Good Friday!

Today is Good Friday & unlike every other organisation in the city, it's a workin day at my company.

The last 2 days have seen a lot happening in Bangalore. India lost the Jamshedpur ODI on Wednesday & as if that wasn't bad enough there were portentous rumours doing the rounds of the office after lunch. It sounded as if there was trouble in town (our office is about 10km out of the city, & there's no way you can get to know or see what the buzz is about), but I couldn't really get what it was. Called up Pritish & the dude tells me that Rajkumar (a BIG local cinestar, more like THE local cinestar) died this morning & there's been violence in parts of town.

As news spread, so did the panic in the ODC, especially among the car owners (smashing windscreens is the fav pastime of Kannada hooligans). Vanitha called up her sis who works in the Diamond District office of HP & she informed that Domlur was totally shut down. Reports came in of thugs roaming around Koramangala streets vandalising shops & cars. Enough, we decided. It was 5 o'clock .... Sid & Sweta made for the inter-office shuttle, while Hemant & me decided to make tracks on his CBZ.

Reached home without incident. Cops were nowhere to be seen. Hemant's been in Bangalore since ~5 years & says that the Bangalore Police is known to vanish at the first sign of trouble. By evening it was clear that Thursday would be a day off for everybody.

Woke up late on Thursday. There was a silence of the kind usually reserved for around midnight (even THAT is broken by call centre cabs, none of which were around today). The 2 day state mourning meant all channels, other than News are blacked out .... so had to spend the day alternating between NDTV, CNN-IBN, TimesNOW, Aaj Tak, Star News & Zee News where the only other story besides Bangalore seemed to be Salman's release on bail after 3 days in prison under the Chinkara poaching case. There was more violence on the streets during the day & the final toll was 6 dead, scores injured, lots of property destroyed & Bangalore's image gone for a toss. Senseless, .... pathetic even.

Moving away from all that depressing nonsense, Praveen, Sid & Sweta went home today. Sweta gets married on the 20th & so does Prav's sister. Sid will be at one of the weddings while hoping to be at the other. Wished 'a happy married life' to Sweta last night .... first time ever I've said that to a friend! Felt strange. Anyway, the ODC is silent without the 2 live wires. Coffee won't be the same without the 2 .... it's crazy how you realize the extent you've grown used to some people's presence .... only after they're gone.