So, you need a smartphone. You are going to a new college. You outgrew your good old java phone. Monkeys liked the shiny exterior of your old one and took off with it. You were drunk and thought of baiting the fish with your phone instead of worms. N number of reasons. The bottom line is, you have to buy a new one. Finito.

The first thing you need to remember is, All that glitters is probably cheap chrome. The time for selecting a phone based on its looks is long gone. You gotta remember certain things while choosing the right device for yourself. Search the market, ask people about their opinions on their smartphones and  how you are going to use your own one.

When you need a smartphone, you should select it on the following criteria:

Budget : 
Remember the good old advertisement that asks, "Is your dad an ATM machine?" If yes, good. If no, you'd do well by watching it. Yeah, everyone wants the HTC One X. But getting it shouldn't burn a hole (or tunnel, for that matter) in your pocket. Decide what's your budget going to be. If you have no such constraints, spoil yourself. Waaaaaah! 
Requirement: 
now that you're decided on the  budget, let's think about how you're going to use your phone. Consider a person who needs a phone for making calls, a few texts, an hour or so of music and video playback, with not much care for a huge application base. Even a new born infant can tell you that this person will be more than happy with a symbian phone, the most imporatnt factors being sturdiness and good battery life. Likewise, if you're a businessman, you need a phone with good and secure connectivity options with encryption. (Blackberry! Blackberry! ) If you're a student, you need it all. Music, social networking, internet, and other bling bling features. (Android) Moral : You don't need an android or iPhone if you're going to use your phone for basic purposes.
Reliability:
So you just checked out that new smartphone from Meizu. It fits your budget, It's a quad core beast, perfect for your requirements and looks great. So you'll buy it. *Coughs a little* Really? Ever trusted a chinese phone maker before? One fall, end of the story, and in most cases, the phone too. (Don't think that I'm stereotyping, just user feedback) You need a decent build quality, and service centers located near you in case anything goes wrong. People with a wild side who constantly go trekking or need adventure as a daily nutritional supplement should look at devices with  IP67 certified phones. One word of caution : Don't read to much into tech sites reviews, it's a common practice for the so called tech experts to be drunk while reviewing the gadgets. Rather, ask people who've owned the phone for a definite amount of time.
Ergonomics:
Small factors like the position of the lock button and shape of the device affect the user experience a great deal. It's a common observation that people with small hands (usually ladies) have trouble operating a phone with display greater than 4.3 in. size. Also, if you're a big man with sausage hands, typing on a small touchscreen can be nothing short of hell. What I basically want to say is, the phone should be made to suit you, not the other way round.
Miscellaneous :
This is an open category. If any one factor is so important for you that it can become a deal breaker, make that factor your primary area of focus. You need to customize your phone every other week? Go for android. Need the best entertainment features? iOS. Beautiful interface with great functionality? Windows phone. Reliability and good battery life? Symbian. (Exception: Droid Razr Maxx, android device) . Enterprise features? Blackberry. A Camera that you can carry anywhere? Nokia pureview 808. Avid texter? A phone with slider keypad. There's something for everyone.

P.S. I haven't given a list of the best smartphones here. It's subjective and varies from person to person. If you need the list, you can contact me here.

The Wanderer

He was a lonely traveller, always hunting something.Never resting, always in the pursuit of his dreams, though he never ever fully understood them. The mercurial wanderer, he was called; both by the commoners and wise men. He confounded them all. Never could he rest in a place, though many of unquestionable strength tried to bind him in shackles. He’d somehow break free of every rope, changing his form, soaring into the unfathomable, ethereal sky, never to be bound by the same chains. He was the true ascetic; the most possesive demon, the donor of ecstasy, the hoarder of miseries. He could be all at the same moment, but never none. He always had some shape that defined him, though he was indescribable as a whole.
That day was different though. Something had changed. The very existance of his self seemed different to him. He was actually still, contemplating all he’d ever experienced. The sublimity, passion, turbulence, solitude, unrest he’s gone through formed a montage before his very eyes. It was like dreaming with open eyes; aware of the surroundings yet experiencing its fragility.
Slowly, the light of comprrehension tricled in, illuminating the deepest crevices of his conscious. In those moments he understood the glaciers. He understood the plants that sustained in water alone. He understood the scant rains that left the thirst of the deserts unsatisfied. He understood the gazelle running away from the tiger. He understood the gazelle running towards the tiger, heedless of the danger. He understood the rainbow, he understood the clouds. He understood the depths of the oceans, he had the measure of the summits of the monstrous mountains. He understood the eagerness of a cat to return to her litter, and the beauty of a peacock dancing in the anticipation of rains.
He’d begun to appreciate the significance of the chains he’d so often bound with. Not that he welcomed the knowledge. It made the world a bleaker place for him. With an exasperated sigh, he got up and started stretching his legs. He might have understood the world, but he’d embraced his destiny. He was the lonely traveller, never resting, never stopping.

Terrible Vaudeville

I know it’s a weird title. Totally nonsensical, right? Well, just like always, I’m here to extract sense from it.  Let’s play a little game. Look at the initials of the words in the title, then open the dusty dictionary lying on the shelf (Don’t lie to me, it’s been there since god knows when) and look for “vaudeville”. For all the lazy bums who don’t wanna do the simple exercise, vaudeville  is “ A type of entertainment featuring comical and musical acts”. I guess the meaning’s clear now. I’m talking about your favourite pastime, the television (hallelujah, the bulb glows!!)

T.V. for the want of a better term, is said to be a medium of communication. It is medium, yes. It is medium as in “ordinary, mediocre”. Nothing special. And it just passes on that mediocrity to you. Don’t believe me?? Hang on a sec. Remember the last time you had a good game of football with your buddies, or visited that favourite garden of yours? Bought a book to read and read it completely? Looked at that coin collection which you painstakingly built? Tried to write poetry, which you liked to do earlier?? Naaaw. Nope, because you’re now glued to the Idiot box. I believe, T.V. is too much chewing gum for the eyes.  Gooey, sticky, indigestible and turning sour after a while.

Let’s talk about your idols from T.V. Do you honestly believe the shit they show in the daily soaps? The guy you swoon over might be a drug addict in real life. The good girl who routinely makes you cry because of her noble character might be a bitch who routinely beats up her underage maid. The “reality show” which you  dream of entering every single night might not be so real after all. Let’s have a look at the daily soaps. One breakup (no, make that two, three, four,…..n). two years have passed. Now our gal gets married (even that god awful farce of a ceremony lasts for two months). Then the husband dies after a few days, or an old flame returns to torture her (mind you, she HAS to suffer). Then a few more troubles, shedding of tears that could solve India’s water crisis and a few twists later, the series “ends”, only to be restarted with a leap of one century in the character’s lives. Be honest, how many soaps have you seen with this story line? Many, did you say? All? And little do you realize that you’ve lost precious time and gained a few kgs in the process.

Let’s not forget our beloved news channels too. We have certain channels which deliver content that’s funnier than two and a half men (atleast when Charlie sheen was still there). Who in the bluest of the blue hells wants to know which flower did Ravana gift seeta? Or the gateway to hell? We hardly need such popcorn fart thingy news!

Please get this, people. Don’t screw your time. It is stupidvision, where most people look like they have to pretend to be stupid just because their audience is. It’s like talking to a vacuum cleaner; stuff that hardly touches human brain. TV turns made into vegetable (no pun or offence intended). Throw that box outta your room and life. Don’t live some bimbo’s life, you’ve got your own to take care of.

Still... unanswered

*Author's note*
 Sorry Guys, didn't update this blog for a long time. I was busy with thewackyheads.com. Now that it's stable, I'm back to this blog. To make up for the lost time, I'm publishing the last few posts which I'd previously published on TWH. A new post is preprogrammed to go public after every two days, so I guess you'll have your hands full for the next fortnight. Enjoy!

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I don’t really know what love is. The more I try to bind it in words, the more indescribable it gets…

Does love mean hoping and waiting patiently for years and years, just to meet a person someone once?

Is it walking side by side on the streets, noticing how uncomfortable that spark of electricity between the two of you has grown to be?

Or is it just pretending to look in some other direction, just to watch and admire all the graceful moves the person makes?

Is it the blush that makes your ears turn red when your hands touch accidentally, or the hurriedly uttered apology made just to fill out the awkward silence?

Is it the warmth that swells inside your heart when you see the one looking and smiling at you?

Is love hiding your dumb grin and the moisture in your eyes, so that the person does not come to know what you feel??

Is love the distress that makes your life hell, when you realize that the one with you has to go and can’t stay with you forever, or is it the silent cry that urges you to hold the other one tightly and never let them go?

Is it the hopelessness that engulfs you when you watch the one disappear slowly, saying goodbye?

Or is it the denial you make when your heart silently answers the above questions affirmatively?

I don’t really know. Maybe i’ll understand someday.

Being Human

*Author's note*
 Sorry Guys, didn't update this blog for a long time. I was busy with thewackyheads.com. Now that it's stable, I'm back to this blog. To make up for the lost time, I'm publishing the last few posts which I'd previously published on TWH. A new post is preprogrammed to go public after every two days, so I guess you'll have your hands full for the next fortnight. Enjoy!

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I was out shopping for clothing (totally pointless, but i’ve been told that being at a new college requires a change of wardrobe). Totally boring, but performing this unpleasant ritual once a year helps avoiding it for another one.  After spending three “pain in the you-know-what” hours, I was finally done with shopping and got to my favourite part of the evening, i.e. food 

As many of you know by now, little Ninad is a creepy stalker. Trying to live up to my reputation, I grabbed a corner seat and began to watch the people inside the restaurant. Interesting things are bound to happen at an overstuffed and understaffed hotel, and soon enough, soomething happened.

A waiter caused quite a commotion when he dumped a couple of plates full of food on the shining, clean-shaven head of a burly customer (If you ask me, that fatso got up without looking around, but the customer is  always right until he pays the money,so…)

Very soon, after all the mess, the guy started abusing the waiter and using all sorts of colourful expressions which you don’t normally hear at places other than truck docks. After all the doomsday threats, the guy accepted compensation from the waiter and left the restaurant smirking, his T shirt proudly proclaiming “Being human”.

I looked at the waiter. He was barely older than me and looked very close to tears due to the financial loss and humiliation. I was shocked at the behaviour of that man, but had seen many money lickers who asked for financial settlement for anything that went against them.

You see, it all boils down to money.  We don’t, or rather, don’t chose to see a worthy student who can’t buy his books or pay his fees citing our own expenses. The same day, we visit Adlabs or Cinemax, watch a trailer trash movie and eat pizza that looks like a puked-on pancake and throw a thousand bucks away.

Leave the charity aside, but look at what we teach the children: demand compensation from friends for lost or broken toys, or worse, break something in return. No wonder they don’t learn simple values like sharing. And then we cry, “Awww look where this generation is headed”.

I’ll cite another example here. I’d been to a blood donation camp recently. It felt good to help in my own small way, like many other donors there. Imagine our outrage ands hurt when when we came to know that the organiser of the drive was caught red handed (no pun intended) for selling the blood to a blood bank. He was the guy who had made a pretty speech the last day, telling everyone how benevolent our gesture was. Today charity is for showing off. People think that wearing a being human T shirt is more important than being one. Disgusting.

As I was contemplating all this, a voice intrrrupted, “I’m sorry sir, but it’s time for us to close. Can I get you anything?” I just asked for our errant guy to collect my bill. But before he could come, I paid the required amount,and emptied my pocket (or what was left of it) and decided to walk home. After all, walking is good for health, isn’t it???