My marriage chronicles - 3 Months

That day, was as normal as any other day, or so I thought. Of-course I have heard about mood swings, and have experienced them myself, and have tolerated others'. But wives, are a different human species all-together. And I have learnt that after 3 months into my first marriage. Although, I had been warned about them before, the first hand experience always teaches you a lesson for life.

We were just having a casual talk. And slowly, the track was shifting towards scathing personal comments. Which, most of the time, I didn't mind. This wasn't that bad, but I took offence, and thought it would be funny to reply back and make an equally scathing PERSONAL comment.

We were in the lift, going back home after a little shopping.

She: You should exercise more.
Me: I already do that. 5 days a week, and that's sufficient I think.
She: You are becoming an "Aloo (Potato)".

That was it. That was a poke at the wrong place and time. I have good reflexes, and so without even thinking I blurted out.

Me: You have become a ladies finger.
That's a nice comment with an atom bomb in disguise I thought.
She: Haha, I know. I have been losing weight all these days, and have become slim now.
Me: (With a grin and a triumpant smile) Ummm.. Have you seen them in a shop? They are always broken from everywhere. 

She: Grrrrr.... Wait...
She snatched the keys from my hand, opened the door and shut it on my face. And said:

"Go away. I am not allowing you into the house anymore."

Me: It's our house, don't you remember?
Trying all I could to pacify her.

She: I gave the rent for this month. So, I have all the rights to throw you out.

I thought, she would calm down in a few minutes, so I went out and walked a bit. I was not really sure if she was serious or just joking with me. I was in a state of confusion. So, I updated my facebook status.

"Wife threw me out of the house. Wandering on the streets."

I never thought, this post on facebook would be my most popular post of 2014 within just a few minutes.

After a few rounds of the city, I came back and knocked at my own door, with a plan to somehow find a roof over my head. The temperature outside was 30 degrees, and I had no idea what was the inside temperature. But, at-least I wouldn't get a tan inside.

Knocked 10 times. No response. The only response, I got from her, was on Facebook. And that was:
"You deserve it". 

And that comment of hers, beat the popularity of my post hands down.

Anyway, I told her, "I am thirsty".

The door finally opened, and I saw her hand pushing a water bottle through the small gap. I tried to catch her hand, but she dropped the bottle, and shut the door.

I kept knocking, and knocking. The neighbors saw me walking back and forth in-front of my own house. They seemed confused. Thank God, I don't yet have them on my friends list on Facebook.

After a few more minutes, she opened the door. I was alert, looking for a chance to run inside.

She: If you want to come in, make me feel special, praise me, and only then you get to enter the house.

Arrrghhhh!!! Not again.....

Me: You are my butter scotch, gulaab jamoon....
(All the sweet dishes that I could remember, although, the only thing I was thinking about was "Karela - Bitter Gourd")

And then, Voila..... I was given a safe passage.

It's that time of the year...

1. When I keep falling sick.
2. When the weather requests me to sleep longer.
3. When my expenses are way ahead of my income.
4. When the stupid box keeps telecasting the same old movies over and over again.
5. When I don't feel like working anymore.
6. When I don't feel like cleaning up my dusty room.
7. When the weekends fly past before I have my quota of deep sleep.
8. When my brain fails to reason.
9. When the first tab that I open on my browser is "Google".
10. When the first thing I search in the newspaper is my horoscope.
11. When I rejoice and celebrate on getting a call from an unknown number.
12. When I doze off while watching movies at the theater.

And I desperately hope that these days go away soon. Waiting for the bright and sunny days ahead.

Coding Exercise: Am I engaged?

isSearchComplete = false;
while (!isSearchComplete) {
        if (isBeautiful(girlAtHand)) {
                isSearchComplete = true;
                exchangeRings();
                break;
        } else {
                girlAtHand = getNextGirl();
        }
}
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.
more_beautiful_girl_1
more_beautiful_girl_2
and intelligent too!!!
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.
exchangeRings();
isSearchComplete = false;

Hope, I don't get killed after this.... :D :D :D :D 

A girl and a boy talk

She: Hey, why didn't you go to the gym today?
He: Ah!! I tried very hard to wake up in the morning, but my eyes refused to co-operate.

She: This is not done. You know, I wish that my boy friend has a good body and looks muscular.
He: I try my best..and .. ..

She: Nothing doing. Do you feel that going to the gym is a burden for you everyday?
He: Sometimes. You know, working out alternate days is recommended by many people.
She: Look, I need my boy-friend to be fit and have a few muscles which he could use to scare away at-least 5 people.

He: Umm... Well, I also want my girl friend to be fitter, slimmer and healthier.

She: Ain't I? I am already so lean and thin.

He: Haha, you need to cut off a few pounds here and there.

She: My work timings are so hectic. Ok. If you want, I can come with you to the gym in the mornings. Earlier the better.
He: Are you sure?
She: Of course. You want your girl to lose some weight, right?
He: Yeah, but..

She: Let's go in the mornings. What time does the gym open?
He: 5 am

After a long pause...

She: We will discuss about this some other time. Got to sleep now. Good night. :)

Disclaimer: All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Conversations and her

She is either very intelligent, or just loves to show off her arguing powers. One day, out of nowhere, she wanted to test me. Usually, I lose the argument, irrespective of the topic of the discussion. Here we go.

A chat transcript.

She: Did you see a soul-mate (past, present and future) when you first looked into my eyes?

I instantly knew that I cannot afford to be outright truthful here. Didn't reply for a long time, pondering over my course of action, and also anticipating the possible repercussions.

She: (Impatient) You didn't answer my question.
He: (Oh no.. Not again!!) Ummm, No.
She: No? You did not see a soul-mate in me? You are lying.
Me: (Trying to be funny, to divert her) Living life with you is enough. I don't want to linger around with you after we become ghosts.

She: You are saying that we were not together in our previous births?
Me: I don't remember. (Trying to remember harder as ever)
She: And you don't want to be with me in your next birth?
Me: Global warming, everything will be over soon. So, I am not thinking about my next birth. :)

She: Oh...
She: Okay ("Ok" would have been fine, but "Okay" is a sign of the approaching storm)
She: (She was reading a book just before we started this conversation) Then, I guess, I will read my book.
Me: Hahahahaha
She: Huh!!!

And after that, we had to continue this discussion over the phone and finally reach a conclusion, well, not exactly, but to a point where she can go back to reading her book normally, and me, well, telling myself, "A job well done" and gave myself a pat on my back. :D I won this time. Yay!!!

The New Year Post

Ah!! this time I am late. Damn!! There were quite a few reasons. But, finally, this had to come.

Image source: Wikimedia commons

HAPPY NEW YEAR to you. :)

Not much happened when the year changed for me. I was at home, sitting idle, watching the TV. Everyone else at home was asleep. I was the only one at home, waiting for the new year. The date changed with no big bang. After that, I switched of the rooms lights, and got busy with the movie. At about half-past midnight, my phone rang.

"An unknown number". Must be someone from college, I thought. Without concentrating much on the caller, my eyes still focused on the TV, I answered the call while I lowered down the volume.

A girl answered.

She: "Hi, Happy New Year".... Come down, I am waiting for you.

She sounded very very familiar, and I almost instantaneously recognized her. She was Radhika, a friend from school. We weren't really great friends, and we probably hadn't talked for more than 10 years now. I wished her back, still trying to confirm if it was her.

Me: Hey, A very very Happy New Year to you. But, why are you here at this time?
She: Come down. I am shivering outside. We are going somewhere.

This was a mistake, I thought. It can never be her. Even if it were her, she wouldn't be here waiting for me in-front of my house. I got up from the chair, walked towards the window and looked down. I could see the shadow of a car below in the dark. I could also see a girl inside the car, although it was just her silhouette.

Me: Ummm. Wait. It's a mistake. Who is this by the way?
She: Come on. Be a sport. Let's go now. I am shivering.

Still confused, I thought of going down and getting a better view of the woman waiting inside the car. And then I heard a big loud horn. Startled, I almost trembled and closed my eyes.

The TV was still playing that movie, and I was on my chair. I had dozed off.

I never knew anyone called Radhika. Huh.... Just to be sure, I looked down from the window. The roads were empty, and even the car. This time, the street lights helped me look inside the car.

I wished if she were a bit more patient and not honked so loud.

Dreams. Our minds can be so imaginative. I am sure, if she wouldn't have honked, I would have celebrated the next year in my dreams as well. A whole year of thoughts, within a span of a few hours. That would have been fun.

Flower chor!! Flower chor!!

Ah!!! I thought things would have changed. It's been a long long time that I heard such tales from my Mom. Let's ponder over the background of the story.

Every Indian house does some form of Pooja, every morning, for which one of the most important ingredient is "Flowers". The flowers have to be fresh, i.e, freshly plucked. And the most important part is, the collected lot should at-least have 2 varieties of flowers (varying by color or species). The fun starts every morning. If you could fix a big camera over my colony, one could see people getting out of their houses just before the sunrise, with small bags, determined...

Their mission: Collect flowers for Pooja.

Target: Everyone else's garden.

We also have a few flowering plants inside our compound, and Mom recently noticed that everyday the number of flowers on our plants kept diminishing. And, on other days, she failed to find a single flower for our Pooja on our plants. It was obvious that someone was stealing our flowers. Although we somehow managed to get our share of flowers from other sources, Mom took up the responsibility to catch the erring neighbor and confront them, or may be teach them a lesson.

She needed a partner. And who else would be a better accomplish other than Auntie who was a close friend of Mom. She was on the ground floor, and Mom on the second floor. The plan was chalked out. Everyday, Auntie would try to wake up early in the morning, hoping that she would wake up before the THIEF reached our compound, watch the plants for a few minutes and alert Mom if she saw anything suspicious.

Everyday, Auntie and Mom used to wake up early in the morning, and kept an eye on our plants. Mom, from the terrace, and Auntie through the windows. For the first few days, the thief was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps, he made his errands too early in the morning. After a few watchful days, the thief was finally caught. They were actually two (From the same house, Husband and Wife). To be sure enough before deciding on their punishments, Mom and Auntie wanted to be check that the culprits came and assaulted our plants daily. So, they continued for a few more days, and it was established that the THIEVES actually came everyday and robbed us of our flowers.

The plan: The next time when Mom would see them getting their hands dirty, they would be washed off by a bucket of cold water from the terrace.

But, the idea was finally dropped, considering...

• The culprits were from our own colony, and we knew them.
• It was winter time and Mom felt that the punishment would be a bit harsh.
• We also used to collect our flower lot for the Pooja from our neighbors few years back when we were not the proud owners of a few flowering plants.

What? What the heck!!!

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

People can be so stupid at times. Sometimes, we say or do stupid things, which would make even a donkey laugh out loud. However, there are certain situations where you tend to ignore them. For example, you would just ignore a stupid question from someone when you know that the person is perhaps sad about something, and not in the right state of mind.

But it's really irritating sometimes, when people ask stupid questions, whose answer they already know. The best example for this is when your phone rings, and the other person confirms first that it's actually you who answered. Of course, there are exceptions, but then, at times it's just so obvious that nobody else other than you could possibly answer the phone.

There was a guy, whose name I prefer not to mention. I had this habit of reading newspapers few years back. Whenever he walked into my room, and saw me reading the newspaper, we would go like this:

He: Hey, What are you doing?

Me: Reading newspaper (Obviously)

He: I can see that. Reading what in the newspaper.

Me: So and so article. (Guiding his vision towards that portion of the newspaper)

He: Hmm. What are you reading in that article?

Me: Well, you know, so and so happened. I was just reading that. (Should I read out loud)

What the heck!!! I don't have the habit anymore.

And it happened almost every time he saw me reading either the newspaper, a book or even listening to the radio. I mean, isn't this stupid? I could understand that he wanted to break the ice someway or the other, but didn't he have any another ice-breakers?

Perhaps this: "Oh, you are reading the newspaper! Did you see this article today?"

I would at-least not wonder if he was "BLIND".

There are other stupid questions as well. And the more frequently used one is:


Why do you like Ice cream so much? (Or anything else which I like/love)
It's not that I haven't tried explaining them. For example, a typical response to such a question would probably be something like: "Well, it's cold, it's sweet, and it comes in a variety of flavors".

But then, how do I respond to questions like: 
1. Why do you like cricket?
2. Why do you not like tennis?
3. Why do you have a Citibank credit card?
4. Why are you wearing a black shirt on such a warm day?
5. Wassup?

Ah!!! The last one is one of those, which I answer with a "NOTHING - Nothing at ALL".

New ways of cheating

Recently, there has been a truck loads of new ways of cheating people. I have, once fallen into their trap but I realized very quickly. You should have heard about SpeakAsia scam which was recently in news. Hahaha, that's not the one I fell for. There has been a whole lot of similar scams in the past. People, smart people, sometimes fall into their trap and end up losing their hard earned money.

One of the terribly pathetic and ugly trap is a program which is being aired on NDTV Imagine channel. The program is "Gold Safe". This program, shows some images of well-known personalities and ask people to call in and recognize them. When I was in college, some 5 years back, I was lured into calling in. I must have spent at least 100 bucks that day. And, quite obviously, I didn't win a dime. Someone who has the ability of adding up 2 2-digit numbers without a calculator would never fall into their trap. But, that day, I just thought of giving it a try. I mean, who would not be able to recognize "Priety Zinta"!!!!! People were continuously calling in and blurting out seemingly absurd answers. The images have been always too obvious for someone to give a wrong answer.

The next one is in the form of an E-mail. There's a website which promises you really great discounts on some of their products. The website is "Bag it today". It seems to be affiliated to "The Indian Today Group". Atleast, the website shows it's logo.

Almost everyday, I receive a mail from this website. Here is a sample e-mail that I received today.

Welcome Kumar,

Congratulations! You have just received 5 products including Reebok Tracksuit,
Numero Uno Watch, Satyapaul Leather Wallet, Lotto Duffle Bag and
Converse T-shirt worth Rs 10442 at Re 5.

The catch here seemed to be this: You could get all these things at a final price of Rs.2999/- only. Seems to be a really cool deal. But, be warned, this is too good to be true. Please don't fall for it. People have, and have repented. If at all, you want to see if it's a real deal, opt for "Cash on Delivery".

I am certainly not saying that all these websites/services that promise you discounts are fake and scams. There are really great services, such as SnapDeal.com where you would get real discounts and deals. But please don't fall into obvious looking traps.

One more scam worth mentioning is the "Free T-shirt scam" that made rounds on Facebook recently. I mean, it was quite obvious to me that it was a scam, but many people still went ahead and gave them their phone numbers, email addresses and postal addresses. None of them have received their free t-shirts yet.

The other category of scams, which I think nobody will ever fall for are those e-mails that you receive from complete strangers who have found a fortune somehow(people make up real good stories, I read it for fun), and want to transfer it to your country to avoid getting caught, and promise you a large stock of bills for your assistance. Don't ever fall for it.

I don't expect the Government to do anything about these guys. They are probably busy handling their own scams. The best part is, unlike the government ones, you could choose not to be looted by these private scamsters and swindlers.

Teaching kids is tough

I bet you would agree. Well, sometimes, they can be smarter than you at alphabets, arithmetic or whatever you are trying to teach them.

She was a 3 year old girl just beginning to learn alphabets. Kids can get difficult at times, and might also be uninterested, particularly when their favorite cartoon characters are starting out on yet another adventure on TV. Her mother found it too difficult to draw her attention away from the television and make her concentrate on her books. Her uncle offered to help. Her mother was more than happy to hand over the responsibility and go back to the kitchen.

Mr. Uncle seemed confident and determined at the job at hand. "She is just a 3 year old, and I have my ways of teaching", he must have thought. Today's target was to teach her at-least 2 alphabets, A and B.

She was more fond of her uncle. He used to bring her chocolates, take her out on his bike and was never angry at her. She had her reasons. Perhaps, she was bored of the cartoons and thought this was going to be interesting.

Mr. Uncle pulled out a blank sheet of paper. She sat down beside her, with a pencil in her hand, with all the focus and concentration required of her. Mr. Uncle started with 5 DOTS on the paper. She seemed confused. Mr. Uncle explained her, "Look here, the first DOT is your house, the second one is my house, the third DOT is your school, the fourth one is Papa's office and the fifth one is your friend's house. Now, to learn how to write an "A", you start from your house, go to my house, then go to your school, and then Papa's office and finally to your friend's house." He didn't connect the dots, rather he explained it to her(sequence) 2-3 times.

After Mr. Uncle was satisfied that his point was put across, he asked her, "Understood?". With a little smile on her face, she nodded her head. And then Mr. Uncle said, "Now write A with the help of dots".

Without a live demonstration, she looked confused and perplexed. Mr. Uncle tried to help her out. He said, "Ok no problem, I will help you out. How would you go from your house to mine?"

She was now smiling again. That's the hint she was looking for. With the pencil in her hand, she stoop up, and put her foot on the sheet of paper. :D

Filmy Dialogues

We all love Bollywood. I still remember those Saturday and Sunday movies on the National Television for which the whole household would eagerly wait. Everything stopped. Mom would stop cooking, my sister and me would close our books and everyone else would be rushing home to be in front of the TV. No matter what movie would be playing, those 3 hours seemed like a small theatre minus the pop-corn and the Coco Colas.

And those movies also influenced us in everyday life. Especially the dialogues. Some of them are still being played around. And I still remember and sometimes use them as well.

For example, Mr. Dharmedar's all time fav:

"Kutte, Kamine, Me tera khoon pi jaunga".

Well, that was considered as a harsh one those days. We children, for example, were never allowed to call a person or a human as a dog.

Another classy dialogue which was repeated over and over again in almost each and every movie:

Doctor: "I am sorry, Hum kuch nahi kar sakte hain" / "24 ghante tak hosh nahi aaya to hum kuch nahi kar sakte hain"

These days, nobody in the movies consult Indian doctors anymore. Perhaps, they are frustrated of hearing the same dialogs again and again.

And the policemen also had one:

"Kanoon ke haath bahut lambe hote hain".

Mr Suresh Kalmadi knows exactly the length, and thus has been able to keep himself out of reach.

Farmer: "Me iss jameen ko apne khoon se seenchta hoon".

There are no more fields or farms. Instead, there are 5 star hotels and IT companies.

Judge: "Saare saboot aur bayanat ko najar me rakhte hue, ye court is nateeze pe pahunchti hai ki muljim ko dafa 301 ke tehet faasi ki saja sunai jaye"

Nobody takes there cases to the court fearing execution. 

Gabbar Singh had a few super duper hit dialogues:

"Kitne aadmi the"

"Holi kab hai, kab hai holi"

Kalia and Samba have retired now and Gabbar's question go unheard and unanswered.

Satrughan Sinha's all time favorite: "KHAAAAMOSHHHHHHHHHHHH". 

I guess he was paid per character he spoke.

Rich villain Dad to Son: "Me tujhe is jayedaad se bedakhal karta hun"

Hero to villain: "Agar maa ka doodh piya hai to saamne aaa"

Weren't they funny? I miss them. :(

Friday night friend

Who doesn't want a few extra bucks for a few clicks! Even I, at some point of time was lured by those paid survey sites that make grand promises of paying you dollars in return of a few clicks. My initial clicks fetched me quite a few dollars, but very soon I realized that this is just a scam. They never actually pay you.  Well, that's not really what I have in mind right now.

I was just killing my time browsing, and watching TV happily. I noticed my gmail window blink with a new chat message. It was 3:00 am in the morning, and I was quite surprised to see someone ping me at this hour. It was from an old friend. It must have been almost about half a year when I had last talked, chatted or seen him. Here's our conversation.

He: Hi
Me: Hey, long time, wassup?
He: Are you free?

Me: Yup, sort of, just enjoying the Friday night.
He: Can you do me a favor?

(Ah, there he goes, I started thinking about what would he ask for. In a split second I knew exactly what he would be asking for)

Me: Hold on, Are you going to ask me to complete one of those damn MBA surveys?
He: Hehehe, LOL, How did you know?
Me: Dude, you MBA guys only contact non-MBA people only when you need these surveys done.
He: Hehehe, please, yaar, I have to submit this tomorrow, and you are the first one who would be helping me out. It's an interesting one and you will actually like it. I have personally prepared it, keeping today's generation in mind. It's about alcohol consumption, and....
Me: Ok Stop, I don't want to know the details. I will do it.
(@#$!$%&@ a good 10 minutes of my already ending Friday up for those MBAs)


I got the questionnaire within a second of typing out that line. He must have already prepared the mail even before he started chatting with me, all prepared to hit the "Send button". Well, the questionnaire was all but interesting. I really don't understand what are they going to make out of it. Anyway, I just skimmed across the questions, and marked my random answers, and sent it back.

He: Thanks dude, I will mention your name in my assignment. Can you do me one more favor?
(Well, I couldn't think of anything else this time. I brain had gone completely dead)
Me: WHAT? I just did it.
He: Can you send out this questionnaire to your friends and ask them to fill it up?

:@ :@ :@ I clicked on the "SIGN OUT" button right after that.

PS: "He" was actually a "She". :D I have just decided that I wouldn't be doing any more such surveys, and I would refuse any such requests right-away. So, the MBAs, beware. I will not do anymore surveys for free. You have to pay up now.

Kitchen Champion - What the heck!!!!

It's really a pathetic these days on TV. I had been out of this connection for nearly 2 years. Now, I got a cable connection working with my laptop. And I have a remote. Within a few days, the remote's keys are dangling out. But they still work.

The DIDs, CDDs, Boogie Woogies, Emotional Atyachaars, Love Net, MTV Roadies, aaah, the list goes on and on and on. Do I like these? Well, honestly, I want to slap those fellows. I mean, it's been an overdoes of the so-called "Reality Shows".  And these shows don't seem to end. They go on forever.

Roadies 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, I mean, come on, this is definitely not software. And now, there's a new show on the TV. Kitchen Champion.

I guess, the actors weren't getting paid enough. They were interested in such a novel reality show. And the most amazing thing is, People do like to watch such things. Weird. Well, I also spend some time on these channels when something's cooking. But, I guess, these shows are just like the "Facebooks" and "Orkuts" for the not-so tech-savy people. Once a particular episode ends, I can see many people get on the phone and discuss about how Tulsi is going to escape from the traps of her Sasural wale, or if Parvati would leave her husband. It sometimes is very very funny.

I guess, the hardest job in all these shows is the work of the cameraman. At crucial junctures, they have to move those heavy cameras back and forth, uinfinite number of times. "Sweeeeiiissshh" "Sweeaaasshhh" and with sound effects as well. Out of the 30 minutes or so, 15 minutes goes into ads, 5 minutes in these "Swwweeeshing and Swwwaashing" and the remaing 10 minutes is full of "tears, cunning looks, abuses". It's just masala. I sometimes love masala, but an overdoes of it upsets my stomach.

One more thing, I hate those women cry out so loud with trillion drops of tears. I was once sleeping, really hard, and suddenly I heard someone crying loud. I rushed out to see what happened, just to realize that my friend was watching "Baalika Vadhu". Crap.

And by the way, all these Reality Shows are copied from some similar shows running in US/UK/Canada/Australia. Come on guys, be creative. Don't just copy and paste like me.

Our Rules for RPL

First things first : What is RPL??

Any wild guesses? No? Ok, here it is, Roomies Premier League.

The name has not been in wide use, but I think the rules of the game remain the same, no matter where the game is being played. Let me give you a brief history of the game.

First year in hostel: Under ragging period, we were so terrified to even peep out of the windows in fear of our dreaded seniors. So,  after college, we had to put ourselves inside our rooms, locked up from outside. Checked and double checked!!

During this time, the foundations of our version of the game were laid down. Although, the game has it’s roots deeper than that, I will only talk about the rules that we officially had incorporated into the RPL.

1. Teams: As in any other game, here also we had two teams. But, the uniqueness was, the number of players in a team was never constant. Depending on the availability, or rather the willingness of our roomies. During exams, we had teams with as low as 1 player on each side, while on the other hand, during the start of our semesters, the number of players would sometimes even rise to 8 on each side.

2. Venue: Most of the time, it was inside our rooms. However, at times, when the teams got bigger than the rooms can accommodate, we moved out into the corridors.

3. Equipments: We are talking about cricket here. So we would certainly find similar equipments that are used in ODIs and Test Matches. BAT: Our definition, it just had to be hard enough to hit the ball without falling apart. Be it a real bat, a broken leg of a chair and when none of the above were available, we managed to get a wood piece from our mess which would have been burnt away to cook our food that night. BALL: A tennis ball preferably, a plastic ball was also used sometimes, in some versions of the game, some teams were often seen using a football. :) No definite rules here. OTHERS: None. Oh!! for wickets, we had chairs.

4. Format: Just like ICC now-a-days has at-least 3 versions of the game, we also had 3 versions of the game. ODIs: These were single matches, which were to be played till the end, and were supposed to be the shortest version of the game. Tests: A bit longer version, these matches took anywhere between a day to 5 days, to be completed. Series: A series of never ending matches, where the same teams meet and keep a record of matches won and lost. This was the most preferred version of the game since we could brag about our stats, records, make fun of others’ performances.

5. Rules: Now the finer details of the game. These rules were the most important. They were followed by each and every player honestly, though sometimes, the match had to be called off, not because of bad light or rain, but because of differences in opinions since we didn’t have an ICC like organization who could sort out the problems.

A. How to get a batsman out?

In addition to the normal rules prevailing in international cricket, we had amended the rules to suit RPL. Here they are:

• One tip one hand out
• 3 consecutive body touches (ball hitting your body, a replacement for LBW)
• hitting the ball directly to one of the walls
• 3 consecutive misses

B. Bowling rules ?

• Under-arm compulsory
• Speed limit – 60 km/hr
• Body line bowling allowed
• Negative tactics were encouraged

C. Runs?

• One run if you connect the ball with the bat
• No sixes allowed, you are out if you hit a six
• For fours, you should ground the ball at-least once before it hits the walls
• 0 runs if you don’t hit the ball
• No running between the wickets

D. Match abandoned due to ?

• Lunch, dinner, breakfast or class time
• Power failures during night matches
• Disagreement between players (no umpires!!)
• Ball hit out of the room through the windows/balcony
• A broken bat

I might have forgotten to add other rules of the game. So I kindly request anybody and everybody who are familiar with the rules to add to this list. RPL rocked. I miss them so much.