City admits it doesn't give a TRA about blogger's absence

BOMBAY, May 17th 2006. After much dilly-dallying, the city of Bombay today admitted that it doesn't give a Tiny Rat's Ass (TRA) about the absence of the wannabe blogger Rahul Gupta. In a formal statement at the Mayor's residence at Prabhadevi, a town spokesman said, "Frankly, we didn't even know that he was here. So the question of us missing him doesn't even arise" , and then quickly added, "but we wish him the best in his future endeavours."

Rahul Gupta, who goes by the juvenile nickname of Asterix, had moved to the city of Bombay in order to take a shot at blog-fame and to jumpstart his PhD, in that order of priority. Dozens of naive and mediocre posts later, he was still no way near his goal. So he resorted to blog-whoring. Blog-whoring is a concept in which a newbie blogger starts leaving inane comments on other, more popular blogs, with a trackback URL to his own blog. The hope is that any other commentator will mistakenly, or out of curiousity, click on the URL and visit his blog.

Such a childish endeavour was only partly successful, as Asterix managed to gather only a handful of loyal readers, most of which were amassed using lures of chocolates. By using self-commentary, Asterix managed to reach an all time high of 20 comments on a single post.

In interviews done all over the city, we talked to a lot of people and asked for their opinions. The results, not surprising in the least, are as follows:

"Asterix who?" : 68%
"I am glad the loser is gone" : 20%
"Bombay's loss is Delhi's gain. I will miss Asterix": 1%
"Well his blog was oookayish, or atleast the chocolates were nice": 6%
"I live/work on the same floor as Asterix. I HAD to read and comment on his blog under gunpoint" : 5%

As expected, Bombay police has launched a manhunt to nab the loony 1% readers who think his blog is good.

We managed to contact Asterix and asked for his comments on this formal press release.
"Well....What can I say, I am aghast! Day after day, I used to eat the hostel food and turn it into my blog posts. And after that this is the treatment I get!", he said. Although it may be debatable which one of hostel food and Asterix's blog post resembles smelly organic matter, but one thing is for sure: If all he did was to convert one to the other, then it wasn't too much of an effort.

He goes on to say, "How can they even say that they don't give a TRA? Not even a BRA (Big Rat's Ass). After all I have done and written about, I deserve atleast a BRA."

As usual, the blogger's comment became too much PG-13 to be recorded and the interview had to be abruptly terminated.

An ode to a wonderful abode

Leaving Bombay tomorrow for Delhi. Its been a wonderful two semesters here at IIT Bombay and it was much better than I expected. For a change, I will lose the cynicism (temporarily) and state it as it is. I am going to miss this great city terribly. When I came here, my ego of being a Delhi-phile stopped me from accepting how cool this place was. Subconsciously I used to find reasons not to live here - the lousy traffic, the jampacked trains, the ubiquitous crowd and the rampant concretization with total disregard to greenery and the environment.

What I didn't realise was that my acceptance of this place didn't make me less of a Delhi lover and vice versa. Bombay, I will miss you - walks in the green campus, the lake, the train rides against the traffic, the sea-fronts, bandstand, Nariman Point, quarter bars, BEST, autos, cheap cabs at 2 a.m., the gorgeous Victorian buildings of South Bombay, Marathi signboards and annoucements (even though I had no clue what they meant), but most of all, your humility and simplicity which hides your pride and determination perfectly.

My stay here couldn't have been peaceful without old and new friends - Vikram, Raghu and Kohli from undergrad days and all the PhD/Masters gang members here at IIT Bombay.

May your tribe increase. And may I return here soon enough.

Rahul.