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

More snaps

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...

Click here for some more...

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.

Click here for some more snaps

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 :(

Food Fest!!

This weekend was another one of those wild food fests. It had started a little early with Suhel's visit and it went on till saturday evening. It was simply awesome...
We started off with a chicken snacker at KFC , followed by something called mongolian (or was it malaysian) noodles and lamb roast, not to forget the golden fried babycorn for starter. Slightly ironical to think that we ate delicious steamed corn for five bucks apeice and ended up paying almost twelve times the amount for the younger version.
Friday was another celebration of junk food, After a Paneer roll at a roadside joint and a buttered bun at another one we went off to Forum to eat at the mother of all junk food vendors, MacDonald's , the same old McGrill, medium fries and medium cola. We enjoyed ourselves groping for each others' fries and fighting over a sliver of a burger as if those little nursery days aren't over yet. Saturday afternoon found us at Takatak, another fast food joint. This time it was heavy stuff, Mutton Biryani and even I couldn't believe myself when I figured that I was too full to polish off all the food that was served to me :( But as they say, the best is always reserved for the end:
Dinner at Chung's was NICE! Hot dragon rolls smothered in the tangy hot sauce , rice noodles and some really spicy mushrooms. A fitting end to a delightful weekend. Just that the disobedient belly doesn't seem to take any notice of the painful crunches I put in every morning.

Reunion...

We met after a year and three months, Suhel and I, and a lot has changed since the last time we saw each other. He had started working for some advertising Hot Shot and I am still in the process of completing my graduation. Things have changed quite a bit. But, we can still talk like no time has passed at all. Priorities have changed as have the ways we look at life. Come to think of it seriously, there isn't much common to us anymore, except that we both go to Asansol when we go home.
We walked down MG Road and spent a lot of time trying to disentangle each other's love lifes. While he kept trying to convince me that I was in love with one woman , I was more inclined to give him a more practical approach to life and Boudhayan kept dropping smart comments every now and then. Oh, I forgot all about that chap. The three of us had started our academic careers in red checked shirts and red shorts in a little school called Wonderland Nuersery School and we studied together for 13 years , till our ICSE in 2000. So much has passed between the three of us, but when we met up after so many days, just felt like we were back to those days when homework and tiffin used to be the only matters of concern...
Will upload the snaps once Suhel gets them for me.

Handicapped !!

The skin on the lower part of my right palm, near the wrist is dead. So are the nerve cells at the tip of my right index finger and I call this handicap mousititis. Excessive screen navigation using the mouse got my palm totally... you know what :P.

Plus there is a paunch growing out of my previously flat, well-behaved stomach and I don't blame it either. At least nine hours of sitting in front of a computer surely makes it an easy task for the belly to revolt and make its presence felt in a really ugly way. These are the two very evident physical handicaps I have been subjected to. And then there is mental fatigue. By the time I reach home after having dinner at Saleem Bhai's hotel, I am in no condition to think anything positive. Its become natural to be tired and despondent at night after hours of coding and code breaking...

Some friend of mine just reminded me that I am perhaps the only person in Bangalore to have not seen Rang De Basanti...another handicap, this time its Time that eluded me. Never found the time to go and watch. But then neither am I a fan of Aamir Khan nor am I in dire need of some patriotic inspiration and I entertain myself enough through all the net surfing (mis)adventures to actually need to go out and watch a movie in a theatre and get entertained...

The worst thing to say

They say, the worst thing to say is, "It could have been that way"...All these days I never believed them. For I had never had to say that. However, last night was another one of those long thought sessions, basically, the TV wasn't working and I was too pissed off to even try to tune it. Just lay quietly and thought...Life would have been so different had I not done decently in my four years of engineering, I would have been happy and content with whatever I got, for I wouldn't have had the choices to do all that I didn't do. I have participated in many a debate and discussion about choice is an illusion, then again I laughed and argued that choices were always fun. To have a choice was always a good thing.

However, making the wrong choice sometimes doesn't even leave you a chance to make ammends, even before you realise it, the chance is lost and you can spend the rest of your life repenting. But it will never come back...
But I guess I'll have to be content with saying , "It could have been that way".

Bloggers' Classic

I have been waiting to write this one for quite some time. A day in the life of your's truly, but it seems to be a staple component of every blog i have read or glanced through. I am sure its not a necessary component of a blog, but at the same time, it would be really entertaining to write how my life changed since the time I left campus last December.
The mornings don't start any more with the jingle of the little bells hanging from the huge banyan tree in the courtyard of our warden; someone's mobile rings , or my own alarm for eight o'clock. A sleeply walk to the bogs and the process of waking up continues till I am jostled into the complete awakening by the noisy flush! I step out into the sunny room and stare pitifully at the most lazy creatures in the world, the three room mates of mine. The nicest guys in the world, but I am sure they haven't seen 8 a.m. in Bangalore yet. Brushing my teeth, switching on the gyser happens and then its time to exercise. 45 crunches punctuated with heavy breathing, an occasional grunt and a curse or two. Bath in the life of a bachelor is naturally associated with some washing. Whether the clothes I wash get cleaned or not is not a matter of concern. What really matters is that i soak them in some soap water wait diligently for half an hour as instructed at the back of the sachet, wash them and put them on the line to dry.
A bun for breakfast follows the seven minutes walk to the office. Checking mail , when i get one. There are people in the world who will beg you to stay in touch when you leave them, but never find time to reply to an e-mail when you actually make an effort to stay in touch. The number of mails in my inbox every morning was going down...but when I checked it today...there were none...
Even before I figure out the bugs in the previous day's code, it's time for lunch. After lunch till dinner, life is spent in front of the comp or dicussing code with the room mates who reach office slightly later than me. We have cups of coffee and tea, play table tennis, surf the net, upload blogs... in a way, spend off our time, some way or the other.
By the time the ping pong rests its past nine o'clock. A tired walk to the restaurant followed by another one back to the room and after watching the TV for some time...its time sleep.
But thats when the mind starts wondering...
Those uncomfortable questions keep coming back to the fatigued brain. But before I reach a solution, I am asleep. Nightmares rule the head till the welcome chiming of the alarm ushers a new day...assuring me of another day to live .

Digesting dreams...

If I were to believe the famous Idiom, "Morning shows the day" and apply it to the present week, life doesn't look rosy at all. Right now I am chewing a tab of Gelusil MPS and sitting at office typing away on the key pad. All the delicious stuff ( Chicken at KFC, the delicious MacD's softee, Salim Bhai ka Paratha, some soft fresh buns, banana chips and half a dozen other less important ingredients to a rocking weekend!) that reached my stomach through out the weekend doesn't seem to do much for the well being of the same.

My obsession with the Laptop continues, checked out a couple of heavy duty, smart apple notebooks. Really funky but bloody costly too. Even if i think of buying them after another four months, i won't have the dosh..:( The Lenovo X series thingie still seems to be the best bet! the only other lappy i liked is too bloody heavy for my shoulder and the lighter versions are too heavy for the pocket. Such are the problems faced by the common man when it comes to fulfilling little material dreams...

I guess the pun I intended to use in the title is a bit too much to digest :P ...

Still in the Lyrics Haze...

This time it's another really famous song, Stairway to heaven (Led Zep). Again, I had never read through the lyrics properly before yesterday. These four lines are not intriguing, but really inspiring again. I dunno why these things seem so inspiring to me, but there is definitely something. Something that talks about freedom, happiness, laughter. Its been ages since I've fallen off the bed in a fit of laughter. And I ain't all that old yet. He..He.
Interaction with nature has also been reduced to a bare minimum... the long walks or bicycle rides through the fields I went on every now and then, while on campus have stopped altogether. Bangalore is not the place to live in if your walks down the dirt track mean something to you... but as the singer says..

And it’s whispered that soon
If we all call the tune
Then the piper will lead us to reason.
And a new day will dawn
For those who stand long
And the forests will echo with laughter.

She's just a woman!

Have you ever listened to the song "She's always a woman" by Billy Joel?

I just went through the lyrics the 14th time today and I am still intrigued. What was the man thinking when he wrote the song. I dunno what to write...here's the lyrics...see if you think the way i do. Perhaps I am too confused to think anything, but this song does have something about it which is not true and neither is it totally false...there, I am in my state of eternal confusion again...

She's Always a Woman


She can kill with a smile
She can wound with her eyes
She can ruin your faith with her casual lies
And she only reveals what she wants you to see
She hides like a child
But she's always a woman to me

She can lead you to love
She can take your or leave you
She can ask for the truth
But she'll never believe you
And she'll take what you give her as long as it's free
She steals like a thief
But she's always a woman to me

Oh--she takes care of herself
She can wait if she wants
She's ahead of her time
Oh--and she never gives out
And she never gives in
She just changes her mind

She will promise you more
Than the Garden of Eden
Then she'll carelessly cut you
And laugh while you're bleedin'
But she'll bring out the best
And the worst you can be
Blame it all on yourself
Cause she's always a woman to me

Oh--she takes care of herself
She can wait if she wants
She's ahead of her time
Oh--and she never gives out
And she never gives in
She just changes her mind

She is frequently kind
And she's suddenly cruel
She can do as she pleases
She's nobody's fool
But she can't be convicted
She's earned her degree
And the most she will do
Is throw shadows at you
But she's always a woman to me

To smash or not to smash...

The game of table tennis is easy, that is, if you know how and when to smash that little ball with all your might! I never seem to get the timing right. Losing game after game either because the ball was too low for a forehand smash or too high for a back hand one... and then there is this concern about my partner if we play a doubles game, with the increased number of stakes to the only table at office, people have forgotten that there ever existed a singles version of the game. We have to wait in queues to get a chance to occupy the space behind one quarter of the table and play a game of patience ( read: waiting for the opposition to get frustrated with rallying and smash the ball into the net). Agression is totally lost and its always a game of patience and placement. In a working environment, even in a game like TT we end up playing the thinking game; only yesterday while going for dinner we were complaining how our natural games have changed and how we are supressing our instincts to play a safe game... a hint of how life changes in the bigger world, eh?

Inspiration

I don't follow cricket with the zeal that an average Indian follows it with. I spent most of the time sleeping through the third test match while my room mates were busy discussing the different strategies that the team could have used to salvage some pride in the lost match. My laziness is not a sign of disinterest, just that i think its totally the teams business to do what they think is right, for the fact that they are there and I am not, means that they know better.

However, yesterday's match was inspiring, the TV in the office is at some distance from where I sit and I started running towards the TV when Sachin was on 95, but by the time I reached it I could only see the replay of his dismissal.

But then Dhoni came out, all guns blazing and surely, that was inspiration. To see one man tear apart the morale of a whole team is great, especially when the team is Pakistan. The last thirteen overs were mind blowing. He cut, he drove, he pulled ....basically he just enjoyed himself and in the process gave India a victory which nothing less than phenomenal.
Its inspiring, to see what ONE man can do if he does it right!

Minister,Defend yourself!

I had never thought i would end up writing about politics on my blog! But in the present circumstances, i guess i feel too strongly about something and i had better write it down before it takes a back seat.
After dinner, we sat down in front of the TV for this show called Devil's Advocate which is a series of exclusive interviews of emminent personalities with Karan Thapar. I must say i am a huge fan of Karan Thapar for the way he handles his interviews. His inteview with the then Defence minister, George Fernandez was the first one in a chain of interviews that I had seen. However that is not the point of this post.
Defence minister Pranab Mukherjee was on the Recieving end of Karan's pointed questioning yesterday and he did make a fool of himself. Really sorry of using such a strong word, the behaviour of the minister was not only outrageous but also he was not able to answer any of the questions directed to him even close to convincingly... I was really shocked to see how a defence minister could be so evasive and unclear in his responses to a set of straight forward questions (after they were clarified three to four times by the interviewer). For every question his answer was "I don't agree with you" or " This is your conclusion!" or "Everything that was necessary has been done" or"You are not a court of law!" or something as unbelieveable as "Don't make me answer the same question twice".He refused to make any statement on any of the issues adressed during the interview.
What kind of a statesman are you minister if you can't defend yourself , your department or your government in a well meaning interview? How will the country depend on you to defend it incase of a not so well meaning operation from across the border!
Pranab Mukherjee not only tainted himself but definitely clarified one fact, that the defence ministry is one confused bunch of people who don't have their figures right or don't want to keep the people informed. I guess the country could do with a few more people who at least know how to handle an adept interviewer.
Minister, please learn to defend yourself properly before you get down to the task of defending the country.

Growing up.

Another day went by..another nine hours spent in the office , typing away on the comp...lines of code , incomprehensible to the normal human being, hated by the not-so-normal ones and despised by the one who writes it. 183 english tracks played in my ears almost twice before i realised that i have been listening to the same songs for quite sometime. Life in a corner of a building where I am totally unreachable , except through the internet, gets to one a little too fast. There is not much to show for a whole day spent in front of a comp, especially when you know that everything you did right from the morning needs to be changed to incorporate a simple detail which you might have forgotten due to a momentary lapse of reason (i guess the music caught me there ;)) ...
A lunch loaded with the kind of vitamins and proteins a dietician would give his right hand for and devoid of the essential human requirement, Taste, is consumed with the minimum fuss. followed by another marathon session of trying to understand and create obsure procedures for vaguer needs of out-of-the world engineers. Perhaps this is how you know you are grown. I would have pulled the house down had my food not tasted good when i as a kid at home. When you do everything you hated with just as much compassion as you tend to your favourite flower bed or with as much interest as you read your first peice of porn literature, you can safely conclude that you've grown up.

Desk Magic!!

Did a new book ever increase your interest to study a lot? Or were you one of those geeks who would study just as much whether its a new book or an old one? Any thing new always got my interest soaring in trying to use it, whether it's a new book or a new Table tennis bat... And so is the case with a desk. But slightly different, we were assigned desks at the company a couple of days back...and the enthusiam to sit at my own chair and getting down to work on my own project and listening to my own music on my own headphones really makes a whole lot of difference... I haven't done as much work on my project in a whole week as I did yesterday and i am sure its all about having my own place in this office. One place that i can call mine, no disturbances.I guess I am a bit selfish, but more than that i think its just Desk Magic!