Path to QF - Group A

Only 8 matches remain out of 21 matches in the league stage of Group A, including that of today's SL v Zimbabwe encounter.

Just before the start of SL v Zimbabwe match, the points table of Group A given below (Courtesy: www.cricinfo.com)

Group A

Teams	Mat	Won	Lost	Tied	N/R	Pts	Net RR	For	Against
New Zealand	4	3	1	0	0	6	+1.848	746/141.3	630/184.0
Pakistan	4	3	1	0	0	6	+0.760	970/200.0	818/200.0
Sri Lanka	4	2	1	0	1	5	+2.663	744/118.4	541/150.0
Australia	3	2	0	0	1	5	+1.813	469/84.0	377/100.0
Zimbabwe	3	1	2	0	0	2	+0.079	631/150.0	551/133.3
Canada	4	1	3	0	0	2	-2.083	582/195.3	1012/200.0
Kenya	4	0	4	0	0	0	-3.403	521/200.0	734/122.1

I have made a chance table as I did with IPL 2009.  This table tells what are the chances for each team to enter into the quarterfinals stage (The top 4 teams at the end of the league stage  in each group advance to the QF stage).  The chance table has the following assumptions

1. No future matches has no result or will become a tie

2. The relative position of teams with respect to NRR remains the same till the end of the league stage

3. Each match has equally likely outcome of win and loss for both teams.  In other words, both teams have 50% chance of winning the match (though that may not be the real case)

As of now, the chance table looks as below

Team	Current Chance(%)
NZ	98.83
Pak	96.88
SL	80.86
Aus	89.84
Zim	28.13
Can	5.47
Ken	0.00

Seems like Canada still has meagre chance of advancing to quarter finals!! 

An Interesting 2011

Wish you a very happy new year 2011!

Let the new year be as interesting as the number 2011 itself!

Some facts about the number 2011:

1. 2011 is a prime number!

2. 2011 is sum of prime numbers!!

3. 2011 is sum of 11 prime numbers!!!

4. 2011 is sum of 11 consecutive prime numbers!!!!

5. The digits of that 11th number in that series ends in 11!

6. The 11th number has all its digits taken from the year 2011! 

Interesting?  Just find out which are those 11 prime numbers which add to 2011! This link helps you with the list of prime numbers.

And, by the way, the number 11 itself is a prime number!

Courtesy: Nagendra via Gmail Buzz!

Financial Technologies

I was just browsing in the internet and stuck upon this company called Financial Technologies (India).

This company is in the back ground of many of the known brand names such as National Spot Exchange, MCX, IEX etc.  They have their presence in almost every domain of a financial market.  They are not into lending and recovering, though!  Mostly, they cater to the financial infra structure services like exchanges, financial training, brokerage, capital market information and research, consultancy etc.

It is a listed company and not owned by a single promoter or a business family.

Education

Came across a good article on education scenario in India, now in Business World.

http://www.businessworld.in/bw/2010_07_24_Case_Study_The_Education_TeeterTotter.html?offset=0&max=1

Some excerpts from the above article:

The numeric is only an eligibility quotient for the job; for doing one of those jobs. But it does not indicate preparedness for life! 
Examples abound: a) High scores to enter Wharton but zero EQ to know you do not drive after a drink, or even hit and run away; b) High CAT scores, but low on EQ to know that insider trading is just sophisticated thievery; c) High scores to pass the IPS and become a top-notch police officer, but zero EQ when he chooses to molest a child; d) High scores to enter a top- notch MNC, but no EI to understand that reclassifying your products to get a lower slab of excise is cheating; that paying excise is not a penalty but a means to fund the government's efforts in public administration!

What  said about engineers is, in fact, a 'comfort behind the machine' syndrome  —  a function of either shyness or fear of admitting 'I did not understand'. Those who are comfortable dealing with people and new territories are the best of the crop from the premier institutes where placement is as much a function of background as education qualifications!

Suffice it to say, your CAT, or GMAT or PGDM is not an index of your 'education'! It is a score for passing. Will it prevent rapes, frauds and neglectful governance? No. It simply means that you scored X and you are now a master in administrating businesses. You have been fitted with a software, without an operating system. It is not 'education'.

We are entering the knowledge era and in this era, knowledge of managing money and machines and products will be less important. This era will demand not academic prowess but thinking prowess. This era will demand a values quotient from its participants — skills in giving, sharing, enabling, respecting, taking responsibility, inclusiveness — none of which can be converted into an index!  Then the educator will return and the academic will be laid to rest.

Deal or No-Deal

I happened to watch this program called "Deal aa - No Deal aa" in Sun TV today, for the first time.  It is celebrating its 100th show next week, is an extra info!

This is a game show purely based on random numbers.  The contestant is given with 26 boxes worth values ranging from Re 1 to Rs 50,00,000.  Out of that, the contestant has to select one box and keep it aside, the one marked as his box for him to be taken home.  Now he opens the remaining boxes in various rounds in order to know the  value of the box that he had selected and kept aside for him.  In Round 1, he opens 6 boxes and gets to know what all those 6 values that he cannot take home. In Round 2 - five boxes, Round 3 - four boxes, Round 4 - three boxes and so on. At the end of each round he is offered a particular value which he can choose to take, ditch his marked box and quit the game. Or, he can proceed to next round and get to open more boxes.  The offer price at the end of each round increases or decreases based on the values in the hidden boxes (including the one marked for the contestant, and kept aside)

It is a pure fun game, not much knowledge or creativity required on part of contestant, except to answer some very basic GK type questions at the end of each round, to continue the game.

One interesting thing is the offer price at the end of each round.  The Offer price is not the expected value of the hidden boxes.  It is some percentage (<100) of the expected value. It starts as low as 8% in the episode that I saw today and went up to 74% at the end of round 5.  This gives a natural inclination (though, he may be unaware of this fact) for the contestant to go for the further rounds in the initial stages and to restrict himself in the later stages of the game, which is a good design!

This spreadsheet gives a detailed analysis of the same.  For any episode, the expected value of the game is Rs 3.95 lacs and the offer value will be lesser than that in the further rounds. Further, the game designer previously knows what is there in the marked box which was chosen first.  So, accordingly he can play around with the offer price. 

Deal or No Deal?  Not-So-Fair Deal!

Peter Principle

QUOTE

Peter pointed out that a class, or caste (social stratification) system is more efficient at avoiding incompetence. Lower-level competent workers will not be promoted above their level of competence as the higher jobs are reserved for members of a higher class. "The prospect of starting near the top of the pyramid will attract to the hierarchy a group of brilliant [higher class] employees who would never have come there at all if they had been forced to start at the bottom". Thus the hierarchies "are more efficient than those of a classless or egalitarian society".

UNQUOTE

This was taken from the wikipedia page on Peter Principle 

I was actually surprised at such a thought!  But if one digs a little further, possibly there could be truth behind what was argued by Dr. Peter.  May be, that's why they used to have such kind of hierarchies in the olden days.  But the problem occurred when someone was confined to the class he was born in irrespective of displaying potential to be worthy of doing higher level work.

I just added the book "Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong" in my wish list.  I shall give an update once I finish reading.

Happy New Year 2010

I know this is November already!  But this is my first post of this year!

I cannot blame anyone else other than my laziness for why it took so long for me write my first post this year.  A lot has changed in these 10 months of my blog-dormant state.

In these 10 months, I graduated from IIM Lucknow and took a nice 2 month vacation which I used to set-up and do the interiors for the newly bought house of my parents.  Wrote CFA L2 and flunked.  Joined a finance company, got new friends and colleagues. Now, I am based in Chennai, working my way to go around in the traffic and pollution.  Traffic has increased a lot from the time I left Chennai in December 2004. 

Last year, by this time I was touring the European cities and now I am touring the towns and villages in Tamil nadu as a part of my site visits on behalf of the organisation that I am working for!  I made first-time visits to some of the cities like Madurai, Tirunelveli, Tuticorin etc.

And most importantly, I found the friend and partner of my life. We got engaged and now, soon to be married!

Hope I blog often!

Youtube download in Chrome

To download videos from YouTube in Chrome browser, make a bookmark with the following address and click on the bookmark while playing the youtube video.

javascript:window.location.href = 'http://youtube.com/get_video?video_id=' + yt.getConfig('SWF_ARGS')['video_id'] + "&l=" + yt.getConfig('SWF_ARGS')['l'] + "&sk=" + yt.getConfig('SWF_ARGS')['sk'] + '&t=' + yt.getConfig('SWF_ARGS')['t'];

This may not work forever, as YouTube keeps changing the methods to get the parameter values.  Stay updated.

Some Change and Some Don't

A lot of things changed. Hotter Lucknow changed to colder Lucknow (But, folks still prefer to sit and eat in the corridors of the mess instead of sitting inside - reasons being different then and now)  

Mobile operators tell even a half paise has a value.  Hail the competition!  Tatkal system in trains changed.  Railways charge only for the journey leg instead of full ticket; and you can book tatkal just 2 days in advance instead of 5 previously.  WL e-ticket in trains is considered as ticketless travelling as they are automatically credited back.  Bus fares increased in Tamilnadu.  Oil, rice, fruits and vegetables (in general most of the food items) increased.  A big super-market chain has opened a branch in my home town Rasipuram, pleasantly surprised to see shopping carts and multiple billing counters.  NH7 (Kanyakumari-Varanasi) is done four-way in Salem-Namakkal leg - now that it takes only 35 minutes by bus from Namakkal bye-pass to Salem bye-pass.  B-TRAC has put directions and new sign-boards in many junctions in Bangalore.  The link road to Salem Central bus stand has been laid new.

Some of the things unchanged: Delhi Metro Airport Express line is still under construction, Bangalore traffic is still chaotic, Trichy-Tanjore stretch is still cumbersome.  "Dr". Vijay still acts in formula based masala movies, the latest being "Vettiakkaran" which unfortunately I saw in a theater.  Government office asks you to come back after two days for the work because the person responsible for keeping the challans is on leave.  Bank employees still do not have enough common sense; they refuse to reimburse an authentic payment and suggest alternative non-practical workarounds.  Wait in an office for 2 hours only to realise that your presence is not required at all and could have been communicated to you much earlier.

India v Sri Lanka 3rd Test at Mumbai Preview

It may be a historic test match starting tomorrow if India wins the match and series and get No1 place in the ICC Test Rankings. Cricinfo's preview is available here.

Based on the ICC's test ratings system, I have made a calculation of how the end ratings would look at the end of the series based on the possible 3 scenarios.  Sri Lanka may retain their 2nd position only if it wins the match and draws the series.  In other cases, it will be pushed to 3rd spot.  India can move to the No1 spot only if it wins the series 2-0.

Tobin's Tax

Paul Krugman is thumbs up for the British Government's proposal to tax the financial transactions.  He gives his support arguments in this NYTimes article.  But the economist Greg Mankiv and Stern's Prof. Damodaran give their counter arguments as to why such a tax would not work and become is actually a deterrent to the financial markets.

Dubai Financial Crisis

There is a lot of talks in the past 2 days around the world regarding the recent Dubai financial crisis.  Dubai's state-owned Dubai World has asked for a moratorium on its debt scheduled for December.  This has triggered reactions around the world with major bank stocks going down by around 3% in European stock exchange; Sensex going down on fear by 500 points on Friday later to be recovered by LICs aggressive buying and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee's statement that India may not be affected by the Dubai crisis.   Dubai World has around $59 Billion in debt from various banks all around the world.  I read articles in net in which, many opine now that Dubai's projection as financial center itself is a big illusion which has sustained for about 20 years to come out naked in light now.

Some of the links on the same:

Financial Times 

Financial Express by Ajay Shah 

Process-oriented or Result-oriented

This page is shared by one of my friends in his Google Reader. Mostly based on Parkinson's law that "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". The author says a lot can be accomplished by keeping a fixed time schedule. He cites several examples from others and his own life to prove his claim. I do agree. I personally tend to work better if I am with certain constraints - in this case "the time". Better planning and organising makes the task easy to accomplish within a short time. I know a friend of mine who used to cook with just 2 vessels and a spoon. And he cooks rice, chicken, vegetable side-dish, dosa and what not! Constrained resources makes you use them as optimal as possible.

I still remember the days when I was working on optimizing video processing algorithms to be done in lesser number of cycles.

Over a period of time, you learn and become more creative in utilising the resources effectively.There is always a debate between the process-oriented and result-oriented. For long, people have advocated to be process-oriented and said that results will follow. If you achieve the results, no body questions the process unless it is totally non-agreeable, unethical, unlawful etc. Proponents of process oriented may say that it is the journey not the destination that gives satisfaction. I am of the opinion that the objective is different for different people. Some people get satisfaction in good execution and some people derive satisfaction in better results with minimal efforts.

Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

I am not a regular follower of F1 racing.  But, today happened to see the Abu Dhabi GP in TV.  Incidentally this was the inaugural race in Abu Dhabi.  I was watching the race by around 3:00 pm.  I doubted whether that was a live relay.  Because,  Abu Dhabi is on the east direction and it must have been at least 5 pm then.  Later realized that the race started at 5:00 pm local time and this was the first race with the flood lights on all around the circuit.  I am amazed at seeing the circuit.  In each and every corner and wherever you see, you could see the richness.  The bluish structures across the circuit, waters with boats parked nearby the circuit, artful blue and white painting on the areas nearby the race track - what a view!  And with the helicopter following the car through the entire lap, the aerial view was spectacular.  Surprisingly, they have a hotel built across the track (that bluish structure!).  The residents of the hotel can see the racing at the comfort of their rooms.  

See this link too

FRM This November

For about a week, I stopped going around my visits and started preparing seriously for FRM (Financial Risk Management) exam.  I have enrolled in the full exam format.  This is the last year in which GARP (Global Association of Risk Professionals) - the organisation which administers FRM) conducts full exam.  From next year onwards, FRM is offered in 2 levels with the portion approximately divided into 50% in each.  This November though, both formats are available. 

FRM is of higher difficulty level in terms of vastness of the content.  CFA takes comparably less content in each of its levels and goes deep into the areas in terms of variety of problems offered in each area.  The focus though is completely different in the two exams.  Both introduces the basic financial aspects and products.  But CFA, as the level progresses goes more into portfolio management and management/design of various customized financial products.  FRM on the other hand, focuses more on various risks one would expect in an organisation, with more focus on financial institutions and banks.  It has detailed reading references to BASEL Regulations, credit, market and operational risks.  

CFA has around 18% of marks allocated to ethics and CFA guidelines.  FRM also has certain ethical guidelines, but the weight for them is less than 10% (in the full exam).  Both reading references point to past financial failures like Enron, Wolrdcom, Bearings etc. and asks the learner to understand what went wrong in those cases.

Let me see how my preparation and the exam goes!

Deception Point

Just finished reading Deception Point by Dan Brown. Usually I take a few weeks to read a novel of around 500 pages. But, surprisingly this one was over within 10 days. I started this on my visit to Tolouse/Bordeaux and finished next week during the visit to Eastern Europe. Most of my journey time was well spent in reading.

It is a typical Dan Brown novel. NASA finds something path-breaking in Arctic circle. The discovery of this of such a magnitude has huge implications on the image of NASA and on the impending Presidential election contested by the incumbent Zach Herney and Senator Sedgewich Sexton. Rachel Sexton, daughter of Senator Sexton works for NRO (National Reconnaissance Office) and reports to William Pickering, Director of NRO. The relationship between Sexton and his daughter is ailing. On a fine morning, Rachel receives a special request from the President and she is taken to Arctic circle in a special flight. Her task is to ascertain the facts that she finds there (the facts claimed by NASA) and report it to the White House staff.

NASA has been criticized widely for its repeated failure missions and overspending. It is the main pole against which Sexton is holding his campaign. The discovery could be the defining moment for NASA and its director Lawrence Ekstrom. The President employs 4 civilians from various discipline to ascertain the claims made by NASA - Michael Tolland, Norah Mangor, Corky Marlinson and Wailee Ming. The camp of NASA at arctic circle has been closely watched by 3 people belonging to Delta Force. When Wailee Ming finds something fishy about the discovery, he is killed by the Delta Force.

Rachel Sexton goes with Tolland, Mangor and Marlinson to ascertain the facts when they are attacked by the Delta Force. Mangor dies where the remaining there run for their lives. The plot then fastens up with finding about what is fishy about the discovery and who could be behind this. The knots get untied one by one.

With these characters, Gabrielle Ashe (personal assistant to Senator Sexton), Marjorie Tench (Senior Adviser in White House), Xavia (one of the team members of Tolland's oceanography discovery team) all have their important roles to play.

Behind this discovery there is a lot at stake for many people involved directly with it.

The story is well embedded with good amount of information regarding meterorites, oceonography, White House inside information, some elements of psychology etc. I have never heard of the NRO before this which is a space intelligence agency of US supplying classified information to CIA, Defense etc.

But as the story goes, it is kind of easy to predict who could be behind all the crimes. But, still the author maintains suspense in how is going to reveal it and what how he handles after the information is revealed.

The story is properly built up with author revealing the discovery only after 100 pages. After that the murders start, plot and the characters fly in jets.

A good read!

Gmail Trick

The post that I did before this one was through gmail.  You just need to write your blog and send it to an unique "blogger.com" address which you can get from settings on blogger.  One of the facts that limited my gmail posting was that I was not able to embed images on to the mail.  Simply, you cannot copy and paste an image as you do in the MS Outlook.  But there is a work around.  You can copy an image from a location on internet and paste it on to the browser.  It works!  So, I can upload my images on flickr or picasa and copy from it and paste on to my blog post!

In fact the gmail logo you see above is also embedded in the same way!

Post from Milan

I came to Milan as exchange student in the beginning of Septemeber.  From then on, I have been going around places in Europe - Venice, Berlin, Bern, Bordeaux, Austria, Czech, Slovakia, Frankfurt.  Had been consumed by the picasa, facebook, twitter in the time I am in Milan with of course a few hours to spare for the classes here in Bocconi Universtiy.

This is one of the pictures taken in Interlaken, Switzerland - unarguably one of the beautiful countries of the world.

This is quite some lull in the blog updates. Hoping to update frequently.  Especially, in the tours of the past one and half months, there were so many new experiences which are worth sharing.  I shall update as and when I reflect and gather.

Movies This Week

The Usual Suspects

The plot starts of with a man being murdered. From the conversation that happens just before murder, it appears that the killer is already known to the victim. He dies in a boat which is also the venue of so many other murders on the same night. Only a cripple(Kevin Spacey) and a Hungarian survive. The cripple starts narrating the story to the Customs Special Agent, Kujan, going back by 6 weeks. A group of 5 people gets interrogated in a case involving a missing truck carrying weapons. The cripple narrates how Keaton, Fenster, McManus, Hockney and Verbal (the cripple) - the 5 people then team together and gets involved in the story leading up to the massacre in the boat. Verbal mentions a lawyer named Kobiyashi on his narration, who makes the group to get involved in the task on the boat, on the advice of his boss. Further, the Agent gets to know of a man named Keyser Soze (the boss of Kobiyashi) from the injured Hungarian. Verbal gives the background of Keyser Soze and picturizes him as the ultimate Devil and also tells he is the one who killed Keaton (the first scene). But later he agrees that he saw a man (which he believes to be Keyser Soze) shooting, but he did not actually see Keaton dying. The Agent finds out who is Keyser Soze and convinces Verbal too. Verbal breaks out on finding who is Keyser Soze. Once Verbal leaves the office, the Agent senses something fishy and what gets revealed next is the twist in the tail (tale).

The plus point to the movie is the screen play and the narrating style. Very good performance from Kevin Spacey. The actor who plays the agent, Chazz Palminteri does a wonderful job. Some of the dialogues are very good. One cannot forget this one. "The greatest ever trick that the Devil pulled was convincing the world that he did not exist".

Bheja Fry

This has long been on my movie list; had a chance to see this week. Absolutely no masala stuff! The story is about how a talkative person gets involved in a tussle between a husband and wife. Inspite of his good intentions, he messes up everything. Ranjeet Tadani invites "talent" for his special dinner on every friday and makes mockery. He gets to know of Bharat Bhushan (Vinay Pathak), the talkative character who thinks too high of his singing talents and invites him for his special dinner. But unfortunately he breaks his back and is unable to go to the dinner. In the meantime, Bhushan arrives at Ranjeet's house. Sheetal, wife of Ranjeet leaves giving a message on phone that she will never return. From this point onwards, the story goes about how Ranjeet traces the whereabouts of Sheetal with Bhushan making a mess of every move. Further, an ex-girl-friend, ex-friend of Ranjeet, a tax-inspector - friend of Bhushan enters into the story and makes it humorous to the core. The movie even ends with a typical mess-up by Bhushan.

Cheeni Kum

Another movie which was on my list a while ago, but got missed then. The plot is about a 64 year old man and 34 year old lady falling in love with each other. The story does not put forward a good reason for the 34 year old lady to fall in love with the old man. There are a very few occasions in the story where it deals with this complicated 64-34 relationship. Otherwise, it seems to be an ordinary movie where that 64-34 could have easily been replaced by 25-25 or something. There can be many issues, psychological and social, which could have been brought up. But the movie misses out on those and tries to make a single point - there is no age for love, with no sufficient back-up. The Hyderabadi Zaffrani Pulav and the Umbrella sets up the stage and are the main characters in the first half. The "Sexy" little-girl is nice. Her beyond-age comments and remarks are awesome and interesting, especially the "Happy Sad" and the "Sad Sad" dialogues. In some other scenes also, the dialoges stand out. The background score by Ilayaraja is good. In fact, in most part of the movie, he keeps it silent. Lead roles by Amitabh and Tabu.

An Early Morning Auto

This story happened a few years before when I was in Bangalore. I just thought it might be an interesting read and also wanted to record it before it goes into oblivion.

A very ordinary day had been turned into an unforgettable experience because of an auto-driver in Bangalore. I was to catch the Intercity Express train to Salem from the Cantonment Station at 6:35 am. Generally, it takes only 15 minutes for me to walk from home to the station. That was not a very special day - as usual an ordinary Saturday. I estimated the time in the ticket-queue to be 10 min. With all these calculations perfect, I came out of the apartments at 6:10 am. I started walking, just then realised an auto-rickshaw passing by. I just thought I could get some extra 10 minutes if I take the auto and save some energy walking to the station. I called him. He stopped. Generally, the autos charge around Rs 20 in the mornings to go to the station. I stepped in and seated and told him to go to Cantonment railway station. By this time, it was 6:11 am. He replied, "Ek Sow, Ek Sow". "What! One Hundered! Not at all possible. I will give you twenty." After that he did not care about what I told. The auto whirred and sped up on the empty roads, but unfortunately in the direction just opposite to the station.

"Where are you going? Turn right on to this road." - "Ek Sow, Ek Sow"
By this time, I realised that the auto driver was totally on a high. Drunken Driving experience!

"I do not want to go anywhere. Stop! Stop! Now!!" - He did not even cared. The auto started speeding up even a little bit more. He had no idea where he was heading to. In the meantime, another auto started following the one that I was in. He tried to overtake us a couple of times and tried to say something to the driver. From his expressions, I got that he was also trying to stop this guy. No way. My driver was already in heavens. He did not give way; did not listen; but never stopped to release the accelerator. By this time it was already 6:15 and auto was going through the streets of Cox Town.

The auto happened to cross the railway bridge. I just got an idea. I told, "See the railway bridge. Stop here. The station has come". I am not sure whether he listened to me or what went into his mind. But he finally stopped. The other auto which was following us also got close by. The moment it stopped, I jumped out and started running. It was 6:17 am by now. I saw a bus which goes close to the Cantonment railway station (it takes a turn 200 metres ahead of the station towards Shivaji Nagar). I got into the bus. It was 6:18 am. I was looking at the watch every now and then. It reached the bus stop at 6:25 am. From there I started running towards the station. Entered @ 6:29 am. Walked up the stair case, reached the other side of the station, joined the ticket queue at 6:31 am. The train had just entered the platform. The ticket queue appeared to be moving very slow for me. There would have been around 15 passengers waiting ahead of me. I look at the watch, it was 6:33 am, still 10 more were there. It was 6:35 am, the train started leaving, still 4 ahead of me. When I reached the counter at 6:37 am, the platform was empty - the train had already gone. Stop here! For those of you who had thought that I could have made it finally - it is an anti-climax.

I requested the ticket issuer, "One Jolarpet" - Idea changed. I planned to take the Lalbagh Express to Jolarpet and catch the Kovai Express coming from Chennai. It would reach Salem by 11:30 am. Had I originally caught the Intercity Express, I would have been in Salem at 10:20 am.

Got the tickets. Lalbagh Express came to the platform at 6:53 am. Unexpectedly, too much of crowd in the unreserved compartments and even in the reserved ones. I thought why all these hassles, why can't I catch the passenger train to salem at 7:45 am. That probably seemed to be a better deal. Came back to the counter and cancelled the superfast ticket and got an ordinary ticket to salem. By the time, the Lalbagh also left, the platform was almost empty. Spotted a comfortable bench and started reading magazines. That continued till I fell asleep in a few minutes after I boarded the 7:45 train. When the train reached Salem, it was 12:45 am.

When I look back, it is enjoyable and I can laugh at it. But definitely not, when I was in that auto!!