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!