Bangalore Bytes - II

My Thai Airways plane glides effortlessly through this nascent pre-sunrise Bangkok sky on its way to Suvarnabhumi Airport. From my window seat, the entire city horizon looks like the city has been chiseled and mapped to scale with absolute perfection. It is dotted with dozens of Parallel expressways twinkling with their still brightly lit street lights, each trying to proclaim its dominance over the other. One can see numerous zigzag flyovers that will try their best to confuse every new tourist out of his wits throughout the day to come. Way above the Bangkok horizon and smog, right beside my plane I can see a very pretty ‘good morning’ cloud with its own golden lining that it seems to borrow from the emerging sun. And finally I have ‘Morning Celebration’ by Karunesh playing in the backdrop to make it a picture perfect setting for diving into flash-back…

Bangalore brought along with it many new people - most of them fellow i2ers. In my last blog I wrote about some people who made my transition to Bangalore smooth. They were people I knew... folks from school, college, B-School. But there are many more whom I met for the first time. - most of them from SPJIMR, Bombay.

Like ‘Punch Liner -Amit Vijay’ alias AV who has this uncanny ability of coming up with the most unthinkable and utterly hilarious punch lines in the most unexpected circumstances. Then there is ‘The Monk without a Ferrari – Anand’ who keeps planning about how to get rich enough to buy his first Ferrari ASAP. Both AV and Monk have one thing in common - a fantastic sense of humor. Then comes ‘The Motorola Man – Ashwin’ alias Crao who brandishes his latest Motorola and if you happen to say ‘Motorola isn’t good’ and/or ‘Nokia is the best’, be sure you are dead the next moment :). ‘Happy Man - Avinash’ is someone who never stops being happy and smiles all the way.

Then there are my own folks from B-School, my classmates Ajay, Shilpa, Prit Raj and Nitin. Prit Raj’s bachelor’s party was our first late night outing in Bangalore and it remains one of the best times I have had in the Garden city - thanks to the non-stop jokes cracked by AV, Nitin and others, we almost died in a riot of laughter that night! Truly awesome fun!

The sudden clutter of the cockpit radio jolts me out of my flash-back. “Cabin Crew – Prepare to land” crackles the pilot’s voice over the in-flight announcement system and within the next few moments the plane made a perfect landing at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport.

The journey has been very comfortable so far and I hope it stays so for the entire duration of my first assignment with the Tatas in Thailand. Will keep you folks posted… Ciao then!