End of days

Another year comes to an end. Definitely the most eventful one in life till date. Lots of people have come and gone, lots of places have been visited. I have travelled to almost all the corners of the country during the Internship and training periods. Bangalore, Vadodara, Mumbai, Agra, Delhi, Mathura and Pilani. That makes it a little of east, west, north and south of the country.

I have gone through periods of extreme loneliness and isolation, mental turmoil and I have moved from sharing one cubicle with three other people to having one of my own!

I have bought the three basic necessities of solitary living a camera, a laptop and a bike.

And I have successfully managed to push myself to the depths of self pity and come bouncing back to feeling good...

Everything put together its been a year worth remembering for all it had brought along and everything it took away.

Indulgence

Its been a really long time since I had indulged myself like this. One evening I decided to relive one of those innumerable college evenings we'd spent, watching one movie after another. This time however, I had to limit my indulgence to one movie, I chose Khosla ka Ghosla as I hadn't seen it till date and people who'd seen it had a nice thing or two, to say about it. Therefore I decided to rent out the CD, buy some Bhujia and a bar of chocolate ( the kid inside is still painfully alive :P)

I had an early dinner, just like the BITS days and then snuggled under my razai with the computer on my lap, the packets of bhujia on one side of my bed and the munching on the chocolate, I commanded my indulgent self, "Let the movie begin!"

What followed was a watered down version of Jeffrey Archer's Not a penny more, not a penny less, brilliantly Indianised. But now a days, you don't need to do much to Indianise anything, do you? Add a couple of cut shots of the busy and filthy streets, a plan view of a dilapidated Slum area, the typical Indian dream of going abroad, the dad opposed to the idea in principle, the tearful mother and the very familiar helpful neighbours. The formula just cannot backfire. In each of these six elements there's something that each Indian identifies with and therefore all the director has to do is to integrate these elements seamlessly into a story and voila! Even some of the European Classics can be used to portray the Indian Household!

But I shouldn't prevaricate, I would grade the movie at three and a half stars. The performances of Boman Irani and Anupam Kher are commendable, its always a joy to watch these people on the screen. Sometimes you have to accept that the best actors come straight from the theatre.

Ranvir Shorey was brilliant with his accent, not for a moment did it seem that the guy was acting. Everyone else was mediocre, in this regard, a special mention has to be made of Tara Sharma, someone needs to put a knob in her throat to regulate her volume with respect to the dialogue she's delivering.

However, by the time the movie got over, I was happy with the choice of movie. Light hearted comedy with a nice ending. The eprfect choice for stress free viewing.

To Chitra and Arun...

Sometime in March,2004: Two students were sitting in a public car parking outside the grand hyatt at the Bikaji Kama Place in South Delhi and proof reading a sheaf of pages which happened to be the first daft of Cactus Flower, 2004, official magazine of the students’ Union of BITS,Pilani. One of them turned out to be a budding playwright and the other ended up with an engineering job with one of the foremost public sector concerns of the Country.

December, 2006: Two men walked into the lobby of the posh head office of Engineers India Limited. They were on an official tour to EIL to gather some information required for some forthcoming project. Of the two men, one was a fresh graduate and new employee and the other, a veteran in engineering activities in Indian Oil Corporation.

The common string connecting these two isolated incidents is that same boy who happened to land himself an engineering job. Me.
The way life changes your outlook is really amazing. Imagine the same me sitting at a car parking today and reviewing my stress analysis files! I can’t. The place has remained the same. Just that Arun isn’t there with me sitting beside me and pointing out one error after another. People running to office, the early morning hawker selling his ware to whoever has enough time to lend him a ear. The palpable busyness of the area was almost haunting. Somehow I missed my companions of the past too much.
This one is for Chitra and Arun for having made my first Cactus Flower trip unforgettable. The memory remains.

I walk a lonely road...

I have a list of ‘nice blogs’ on the right hand side column of my weblog, there are certain characteristics about each one of these blogs that I love and I am sure I cannot achieve. the outspoken sarcasm and cynicism of Satya, Abilin’s philosophy, Kray’s free flowing amalgamation of myriad emotions and simple narrative, Sujan’s nonchalance about anything that comes his way.
They are all unique in the way they look at life and the way they assimilate each scenario they are put into. But somehow I find their reasons for maintaining a blog totally different from that of mine.
My sole purpose in having a blog was to be able to offload disturbing thoughts in an organized manner so that I can go back to them if ever the need to go back to some of them arises. I have never been a romantic of sorts, true I love certain hues of nature, like a sunset or a sunrise at a beach. I am cynical and I am emotional, but I can offload neither my cynicism nor my emotions confidently in my blog for the fear of being discovered and questioned. Of course, I have the right to remain silent ;) but somehow the idea of remaining silent was never appealing to me.

I was a friend’s place till pretty late last night. On the way back to my room, I could see the changes a job had brought about in me, previously, while in college, I hated returning to my room all alone, I enjoyed the company of people and I was disappointed if there was no one to accompany me back. Yesterday, while walking down the deserted township streets with only a few stray dogs here and there, I had almost accepted the loneliness. I didn’t feel the urge for company neither did I think it was weird to have to walk back all the way alone. Somehow, the idea of being alone has totally been accepted by the subconscious.
And therefore, I walk alone. But this time there’s no fear, for I have figured out my path. The loneliness has been countered; I have successfully devised a mechanism.
I am not afraid of being alone anymore. I have grown beyond the realm of love and hate. I have learnt better than craving for unwelcome companionship. I am ready to face the world all alone till its time. The worst that can happen is that the time might not arrive, or I might just burn out before that time arrives…
Either ways, I prefer being alone.

Everyone says I am fine, but....

You Are 83% Perfectionist

You're a total perfectionist. So go ahead and congratulate yourself on a "perfect" score.The truth is, everyone is sick of living up to your standards. And you're probably even sick them yourself.

Are You a Perfectionist?

Sunday... after a long time

This was the first Sunday in my working life that truely felt like a Sunday. There were absolutely no plans to go anywhere or do anything. No fear of the dreadful alarm going off. After a late night gaming session on Saturday I turned in only at quarter to two.

It was nine in the morning before I woke up and decided to start the day. Even in hostel we had to get up in time for breakfast, but here breakfast stretches for as long as you want it to stretch. Therefore, by the time I reached the mess it was already 9:30.

A super oil-rich breakfast comprising the ubiquitous chole bhatoore awaited me along with a newspaper splashed with brilliant images of Vidya Balan and justifications as to why she's the kind of girl you can take out to a night club and and even to meet your mother. I haven't got much idea about the kind of girl I might want to take out to a nightclub (In most cases I would look forward to getting hooked to one at a night club only), but I agree with "the taking to your mother" part. Definitely... but there are a few people already in mind, Vidya Balan can wait.

I can understand the reader widening his/her eyes and condemning this blatant egoistic comment.

After breakfast, two peaceful hours were spenting in poring through the Sunday Times. Life, Horoscope and some really comical matrimonials. I am not joking, if you want to ready some really funny, grammatically minimalistic literature, Matirimonials is the place to find it! Some 45 year old woman looking for "tall, handsome, middle aged male"is just one sane example. There are so many things about the matrimonial pages that are just hilarious. Some day, with a little more time at hand, I should be able to write something about the matrimonials. ;)

Then there was lunch, right from the day I joined BITS, Sunday lunches have always remained attractive and it hasn't ceased being so even here in Mathura. The spicy chicken curry with the red gravy and shreds of onions and cubed tomatoes, the warm rotis with melted butter, the fine long grained steaming rice...mouthwatering!

This was followed by some reading in the mellow afternoon sun and a nice siesta. The persistent ringing of the mobile broke the sleep, on the other side was a long lost friend. A conversation spanning every topic we'd ever discussed, right from friends' girlfriends to drinking habits...

Evening was spent in buying a razai to defend myself against the life threatening winter. This was my first visit to a Gandhi Ashram Khadi Bhandar. In case you have a chance, go and check out the variety of stuff they make.

The mess is usually closed on a Sunday evening, we had dinner at the "most happening place" of mathura. A family restaurant called "Brijwasi Royal". The crowd was good, the food mediocre and the ambience third grade. But one really cannot complain much. After all we are at Janmabhoomi.

A winter's day...

Life has changed a lot since I updated my blog last. Much to my surprise, I have become really busy these days, not only at office, but also at home. I have a Laptop now and therefore a lot of music and movies and games have come back to life. I am trying to learn a few new softwares and update my knowledge in a few older ones. I have even managed to clean up my kitchen and make it usable. Tea, coffee and noodles are not constraints anymore.

Its getting really cold here, sometimes it reminds me of the beginning of winter in Pilani. We could never conciously enjoy the beginning of winter in Pilani because of the impending compre s, but now that I have a chance, I must say its brilliant. The chill of the morning slowly gives way to the golden warmth of a lazy sun as it creeps out of the horizon, the 5 minute bus ride on NH 2 as I come to office every morning when the little hamlet of Badhgaun awakens from a deep slumber and gets about the daily chores of a typical north Indian village. The slow ignition of coal and cow dung cakes in the black soot stained sigri giving off the familiar fumes. Cowherds coaxing their wards off to the fields, with an occasional lashing to the most disobedient one of the herd.

And the moment the bus ride gets over, I am sitting at my office in a regulated atmosphere, looking at a computer screen and rattling off lines on the monitor.

There's so much of the winter that hasn't been covered yet... But I shall be regular hence forth. By the way, here's my laptop, for those who know about my "tiger biscuit and peanuts" and "saving up for laptop" stories...

Demented...

Another one of those days when life just remains average. Everything is just 'O.K'. Nothing great, nothing exciting. Therefore....no reason to upload a throughly mundane blog of a thoroughly bored bachelor. But I still felt like hearing the clattering of the keyboard and the sentences appearing in neat arranged rows right in front of me. I had decided not to crib and try and find out the positive aspects of my "life and time" in mathura. But how long can someone keep looking for something that doesn't exist?!

There is no life in Mathura and the time spent over here can be summaried in one sentence. "It was boring." The only life that I have is that of a guy who works more than he needs to. There was a time when I used to tell people that I study for the want of something better to do. The statement remains the same, just substitute study with work. You have me again. I am slowly becoming the workaholic I didn't want to be.

Someone said , Life is beautiful. My answer, beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. And the beauty just doesn't seem to show up.

Back!

I am back from what was the shortest visit home. It was a totally different feeling this time. No explanations about courses and evaluations, no need to think about the dreaded C.G.P.A., no reason to stand at the balcony and look out at the horizon and wonder what lies in store for me.

I know what lies in store for me... at least for the next couple of years.

There have been times when I have had nothing to worry about. But they are the most unsettling times . The moment there is nothing to worry about, there is a fear of stagnating. The fear drives me to think of new things to do, new avenues to explore and get worried in the process. The vicious cycle continues...

Homeward Bound

Going home had never been this mundane. I have a ticket for a train at 1:30 in the morning. I have to reach a godforsaken station somewhere in the heartlands of Uttar Pradesh by bus and I am still not sure of the route I am supposed to take. All I know is that a car will drop me off at the bus stop and I have to take a bus to Agra. The route from there is yet to be discovered.

There was a time when going home was a big thing, when I packed things 4 days in advance. I can still recall the joy of going home in the middle of my first semester. I had finished packing my bag three clear days before my train left delhi station and I had to unpack my bag several times in the middle because I had packed off stuff which I actually didn't want to take!

Four years down the line, once the bag is packed I don't have to open it up and to remove stuff packed by mistake.

Lets hope the train doesn't take too much time to reach Asansol, the one I am boarding is supposedly one of those trains which run 12 hours behind schedule as a habit. God help me.

Too tired to crib!

This place is the one I use to crib when there is no other person to crib to... but sometimes you are so down and so tired that you can't even crib.. thats exactly whats happening to me right now.. another 45 minutes and I'll be working for 12 hrs straight with exactly 35 minutes break for lunch!

I can feel the angst deep down, but I am just too bloody tired to crib...

Is this the life I had bargained for?

I have to be up and running by the time the first rays kiss the tree tops and get back to my room only by 8 in the evening. With an average of 4 hrs a days of non-sleeping free time, I don't think its worth the pain...

But again, I'm tired.

Pizza I want!

Saturday evening in a public sector company is just as sweet as Friday in a software firm.

The next day being the one day when you know that the Alarm clock won't marshall the day for you. When you can take your own sweet time to move yourself from the bed to the bathroom. When you can walk slowly in the golden winter sunshine to the mess for a long leisurely breakfast accompanied by the newspaper with the all-so-familiar accidents, manhunts and deaths being reported with wartime efficiency.

What I mean to say is that everything remains the same, just that for one day, you are allowed to slow down and adjust your bearings before flying off for another six days of early mornings and stereotype evenings.

However, this post is about the evening before the beginning of this beautiful day.

In this backward land of Mathura which according to me hasn't moved much ahead since independence, we set out in search of Pizza at a remote Shopping mall called Highway Plaza which was about 10 Kms from the Township.

Highway Plaza does justice to its name on two counts, one, its bang on the Delhi-Agra highway and two, its exactly what the dictionary meaning ("Mercantile establishment consisting of a carefully landscaped complex of shops representing leading merchandisers; usually includes restaurants and a convenient parking area; a modern version of the traditional marketplace") reccommends a plaza to be. However, after the stint in Bangalore a Mall without babes and MacD's doesn't look or sound like a mall. Therefore it took me quite some time to actually come to terms with the idea of being in a mall on a saturday night and not being able to letch!

The pizza was mediocre, but a welcome change from the typical "dal-sabzi-roti" routine.

I am still thinking though.... a mall without babes...

Mathura Mediocrity...

In Mathura after stopovers at Baroda and Mumbai. The last time I updated a Blog, I was at Bangalore, sitting in from of a PC in the corner of a shared cubicle, typing whenever I am not coding. The scenario hasn't changed much, except for the fact that now I don't share a cubicle any more (I have my own :D) and am typing whenever I find a little time... and believe me, its quite a bit difficult to find time when you are a full time employee and an "officer" at that :P With all the "Responsibility" and associated ego, you obviously wouldn't want to be caught spending valuable office time on cyberspace! Life has changed in so many different ways that I have stopped keeping track of all the changes.

I have decided to flow with the current. Resistance is futile. Just flow along and let the stream decide whether to leave you on a deserted bank or a crowded embankment. I shall very soon come up with the typical "daily routine" post. But as of now, I have to start being less cynical.

This browser sucks...

The browser in the office sucks !!! I am not allowed to upload photos or even format my text, only for blogger though. I'll have to shift my blog to some other more usable host.
Blogger still remains my first love though... shall post my new blog site once I am done setting it up.

Update: I have downloaded and installed all the required updates to make the browser usable... therefore.. I AM NOT MOVING OUT OF BLOGGER! yuhoo!!

Return of the Kafir.

This was religion to me. And i had still given it up to prove some theory to myself. The theory failed and I am back on the old battered track. I can't live without writing.I can live if i don't crib. Hence, I shall crib,I shall write and I shall give myself some decent sleep at night.
This is the beginning of the much awaited and much maligned second innings, but even though I have returned to my faith, I still remain a Kafir.
A rustic of the soil who refused to accept the gloss of the dazzling new world. I renounce the new world and dive down the depths of past glory to retrieve whatever I can. I stand convicted of indecision and condemned to the only result of such renunciation, eternal darkness.
I promise you a new faith, a faith in which i will be accepted as a founder rather than be maligned as a Kafir.
I have arrived. Again.

The lonely path ahead

He pushed back his chair, removed his spectacles, turned his neck in the two possible directions, yawned and got back to staring at the screen.
Lines of his new book were right there in front of his eyes, but he couldn't decide on the ending. He's been writing it for quite sometime now, weaving new incidents into the same plot, new characters entering and exiting his story every now and then. But the ending had always remained elusive. At times he even had nightmares about not being able to finish his book for the want of a proper ending. However, he could never think of a proper ending.
He wanted it to have a dashing end which wasn't predictable. But as they put it, he was scared of making it "predictably unpredictable". So he wrote on... every evening saw him insert new people into the story and every afternoon saw him taking them out in the light of some newly thought ending. But the quest for a better end wasn't quenched. He continued writing.Mixing his emotions with those of his characters. Giving them names, traits, failures and successes out of his own life. Living many lives through them.
But this is not what he always wanted to do, how long could he keep trying to find a new ending? It was time he went ahead and lived at least one life of his own. Not the imagined lives of his characters who could walk, run, laugh, cry and strike out in anger. But he wasn't interested.
As he pushed away from the table with the three plastic fingers of his left hand and balanced the wheel chair with the remaining ones on the right, he looked out at the tinge of red covering the horizon. The story had ended long back. The sun had set. All that remained was the path ahead... the lonely path ahead. He wasn't strong enough to make the journey on his wheelchair and he wasn't weak enough to give up all he had in form of his book, his characters, his plot, his life. Turning his wheelchair back, he started typing frantically.
There has to be a better ending...

Wanting what we don't have

What is it that you don't have ?
If its Freedom, snatch it
If its Money, earn it
If its Love, deserve it
If its Time, create it
If its Attention,demand it
and...
If its Self Respect....

Go kill yourself.

All about music...

There are so many songs attached to so many memories, people, incidents and feeling and everytime you listen to them, they seem to make those feelings, thoughts and emotions, so real!
There have been songs related to every unforgettable incident in life.
Those rainy afternoons in august when my brother had first started taking guitar lessons. He used to be very possessive about his beloved instrument and I got a chance to have a go at it only when he was asleep. Another of the the sweet sacrifices you have to make for being the older one. Hence I strummed the chords when he slept. I remember mastering a little peice called kafi ( its a raag i guess) and playing it sitting on the balcony overlooking the railway track at a little distance while it rained. The cowherds managed their cattle along the bright green fields, the trees looked much greener than otherwise and I lived those few moments of self created music , intensely.
The first few days on campus, the ragging sessions and the scary recitals of the then-famous score, Baanch ke tu rehna from the movie Company, followed by those rare occasions when we grew out of our shells and walked in groups, unafraid of any 'senior', singing Jaane kya hoga rama ra, form such a precious part of my campus memories.
Then came the golden days of graduating into Hard Rock from John Denver and Cliff Richard! The whole of second year say me humming Aerosmith, Guns n Roses, Metallica, Nirvana and lots of other bands. The hours spent in front of Gupta's computer playing Max Payne and listening to Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Jimmy hendrix.. unforgettable!
Third year saw me return to the softer version of all music, Simon and Garfunkel came into life. On the other hand Aab na Jaa became a hot favourite with a little romanticism creeping into my
mundane life. Hmmm.. but some things are not meant to last.
Soon it was time to move on, in search of more rewarding yet less demanding relationships. Soon it was time to accept and analyse the magnitude of loneliness I was destined to get used to.
Finally it was time for Boondein by silk route: a time to understand how I have whiled away the best time of my life in some of the most inconsequential pursuits. It was time to understand the value of true friends, to draw the line between friends, aquiantances and "Hi-Bye"ers.
Farewells: the feeling took a lot of time to sink in, the fact that the dream is over. And with Save tonight and Time of your life I bid goodbye to the campus.
One fine January morning I found myself on the streets of Bangalore humming Boulevards of broken dream.
Life goes on. And every song releases an imprisoned memory or a dream. And I cherish each one.

22 tango

I am 22 at last! though I remember little about the last four or five birthdays I had, one thing was common about all of them, I always had to study on my birthdays..the last three years on campus, I had exams on the third of May always, Linear Algebra in First year, Principles of mangement in second year and Prime Movers and Fluid Machines in the third year !!
Finally I had a break and it was beautifully celebrated!
All the calls and mails I had expected ( and a few that I had not :P) came in. Mom called up at the exact hour, precisely 7:10 in the morning. Somethings never change, and I am happy they don't. As fate would have it, two of my oldest friends from college also had to come down to our office and we went out for lunch.
The day was great at office, one day when I didn't write a single line of code, nor did I do anything vaguely related to the project.
The evening was the best time of the day, lovely room mates got the most delicious cake I have had in Bangalore and then we hogged on the chicken and associated stuff till we were light headed enough to dance to some obscure song playing on channel V. We went for a walk in the middle of the night and return to the room only because we were too thirsty and dehydrated.
In all, a rocking beginning of the 23rd year of life!!

Monday Monster!

I knew this!
Somewhere deep down I knew I would be sitting at my desk on monday and typing away something !! We got up frigging early today to catch the morning show of Ice Age 2 at PVR, but even before 10 in the morning all shows of the movie were booked! How extraordinarily ridiculous!
Total frustration saw us walking all the back to office, turning on our systems and getting down to some work-blogging-chatting-associated activities.
I wish there never were any holidays!
Monday Monster has its own ingenious ways of driving us to office even in the most improbable of circumstances. When some guy in some advertisement said, "I always wanted to quit on a monday morning.", I didn't give it much thought. Now I know.

Freaky Friday

Prakash went to Chennai. Randeep went to Pondicherry. Varun went to Goa. Srinivas went to Hyderabad. I stayed back. Another weekend looming large with no specific job at hand and a wild urge to run home, but 2000 kilometers is something you can't run whenever your mind urges you to do so. Going to Goa was an option but on a trip like that, the company matters a lot and the gang going to Goa was just not my kind. Again, it will be very difficult to describe what is my kind!
But there are some people we just know we can't go around with, don't we?
Life in Bangalore seems to be just rolling down hill. Initially there was anitcipation, followed by excitment and finally a well deserved comfort in the office and back in the room. However, once the malls, movie and play theatres were visited, there was nothing left in Bangalore. Nothing great or really attractive, only a number of false weekend promises of relaxation and the feel good "big city" factor.
I shall go back to the room and spend ages staring into the TV till I fall asleep. I Noticed one brilliant thing about Star movies yesterday, was watching The day after tomorrow which started at 1:30 in the morning and there wasn't a single commercial break! Long since I had seem a movie without a break.

Water water every where.. not a drop to drink

Yeah, the water tank supplying water to the the Aquaguard was empty. At 11 in the night we were left without a drop of drinking water. The shops were closed and we couldn't buy mineral water. We walked all the way to the landlord's den, but as expected it was locked. Frustrated and thirsty tenants, we came up with a lot of vengeful idea like stealing the water jar from another room or getting bottles and filling them up from the jars present in the rooms of other tenants. Ideas ran wild, and unfotunately I was the one to suggest the dumbest of them all - "Lets put a couple of buckets of water in the empty Syntax tank, if the water level rises a little maybe there'll be just enough flow into the aquaguard and we could filter enough water for the night. But all of my room mates gave nice little smirks and walked off.
Finally it was decided that the best course of action would be to borrow a couple of bottles of water from considerate neighbours and wait for the municipal water supply to fill the tank.
Such is the life of a poor unemployed intern.
"Boond Boond paani ke liye taras jaate hain!"

Childhood... once more

On my way to the office the other day, I walked past a park and saw a number of kids playing cricket. The first thought that struck me was, " What day is it? How come there's a holiday today? and if its a holiday why am I going to..."
It was then that the facts struck me. I go to an office and not to attend classes anymore... the kids playing around means nothing other than the fact thats its summer vacation, the days of a long vacation are overfor me though... we need to go to office and meet deadlines and no more of happy afternoons flavoured with home made cookies and notebooks filled with holiday homework.
Its time to move into reality. Gone are the days of running around and begging the powers that be, to accelerate my growth so that I could go to office like dad and have enough money to buy myself a large candy bar every day. I want to play cricket once more and live without having to worry about what I would have for dinner tonight, but then, that time has passed and its time for the much coveted "wild bachelor life".

Who is backward ?

Who is backward?
The guy who doesn't have enough money to eat, who is not educated enough to read the price printed on the package of rice he has to buy, who cannot afford to send his kids to school, who finds it difficult to procure enough medicine to save his dying relative ?
Or the guy who eats 4 to 6 times a day, maintains a decent living with his family and kids, has a number of pets and is a member of some of the local clubs and societies?
If we have to take care of the backward people of the nation , its imperative that we have a clear method judge who's backward and who's well placed in the society. What if a brahmin doesn't have enough money to eat a square meal a day and a dalit maintains a cowshed of over a hundred cows ? Who is in need of reservation? Even a dumb blonde can answer that.
But I guess our government has lost the ability to reason and to think of such anomalies with the most qualified prime minister in the whole wide world at the head, ashames me further.
For how long will we keep turning a blind eye to the actual needs of the nation in favour of uplifting the mythological backward classes. Gandhi worked for untouchables when there were untouchable. Who are we trying to help with our reservation policies now? People who've already built a fortune by being allowed to surge past the hard working and more deserving 'general category' just because they were born into a family who happen to have been declared backward by some survey conducted in the early independence era?
But who care... with the best Universities in the world looking forward to training the best Indian minds trying desparately to escape the skewed government policies, and recieving encouraging response from us, its already too late.

Then there were none...

Its all about countdowns... I had contracted this dangerous disease of starting countdowns from my mom. Intially, she used to start countdowns for me during the end term examinations to motivate me to study. The countdowns were meant to make me feel there weren't too many days left and I hardly had to study for another week before the long vacation beautifully punctuated with trips, swimming classes and a customary get together at our country home. She always managed to make me feels nice about the number of day being ticked/scratched/erased off the list. But one thing she did best was deciding the time to start the countdown, so that at no point of time did I feel that there are far too many days left before it gets over!!!
I never manage to get the timing right. The first time I left home for college, I started the countdown the day I reached campus, it definitely doesn't make a fresher happy to think there are a hundred and thirty six days to go before he had a chance to get back home ! Even during exams I started my countdowns far too early and ended up frustrating myself before the last day was struck off the list.
When it came to leaving campus for good, I shouldn't have started a countdown in the first place, it was horrible to even think that I would never step back into that place as a student, ever.
the occasion and timing of a countdown still eludes me :(

End of The mania

The countdown has truely begun. There are less than two months before I am home, after a long time. The internship ends in another fifty odd days and then there will be a really long holiday !!
The insomnia gave way to peaceful sleep even while Pakistan kept inching towards a comfortable win in the Abu Dhabi match. Channels were changed to have a look at the Champion's League semi final between Barcelona and AC Milan. But that match also turned out pretty boring during the first few minutes I managed to stay up.
Shantaram seems like a nice book for the first hundred odd pages I have managed to read, the most exciting thing about the book is that, for the first time I get to see our culture, dressing, food habits ..almost everything, from the point of view of someone who is not Indian and for whom everything is a different experience!
Especially the description of a Salwar Kameez and that of a Pan vendor, the way we fight to reserve a seat in a local train. The village folks, the livestock that travel in the local trains with as much comfort as we allow ourselves... I have never been to Bombay (never quite got used to the 'Mumbai' word) but the description of the slums, roadside shops, shady bars and the underworld definitely accentuates the impression already created by movies like Satya, Company, D and Sarkar. Hope the book doesn't disappoint me in the end.

Insomnia!!

Its confirmed now. I have insomnia. For two nights now, I am able to sleep only after the first rays of light cross the sky. Sunday night I fell asleep only after five in the morning and last night it was well past four before I could become acceptably unconcious of the surroundings.
Its the end of the era where sleep used to be an accepted phenomenon. Perhaps the brain is just not tired enough or maybe its the body.
The laziness of sitting in front of a comp seems to be taking its toll! Nothing seems to make me fall asleep...one hundred pages of shantaram, an old bengali movie watched in bits and peices while checking out the cable network channel in the perverse hope for some forbidden visuals (last enjoyed on someone's computer on campus).
The dogs sleep off and everything is totally quiet by three and that last one hour till four is like death. Not a sound and lying there in the silence broken by the mechanical twirling of the fan and the muffled thud of the deoderant bottle dropping off the table onto the matress, hit by the curtains flung around by sudden gusts of wind every now and then.
Then sleep decends like a welcome retreat from the real world into the unconciousness. I am safe finally, tugged away into my world of pure dreamless sleep far far away from the pain of the real world.
It hurts a lot when your only hours of unconciousness which you treasure so much are taken away from you.

Bong, at Heart...

Yes, at the end of the day I am so much a Bong. To be able to sit cross legged on the floor and dig into a plate of hot rice and curry after almost a hundred days of ' chapati and paneer', was heavenly! Thanks to my cousin who made a fabulous start to the new year weekend for me.
Then the saturday evening, when we ( a friend of mine, whose idea it was in the first place and I) trudged through the muddy crossings of the Bangalore roads to make our way to Bangaliana, a well known Bong restaurant in Kormangala to have our first taste of Luchi (huge puris made of white flour) and Mangsho ( Mutton cooked in the typical Bong style) since the day I left home in January. However, I really couldn't help noticing the bong obsession with English, while we were gulping down our luchis at a breakneck pace, two gaudily dressed women walked in and announced in heavily accented Benglish, "Its too stuffy here!I cannot eat like this!"
One great dinner it was, otherwise !
Humming half forgotten bong songs ( much to the annoyance of the autorickshaw driver, we could figure out) in the autorickshaw all the way back made up for all the lost bongness thanks to a life totally deprived of the bong culture for the past four months in the great garden city!

Bangalore: Uneasiness to Anger

4:30 p.m.,Wednesday,12th April,2006: "Dr. Rajkumar has expired, crowds have gone berserk, please go home and be careful on the roads"- Multicast from someone in the office

Did he die a natural death? YES
How old was he ? 77
What did he die of ? Cardac arrest

In that case why the riots? NO ANSWER
We'll just walk home from here. lets hang around for some time, we'll go after the things settle down a bit.

5:50 p.m.: "Guys, we have instructions from BITS to send all PS students home. Take a leave tomorrow also, if need be. Leave office right now and make sure you don't pass any comments on the way. just reach home safely" - Mr. Atul Gupta, our Guide

Ok Guys! this is big. lets go.

We stopped at a half opened stall on the way back to eat something, and even before we had finished our meagre plate of idly some fan(atic)s came and asked the owner to shut down! he pleaded with them to let the last of his customers leave.

9:30 p.m."the office will be closed tomorrow. if you haven't had dinner tonight, you can go to office, there will be dinner over there"- Sunil called up

Lets get back to office! Anyways, the bread is inedible!

11:30p.m. " Sir, there's curfew outside, please go safely" - Security guard at the office

Wow, only this was left!

April 13th:

Its was a holiday alright, but nothing to eat, not a shop open. Thankfully, I had some friends living close by and I just went off to their place. It was a horrible day as far as promoting the picture of a peaceful, tech-savvy Bangalore was concerned. People breaking house, cars,bikes,buses, setting buses on fire, killing constables! ( All you had to do to save your property was just place a picture, a xerox copy would do, of the late Film star on it!)
No doubt, there are two Bangalores, one of the local youth seething with anger and vengeful hatred towards the "North Indians" who've made their Bangalore what it is today. The other of the computers, fab malls, multiplexes and pubs. I guess we have been foolish to have expected the local unemployed and uneducated youth to give up their own right to the city of Bangalore (Is it Bengaluru yet?) to some MNC's who want to set up centers of extra ordinary profit in and around the city.
Or am I just being too presumptuous and sarcastic?

Home, sweet Home!

Never felt this home sick since the first week of my first year. But I still don't know if this is the typical 'April homesickness' thats common to every BITSian or I really really want to go home. Just that life has become totally insignificant in every respect. There is no single element of change in life. I know what I have to have for breakfast, I know what code I have to rattle off the keyboard, I know what lunch I'll get and exactly how many hours I have to wait to have a go at the TT table! Dinner, fixed, TV, boring and sleep ,vanishing gradually. Looks like I am becoming an Insomaniac completely!
The reservation thingie is causing quite an uproar among the (prospective) student community and as I happen to be of the same community, I have to shout my lungs out! Its frigging ridiculous, Minister !! who do you think we are? A nation full of morons who will sit quietly and lap up the spoilt milk you lay before us in form of an outrageous bill to reserve half the seats in the best colleges in the country for certain classes!
The number of people going abroad to study and ending up working abroad is increasing with every passing year and if our dear worthy ministers don't understand this, all the people who can afford to go abroad will definitely go and the general category people who are unfortunate enough to have had a little feeling for their country will soon vanish off the face of the country dogged by the fear of failure to secure a seat in the premier institutions of the country in the face of the great reservation policies of the vote hungry government.
I am ashamed to be a citizen of this nation governed by people with such narrow political objectives. Its ridiculous and every person who is capable should contribute to the protests in every possible way.

Chicken and Play.

I Had a pretty fulfilling weekend. It had been a long time since I saw a play, till this saturday when I finally decided to go for this play called Harvey written by Mary Chase. Two reasons why I went for the play, one: the usual one, boredom; two: The play had been performed by the English Drama CLub in BITS before we had joined and I wanted to check out the standard of plays our audi had seen.

However, the Audi ( JSS Auditorium) was much smaller than expectations and the sound system was also pretty rusty) , but the stage set-up and performances made up for anything that was missing. Extraordinary performances, each one, the actors were very much in character even during the curtain call! However, the articulation of dialogues in the first scene were slightly muffled and unclear, could very well have been a sounds screw up though. Overall, a really nice way to spend a Saturday evening.
Sunday was spent in bed, more than 13 hours of pure, dreamless sleep! We decided to break the 'No Chicken' phase with a Maharaja Mac burger at Forum. I have a very relevant complaint against the Maharaja Mac, the amount of wrapping involved is just too much!! by the time you you are done with the paperwork ( which comes in form of tissue and card paper trying desperately to keep the burger in shape) you have your fingers covered with mayonaisse! However, if you can succesfully ignore the oh so ill mannered stares of all the junk food experts and the table mannered smarties, the burger is delicious, especially if you are having chicken after a haitus of almost a month!

Classic : Nothing beats this !

It was the beginning of second year, I was sitting in Goyal's room trying to get some pressing work done. At that point of life, I was one of those ardent , 'ROck Suck!' Bong Soft Music Lovers! He started off with November Rain and I pleaded with him to stop the torture. All I got in return was , "This is Heaven, just look at this man and his guitar and try to listen, not just hear and for the last time, ROCK DOESN'T SUCK! " Obedient junior that I was, I settled down in front of the comp and thus was initiated into the religion of Rock.

The Most appealing Images were however of "this man and his guitar". Some of those images will always form my very conception of Rock Music. The long haired, cigarette smoking arrogance of the master. Slash playing the incredile solo in front of the church definitely forms one of my most favourite parts of the song, the best however came when he walked on top of the Piano for the heart rending solo ... nothing beats that !

We have spent so many evenings watching that video and mumbling , "god level!", or " no one beats him" ..or similiar phrases. Slash will definitely form a great part of my college life.

Here's to the greatest lead guitarist of all time!

Simon and Garfunkel

I hadn't heard their name till third year, and I hadn't heard more than one song of theirs till Final semester, but thanks to Srinivas, there are some of their best songs on my playlist now and they are good, to say the least!

There aren't many slow songs in English that I really like, but somehow, all their songs seem to have something very different about them. Be it the quite contentment of leaves that are green or the soft, lively tone of the sound of silence or the compassion of Mrs. Robinson, they always seem to touch some hidden chord in the brain too crammed with the tunes of an electric guitar or the drums. Their tunes are different, yet there's something that binds them all together to form an extraordinary collection of soul stirring lyrics and tunes.

Another thing about them is that I find their tunes pretty similiar to another bengali band I liked a lot, Mohiner Ghoraguli. Somewhere they match a lot when it comes to the thoughts they portray.
However the song I liked best was the first I heard, thanks to Ramya, called I am a Rock.
Check it out,

A winter’s day
In a deep and dark december;
I am alone,
Gazing from my window to the streets below
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
I’ve built walls,
A fortress deep and mighty,
That none may penetrate.
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain.
It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

Don’t talk of love,
But I’ve heard the words before;
It’s sleeping in my memory.
I won’t disturb the slumber of feelings that have died.
If I never loved I never would have cried.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries.

Favours and misfortunes

Have you ever done something as a favour to yourself? Sounds weird, doesn't it? Isn't everything we do a favour to ourself?
Yeah..lots of questions, but seriously, giving up or disassociating yourself with some things can really become favours to the self if they become painful and difficult to give up, at the same time. Thats when you have to make and extra effort to break lose, let it go and move on. Thats when you do a favour to yourself by deciding that there are other things in life.
However, the scar remains and definitely comes back to haunt you, it becomes difficult to figure out whether its a lesson you learnt or a fear that will never leave you. Whether it helps you to avoid similiar mistakes or not take chances at all, is something only time can tell.
Again, time or distance don't seem to be the best healers. You just have to be strong enough to cure yourself rather than wait for time or distance to do the needful.

The favour is done and its time to find the strength.

Sweet Reminder

Its Randeep's birthday today. Just like 'nice' roommates would behave, we went around looking for a proper cake for him, but there were none. Partly it was our fault, 9:45 in the night is a little too late to go looking for a cake and partly it was the guy in sweet chariot who had only closed half his shutter when we reached his shop and very smugly he told us, "We are closed". The delicious chocolate cake with dark syrupy chocolate and cherries was lying there right in front of us, but it was too late. Finally we had to settle for some chocolate pastries
But 12 o'clock was fun! just like the great old BITSian days we wrapped up all our phone calls and pulled him out of bed and started the bumps session cerimoniously, but there was a techincal problem, with only three people, two of whom were always required to hold the birthday boy, only one person could hit at a time !
But we couldn't let any such problem spoil the fun, could we? :P
Sapre, being the darling that he is (to randeep) abstained from the 'dreadful' activity of kicking a fellow human being, leaving only varun and me to do the honours. Kicking had become too difficult for us, therefore only 'rapid fire' ( the term for slapping one's @$$ with his own slippers to cause the maximum amount of pain ) was executed with practiced efficiency. After that the usual hugs and 'happy birthday, da ' followed and we polished off the little pastries in 10 seconds flat. The only thing missing was the 'ANC treat' but in this weird city of Bangalore, its not possible to find any shop open after twelve.
Whatever be the case, in the end it was a really sweet reminder of all the great birthdays in celebrated in BITS !

Random thoughts

These are some of the things we (Sapre ,Varun and I) talked about, this weekend. They seem to form such a clear picture of whats going on in our minds...how clearly they portray our boredom and disgust for the city of computers...
1. "12 weeks gone ; 11 more to go"
2. "Too long be , I have never been away from home for this long!"
3. "Job life bhi aisa hi hone wala hay saale!"
4. "Kal, main SHUUUUR gym jayoonga"
5. "Kuchh kam bhi to nahi hay"
6. "MacD's mein Khaatein hay aaj, yahee dinner khaa khaa kar pak gaya hoon"
7. "Going that far is a pain!"
8. "So jaao saalon!"
9."Utth! Aalsi ! jab dekho sota rehta hay!"
And another weekend suddenly goes by, another week starts off in utter hurry to get struck off the count-down list in a corner of my little notebook. Home beckons, we are not homesick, just totally bored with our lives.
Monday morning follows the familiar pattern of shaving, bathing, crunches and breakfast (Shifted from bun to a slightly better breakfast of juice and cake on the insistance of a friend who thought I was running the risk of getting stomach ulsers due to insufficient breakfast, the weird thing people think about in life!)
And I settle smoothly into this couch cum chair and start rattling off lines of code on the very familiar key board... another 10 weeks to go after this one!

CAMERA ...finally!

Finally ..I have my camera ! Bought it in somewhat of a hurry, not hurry exactly, but this time I didn't take too much time to do the necessary research ( one of the pros of working in a software development company, unlimited internet access, be it in terms of checking out different manufacturers and specifications or seeking my 'geeky' and 'gadget crazy' friends' opinion :P)

It was only day before yesterday that I came across this Sony model, which rests happily at the bottom of my cupboard right now. Another day was spent in comparing Kodak, Nikon, Canon and Olympus equivalents and the evening, in reading some n number of reviews of the performance of the camera, written by different users all over the world. Information made space for itself somewhere in my already crowded little brain. About half a dozen calls made to the dealers in Bangalore and I was all set to shell out a considerable chunk of my painfully accumulated savings for this desperately required new toy!

Guess I was the first person in the shop today and by the time the deal was closed I was pretty happy with the biggest purchase I have made all by myself (Dad had gone with me when we bought the comp) , till date. Will post the first batch of snaps once the Bats are charged and I have learn the troubleshooting manual by heart :D.

Holiday (Optional)

Its fun coming to office on a holiday! Every thing is different; 'relaxed' as a friend of mine would want to put it. To start with, the parking lot, with only half a dozen bikes and as many cars would be empty enough to play short pitch cricket!
The office would be really empty and its a wierd feeling to sit in my little corner when I know there are only 5 people instead of the regular 25 on a normal day, sitting there. The cafe would be less crowded and so will the be the TT room.... That reminds me, someone encouraged me to play as much TT as possible today as I wouldn't have to fight for the bat, nice. Lunch would be pretty frustrating though.

I am obsessed with Don McLean's 'American Pie' right now..its one master piece of a song.

To sir, with Love

It was ten minutes past seven in the morning when my phone rang. As usual I was in a deep ,all encompassing slumber when I picked it up. Its common knowledge that only my mom can take the liberty to call me up this early in the morning, but I was REALLY surprised to hear a long forgotten voice on the other side... It was Prodipta Hore, my maths and computer science teacher in class ten!!! Talk about long lost friends, and long lost teachers! And the memories came rushing back, all the tamtrums we threw in class, the tuition class where we tried to make life difficult for him in every possible way, his dissapointment at my screwing up computer science....
It takes so little time to get back in touch and he actually found out my phone number and gave me a call! Thats touching. And all this after 'zero' contact for six long years. The last time I met him was in August , 2000.
But we'll definitely meet sometime in the next week and the past life will be resurrected and we'll laugh at our younger selves and reflect on the future.

If your are destined to meet someone, somewhere in some way, it will definitely happen, but till it happens, keep the faith.

Drifter...

I am NOT influenced by "Being Cyrus". But its a nice movie, none the less.

Worth watching, if nothing else, for Dimple Kapadia's 'old age babe' portrayal of an aspiring woman being stuck with a wasted, day dreamer of a husband. Boman Irani as the hot headed, chick brained parsee banker and Naseeruddin Shah in all his dreamy mastery in the enacting the aforsaid "wasted, day dreamer". Saif, as usual, is in brilliant form, I hope his 'Italian' luck doesn't abandon him too fast though. Its a brilliant movie, no huge messages, no great mushy love talk... no moral in the end. Looks like Govinda style entertainment (read: 4 songs, 5 dance sequences, 114 Jharkhand accented dialogues , 3 car chases and an odd fight sequence) is truely over !

Otherwise the weekend was a celebration of "solitude"! Long, lonely bus rides through Bangalore. Somehow, I have come to like these long winding bus rides on the 201. Sitting alone in some corner in Crosswords and reading the free flowing narrative about Swaminathan and friends (hope that book is still on the rack when I go there next). Spending "quality time" with myself on the terrace trying to find a star in the night sky, waiting for my eyelids to start drooping, the last walk down the narrow staircase and the final act of barbarian self defence by swating a dozen mosquitoes before I am tired enough to drop off.

Google Rocks ( Thanks for the Idea, Ojas :P)

Self Explanatory :P

Short Cuts...

There are none!
If you want to find one, start building it right away.
If you want a morsel of food, run and get it, don't wait for some s#$ o$ a B#@$%h to get it for you. If you are expecting some favour from someone, stop expecting. Everything has a price attached to it...and if you are expecting a little bit of sympathy from the world for what your state is right now, just go screw yourself.
When it becomes difficult to grab a Table tennis bat without being uncivilized or stubborn or outright kiddish, that is exactly what the world looks like.
Every person we come across is a loser in his or her own way, its just how well we hide him within us and put up a facade, and right now, it seems, none of us are bothered with the hiding part. Since no one is bothered about what is right and what isn't, why care?
Reminds me of a caption on Steve austin's T shirt, "Don't expect mercy @ 3:16" ....
Just replace mercy with maturity and we have our whole new world!! Ha Ha! I am so excited...

Solitude

Sitting in the corner of a comfortable office floor, with a computer connected to the internet and window right beside me to allow all my "staring into space" activity and ill advised thoughtfulness at times, I enjoy my solitude. I wouldn't call it loneliness, but a solitude which is comfortable and unnerving at the same times.
Come to think of it, there is no one (other than myself) in the world who actually knows what I want, what makes me happy, what are my insecurities or fears and hence I am less vulnerable, but I am lonely too. As much as I savour my solitude, I wouldn't mind letting some people enter my life and understand me, give me some company, help me know myself better. But some deep seated fear of being hurt again by allowing people to come really close, of becoming utterly predictable kills the urge and sends me back to enjoying the solitude of a quiet anonymous life.
People will say I am contradicting myself again, but I guess we can live sanely only if we are well aquainted with both the sides of the coin.
Listen to this song sometime...

I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me and I walk alone
I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
and I'm the only one and I walk alone

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone

I'm walking down the line
That divides me somewhere in my mind
On the border line
Of the edge and where I walk alone

Read between the lines
What's fucked up and everything's alright
Check my vital signs
To know I'm still alive and I walk alone

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
And I'm the only one and I walk a...

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone...

Long live the Queen

It just got over! The third test.... And the first thing that came to my mind the moment the cricinfo site refreshed itself for the last time was , "Great!!! Long live the Queen!"
I couldn't stop myself saying that. Come on guys, we spend five days sitting in office, refreshing Cricinfo everytime we get a chance, and what does our most "formidable batting line up in the world" give us...
A huge huge defeat. The wall broke when it was required the most, little master suddenly cropped a bad shoulder from somewhere, Dhoni's Dhamaka Fizzled out. Sehwag : 15 balls to adjust and one more to start walking back!!!
I love cricket!! Someone please tell me the Hockey schedule..at least those guys lose convincingly, they don't take you to the peaks of hope before giving you a soft push into ravines!

Seriously, I AM HURT ...once again LONG LIVE THE QUEEN

Half way through...

Officially, this day signifies the half way mark of my stay in Bangalore. We are supposed to present our Mid semester seminars and reports regarding the amount of work we have done over here till date, today.
Only I know how much work I have done here till this day and I am sure if the hours I spent debugging lines of obscure code were included in the evaluation scheme as productive hours, I would have probably shown almost twice the productive I can account for at the present time with the present scheme :P
However, one thing is pretty heartening, student life is coming to a close, at least for the time being ... another couple of months and I'll be a graduate. True, people say its best to be a student, but at times it does get to a person's nerves!

Another week...

The difference between one week or the next one or the previous one seems to diminish with every passing week. The routine is so pathetic and uninteresting that I wonder at times if it really matters at all.
The same things keep repeating themselves again and again. Sometimes, people change their routine by choice and sometimes, by chance. In my case neither happens! There was a time when i thought getting into a routine was so nice... one doesn't have to look for something to do every different day. But now, the comfort has become too disturbing, predictability sucks!

Holi!

This was the first time Holi, the festival of colours, went by and the only colour I came really close to were the purple and yellow stains on the road I stepped on while walking to office today. The whole of yesterday was spent sitting in the office and doing some changes in an User Interface so that whoever my user is enjoys using my code!!
But I did have my share of the colourful business, I coloured all my buttons green, yellow, red and purple just for the fun of it :P
This was by far the quietest holi in my life, the only other times I haven't been involved in the colour fest ( which got translated into mud, eggs and tomato fest in hostel) were the first two years of my life when I was too young to understand what it meant.
I missed it all so much; jumping on people with the most wierd colours in the world, getting thrown into a mud pit and spending hours in front of the wash basins with lemons and other colour removing agents....
Have to get back to the code and make sure everything looks nice and curt again.

Gone are the day....not yet!

Yeah!!
Those days of watching movies on a computer screen with college cronies are not gone yet!
We met up yesterday after travelling in a bus, on foot and about eight kilometers in an Autorickshaw to reach Bangalore central where Suz, Bhargav and Sikandar were already waiting for us. Just like the old times, we started pulling each others' legs, trying to decide who should bear the expenses of the food we were about to devour. Just like old times, we ended up paying for each of our shares :P
Then, instead of coming back and sleeping off in our own rooms we decided to stay over with Sikandar in his HUGE room at the NAL guest house...after stopping for Ice Cream at Corner House we entered the NAL campus and as usual we were in a for a movie show on his comp. I have been in the Elisha Cuthbert Fan Club for quite some time now and now, after seeing 'Girl next door', I know why the size of the community just keeps on increasing !!!
After the movies, everyone's love life was disected for some time till we decided to sleep off...

A great evening spent with the people who know me the best! what a way to get over all the bitterness from the last couple of days.

Back to being Rude...

I have this reputation of being rude and brash to everyone I come across. I call it, "cold reasoning mixed with an occasional bout of madness". But then people always love to believe their own version of the story.
I just ended up alienating three friends of mine, yesterday. Two of them, over a telephone conversation and one through an email. And then I felt horrible for some time. Surfed the net like mad and read a few short stories from a free ebook I found, called Dubliners (James Joyce). One of the stories (counterparts to be specific) was there in our English Literature course for ISC.
But I am fine now, if people don't understand me, its okay if they can't put up with me. Too egoistic I think, but at the end of the day, its always better to lose an aquaintance if there is no chance ever of getting a friend.

A normal Weekend

A normal weekend.
Late night lachcha ( BITSian slang, for 'Laughing and chatting') on Friday, late morning on Satruday. Evening spent with friends and night playing cards and talking about various subjects starting with cricket and ending at careers and dating! Sunday was a bit different in the sense that I finally broke my vow of not watching any movie at PVR.
Saw CRASH, I had never seen an oscar winning movie in a theatre before and the initial assumption that the movie was going to be extremely involved in its content and treatment of the subject it adressed was almost proved right, but for the entry of the foul mouthed American Blacks and Whites together.
What followed was a emotional roller coaster about how every white man is not prejudiced against the blacks and why it's so difficult for a black man to see a white as just another human being and still be accepted into his home, by his own mother, leave alone his community. The other ethnic groups either present in the movie or mentioned in there definitely give it a much larger appeal than just the 'coloured' concept. Its one movie you should watch if you believe in emotions and coincidences and the fact that life must go on. A really nice movie, its worth all of those one hundred and fifty bucks I spent and if you know me for my stinginess, this is a clear sign that you should see the movie.
An autorickshaw ride from forum, the wonderful cricket match between South Africa and Australia, a late dinner, few goodnights on SMS and falling into a deep sleep waiting to wake up for another of those weeks which seem to be similiar to the extent of being carbon copies of the previous one.

Ganguly

I was one of the rare bengalis who thought including Sourav in the Indian team touring England in July '96 WAS a religious selection. However, the man changed everything about Indian cricket along with everything I thought about him... Its been a long time since I wanted to write something about the whole BCCI , Greg Chappell and Sourav Issue, but after reading this, I found it mirrored my views perfectly.

Return to routine

After breakfast it was time to start on the long journey home. We started off at 11:30 in the morning, but even that wasn't all that uneventful. Umesh, the driver, had hurriedly closed the door of our van with the keys still left on the dashboard, inside. The door got locked and we were to travel by a vehicle which had its keys locked inside it !
The rubber lining of the front window was removed and the window was lower to gain access to the keys. We were moving fine till we got caught by Tamilnadu police just minutes away from the Karnataka border and our van owner had apparently not paid taxes for some time. A little 'reasoning ' got us through. After that it was another quite and wonderful journey while we crossed into karnataka and went on our way to Balmuri falls. We stopped for lunch at Kamat's , this time the fare was 'North Karnataka thali , everything except the chapati's made from maize flour and the buttermilk was alien to me, but it tasted great.
Balmuri falls was somewhat of a disappointment though, due to the scarcity of tourist spots around Mysore, the place had become highly crowded and as a consequence, extremely filthy. There were people bathing all around, kids playing in the water, the scene looked really fit to depict on of those famed Dhobi Ghats, but for a dhobi!
After Balmuri we decided to just head home. Dusk fell and after another stop for juice at the same place where we had had breakfast the previous day, we entered Bangalore. By the time we reached home, every joint was aching. A hot bath and some painkillers put me off to deepest sleep of my life.
And while I was thinking all about the last weekend, its friday already :P

Rest of the snaps

Safari n Cricket

More snaps

The next morning started with Srinivas's cell phone alarm ringing after every five minutes. He had put an alarm for 4:30 and kept pressing the 'snooze' relegiously every time the alarm rang, we were only remotely awake when Jayram knocked at our door at 5 and asked if we were ready, I was quick to reply, "almost" with three guys in the room still fast asleep!
We boarded our Jeeps at half past five and thundered off into the forest while it was still pretty dark. I was so sleepy that I hardly had any interest in finding out what animals we might sight, but then I wasn't deprived of much, all we saw were a number of deers, a peacock and a couple of stags (on our way back). However, the high point of the safari was when one of the tyres of our Jeep got punctured in the middle of the jungle... With the sun just rising and the first rays hitting the mountain tops, it was a really beautiful journey down the deserted forest track, with a herd of deers crossing the road every now and then. We stopped on a bridge for a proper group snap this time, for once, all twelve of us were in the snap.

Cricket again

We reached the resort at eight in the morning and after placing orders breakfast it was time for cricket. As usual, the teams of six went onto the ground as we lost both the matches, again. The four match series ended 0-4 against us, but who cares ? The fun we had was more than winning!
After that it was time for breakfast, which, surprisingly was much decent when compared to the lunch we had the previous afternoon. After breakfast, It was time to pack up and move, just that it was a bit difficult to accept that the trip cannot go on for ever...

Campfire

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The campfire was something I was really looking forward to, but a light shower at around 8:30 dampened my spirits as well as the wood kept ready to be burnt. Dinner arrived from some restaurant in the little village at nine. Narayan did all the good work of going and getting the stuff. But a little confusion caught all the poor veggies unaware when radhesh discovered morsels of fish in the so called "Pure vegetarian kurma"! However, the other side dish was Sambhar, true to its vegetarian spirits, people did end up enjoying their dinner, not to mention, the delecious porotas (circular south Indian versions of the normal Paratha of the north, but way tastier) were just right after the tiring frisbee game and the rain.

Will it burn ?

I guess that was the question top-most on our minds when we walked to the spot where the fire was supposed to be started. The wood was pretty damp and it took quite some time and a lot of paper to finally get the fire going. After that it was fun!
The beer bottles were opened and so was the little quarter of whiskey. Some really nice conversation, punctuated by repartee as often as possible, followed and its always a fact that in such sitiuations one person has to become a Bakra, either willingly or through sheer coincidence. We did have our man and hence, our fun.
The fire was more of a personal thing to me, since I was the bonfire enthusiast even on campus and sometime before Holi, last March I did end up pursuading people to have a bonfire and sit around it. Memories just keep flowing back....
It was pretty late by the time the Beer got over and another light shower killed off the already dying fire. We returned to our rooms in anitcipation of a very early morning the next day.
On the schedule next, was a forest Safari at 5 in the morning while it was still dark. Body pains were killing me and I was fast asleep under the influence of some heavy painkillers and sedatives, even before my roommates had finished with their first round of Least Count (A card game).

The Best Weekend...

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The lunch was ok, neither great nor inedible. Besides, the two hours of cricket has multiplied hunger by a some obscene amount and anything that was close to cooked was eaten happily.
After lunch we decided to visit the temple on top of a hillock about half a kilometer away from the place we were put up. It could be seen from the cricket ground. But before that, we decided to relax for sometime while some of the guys went off to the closest village to get some softdrinks and other "light snacks". It took them about an hour and a half to return from their mega shopping expedition while we spent our time lying around here and there. Sajin and Radhesh took advantage of a frail hammock and by the time they had finished with it, I was sure it will give way under the weight of an infant :P

Destination Temple

Everyone except Radhesh went ahead on a short trek to visit the temple mentioned earlier. It was a pretty uneventful trek , except at one place where we had pass through a quite precarious opening in a bush to follow a short cut. Varun dove into the opening scared of a barking dog that was making it way towards us, while poor Sajin was really distressed at the size of the opening. The view from the top of the hill was breathtaking to say the least. We spent about half an hour on top, standing against the steady breeze, posing in as many different ways as possible to make ourselves look like the set of perfect adventurers.
By the time we returned from the trek it was dusk.
Back inside the safe boundaries of the resort we decided to have a game of frisbee played in the rugbee style, the same teams of six pitched against each other trying to score goals by firing th frisbee into the opponents' goal posts. It was too tiring and a bit too agressive for our already dimantled bodies. After a bath and dinner it was time for the most awaited event of the trip: the camp fire.

...tomorrow

The Best Weekend till date.

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The trip I was talking about in the previous posts happened and it was the best thing that has happened to me since I came to Bangalore. We ( twelve people) went to Masinagudi, a little hamlet somewhere in the forests on the border of Tamilnadu and Karnataka.
Now, the trip was too good for me to finish writing all about it at one go, also I want to go into some of the smaller details without which the whole trip would not have been as enjoyable as it was, so I guess I will be writing about the trip throughout this whole week.

The Onward Journey

We started off at 6:15 from the office. The weather was really nice, it had rained the previous night and it was overcast in the morning with a light breeze blowing. All of us assembled at the office on time and were on our way by half past six. Nothing happened on the way, except being stopped by a traffic police who, contrary to all accepted conventions, didn't ask for a bribe citing some obsure reason and actually let the vehicle move ahead.
We stopped at Kamat's for a breakfast comprising Dosa and Kesari Bath (a sweet dish I have had only in Karnataka although it claims to belong to deccan cuisine). The people who decided to have Idly were in for a 'cylindrical' surprise! The shape of Kamats' Idlies were cylindrical, carefully rolled in a banana leaf, instead of usual 3 inch flying saucer shaped ones.
After that it was a non-stop journey till Bandipur where we were told that we could go on a safari only at three and trekking was also not allowed. We decided to move ahead into Tamilnadu and get to Masinagudi, passing through Muddumalai Wildlife sancuary on the way, unfortunately the only animals we saw on the way were monkeys and deers.
We reached Masinagudi at around midday and checked into our rooms, booked in advance. The beauty of the place is not something I can write and explain, fortunately we could take some snaps and I have uploaded them have a look!

Cricket: The first round

The first thing we did over there was ... play cricket! Teams of six pitched against each other with the previous exposure to practical cricket (the analysis and commenting that we do while waching matches can be safely passed into the domain of theoritical excellence) being holding a bat at least six months back either on campus or on another office trip (for the regular employees) . We tried to look and play really well...but thats not what happened to us. However after the most tiring two hours of most of our lives we went in for lunch.

And I have to get down to some work right now, therefore, lunch and everything after that can wait for tomorrow

Silent Night?

I was sitting outside my room, chatting with a friend pretty late last night.
I couldn't help noticing the variety of sounds that are created and heard even more clearly in the relative silence of the night. The street dogs barking away to glory, involved in one of their customary late-night brawls. The creaking shutters of the workshop right beside our house.
The workshop seems to have developed its own habit of adding a number of decibels to the existing noise levels, whether its the constant hammering and welding throughout the day or the wierd,eerie creaking of its half closed shutters at night. There was the occasional heavy rumbling of a truck as it thundered along Bannerghatta Road, generously blowing its horns. Now this is another unexplained behaviour, where's the pointing blowing your horns so loud when your vehicle is probably the only one on the road?
It was kinda windy too, the sound of the coconut leaves brushing against each other in the no-so-gentle breeze complemented the creaking of the workshop to give the beautiful haunted house effect. And I kept sitting there for quite sometime, just soaking in the sounds disturbing the otherwise silent, idle night, allowing the breeze to hit my face, in some invisible attempt to exact an utterly humiliating revenge for some unknown offence against someone, someday.
It was two thirty by the time the dogs decided to give up their fight and settle down in their stipulated corners, the trucks became less frequent, the breeze died down. I sat there staring at the red sky. I walked back into my room only at three after a silent goodnight to the creaking shutter. The night was sane, sober and subdued again, just the creaking persisted.

To Suzie and Guppu...

This is one of those obscure posts that are a little too involved in the jargon used and the people and feelings referred to, but I just can't help writing what I am writing right now.
They showed F.R.I.E.N.D.S 10-17 on star world yesterday and I was sitting in front of the TV trying to remember the last time I saw that Episode. Usually I don't like the psenti sessions they put on friends, but this one sure was different. The scene in which all six of them leaves their keys on the kitchen cabinet is too difficult to ignore.
It was the summer of 2004, a day before our Ap-T compre when Gupta suddenly gave a loud call from his den, 126,Vyas, "Guys, 1017 download complete" and we decided to see it right then. That day when we sat and watched the hour long episode, I had no clue that one day I will be sitting in a PG in Bangalore and watching the same thing without Sujan and Gupta there to throw in a psenti or a sarcastic comment ( in that order) every now and then.
It was horrible, but also in a way there is something that binds me to two of the best chaps I lived with during those wierd and wonderful college days.
Thanks for everything Guppu and Suz, everything, right from the "u are the fucker" fights in Ram in the first year to the psenti sessions and brown tape signing enthu on our last evening together on campus...miss you guys.
However F.R.I.E.N.D.S will always be there, eh?

Relocated :|

As the title says, I have been relocated to the first floor from my nice little corner in the ground floor to another corner in the first floor. When I first got to know about the relocation business, I was really pissed about the whole thing, but right now i think I am feeling a little happy to have a huge window right beside me and I love a window from which I can see the sky and just keep staring for ages... besides there are a lot of people on this floor and I am hoping that much of my coding frustrations will be done away with due to the presence some knowledgable souls around me.
The guys have successfully managed to split all the BITSians and have placed us in four different corners of the floor, for the first time I won't see a BITSian if I decide to turn around in the chair and chat.:P
Whatever it is, work still needs to be done and I am looking forward to the trip just too much to even think about how this new workplace environment is going to shape up, who cares, I will be coding anyways .

Weekend Trip

Finally the office trip scheduled for the next weekend seems to be happening. We'll be leaving early on Saturday morning and should be back by Sunday night.
There are two reasons I am so keen on going on this trip, firstly because we (the interns) will be the younger than everyone else in the team, therefore very little responsibility and a lot of fun and secondly, I AM BORED OF THE USUAL WEEKEND !!! Now I'll happily launch into another of those "Bangalore is boring" lectures of mine, but there is a lot of work to be done and i am eagerly waiting for the weekend, at least something to look forward to. Only on Saturday I was complaining to Sapre, one of those poor souls who share their living quarters with me, how extraordinarily boring life can get when you have absolutely nothing to look forward to in a whole week (except, ofcourse, the friday evening)! As I said , Finally, something to look forward to . Here are some of the snaps of the place we are going to visit, Hope it hasen't changed much :P

The Snap of the month!

Stairway(s) to Heaven

The escalators in Garuda mall

Check out the Hogging snaps, most of them didn't come out :(