, I could drive a BMW or Audi. middle class sucks dude -  I wanted to tell, but did not. “No Sir I meant if my parents had more money things would have easier achieve in life we aspired for, you know, you can enjoy life, not caring about optimizing on everything you spend. I am a software developer , the software I write goes into the Audi A4 car, controlling it’s engine, see the irony no way I can afford Audi A4 costing about 40 lakhs. So, star party is one in which you look at stars? Actually Sir, we look at everything except stars. Stars just act as guide to locate the interested objects. We look at objects through telescope like planets, galaxies, comets, nebula etc. its just people interested in photography , optics physics etc gettogether to look at objects we see in internet through hubble telescope or something. We are from club called Bangalore Astronomical Society. I held my BAS club ID card proudly as if it was ID card of Harvard or Princeton & showed him. So a star party is totally opposite of normal party, where people get drunk & loose their sense & fool around, we stay alert & strain our eyes all night long to look at some of the faint objects million of light years away through telescopes. He seemed fascinated by this & asked but why did you go to Coorg to sky watch? “Normally city’s light pollution is so severe that we can just see a couple of stars through naked eyes” -  I replied . We need very dark skies to see very faint & very far objects”.  We went to coffee estate far away from city lights. Strange isn’t it how come you can talk to a stranger that too cop about philosophy & astronomy, both unusual subjects.

           Ya I succeeded in boring all girls, then they started, you know what…we went Wonderla this weekend & the new color plus summer shades look I am going with my hubby this weekend !  “Do they have in lavender & is it on discount”  Seeing the surprised look on their faces I instantly said  “Come on, Why should girls have all the fun? ” 

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Moral science stories for kids 6: The one with life & living

This is just a copy-paste of some of the best quotes I have come across. 

Fishy ideas

                     This discussion happened among a group of Five small fishes below the white round rock most popularly considered as pebble & is recorded as the most important discussion in the history of aquatic kingdom ever. Five small fishes were on way back home from school when Nemo probably the most intelligent among them started this discussion:

Nemo : Hey guys have you ever thought there could be multiple worlds out there...I mean I kind of get this weird feeling that we live in a small world called ocean, but there may be another world which we may not even know it exists.

Marvin: Yeah, we always hear that humans catch fish & in this way we loose some of our friends & relatives. They are taken to another world.

Nemo: Hey come on, this is not the world I am talking about. We know this world ...its present just right above ours & we can just see when we pop our heads up. I am talking about the world beyond our planet earth.

Tom: yeah, my grandpa was telling that earth is one of the rarest planet on which life is possible. There may be other earths which may support life.

Tim: Hey Tom I have got a question for you, did your grandpa mean there are fish on other planet similar to earth ?

Jerry: I guess so, he may have meant fish life only. Its very unlikely he may have got out from here & traveled in space & seen aquatic life there.

Ted: Also, I have heard that there are multiple stars which have planets like earth revolving around them....Ah I think ours is called solar system. I am sad about Pluto loosing its planet's status, these humans how can demote Pluto of its planet status. It's just cute.

Tim: yeah in fact this is part of our studies in next standard. My senior friend of mine was telling he went back to his class teacher to get an extra mark for his correct answer of 8 planets which was actually wrong but after humans proved that there were only 8 planets his wrong answer became right.

Nemo: hey guys!! Just imagine if we could land up in another planet's ocean.

Tom: So whats the big deal !! it would be the same .

Jerry:  no it would be different ..there may be other species.... as well as other species of fish...might be bigger in size !!! Ah, I am scared now.

Nemo: My grandpa was telling there could be collection of stars called galaxies & many galaxies exist in this world. Humans call it Universe. They are not able to come up with the theory to explain the universe still. they just make up some shit like big bang theory etc, they don't even know what happened before big bang & how the entire thing would end.

Tim: So, why have they declared themselves most intelligent beings on this planet. If they live outside water that does not mean they can declare whatever they want.

Dorothy: yeah, the theory they have come up to explain the working of the the universe is called the big bang theory which states that there was a big explosion from which all this universe began. The galaxies formed & solar system & planets like earth which can support life forms like us

Tim: Why care about it anyways we cannot get out of this water anyway, chill folks, enjoy the water !

Tom: No, its not about caring its about finding the truth. I have even heard that there are complex objects in universe like black holes, worm holes, time machines in which we can travel through time & go into past or present.

Ted: Hey thats a good one, I have a brilliant idea, if I ever get a time machine, probably I can ask my dad to buy it as a birthday gift, I am going to go to my past & reappaear my exams so that i will come first to class.

Linny, no Ted Marvin you dont get it, when you go past in time you would not know the answers that time also. Its just like first time you appear for your exam

Nemo: Ahhhhh folks folks would you stop this discussion I miss playing after school in fact I would not be part of this discussion if it was not the storm prediction this evening. guys, dont you get it !! All these are FISHY IDEAS !!  Who is up for Scrabble !

Dorothy: I have even heard that there a particular species of human being weird guy named Sunil who has authoring a book which contains ideas like this. Its an old book, but good to read though, Do you guys want to come over my home, I will read it ....you all can listen....

there is whispering heard: hope it will be as interesting & a little more complicated than our last year's nursery rhymes i suppose

As they dont have a choice all go to listen Dorthy reading the book which goes like this:

And there comes a star fish,
Star - Fish -  sorry guys i couldn;t resist & overheard this conveersation, can anyone tell me if you have ever seen a star shaped like me ?  I wonder why humans named me star fish anyway  ?

Nemo:  Oops Charles Darwin missed you, or apparently he never knew the reason while naming you !

......to be continued