Madhan's birthday.

June 20, 2006.

Madhan turned 27 on a monday night. We thank god for fridays but how come nobody blames god for the mondays?? ;) I can almost hear you say "I know!" but that's the way it is. All I got in return for my screaming prayers was Monday night football and I've forgiven him. Not without mumbling, though :). Anyhoo, after collectively abusing "monday", we decided to keep the birthday simple. Beer, pizza and a birthday cake. However, we had a galore of baguth moments which saved the day :)

My fiasco started off the night; I gave the schaumburgians (the rendezvous was arlington heights) the most meaningless (mis)directions to Madhan's place and as soon as I realized my blunder, I saw this imaginary blob of words floating around my head which said "impending doom" :P Needless to say, I was harrassed the entire night and people dug up my direction blunders in the past with glee (grrr). However, the "Chetty brothers" helped me salvage some lost pride by providing the much needed distraction :)

"Chetty" is not a word. Its a concept. Chetty is the short form for "Chettiyar", a South Indian race which comprises of people who are dark in complexion, carry a pot belly and a shaved head, wear photochromatic glasses, always on the cell phone, buy/sell bricks or rice bags. Did someone say "stereotyping"? hehe. Anyway, we have Jay (periya chetty) and Ram (chinna chetty) who easily fit the bill and boy, they were on a roll that night :P. Periya chetty had a few beers, saw the "Red Fort" on television and screamed "Rockford". Twice :). Chinna chetty had his act together the entire night until he ripped out a rod (for hanging clothes) in Madhan's restroom much to my delight :))) Thank god for the Chetties.. :P

Afsheen crashed on the couch, we ripped through two large pizzas in a jiffy and waited forever for the third, the beers iced up in the freezer, I broke the "2" candle out of "27" into half, Gokul was super ogling at Padma Lakshmi (the model) and paying attention to nothin' else, Jumbo was silent for the most part (he got into Kellogg's, you go boy!!) and it was pretty random. But yet, the two hours spent was "baguth" with all the quips that we threw at each other in spite of a long tuesday running into us!

I guess the blog's rather random but that's the whole point of a blog, right? ;)

// Adios //

What a jerk?

I am going to do two thingd s in this blog - one , in tur baguth spirit,i am not going to use backspace/delte...so good liuck figuring out what i write

two, i am gogint to recite teh story og wowbagger from hitchikers guide to galaxy...wowbagger was "the infinetly prolonged" ione. He was an immortal. after a period of time he got so pissed off about his immortal sttatus that he decided to embark on a very noble misssion - to curse every mortal being in the iuniverse....so he made one big huge list and ticked off every being he had insulted at least once...since he was immortal, he would soon run out and had to update and re-do the same thing...his life thus became very purposeful and he could sleep in peace at night

the moral of this story(as i have learnt it) is for us to embark on something as purposeful (if not grand)...i have decided to post / comment very blog that i read henceforth with a "baguth", no matter what is written....i guess i wll be able to peacefully sleep at night as this is the true calling for ehich i was destined

now, after reading this, do you feel the same wasy as the title of thispost suggests?

Baguth : The next best thing :)

Karthik, the Indian wonder with 28,000 blog hits ;) has already provided an apt definition for Baguth but in my opinion, its more than just a word. Its a religion :) For as long as I can remember, South Indians, aka Madrasis, have been oppressed by our hindi-speaking friends who spin their webs of romance on cute, single, social and non-conservative North Indian girls (read “settu kutties”) with their “kya chal raha hain's” and “eyy kya bolti tu”s. :))))) So, what did we do? We revolted :) and the “Baguth” revolution sprang into existence :). Started as a sarcastic stab at North Indians who at the very sight of a bench/table/stool/sofa/any morbid furniture, grab a seat and start chatting away, “Baguth” provides our much needed escape from our ignorance of Hindi, the national language of India :)

Don't get us wrong, we're not haters. I merely hoped to satiate the queer morbid curiosity of some of our readers about the origin of the word :). The matter of fact is, some of us speak Hindi and they've equally embraced “Baguth” in all its pompousness and glory :). So, what now? You know the origin, you know that we live for those baguth moments that bring us together and its probably the next most unimportant thing to you after Britney Spears having her babies sitting in the car facing forward, instead of backward :) What's left to do is to lay some “baguth” contexts on the table for you and the mission will be complete :)) On that note, here are some random contexts in the true sense of the word :P

Excitement. I call Karthik and I go “dude, I just got a job downtown, its time to partaayyy!”. He goes “baguth” [ as in "cooool!" ]

Sorrow. We decide to hit the blues fest over the weekend; Ram calls one of us and goes “dude, i got stuff to do at work; can't make it”. We go “baguth” [ as in "that's a bummer!!" ]

Acknowledgement. Karthik calls Rachna, asks her to be ready in a bit so he can stop by and pick her up to party. She goes “baguth”. [ as in, “OK” ]

Anxiety. We're all dressed up in jeans, we drive downtown to some club and we hear on the way that they don't let you in if you wore Jeans. “Baguth” [ as in, gulps! ]

Nostalgia. One of us finds a video on google videos where they show some part of India (where some of us belong). We look at it, heave a sigh and go “baguth” [ as in, "i miss India" ]

Praise. Gokul cooks his bittergourd sambar, people stop by to grab a bite and they get bowled over by the taste. A typical response would be “baguthhh!” [ as in, "damn, this is good!"]

I hope I was able to shed some light on the history of Baguth. Stay tuned for my upcoming posts where I'll pen down some of our baguth moments which I'm sure will make very enjoyable reads :)

Oh!Oh!Oh!

With every opening, a little introduction is in order. Here is a baguth moment involving two of our most active bloggers.

Karthi(c)k, our brilliant moderator, is a blogging celebrity in his own right who combines comic prose with poetic renderings. Unfortunately, he has been too modest and doesnt advertise himself.

My roomate and co-blogger, ET, is a real world celebrity. He is very well known in the Tamil community in Chicago and is known for his music shows. He is also credited for making Tamils party harder than Punjabis in Chicagoland. In fact, an elderly gentleman from Mylapore endorsed his efforts by stating the same.

So, here we are with two celebs. Karthi(c)k came around the other day to my house. ET was there when Karthi(c)k reeled out statistics about the hits on his site. K, matter-of-factly, and in his own non-comittal style, stated that he had 1600 hits since mid-Jan. ET heard this number. His celeb pride was mildly dented. He made the dent a crater. For the next twenty minutes, the number, was manipulated with dexterity and elan as only ET can.

After a few days, we all met up at Miss W's place for dinner.Prashanth, yet another blogger in the group dropped in at the very moment when the mutating number in ET's brain had stabilised. Inevitably, the topic of blogging was brought up and ET jumped with glee at this oppurtune moment. Wild eyed, he blurted out that Karthi(c)k had 28000 hits over the past one month! So, it took 2 days, a little beer, and hurt celeb pride to make 28000 out of 1600.

The usually nonchalant Karthi(c)k, pissed off and over-joyed by the looks of admirations thrown at him by starry eyed wannabe blog-stars, had nothing more to say than "baguth". And that my friends is the first of the documented baguth moments.

Welcome to our baguth moments...

In life, its hard enough to find one friend who you're comfortable with. It takes a lot of luck, and being at the right place at the right time, to form a gang of such friends. And if you lived in a foreign country, away from home and family, away from all your childhood friends and familiar surroundings, what are the chances of finding such a gang of loyal, shallow, like-minded friends? I'm not a gambler, but the odds sure don't look good.

But that's exactly what we all found. A family away from home. We were all brought together, by happenstance and circumstances, to Chicago and then to its suburbs. And we all found our niche in this group. We welcomed new people with open arms, and quickly forgot those who moved out (mostly lured by Microsoft!). And although we're usually in a constant state of flux, this gang leaves a mark on everyone who happens to cross it. And through it all, we share a strong bond and mutual distrust :-)

So why this blog after all these years (about 5 by our last estimate)? The reasoning went along these lines "Everyone has a blog. So why not us?" But we did feel that we needed to take away a little more than some fading memories and a few Gigabytes of photos from these few enjoyable prime years of our lives. It would provide a medium to sync up, share photos, gossip, pull each others' legs, share idiosyncracies, and just be complete idiots.

This blog might not last for too long, or get updated regularly. It might die the sad, silent death of a countless other blogs out there. But as long as it lasts, we intend to have fun with it. And with that in mind, I would like to declare this blog up and open for posts by our gang members.