āstitva

Kaam bada ya Naam?

2012-01-21T12:53:00.001+05:30

All your life you are spoon-fed one single message: You are destined for great things. For that, you toil hard. Study as much as possible. Play as many sports as possible. Learn as many musical instruments as possible. You do everything that would make you look good on paper. You get into the top institutes of your chosen profession. You end up among the toppers there too. And you are on the cusp of getting placed in a great organization as well. Life's pretty good, eh?

Had that been the complete story, had that been all that there is to life, I would not have been writing this post! Obviously, there is a but.

Let's talk for a moment about how one of these trophy kids* decides which companies to target in the campus placements.

Almost all campuses have a day basis. Stripping it of all terminologies, it usually means that companies come to campus in the decreasing order of their pay scales. Now imagine the thought process of our kid. And imagine the environment within the campus. Almost everyone is targeting these highest paying jobs. Why? Is it just the money?

Probably not. I feel something at least as important as the money is the prestige value. A person who is expected to crack a first day offer (and by expected I mean good grades and a good pedigree) will be distraught if he doesn't, not because he won't get the monies, but because there is loss of face within the peer group. So the kid gives it all to get into one of those firms, usually not caring whether he is interested in that job at all.

The key word here is usually. Most of the times, students convince themselves that it is indeed their ambition to get into consulting or finance. They believe in it precisely because they want to (or even have to) believe in it. Else how would they justify their getting into these firms? Few like saying it is just for the money. And even fewer will admit that it is the social status attached to the job that attracts them. Edit: Not that there is anything wrong with it. The only question to ask is are you being completely honest with yourself?

And there are a few who passionately believe that this chosen stream is really their calling. Nothing better than that, is there?

But every so often, one or two of these students will question this mindset. They will want to explore other opportunities. Those which will not pay as much and definitely are not as highly regarded by this peer group. What goes on, then, in the mid of such guys? How do they decide what to do? How do they resist the lure of money & respect and try something which might give them more satisfaction. And they don't even know whether it will give them satisfaction? Should the institute help such people out? Should the peer group be more understanding? Are our placement systems completely apathetic to the problems of such people?

How does this person decide ki Kaam bada ya naam? I will try and answer that in the next post.

A Nice Pair

2012-01-20T18:43:00.004+05:30

While I had heard the song, Emptiness (Tune mere jaana) quite a long back, I was unaware of the existence of the female version (Maine Mere Jaana), which is just as good..! Posting both.

Tune Mere Jaana
- Rohan Rathore

Ho love of mine..

with a song and a wine..

You’re harsh and divine..

like truths and a lie..

but the tale ends not here..

I’ve nothing to fear..

for my love is yell of giving an hold on…

in the bright emptiness..

in the room full of it..

is a cruel mistress ho ho o…

I feel the sunrise..

that nest all hollowness..

or i have the way to go in that cold…

And i feel so lonely yea..

There s a better place from this emptiness..

And i’m so lonely yea..

There s a better place from this emptiness..

yei yei yei ya….

Aa.. aa.. aa…..

Tune mere jaana..

Kabhi nahi jana..

Ishq mera dard mera.. haaye…

Tune mere jaana..

Kabhi nahi jana..

Ishq mera dard mera …

Aashiq teraaa..

Bheed mein khoya rehta hai.

Jaane jahaan a..

Puchho toh itna kehta hai..

And i feel so lonely yea..

There s a better place from this emptiness..

And i’m so lonely yea..

Maine Mere Jaana

- Kaushi Diwakar

Tu Aaja
Tu aaja

Mujhko meri sazaa toh suna jaa
Woh aahein haan woh aansu...
mere hisse ke mujhko rula jaa

sapne tere saare jinme main rehti thi
tukde ban ke mere
Zakhm seene me kar gaye ho

maine mere jaana kyun nahi jaana
ishq tera, dard tera
Maine Mere Jaana Kyun Nahi Jaana

Ishq Tera, Dard Tera
Akeli akeli
reh gayi bin tere yun akeli
main tadpoo'n ya taarsoo'n
Ya chali aau'n main paas tere
itni tanhai hai zindagi kho gayi

baatein karne saari aa rahi hoon tujhse hi
maine mere jaana ab hai jaana.....
ishq tera dard tera haaye
maine mere jaaana ab hai jaana
ishq tera dard tera

tu jo gaya......
haal ye mera rehta hai
dil ye mera aaa..aaa....
khud se hi tanha rehta hai

and i feel too lonely yeah...
thats a better place than this
Emptiness

and I'm too lonely
thats a better place than this
Emptiness

Surprised?

2012-01-17T17:42:00.000+05:30

I hear a voice,
It is she
The one whom I have been
Waiting to see
She comes up close
And whispers in my ear
Looks at my eyes
Tells me not to shed tears
She cradles my face
And sings me a song
Of sweet memories from
A time long gone
But just as I start
To feel a bit safe
I wake up and find
It was my TV for God's sake!

Foolish Desires

2012-01-01T03:13:00.001+05:30

It's New Year and everyone is partying. Celebrating with people whose company they enjoy. The campus is full of happy people drunk in the spirits of friendship. But there are some, who even in the midst of this crowd are feeling all alone. There are some at the back of whose minds is a hope. A foolish hope, maybe. They are waiting for that call, or that message which they know will not come. They are all pining for it. Checking their phones every 10 minutes. Looking at their inboxes, or their chats, or their facebook pages.

But it won't come. He knows that person is out there, chatting with someone else. Right now. How then can this person feel inebriated in this atmosphere? If only wishes could come true. Just this once. And just then, a couple he knows walks in. And he has to wish them a Happy New Year, drinking in his tears, putting on that face he has mastered by now.

Happy New Year folks.

Two Old Verses

2011-12-18T17:36:00.000+05:30

Found two printouts which used to be on my wall in my cube at Adobe.

This first one is from Scrubs. Fell in love with these lines and the music then. Couldn't decipher a few words though.

Any minute now

My ship is coming in

I'll keep checking the horizon

I'll stand on the bowl*

Feel the waves come crashing

Come crashing down, down, down on me

And you say, be still, my love

Open up your heart, let the light shine in

Don't you understand,

I already have a plan,

I am waiting for my real life to begin

My real life to begin

Don't you understand

I already have a plan

I am waiting for my real life to begin

On a clear day, I can see, see a very long way...!

It obviously talks of death, which is a key theme in the series, but it seems to speak of death metaphorically too, hinting to the lows we deal with everyday, and how we look forward to be rescued, have hope, for something new to begin.

That's what I think anyways.

The second one actually came from a college & work colleague, Meenal. She gave this to me on my birthday along with a nice beer bar cutout which people fought over to keep when I left Adobe :D

It's your birthday, so don't feel down;

Don't think bad stuff and frown;

Your life should be filled with mirth;

Just look what you've done since your birth.

You started out really small,

Now you're really filled out and tall.

In the beginning you would just cry,

Now you can laugh if you try.

You've done quite well since your start,

So as you grow older take heart;

Keep up the good work and don't be a jerk;

Stay happy till you're an old fart.

:-)

Belated Happy Birthday!

2011-12-02T08:28:00.001+05:30

Good Night

Rain drops on the window

Glowing like pearls in the light

Hauntingly mirror the tears flowing

Down the widow's face at night

That gust of wind on the shore

Making the swings scream in delight

Also carries the silent sob

Of the jilted lover's plight

The early snow in the winter

That makes the young ones joyfully fight

Brings dismay to the homeless

Not knowing where to sleep that night

Should I laugh or should I cry

No more can I rely on other's advice

No more can my mother wish away the question

By putting me to bed and saying Good Night

Self Help Groups (contd.)

2011-11-27T11:13:00.001+05:30

A shot in the arm to the argument for the usefulness of women self-help groups for the society (In addition to what I wrote about it here).

A take on how HUL is reaching the rural markets through these women SHGs.

Once

2011-11-27T02:20:00.001+05:30

Lovely movie this, came across it absolutely randomly. It has some very hmm earthy songs and just a movie that makes you smile and shed a tear at the same time. I am a sucker for such movies.

Copying what imdb says about it, succinct description:

"An (unnamed) Guy is a Dublin guitarist/singer-songwriter who makes a living by fixing vacuum cleaners in his Dad's Hoover repair shop by day, and singing and playing for money on the Dublin streets by night. An (unnamed) Girl is a Czech who plays piano when she gets a chance, and does odd jobs by day and takes care of her mom and her daughter by night. Guy meets Girl, and they get to know each other as the Girl helps the Guy to put together a demo disc that he can take to London in hope of landing a music contract. During the same several day period, the Guy and the Girl work through their past loves, and reveal their budding love for one another, through their songs."

Watch the movie..!!

A few songs from the movie:

Falling Slowly

If You Want Me

This one is fun.. less than a minute in length, but so much fun :-)

And one last nice one.

Keep singing :-)

Ideas

2011-11-11T01:19:00.001+05:30

This is a wonderful post by Paul Graham, the co-founder of Y-Combinator. I just had to put this up here.

October 2005
(This essay is derived from a talk at the 2005 Startup School.)
How do you get good ideas for startups? That's probably the number one question people ask me.

I'd like to reply with another question: why do people think it's hard to come up with ideas for startups?

That might seem a stupid thing to ask. Why do they think it's hard? If people can't do it, then it is hard, at least for them. Right?

Well, maybe not. What people usually say is not that they can't think of ideas, but that they don't have any. That's not quite the same thing. It could be the reason they don't have any is that they haven't tried to generate them.

I think this is often the case. I think people believe that coming up with ideas for startups is very hard-- that it must be very hard-- and so they don't try do to it. They assume ideas are like miracles: they either pop into your head or they don't.

I also have a theory about why people think this. They overvalue ideas. They think creating a startup is just a matter of implementing some fabulous initial idea. And since a successful startup is worth millions of dollars, a good idea is therefore a million dollar idea.

If coming up with an idea for a startup equals coming up with a million dollar idea, then of course it's going to seem hard. Too hard to bother trying. Our instincts tell us something so valuable would not be just lying around for anyone to discover.

Actually, startup ideas are not million dollar ideas, and here's an experiment you can try to prove it: just try to sell one. Nothing evolves faster than markets. The fact that there's no market for startup ideas suggests there's no demand. Which means, in the narrow sense of the word, that startup ideas are worthless.

Questions

The fact is, most startups end up nothing like the initial idea. It would be closer to the truth to say the main value of your initial idea is that, in the process of discovering it's broken, you'll come up with your real idea.

The initial idea is just a starting point-- not a blueprint, but a question. It might help if they were expressed that way. Instead of saying that your idea is to make a collaborative, web-based spreadsheet, say: could one make a collaborative, web-based spreadsheet? A few grammatical tweaks, and a woefully incomplete idea becomes a promising question to explore.

There's a real difference, because an assertion provokes objections in a way a question doesn't. If you say: I'm going to build a web-based spreadsheet, then critics-- the most dangerous of which are in your own head-- will immediately reply that you'd be competing with Microsoft, that you couldn't give people the kind of UI they expect, that users wouldn't want to have their data on your servers, and so on.

A question doesn't seem so challenging. It becomes: let's try making a web-based spreadsheet and see how far we get. And everyone knows that if you tried this you'd be able to makesomething useful. Maybe what you'd end up with wouldn't even be a spreadsheet. Maybe it would be some kind of new spreasheet-like collaboration tool that doesn't even have a name yet. You wouldn't have thought of something like that except by implementing your way toward it.

Treating a startup idea as a question changes what you're looking for. If an idea is a blueprint, it has to be right. But if it's a question, it can be wrong, so long as it's wrong in a way that leads to more ideas.

One valuable way for an idea to be wrong is to be only a partial solution. When someone's working on a problem that seems too big, I always ask: is there some way to bite off some subset of the problem, then gradually expand from there? That will generally work unless you get trapped on a local maximum, like 1980s-style AI, or C.

Upwind

So far, we've reduced the problem from thinking of a million dollar idea to thinking of a mistaken question. That doesn't seem so hard, does it?

To generate such questions you need two things: to be familiar with promising new technologies, and to have the right kind of friends. New technologies are the ingredients startup ideas are made of, and conversations with friends are the kitchen they're cooked in.
Universities have both, and that's why so many startups grow out of them. They're filled with new technologies, because they're trying to produce research, and only things that are new count as research. And they're full of exactly the right kind of people to have ideas with: the other students, who will be not only smart but elastic-minded to a fault.

The opposite extreme would be a well-paying but boring job at a big company. Big companies are biased against new technologies, and the people you'd meet there would be wrong too.
In an essay I wrote for high school students, I said a good rule of thumb was to stay upwind-- to work on things that maximize your future options. The principle applies for adults too, though perhaps it has to be modified to: stay upwind for as long as you can, then cash in the potential energy you've accumulated when you need to pay for kids.

I don't think people consciously realize this, but one reason downwind jobs like churning out Java for a bank pay so well is precisely that they are downwind. The market price for that kind of work is higher because it gives you fewer options for the future. A job that lets you work on exciting new stuff will tend to pay less, because part of the compensation is in the form of the new skills you'll learn.

Grad school is the other end of the spectrum from a coding job at a big company: the pay's low but you spend most of your time working on new stuff. And of course, it's called "school," which makes that clear to everyone, though in fact all jobs are some percentage school.
The right environment for having startup ideas need not be a university per se. It just has to be a situation with a large percentage of school.

It's obvious why you want exposure to new technology, but why do you need other people? Can't you just think of new ideas yourself? The empirical answer is: no. Even Einstein needed people to bounce ideas off. Ideas get developed in the process of explaining them to the right kind of person. You need that resistance, just as a carver needs the resistance of the wood.
This is one reason Y Combinator has a rule against investing in startups with only one founder. Practically every successful company has at least two. And because startup founders work under great pressure, it's critical they be friends.

I didn't realize it till I was writing this, but that may help explain why there are so few female startup founders. I read on the Internet (so it must be true) that only 1.7% of VC-backed startups are founded by women. The percentage of female hackers is small, but not that small. So why the discrepancy?

When you realize that successful startups tend to have multiple founders who were already friends, a possible explanation emerges. People's best friends are likely to be of the same sex, and if one group is a minority in some population, pairs of them will be a minority squared. [1]

Doodling

What these groups of co-founders do together is more complicated than just sitting down and trying to think of ideas. I suspect the most productive setup is a kind of together-alone-together sandwich. Together you talk about some hard problem, probably getting nowhere. Then, the next morning, one of you has an idea in the shower about how to solve it. He runs eagerly to to tell the others, and together they work out the kinks.

What happens in that shower? It seems to me that ideas just pop into my head. But can we say more than that?

Taking a shower is like a form of meditation. You're alert, but there's nothing to distract you. It's in a situation like this, where your mind is free to roam, that it bumps into new ideas.
What happens when your mind wanders? It may be like doodling. Most people have characteristic ways of doodling. This habit is unconscious, but not random: I found my doodles changed after I started studying painting. I started to make the kind of gestures I'd make if I were drawing from life. They were atoms of drawing, but arranged randomly. [2]
Perhaps letting your mind wander is like doodling with ideas. You have certain mental gestures you've learned in your work, and when you're not paying attention, you keep making these same gestures, but somewhat randomly. In effect, you call the same functions on random arguments. That's what a metaphor is: a function applied to an argument of the wrong type.
Conveniently, as I was writing this, my mind wandered: would it be useful to have metaphors in a programming language? I don't know; I don't have time to think about this. But it's convenient because this is an example of what I mean by habits of mind. I spend a lot of time thinking about language design, and my habit of always asking "would x be useful in a programming language" just got invoked.

If new ideas arise like doodles, this would explain why you have to work at something for a while before you have any. It's not just that you can't judge ideas till you're an expert in a field. You won't even generate ideas, because you won't have any habits of mind to invoke.
Of course the habits of mind you invoke on some field don't have to be derived from working in that field. In fact, it's often better if they're not. You're not just looking for good ideas, but for good newideas, and you have a better chance of generating those if you combine stuff from distant fields. As hackers, one of our habits of mind is to ask, could one open-source x? For example, what if you made an open-source operating system? A fine idea, but not very novel. Whereas if you ask, could you make an open-source play? you might be onto something.
Are some kinds of work better sources of habits of mind than others? I suspect harder fields may be better sources, because to attack hard problems you need powerful solvents. I find math is a good source of metaphors-- good enough that it's worth studying just for that. Related fields are also good sources, especially when they're related in unexpected ways. Everyone knows computer science and electrical engineering are related, but precisely because everyone knows it, importing ideas from one to the other doesn't yield great profits. It's like importing something from Wisconsin to Michigan. Whereas (I claim) hacking and painting are also related, in the sense that hackers and painters are bothmakers, and this source of new ideas is practically virgin territory.

Problems

In theory you could stick together ideas at random and see what you came up with. What if you built a peer-to-peer dating site? Would it be useful to have an automatic book? Could you turn theorems into a commodity? When you assemble ideas at random like this, they may not be just stupid, but semantically ill-formed. What would it even mean to make theorems a commodity? You got me. I didn't think of that idea, just its name.

You might come up with something useful this way, but I never have. It's like knowing a fabulous sculpture is hidden inside a block of marble, and all you have to do is remove the marble that isn't part of it. It's an encouraging thought, because it reminds you there is an answer, but it's not much use in practice because the search space is too big.

I find that to have good ideas I need to be working on some problem. You can't start with randomness. You have to start with a problem, then let your mind wander just far enough for new ideas to form.

In a way, it's harder to see problems than their solutions. Most people prefer to remain in denial about problems. It's obvious why: problems are irritating. They're problems! Imagine if people in 1700 saw their lives the way we'd see them. It would have been unbearable. This denial is such a powerful force that, even when presented with possible solutions, people often prefer to believe they wouldn't work.

I saw this phenomenon when I worked on spam filters. In 2002, most people preferred to ignore spam, and most of those who didn't preferred to believe the heuristic filters then available were the best you could do.

I found spam intolerable, and I felt it had to be possible to recognize it statistically. And it turns out that was all you needed to solve the problem. The algorithm I used was ridiculously simple. Anyone who'd really tried to solve the problem would have found it. It was just that no one had really tried to solve the problem. [3]

Let me repeat that recipe: finding the problem intolerable and feeling it must be possible to solve it. Simple as it seems, that's the recipe for a lot of startup ideas.

Wealth

So far most of what I've said applies to ideas in general. What's special about startup ideas? Startup ideas are ideas for companies, and companies have to make money. And the way to make money is to make something people want.

Wealth is what people want. I don't mean that as some kind of philosophical statement; I mean it as a tautology.

So an idea for a startup is an idea for something people want. Wouldn't any good idea be something people want? Unfortunately not. I think new theorems are a fine thing to create, but there is no great demand for them. Whereas there appears to be great demand for celebrity gossip magazines. Wealth is defined democratically. Good ideas and valuable ideas are not quite the same thing; the difference is individual tastes.

But valuable ideas are very close to good ideas, especially in technology. I think they're so close that you can get away with working as if the goal were to discover good ideas, so long as, in the final stage, you stop and ask: will people actually pay for this? Only a few ideas are likely to make it that far and then get shot down; RPN calculators might be one example.
One way to make something people want is to look at stuff people use now that's broken. Dating sites are a prime example. They have millions of users, so they must be promising something people want. And yet they work horribly. Just ask anyone who uses them. It's as if they used the worse-is-better approach but stopped after the first stage and handed the thing over to marketers.

Of course, the most obvious breakage in the average computer user's life is Windows itself. But this is a special case: you can't defeat a monopoly by a frontal attack. Windows can and will be overthrown, but not by giving people a better desktop OS. The way to kill it is to redefine the problem as a superset of the current one. The problem is not, what operating system should people use on desktop computers? but how should people use applications? There are answers to that question that don't even involve desktop computers.

Everyone thinks Google is going to solve this problem, but it is a very subtle one, so subtle that a company as big as Google might well get it wrong. I think the odds are better than 50-50 that the Windows killer-- or more accurately, Windows transcender-- will come from some little startup.

Another classic way to make something people want is to take a luxury and make it into a commmodity. People must want something if they pay a lot for it. And it is a very rare product that can't be made dramatically cheaper if you try.

This was Henry Ford's plan. He made cars, which had been a luxury item, into a commodity. But the idea is much older than Henry Ford. Water mills transformed mechanical power from a luxury into a commodity, and they were used in the Roman empire. Arguably pastoralism transformed a luxury into a commodity.

When you make something cheaper you can sell more of them. But if you make something dramatically cheaper you often get qualitative changes, because people start to use it in different ways. For example, once computers get so cheap that most people can have one of their own, you can use them as communication devices.

Often to make something dramatically cheaper you have to redefine the problem. The Model T didn't have all the features previous cars did. It only came in black, for example. But it solved the problem people cared most about, which was getting from place to place.

One of the most useful mental habits I know I learned from Michael Rabin: that the best way to solve a problem is often to redefine it. A lot of people use this technique without being consciously aware of it, but Rabin was spectacularly explicit. You need a big prime number? Those are pretty expensive. How about if I give you a big number that only has a 10 to the minus 100 chance of not being prime? Would that do? Well, probably; I mean, that's probably smaller than the chance that I'm imagining all this anyway.

Redefining the problem is a particularly juicy heuristic when you have competitors, because it's so hard for rigid-minded people to follow. You can work in plain sight and they don't realize the danger. Don't worry about us. We're just working on search. Do one thing and do it well, that's our motto.

Making things cheaper is actually a subset of a more general technique: making things easier. For a long time it was most of making things easier, but now that the things we build are so complicated, there's another rapidly growing subset: making things easier to use.
This is an area where there's great room for improvement. What you want to be able to say about technology is: it just works. How often do you say that now?

Simplicity takes effort-- genius, even. The average programmer seems to produce UI designs that are almost willfully bad. I was trying to use the stove at my mother's house a couple weeks ago. It was a new one, and instead of physical knobs it had buttons and an LED display. I tried pressing some buttons I thought would cause it to get hot, and you know what it said? "Err." Not even "Error." "Err." You can't just say "Err" to the user of a stove. You should design the UI so that errors are impossible. And the boneheads who designed this stove even had an example of such a UI to work from: the old one. You turn one knob to set the temperature and another to set the timer. What was wrong with that? It just worked.

It seems that, for the average engineer, more options just means more rope to hang yourself. So if you want to start a startup, you can take almost any existing technology produced by a big company, and assume you could build something way easier to use.

Design for Exit

Success for a startup approximately equals getting bought. You need some kind of exit strategy, because you can't get the smartest people to work for you without giving them options likely to be worth something. Which means you either have to get bought or go public, and the number of startups that go public is very small.

If success probably means getting bought, should you make that a conscious goal? The old answer was no: you were supposed to pretend that you wanted to create a giant, public company, and act surprised when someone made you an offer. Really, you want to buy us? Well, I suppose we'd consider it, for the right price.

I think things are changing. If 98% of the time success means getting bought, why not be open about it? If 98% of the time you're doing product development on spec for some big company, why not think of that as your task? One advantage of this approach is that it gives you another source of ideas: look at big companies, think what they should be doing, and do it yourself. Even if they already know it, you'll probably be done faster.

Just be sure to make something multiple acquirers will want. Don't fix Windows, because the only potential acquirer is Microsoft, and when there's only one acquirer, they don't have to hurry. They can take their time and copy you instead of buying you. If you want to get market price, work on something where there's competition.

If an increasing number of startups are created to do product development on spec, it will be a natural counterweight to monopolies. Once some type of technology is captured by a monopoly, it will only evolve at big company rates instead of startup rates, whereas alternatives will evolve with especial speed. A free market interprets monopoly as damage and routes around it.

The Woz Route

The most productive way to generate startup ideas is also the most unlikely-sounding: by accident. If you look at how famous startups got started, a lot of them weren't initially supposed to be startups. Lotus began with a program Mitch Kapor wrote for a friend. Apple got started because Steve Wozniak wanted to build microcomputers, and his employer, Hewlett-Packard, wouldn't let him do it at work. Yahoo began as David Filo's personal collection of links.

This is not the only way to start startups. You can sit down and consciously come up with an idea for a company; we did. But measured in total market cap, the build-stuff-for-yourself model might be more fruitful. It certainly has to be the most fun way to come up with startup ideas. And since a startup ought to have multiple founders who were already friends before they decided to start a company, the rather surprising conclusion is that the best way to generate startup ideas is to do what hackers do for fun: cook up amusing hacks with your friends.

It seems like it violates some kind of conservation law, but there it is: the best way to get a "million dollar idea" is just to do what hackers enjoy doing anyway.

Notes
[1] This phenomenon may account for a number of discrepancies currently blamed on various forbidden isms. Never attribute to malice what can be explained by math.
[2] A lot of classic abstract expressionism is doodling of this type: artists trained to paint from life using the same gestures but without using them to represent anything. This explains why such paintings are (slightly) more interesting than random marks would be.
[3] Bill Yerazunis had solved the problem, but he got there by another path. He made a general-purpose file classifier so good that it also worked for spam.

I stole it from his website which has other great stuff.

Loss

2011-10-31T21:48:00.000+05:30

एक थे वे,

एक दूजे के लिए,

पूरे जहां के लिए

अलग हुए जब लेकिन,

एक बना रंक,

और एक बना राजा,

आखिर जिसके पास न मित्र,

वही तो है अभागा |

Formality

2011-10-31T08:06:00.002+05:30

क्यों करते हैं दोस्ती का ढोंग

जब निभाने का मकसद होता ही नहीं,

क्यों देते है सुख में साथ

जब कष्ट में दिल सहलाना ही नहीं

गलती मेरी ही है,

की नासमझी में बनाता हु ये दोस्त,

या दोस्त बन के दोस्ती का फ़र्ज़ पूरा करता ही नहीं,

आज अकेले हु, समंदर के बीच में,

पर साहिल से कोई आवाज़ लगाता ही नहीं,

कोई पास बुलाता ही नहीं,

कोई सीने से लगाता ही नहीं,

कोई अपना बनाता ही नहीं,

कोई दोस्त बनता ही नहीं |

हाये कितनी क्रूर ये दुनिया

2011-10-31T07:52:00.000+05:30

दूसरो को देखके ह्रिदय है जलता
प्रिये कि कमी से मन ये खलता
बिन कुछ कहे मज़ाक उड़ाती दुनिया
हाये कितनी क्रूर ये दुनिया

आंखे तरसती उनकी एक झलक के लिये,
उनकि आवाज़ सुने बर्सो हो लिये,
प्रेमियों से भरी फिर भी ये दुनिया
हाये कितनी क्रूर ये दुनिया

एक पल मन करता उन्हे पास बुला लू
अगले हि पल खुद से दूर हटा दू
अब बस क्या मै त्याग दू दुनिया
हाये कितनी क्रूर ये दुनिया |

Normandy..rather, Normandie

2011-10-31T07:11:00.001+05:30

I had just mentioned that I have been watching the documentary series, The World At War, and there were a few parts I was looking forward to watch. They were:
- The fight at the D-Day beaches
- The fight at Iwo Jima
- The fight for Berlin
- Speeches by Churchill
- The Fat Man & The Little Boy

Well, I am off to see the first for real in a few hours..! Not the fight, of course. The beaches. There were 5 beaches where the allied forces landed. They were code named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. While the American forces landed at Utah & Omaha (duh!), the British and some Canadian forces landed at Gold, Juno and Sword. While the 5 landings together are called the D-Day landings (incidentally called Jour J in French), it is the fight at the Omaha beach that is the one people are speaking of when they talk of Normandy. It was the beach where the allied forces met the toughest resistance, it was described as the 2nd hell on earth, after Iwo Jima.

I will try and hit this Omaha stretch, it is where the famous WW II cemetery is present, the one which we all saw in Saving Private Ryan and countless other movies & news footages. Hope I manage to get to those places. Need to wake up in less than 4 hours to start the journey! Till then the famous photo, and the military map of the area..!

The Omaha beach then

And a glorious picture of the beach now

And the war memorial on the beach

Will post my pics too (fingers crossed).

Guitar aur mai

2011-10-30T23:48:00.000+05:30

Sitting idle at my friend's place with harsh rains outside and just a phone and a guitar to occupy me leaves precious little choice, but a pretty good one at that. And I started playing the only two songs I know, as yet, to play on it. Maybe someone will recognize why I love both those songs, and how I came to learn to play them on the guitar.

Some amazing people

2011-10-30T22:47:00.002+05:30

The Real India. Such an elusive concept, isn't it? What is the real India? Is it, in the words immortalized by Munnabhai, the hungry India, poor India? Or is it the middle class fighting for its survival, a fight which is often reported as the fighting spirit of Indian cities (Different takes here, here, here and here)? Or <in whispers> can it be the rich India?

I obviously don't have an answer. I don't even think there is a right answer. India is different for everyone. To borrow the oft-repeated phrase, India is like a prism. The angle at which I look at it makes all the difference. So, it is up to me, and to you, to choose a vantage point and decide what India means for you.

The 2 months of the summer of 2011 added a new facet to whatever I understood so far. We all know that people struggle everyday. Some, just to stay alive. Others, to ensure they die in grace. And yet others, to solve thorny issues that no one else is interested in helping them with. And it is with this last set of people that I came in touch with recently. I didn't see what I hadn't already seen on TV, in news, in papers on websites. I didn't hear what I already heard from professors, uncles, and friends. And yet, everything was new, everything was different. This time, it was my 5 senses bringing the pictures, the sounds, the smell and the feel of these parts of our huge, huge nation. And nothing like experiencing something firsthand to absorb it, eh?

This post is about the people I met. The amazing people who don't just think, but act. The action may not be planned and may not (and almost always, will not) be with any other intention but to make their lives easier. But it is as 'real' as real can be.

I first came across the immensely charming and industrious Remya Jose, whose pedal operated washing machine, though built to help her mother out, has ended up giving her life a different direction altogether. I worked with her for some time, and it was a real pleasure to talk to someone who has actually done something, rather than just think and talk about it (read me).

I then met Mr. Dipen Baishya, secretary of Pancharatna Gramya Bikash Kendra. This is one gentleman who has almost single handedly fought for the survival of the self-help groups in Nalbari, a district in Assam just a couple of hours from Guwahati. The pressing need for the SHG's is explained here. Mr. Baishya, or Dipen-bhai, as he insisted me on calling him, left a comfortable business of his own, and has poured in plenty of his resources in this organization's work. And it is facing incredible challenges and there are never enough people to do all the work. But he struggles on...

I met more people like Dipen-bhai. There was Dr. Amiya Kumar Sharma and his team at Rashtriya Gram Vikas Nidhi, who among other things work on Food Security in the North Eastern states. There was also
Dr. Randhir Singha, who working out of his home has been helping nearby villages overcome some of their biggest challenges in reaching a level of agricultural income that would make it sustainable and curb outward migration of the village's men. Armed with years of such experience, he opened the Resources Centre for Sustainable Development and is currently helping a number of villages with varied issues. There were many more completely devoted and amazingly passionate men & women whom I met in those months. But I couldn't help feeling for one person I met in particular.

He is Manash Pritam Dureja. Manash , a resident of Dhemaji, a district in Assam. He belongs to a household that does depend on his income, whatever little it may be. And he works in odd jobs, wherever he can find them. But there is one thing that is really close to his heart. And that is given away by his aspiration of being born again as a tree, because a tree only gives and every part of the tree is useful for something or someone. What a thought! And to follow this ideology, despite no surity of a source of income he started teaching as many children and adults as possible, without a fee of course. He also worked for a long time as a volunteer for NIF, then became a permanent employee at a very meagre salary which was just enough for him to support himself. He has now left NIF, since he found he was unable to make the difference he wanted to make, and works as a volunteer for any environment conversation effort, any educational effort or any awareness building effort that happens in or around Dhemaji and Guwahati. The dedication of this boy was infectious too! It was definitely because of him that I traveled to more places and met more people than I would have during my stint in Assam. He might not have any 'statistics' of achievements to show off, but I honestly, frantically even, believe that it is small efforts like the ones made by him that will eventually help build this country together.

I have been trying to get him employed in an organization close to his town that works in his domain. I haven't been successful so far. But if you can help in any way, please do..! Do let me know. You can also contact him directly at his facebook page or mail him at manashpratim2009ATgmailDOTcom.

I will write more later of the people I met in Andhra Pradesh, and one extraordinary gentleman and his family who took care of me when I fell seriously ill. But I did want to say this again, for it can never be said enough, that India will be a lost hope only if everyone loses hope. Only if the last one of us thinks of poverty as a challenge, and not as an opportunity, and only when everyone one of us considers the problems faced by the poor insurmountable, will there truly be no hope. And the good news is that there are many, oh so many people who are fighting everyday to improve the conditions in this country. And we don't get to hear of most of them. And for me that is fast becoming, the real India.

By the way, if you haven't already, do watch these videos. They were made by the Discovery Channel in partnership with the Honey Bee Network (NIF is a sister concern of Honey Bee) about some of the more glamorous innovations (everything needs to be sold, even a good cause, if that is what will make people listen).

And many many more which can be found at missionpacific's YouTube channel.

Isn't this the way how songs should be?

2011-10-30T16:48:00.001+05:30

A comment on one version posted in YouTube:
"Dark Room.
Candle.
Pain.
Just Imagine"
Though I don't need all that to immerse myself in this song, I get the point.

Simple lyrics, no fancy beats - and there are just too many beats in all songs nowadays, and music that actually makes the lyrics say more than they do. A throwback to the old Hindi songs for me. Lovely song. Makes me wanna watch this movie so very much!

I am searching for the full song. Will post if I get the link. But the lyrics of the full song go like this:

दिन परेशान है, रात भारी है

ज़िन्दगी है खेल फिर भी प्यारी है

क्या तमाशा है, कब से जारी है

ज़िन्दगी है खेल फिर भी प्यारी है

दिन परेशान है

इस कहानी को कौन रोकेगा

ऊम्र यह सारी कौन सोचेगा

इस कहानी को कौन रोकेगा

ऊम्र यह सारी कौन सोचेगा

ऊ... कौन सोचेगा

साथ काटी है या गुज़ारी है

ज़िन्दगी है खेल फिर भी प्यारी है

दिन परेशान है

रंगो से कहुं लकीरों से कहुं
मैली मैली सी तस्वीरों से कहुं
रंगो से कहुं लकीरों से कहुं
मैली मैली सी तस्वीरों से कहुं
तस्वीरों से कहुं
बेकरारी सी, बेकरारी है
बेकरारी सी, बेकरारी है
ज़िन्दगी है खेल फिर भी प्यारी है
दिन परेशान है
रात भारी है
ज़िन्दगी है खेल फिर भी प्यारी है
दिन परेशान है

Edit: Here is the full version too..

I would lose the beats in this version though. They take something away from the beauty of the song, in my opinion.

MFIs and Self-Help Groups - Part of the reality

2011-10-28T04:47:00.000+05:30

For most of us, a self help group brings to our mind two words, Micro Finance. Which is a pretty good starting point. A self-help group is essentially a set of people from the same community (not village, notions of unit of analysis) who are working together for some common goal. In the context of micro-finance, it is a group that is lent money by the Micro Fin Institute (MFI), and it is the responsibility of this group to further distribute these loans, keep track of them and ensure timely payment of interest. This is managed through , first, a hand-holding by the MFI & local bodies teaching them book-keeping, basic accounting and other fundamental basics. The Self-Help Group (SHG) then manages timely repayment through the social pressure it exerts on every borrower. These communities are almost always close knit, and public defamation acts as a very severe deterrent to villagers from defaulting. Defaults could lead to being ostracized by the community and consequently, everyone pays up and slowly but steadily a strong sense of social responsibility builds up. What also builds up is the economy of the village through the small loans that were not available earlier due to poor credit ratings of such people with no or little collateral.

This model is a modification of the Grameen model which, as we all know, was propounded by Professor Muhammad Yunus in Bangladesh. The self-help group model worked well, at first. It worked for the villages and it worked for the banks.

But greed soon set in. And banks desired to lend out as much micro-credit as possible as soon as possible to get ahead in the gold rush. But they hit a road-block. Developing a self help group takes time. Initial members have to be selected carefully through local bodies that know and understand the community. The members then have to be trained. And time has to be given to allow a web of social & communal responsibility to develop, which is what ensures effective disbursal of loans to deserving parties and timely repayments. But this takes almost 9-12 months to happen. At the minimum. But the banks wanted a quicker way. And in their haste they ignored what they had learnt over the previous 5-10 years or so.

They created groups of 5-8 people, without much hand-holding and started giving loans within a month of forming the group and expected the same high rate of repayments. But the default rate shot up! And the reason was simple. With no social structure in place, there was little chance of social castigation of defaulters. And everybody started defaulting. Also, the oversupply caused loans being taken for consumptive rather than productive uses. This started off the collapse of the MFI industry in Andhra Pradesh. This is but a small part of the story, which a colleague and I have tried to capture in this very primitive and sketchy report written almost 9 months back. (Refer to it for more details if you like.)

But there is another very important lesson yet to be learnt by governments of different states in India. The SHGs are useful not just for the micro-finance industry. They become a tool to bind the community together, push reforms and development activities and kick-off employment in villages (especially for women). And what is probably the most important impact is that it empowers women and provides them some footing from where they can stake the claim for a say in the way the community and the village works. And it is these intangible benefits that many state governments, blinded by the money that MFIs bring to their states, are turning a blind eye to! But there is hope, as I will explain in a later post.

On the other hand

2011-10-28T02:06:00.002+05:30

On the very day I write this post about India as a two-faced nation, I get to read this article by Chetan Bhagat. This is an excerpt, you can find the full post here. Nice piece and a reply of sorts to an article that appeared in the NY Times here.

Of course, you can also quit. You can take the ‘you bloody Indians’ approach people have taken against my country for decades. I won’t judge you. I really won’t. I really wish the person who wrote the article above is happy in the USA. I love America, it is a wonderful country that understands creativity, talent, freedom and equality. It has drawbacks, but I look at their positives more. I wish India will adopt many of those positive qualities one day. But until that happens, I don’t wish to quit. I love India too much to quit. I want to be here, till the last servant is mistreated and the last person breaks traffic rules. I want to be here, not to be perfect, but to try my best to not succumb to all that is negative in my country. I want to fight it, for simply fighting it feels good to me.

Generally, I find Bhagat a bit over the top (many students from my alma mater are ;-) ). But what he says about himself rings true to me. At least I can identify with it. One or two of you might even guess what I am talking about :-) And at the risk of sounding pretentious, I would say that these 2 months here in Europe have given me a taste of things abroad. I won't extol the virtues of this place, but it has happened more than once that reading some Delhi news has resulted in a chuckle or two escaping me before I even realized it! And that is purely because I am comparing things back home to how things work here. For instance, I was reading about this safety drive in DTC buses, where some DTC officials are going to board select buses over a few weeks to make sure that the driver doesn't over-speed and stops at all stops for the designated duration. And the article went on to quote a Delhi govt. official talking about how GPS devices installed in buses has resulted in more effective monitoring. And involuntarily, I compared this scenario to the one all over Europe, where public transport runs like clockwork with nary a trouble!

But the very next instant I chuckled again. This time it was because I realized the folly of comparing two nations decades apart in their development phase and with issues so different that it was akin to comparing Tarzan with Spider-man! India will overcome these issues in good time, not on its own, mind you, but because of the millions of unsung heroes who struggle to improve things everyday. And I am not just talking of the Anna's and the Bedi's of the country. They are an immense inspiration, sure. But I feel equally glad when I read of people like Nagaraja(of whom I came to read just today), like our very own Professor Anil Gupta, the lakhs of people in our rural hinterland who come up with ways to conquer their everyday problems. And I am filled with hope that our country will stand on its feet soon. We can curse the country and the government, the system, the corruption, all the millions of problems that we face everyday all we like. Or we can try and solve them as these men are doing.

That is the choice which Bhagat says he has made, which these men have made, and which we all need to make!

Are we really that nice a nation?

2011-10-27T19:47:00.000+05:30

I have been watching The World At War documentary series nowadays. And it got me thinking. In our minds, we have essentially labelled off Hitler and his fellow Nazis as evil. And all those Germans who supported his grandiose campaigns and the persecution of the Jews were an exception, a case of rotten apples. And of course, we think that such a thing can never happen in India. Or can it?

How did Hitler come to power? Germany was in the throes of mass dissatisfaction. Unemployment was at a record high. Inequalities in the society were only increasing. At such a time the people were looking to the socialist worker's (and anti-communist) party. Not only that Hitler was adept at invoking a sense of violated national pride due to Germany's drubbing at The Great War and the subsequent Versailles treaty where parts of erstwhile Germany were stripped from it. These two things gave Hitler mass appeal and to cut a very long story short, he stormed into power and later became the President in addition to being the Vice-Chancellor, getting total control over Germany's army and its people.

And what were the basic things Hitler promised? Jobs for all? Economic development? Well yes. But they were part of a larger plan. The reign of the Germans, in simple words. The supremacy of the German Reich over all of Europe. He was an anti-Semite to the very core and was also very much an anti-communist. And he promised getting rid of the Jews and the commies. And he delivered.

Let us draw the parallels with India now. A huge majority of our country is Hindu. There are frequent communal clashes in many parts of the country. It is always followed by the chirp of being secular and how India will slowly root out the fundamentalists who stoke this hatred between brothers. But do you really see that happening?

Many many Hindus believe that the Godhra riots were just. The RSS ideology states in very clear words that India is a Hindu nation and we can not allow any other race or community to take control or pollute this great Hindu nation. And Muslims are seen as a threat. If Hitler was an anti-Semite, the right wing fundamentalists are surely anti-Islamist. Today, if a strong enough personality who draws legitimacy from the immense Hindu population of this country stands up and calls for the 'eradication' of other faiths from this country, especially Muslims, is too hard to believe that a large portion of the country, and not just a large portion of the Hindus will stand in his support? I used to think that no, that is just not a possibility. People are rational. But my thinking has been tempered. I admit I live in a metro, offering a much more cosmopolitan environment than 99% of the nation. And maybe that was the reason I thought people really believe in one of India's most pomped up tenet, Secularism. But India is huge. Undeniably huge. I might sound stupid here, but I had not realized the immensity of India's size till I had traveled long distances by train, bus and even bullock carts through its hinterland. And this immenseness hides from us city folks, us pseudo-journalists sitting in the metros who think they have a feel of the pulse of the nation and set about creating the 'right' or the 'real' public opinion. And it is this very immenseness which also hides from us what a huge portion of the population thinks. (Of course, I am falling into my own trap here, but let that be for now)

Many people want India to be rid of Muslims. And given a mass movement, they would support it. Just as Godhra had its perpetrators. They weren't special hired goons who did everything. Stoke the fire enough and the flames shoot out, engulfing most of all the perceptions that people have built, leaving nothing but a crumbling edifice.

So, should an Anna type figure or a Vajpayee or even a Thackeray with wider appeal stand up today and declare a war on Muslims, I fear the call would soon turn into a movement. And we will believe in it. We will believe that we need to be freed from this menace of Islam. We will believe that this was our land, and they were just invaders. We will take their customs and rip them apart, satanifying them to horrify the millions of Hindus and justify this action. We will attack polygamy. We will attack the eating of beef. We will attack them simply because they are related to Jinnah.

And in doing this, will we be much different from the ordinary German fella who supported Hitler? He did the same. There was a fire. He stoked it. And stoked it hard. And people were won over. Those who didn't agree fell by the wayside or ran away. Was there something fundamentally wrong with those people? I don't think so. There have been experiments, many experiments proving that a man can be made to do absolutely evil things when enough pressure is exerted. The Stanford experiment and the Milgram experiment are just two of those. And those times, in Germany, were of extreme pressure. People were under extreme duress, and they had to take a side. Some didn't. But many did.

And that is my question. Can India face a similar fate? Is it just a veneer of secularism that holds this country together? Or is there more to it? What prevents our society from falling apart? Spirit, brotherhood, love are just terms. There has to be something substantial, logical or abstract that has to explain why we have held together for so long and why we shall continue to hold together for longer still.

I am afraid I have no answer in the affirmative. I fear that yeah, we can fall. And fall really quickly. There will be many of us who will revolt, rebel, shout out that this is wrong, it can not happen. But mass movements aren't built on logic. More often than not, they are built by rhetoric but they have their foundations in emotions. And emotions out-trump logic, almost always. At least when religion is concerned.

Can you give me any hope?

Why is normal boring?

2011-10-24T10:28:00.000+05:30

Why are people who have not done anything but the normal things in their life termed boring? I think normalcy is underrated. I believe that normal is the new special, so to speak. Why should there be this intense pressure for everyone to shine? If the reason was to get better as a person by exploring your limits or what not, then I would say who is to say that I would get better? Maybe I would fall into immoral ways while I try to improve myself. Human being that I am, I will probably understand getting better as getting better than others rather than myself. And wouldn't that just defeat the purpose? Why do I have to get better than the others?

On the same note, why should I always be funny? Or say the right things? Or be street smart? What if I am happy being the outsider. The one who is always there but doesn't say much. The one who observes all but is not much seen. I quite like that fellow. I quite like being that fellow. Why do I have to be the guy whom everyone likes? Why the hell do I have to be someone that is just not me?

Europa - and still the longing?

2011-10-24T10:04:00.000+05:30

I am here. In Paris. Where I always wanted to be. I have stood under the Arc de Triomphe. I have climbed to the top of the Eiffel Tower. I have taken a ride on the Seine. I have traveled on the metro. I have seen the high street, I have visited the low docks. I have lain in the Tuileries, and I have bowed in front of Notre Dame.

But I feel something missing. Still. What is it that I am looking for? Is it because Europe for me will always be the bridge onto which SRK drives that Red Ferrari of his in DDLJ? Or the tulip gardens in which Big B romances Rekha? Maybe. But there is something deeper still. What connects these? What is the one word that comes to my mind when I think of Europe, of France, of Paris. Friends, is it? Or is it fun? Or Yash Chopra? Or Bollywood? Or Racism? Or expensive? Or Beautiful, peaceful, serene?

Maybe it's love. For me Europe was always the place where I would spend my days with the woman I would fall in love with. Or maybe it's solitude. For Europe was also somewhere I would go and speak but rarely, and just listen, and think. It could also be freedom. Freedom from the sheer intimidation I feel back home. From everything and everyone.

I don't know. But I have none of these here. Not love. Not solitude even. Not for me the stereotypical Eurotrip that everyone has. The booze, and the behoshi. The sports and the adrenaline rush. I get my rush by just looking at the women here, thank you. But still, I am surrounded by friends. I have to fight to get solitude. And even then, I have none. The emptiness of my room, the foreign feeling of this place, the exaggeration of the nostalgic value of all things past just refuses to go away. And that leaves me, alone, but with friends. Alone, but without solitude.

Freedom too isn't here. I am constantly thinking of what I am going to do with my life now. What field should I choose. What do I do next? Where do I go from here? And where the hell have the last 2 years gone? And how come every one acts so grown up while I still feel like an ignorant fool that I was in school, despite all these years of work and studies which were supposed to mature me, make me wiser.

Friends are getting married, drifting away. Others have found other occupations to fill their time. What is happening? Am I thinking too much? Or do all friendships drift as time goes by? Is that why people marry? Out of desperation? The pure need to keep atleast someone close to you? For all around me seem to be finding the love of their life. And that means I am all the less a part of their lives. But they still are a huge part of my lives. What should I do? Tell me, madam. Where do I go to? Whom do I bother?

No answer, huh? Mona Lisa is quite dumb. Literally.

Letter from a doctor

2011-09-01T01:53:00.001+05:30

Well, I had no words after reading this.

Dear Tiny,

It is pleasure for me to hear that you are going on exchange to HEC Paris.
The place is awsome and I am sure you will enjoy there, as your best buddies are also going with you. do take care of your health, eat healthy, non fatty food. visit all possible places in Europe, do take lots of Photos & ALSO BRING TWO BOTTLES OF RED WINE FOR ME when you return.

Bon Voyage
Your Floor mate
Dr. Sanjay Vaghamshi

Yes, "Dr." Vaghamshi, I will certainly try my best. If I manage to get over my laughter attack, that is.

Funny Story

2011-07-20T17:07:00.005+05:30

Funny place this WIMWI. The first three days here were hell, no cooler, top floor in a furnace made of concrete, temperature in the 40's, and a huge set of books to boot with names so alien that I wished I was in my super-cosy, air conditioned cubicle with a bean bag just around the corner and free coffee any time of the day.

Not very slowly, but surely, those thoughts of comfort were driven out of my mind and I started hating this place just for the loneliness I felt in the midst of the 400 odd sheep here. Soon, I started getting acquainted with people in my dorm and with those who sat on my bench in the well. Funny all these people are, I thought. How different from the kind of friends I had in office. And how very different from the guys in college. These guys are so... icky.

Lekin samay chalta gaya aur baatein badhti gayi,
kuch naye dost bane jinke saat baaton me raatein bhi katti gayi.

Study groups, clubs and dorm were the places where I spent most of my time. And even though I pined for my life before I entered this place, I grew to accept WIMWI as a part of my life. Still, the visits home were the most cherished part of the year. Meeting my friends, eating ma's food, teasing my sis about her stupid choice of yuck nailpolish, and driving. Driving in Chanakyapuri, driving on expressways, driving to obscure places in Mehrauli.

But in the midst a year had passed. I had made many trips home by now and the awesomeness of being at home was fast growing stale. Even when at home I found myself missing the freedom of playing whatever I wished on my speakers at 6 am. I missed teasing the fuchchas, listening to Shababi. I missed Z's random dramatic entrances into my room, where he would empty his little bottle and go and fill it again and come back, only to repeat this many many times. I missed Chichora's habit of walking around with his mobile's handsfree dangling as if it was the sacred thread. CV and his irritating habit of being on the phone all the time, Horny's "Mai bore ho raha hu. Kuch kare?", RC's "Tiny, Kuch lete kyu nahi?". The way Bazaaru will play just the one song on a loop, the way Focus would laugh like a demon and scare the shit out of me. I have now begun missing it all.

Funny. And when I look ahead I see myself getting out of this place so soon. Just a month more over here and then I would be heading to France. By the time I come back everybody would be busy with placements and poof, just like that, it would all be over. And it seems as if I just got here..!

Never thought I would say this, but I wish I was back in the first year. I would still do it the same way, I would still be super frustrated in the sixth slot. I would still hate the fact that I learned nothing substantial, that everything happened too quickly for me to digest, but I would still be more than a year away from leaving this place.

I never felt this way when I left NSIT. I was sad that my friends were all going to different places, but was excited about my job. I did feel this way when I left my job, because I left the most awesome set of friends behind, but they were always there and I could go back anytime to meet them. But here, it's more than just friends. It's more than the dorms, more than the campus, more than the stupid Joos or the ridiculously expensive CT. It's that which makes me wanna go for a walk at 6 in the morning, behind the girls dorms, in that little wood. It's what makes me want to have night out after night out, alone, or with friends. It's what makes me write on my blog early in the morning, it's what makes me sing when everybody else is sound asleep. It's what makes me walk around the 3rd floor in my kurta (Yo!). It's what makes me wanna spend a long long time here. I can't really put my finger on what that is, but hey fellow wimwian, can't you feel it too? :-)

PS: Of course, I wrote this post when at home and missing WIMWI :-)

Will the real Harry Potter please stand up?

2011-07-19T04:57:00.001+05:30

Now that the last of the Harry Potter movies is out, I thought I would vent my feelings a bit.

I am yet to come across a topic (in the literary world, of course) that divides people like Harry Potter does. Either you like it, or you hate it. The haters would compare you to sissies who still believe in Santa Claus. While the believers will have you stoned at the altar for questioning the gospel truth that comes from the hol(e)y mouth, in this case the pen, of Madame Rowling.

But is there a third front? Is there a set of people who can still enjoy Harry's world without being bothered enough by the nay-sayers to defend it or who can ridicule it enough (even if it is only to impress the second most attractive girl at the bar - John Nash, Game theory, anyone? No? I thought so. Harry fans/bashers and geeks who get Game Theory is a null set, right?) to torment the ones who think that sunlight shines from Harry's every orifice (I did it! This is probably the only other sentence where 'sunlight', 'orifice' and 'shines' can be used together, except of course by Her Royal Pain In The Ass Highness). (Don't get me wrong, I love Harry and his world, I have practically grown up with it. And though I do not take out 5 minutes every day to thank the buffoon who left Philosopher's Stone on the school library counter saying it is too hard to read only for me to pick it up, I do take out one of the books every now and then to escape into that fantasy world whenever I can, leaving behind the phantasmagorical series of events that is my life.)

Coming back, I think there is. In fact, I think you will find enough people to inhabit the Middle Earth, set up the two towers, populate the Havens, create a new language that is not so new (Oh come on, the language of Mordor is obviously a stone's throw away from German), fight the great wars, and fill India and China too (not in the middle-earth, stupid. :Noob: ) who will fall into this middle ground (Eru is great, and he doesn't have a middle name either, and I am awesome!). I lie in this set too. For us, watching the movies was part of the experience, something we had to do, irrespective of whether the previous movie was good or not or the how this one was received thus far. And even though we did 'talk' about the divergence from the books or we did discuss the thousand ways we could hex the next director, we didn't blow our back-sides with our wands (Moody warned you...!).

And now that the Potternama comes to an end (don't count your chickens, eating your words etc. come to my mind) even though we think a part of our adolescence has finally ended, even though we shed a tear, silently, we won't go the full hog and lament the passing away of that oh-the-greatest-thing-to-have-happened-in-my-life.

That doesn't make me a lesser fan than my next door neighbour's third cousin who abhsholutehly lovesh Harry Potter and can't shee him go away. And even if it does, what the heck. I don't give a damn..! I can still recite the poem that the Sorting Hat sings in the 5th book (or was it 4th?), I can still count all the secret passageways in and out of Hogwarts at 5 am. But I sure as hell won't ask for a tissue at the end of the last movie, not because the story wasn't great, but because.. get out of here..!

And by the way, by a lucky coincidence I haven't watched the last movie yet. Oh dear, I committed a sacrilege, did I? I can already hear the accusations. "You didn't watch first day first show? You call yourself a real Potter fan? If you are one, how could you not watch that first show?"
Well, as Joe so often does when faced with a question he is least interested in answering... "Like this.!"

Connect#1

2011-07-19T03:47:00.003+05:30

Connect the two...!

Unnees - 19

2011-07-14T04:24:00.001+05:30

"It's raining", shouted Horny.
"Oh yeah, bitches", chimed in CV.
"Chal na Tiny let's drench ourselves", Horny could barely restrain his joy. CV and Shababi laughed out loud, calling us jerks in a way only they could. Shababi, with the ever-ready poker face and CV, well, was CVesque.
And bas, aise hi, just like that we got drenched in our first rain as tuchchas. Sweet.
'Twas a short walk, a round trip around the library, overlooking the already flooded LKP. But drenched we were. And froze we did in the PP class immediately after that. Wet, the girls in class were too. But Horny's eyes were screaming, "Not enough! Not enough. Secret 7 is so dry". "Chill kar Horny. Tu use dorm bula le, mai dunk kar dunga", CV added with his typical what's-wrong-with-these-guys-why-can't-they-think-of-this-themselves look. And with a sigh that came too late, Horny admitted defeat and lost himself in the drone of the session.

"Tiny, fachcho ko tang kare?", Horny burst out immediately after the class. He needn't have asked for it was just the thing on my mind. The first rain in WIMWI and fachche sleeping peacefully? No way..!
And trouble we did the fachchas. And miffed they were. Content we were, both of us. Laughed they did, CV and Shababi. Chichora also put up a special appearance from the top, the zen like attitude intact, declaring us retards. RC goaded the NSITians laughing at their childish ways and the hoax baap shouted out, "Yeh Tiny meri kitni leta hai yaar". PD laughed, Guruji smiled. But the innocent looks everybody pined for never emerged. And then we lost ourselves in the daily routine that makes such moments so cherished.

The tuchchas talk of dorm bonding. They talk of making friends for life. But they never speak of how. Or this. When the entire dorm comes out and has fun as one. Unnees, a way of life, as Z would say. Unnees. 19. The Singhs.

Atithi tum kab aaoge?

2011-06-28T12:53:00.000+05:30

How I am waiting for this day. It has rained everywhere in India. But not this damn place. Kal nahi hui baarish to rag malhaar is the only option left.

Hey Tuttoo.. Hey Shash

2011-06-28T12:39:00.001+05:30

School was fun. I remember my Monday tests the most. Not mine actually, but Somu's for sure. His was an interesting tale. He would get an English music cassette for every 50 he would score in a Maths test. And he got quite a few that way. And boy, was he glad when he got one. So was I though, since I laid claim to first use after he was done with it. My parents, sadly, never gave me that kind of incentive. They would much sooner have my test answer sheet framed than give me a 'character damaging' English cassette.

I am sure Shash also had a similar deal. Well, the opposite actually, but similar. That he would get a cassette every time he didn't score a perfect 50. And I think he doesn't have any. Maybe that is why my parents liked him more. Not because he always scored a perfect score. But because.. well, I think you get it :-)

It is a different world today. People I am studying with have probably never bought a cassette, all they have ever used are CDs and MP3 players. My generation grew up on Friends and Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and these 'kids' consider these sitcom behemoths the diet of the oldies.

I liked those days more. I guess that's true for most people, or maybe not. But at least I had people whom I called friends and could go out with every day. There was nary a care in the world, and our discussions would be around who would get to bat first, and whose cycle would be used as the stump. I miss school. I miss you guys, S & S. I wish we can all come back to VK and live the way we used to.

But I know...

6 am

2011-06-28T09:34:00.000+05:30

What can you be doing at 6 am in WIMWI? Thinking of going to sleep? Waking up to go to the gym? Admonishing yourself for sleeping instead of working on that long 4000 word WAC? Cursing yourself for not having started your BRM project earlier? Chatting with friends? Watching a movie? Or just sleeping soundly?

Well, I spent my 6 am two days ago hanging out of a small (a tiny) balcony with Z, happily singing songs, woefully out of tune, but with gay abandon. And silently hoping that some girl would pass through the opening that the balcony overlooks, look up and smile that lovely smile that only a girl can give.

That didn't happen, but still easily one of the best 6 am(s) I have had!

PS: I will obviously try again..!

15 minutes

2011-04-25T12:44:00.000+05:30

15 minutes. The time left before I leave. Leave my campus for a month. Leave my room for good. Leave my comfort zone behind. Leave to see if I have found my calling. Leave the blistering mid-summer heat of Ahmedabad. Leave the cool breeze of my twin cooler. Leave my boyhood behind.

Leave for an India alien to me. Alien in person, not in thought. Leave to see my friends. Leave to make new friends. Leave to be humbled. Leave to find new joy. Leave to spread a few smiles. Leave to learn. Leave to teach. Leave to laugh. Leave to seek. Leave to a new life. Yet, continue with all things old. Leave to do what I desire. Leave to make a mark. Leave to make no mark.

My midsummer sojourn. My quarter life makeover. My life. My work. Me.

राही

2011-04-25T00:41:00.001+05:30

कई लोगो से दूर,

कुछ लोगो के पास,

यादें लेके, अपेक्शायों के साथ,

आँखों में आसू के मोती,

होंठों पे एक तनिक मुस्कान,

बार बार हर बार

जैसे हो एक लहर

जो उठे सागर के मद्ध्यम से,

लेके कई सपने,

पर तट पर पहुचकर,

बिखेर दे सब ख्वाब,

जैसे एक बच्चे का रोना,

जो पलक झपकते ही बन जाता है

दुनिया की सबसे मीठी हंसी,

जैसे बारिश की एक बूँद,

जो गिरती है बादल से रिहा होके सब ज़ंजीरो से,

पर ज़मीन पर पहुचते ही खो देती है अपना अस्तित्व,

वैसे ही हूँ मैं आज,

जा रहा हु मैं,

कुछ लोगो से दूर,

कुछ लोगो के पास |

Jao Naa..

2010-11-20T01:29:00.001+05:30

Yeh raat thodi to dhalne do,

Dheere dheere isko pighalne do,
Aage hai do raah maana magar,
Thodi durr to saath chalne do,

Khone wali ho kal tum,
Rukk sako jo do pal tum,
Kuch tumhari tasveerein,
Rakh lu apni aankhoin mein,

Encore

2009-02-09T00:25:00.000+05:30

There are not many things that I know I am passionate about, but France & everything to do with it, most of all the French language, is definitely on the list. At least it used to be when I was back in school, where I had studied French for 7 long years. Just how much I loved French, & how much I have missed it since came rushing back to me last Sunday, when I found myself at the Alliance Francaise , giving an orientation test to gauge my level of French. Before going over to Alliance, I had picked up my ol' school French Book (Mauger Bleu is what everybody called it... :-) ) I had intended to go over the basic stuff, hoping that it would all come back to me in a flash..! But, that was not to be. And the test proved the same, that I remembered very little. A 5th-6th grader would have done better than I did on that particular test. Still, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had been placed in the 3rd semester of their French course...!

Still, it was a great feeling to read, write, hear & speak French (there was an oral test of about 10 minutes duration as well) after so long... Coincidentally, last week, I recited two French poems that I had learnt at school, one of which a group of us school kids had sung as a welcome for the French Ambassador to India, when he had come visiting my junior school (D.P.S., East of Kailash, for the record..), to a colleague at work.

The first one,

Am stram gram
Pic et pic et colégram
Bourre et bourre et ratatam
Am stram gram pic dam!

and the second one...

Sur le pont d’Avignon
L'on y danse, l'on y danse
Sur le pont d’Avignon
L'on y danse tous en rond

Les beaux messieurs font comme ça
Et puis encore comme ça

Les belles dames font comme ça
Et puis encore comme ça

Sur le pont d’Avignon
L'on y danse, l'on y danse
Sur le pont d’Avignon
L'on y danse tous en rond

Les militaires font comme ça
Et puis encore comme ça

Les musiciens font comme ça
Et puis encore comme ça

Sur le pont d’Avignon
L'on y danse, l'on y danse
Sur le pont d’Avignon
L'on y danse tous en rond

Francaise, je t'aime...! :-)

Theory..(i)tically

2009-01-26T23:29:00.000+05:30

So, here's the deal... I have a theory. And I know that I am correct. It is just that most of the people whom I relate my theory to, tend to think that I have got it all wrong. But, fools that they are, they do not realize that by disagreeing with me, they are only proving me right. Not that they are fools, I know they are (that is another theory altogether), rather, that I am correct.

There is another theory by a very well-known anonymous figure. It (or he, depending on your sensibilities. This quandary, amazingly, can be resolved by another theory. Boy, don't we just love theories..!) says that most of the theories are, well, just theories. Like a famous non-theory that says that 87% of all statistics are inaccurate. Well, guess what, even this theory proves my theory right.

Ek minute, let us just clear up the blackboard (or ocre-blog, if you wish) a little. We have already talked about my theory, the theory that the ones who disagree with my theory are fools (more of a fact actually, but a theory explains their predicament), the famous anonymous theory, the It/he theory, the 87% theory.. hmph. Let us call these theories Theory A, Theory B and so on.. in the order in which I have summarized the list. So, in the short span of the 15 odd seconds you have taken to reach here, you have already been introduced to, what, 5 theories. That's one theory every 3 seconds. Wait a minute, I like the figure 3. But I like 2.5 even more. And the color blue too. So here goes another theory, it is quite improbable (not impossible, after all, Impossible is Nothing.. And I like Adidas stuff) that any 6 people in a group of 15 would all wear the same shade of blue on a given day. Wanna disagree with my theory? Sure, go ahead. It is a free country. But, I am free to call you a fool too...!

In the midst of all this, I completely forgot to tell you what my original theory was. Well, it was just that my theories are bunkum. See if you can disagree with that..! If you do, well, I have told you enough times in this post already, as to what I shall refer you as henceforth. And if you don't, then you need to visit the psychiatrist matey..! And if you take all this a bit too personally, peace out umbre, it was just a theory, it's not meant to be taken seriously. Haven't you heard this theory...?

Cellular Silence Day

2009-01-24T10:53:00.000+05:30

Have a look at this and this, the effort of one man to voice his concerns over the apparent christening of Narendra Modi as the (probable) next Chief Executive of India. I am posting his petition here, verbatim.

Dear Friend
The collective amnesia of the captains of Indian industry, Messrs.Tata, Mittal and Ambani embracing Narendra Modi and endorsing his candidature as future PM of India, disturbed me immensely.
This petition is my humble effort to engage the conscience of corporate India and make it known to them that the Indian citizen is not to be trifled with.Just as we can vote for or against the poitician, we can pinch the corporate bottom-line in order to engage their attention to mend their ways.
It is not an easy task for us to keep our cell phones and Blackberries switched off for an entire day on January 30th,- the 61st anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination.
However, it ought to be sufficient to get the message across to corporate India that we will not tolerate the endorsement of fascists as future Prime Ministers.
May I request you visit the link below to sign and thereafter circulate the petition below, if you feel as strongly about this matter
sincerely
Ranjan Kamath
The petition title is: Cellular Silence Day 30th January 2009. The petition URL is: http://www.PetitionOnline.com/30JAN09/petition.html
The petition is directed to: India Inc.
The start date is: ..January 15th, 2009
The end date is: ..January 30th, 2009

The petition statement says:
Dear Messrs, Ratan Tata, Sunil Mittal and Anil Ambani
I am one of a billion Indian citizens.
I am somewhere in the middle of that pyramid that you wish to give voice - from bottom to top - through wealth creation.
I am proud of the brands you represent that have made India proud.
I am one of the burgeoning Indian middle-class that share your aspirations of mutating India from indolent elephant to thundering tiger.
It ends there...
I have hitherto been accused of being indifferent and apathetic, simply because I am overawed and felt overwhelmed in a system replete with Goliaths.
But when I saw you embrace the fascist mastermind of state sponsored genocide as a future Prime Minister and endorse the Modi-fication of India, it was disappointingly apparent that the brands that aspire to make India rich shall continue to languish in ethical poverty.
While I am filled with revulsion at your endorsement of Narendra Modi, I must respect your right to do so as a fellow citizen.
In writing this petition I am a mere David amongst the mightiest corporate Goliaths but I feel empowered to address your collective amnesia - through recollection of the Gujarat pogrom of 2002 - by the true Goliath among Gujaratis in particular and Indians in general - Mohandas Gandhi.
All those who sign this petition will switch off their Tata Indicomm, Airtel and Reliance cellular phone and broadband connections from midnight on January 30th 2009.
It is eminently possible that I might be the one voice in a billion who will observe the 61st death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi on as Cellular Silence Day.
Then again, there might be close to a billion who could join me on January 30th, 2009 expressing their solidarity and silently insisting that the captains of India Inc adopt an ethical, compassionate path to wealth creation rather than the single-minded pursuit of the bottom-line.
We shall know that by the end of 30th January, 2009

I have signed up for the petition & I urge you to at least read this up & think about it.

Of Crucio & Verbalists

2009-01-16T23:22:00.000+05:30

Quite some time back, I had gone for a particular quiz where the audience was asked to explain the meaning of the word 'cruciverbalist'. Being a bit too immersed in the Harry Potter lore, I shouted out "one who hurts others by using harsh words" (I am sure most people can understand this - whether you have read any Harry Potter or not). Only when the quizmaster actually laughed at my answer did I realize that I had done something quite stupid. And almost instantly I realized that the word actually refers to a person who solves crosswords.

And well, that seems to be the flavor of the season - Crosswords. To be precise, as Thomson & Thompson say, Cryptic Crosswords. I first came to know of this kind of crossword in college, when a few school friends of mine (and at that time in a different college) introduced me to the world of cryptic clues & crosswords. But it was only at Adobe, that I managed to get a hang of it. A colleague of mine & I would sit down and attempt the crossword, regularly. But we were never really able to proceed further than 10-15 answers. And we thought, that even that was pretty decent, Hindu crossword's difficulty level being what it is. That was until now. We just picked up this old habit again. After a long time. It has been 3 consecutive attempts in this second stint of ours & Lo Behold..! We have come close to cracking the entire crossword ( bar 3-4 clues each time) twice. Yes, we believe that the crosswords are sub-par, and we vent out all our frustration for that on Nita Jaggi ( the current Hindu crossword compiler ), but still, solving almost the entire crossword is another feeling altogether. Conceded that we had the help of an ace quizzer cum cruciverbalist today, but we were matching him as well..!

How I wish I had a scanner and could upload these 3 attempts of ours, all the insane & inane) rough work, guesses, cuts & crosses. But alas..! Still, for now, crosswords rule..!! Cryptic Crosswords, to be precise.. :)

PS: The blog post is badly structured for a reason. Look out for the cryptic clues embedded within the post... :)

3 things my friends should/need to know about me

2008-12-11T00:26:00.000+05:30

1. I love to drive with my car's windows rolled down & my elbow on the door.

2. I love sarcasm & subtleties... And nobody does it better than johnny.

3. I get angry & out of control very quickly...

3 things most people do not know about me

2008-12-11T00:17:00.000+05:30

1. I love the number '3'. I consider it my lucky number... :D

2. My first nickname was krishna.. I was born on janmashtmi, and barring this year & 1998, it has always rained on my birthday. Plus, the year I was born, my dad could not see me till about a week after my birth 'cause all train services had been disrupted due to torrential downpours..!! :-)

3. I love palak paneer (Ok.. this one some people might know... :-D )

My lost Photoshop Express account

2008-12-11T00:04:00.000+05:30

Long ago, I had made an account on photoshopexpress.com (henceforth, psexp). Now, to create an account there I needed a US residence address. So I created a whole new email-id with a US residence, and I created my photoshop account.

Much enthused by this 'victory' I uploaded quite a few pics and played around with them. One result is my profile pic on blogger. I quite liked my work ( my only digital art, per se ). But, pretty soon, I managed to forget this email-id which was my psexp login id as well. I haven't been able to log-in since and my album is lost!

I request all & sundry to make various combinations of abhinav & gupta & '.' & 101 & mail them to me. I am sure the email id was something of this sort.. I have tried quite a few combos but none have worked so far...

examples:

abhinav.gupta101

abhi.gupt

abhinav.gupt101

abhingupta101 etc.. etc..

Any help is appreciated :-) you know where to reach me..!

3 Answers

2008-12-11T00:00:00.000+05:30

And now for some answers.. you could frame the questions as you wish:

1. Hurrr.... !!

2. Mard bano.. be a man..!

3. Pimply pimp...!

A 'chocolat de France' for anyone who can guess the 3rd :-)

3 Questions

2008-12-10T23:56:00.000+05:30

I have just 3 questions that I want answered. Let's begin:

1. How many people does it take to read the time off a binary table clock?

2. How many people does it take to make a binary table clock?

3. How many people does it take to actually make a person shut up from talking about binary table clocks?

Answers when you answer. :-)

Happy Birthday Johnny

2008-12-10T23:54:00.000+05:30

Hey John, here is wishing you a very happy birthday indeed! :-) Have a great day mate..! Remember, "this too shall pass...!" :D

Tere Bin...

2008-12-07T14:50:00.000+05:30

Random post.. absolutely love the lyrics.. It is the only punjabi song whose lyrics I do understand..!!

Rabbi's good..!

'ere go the lyrics :

tere bin / besides you

sanu sohnia / my love

koi hor nahio labhna / i shan't find another

jo dave / who'll give

ruh nu sakun / peace to my soul

chukke jo nakhra mera / and indulge me

ve main sare ghumm ke vekhia / i have gone and seen it all

amrika , roos, malaysia / america, russia, malaysiana

kittey vi koi fark si / there wasn't any difference

har kise di koi shart si / they all had some condition

koi mangda mera si sama / some asked for my time

koi hunda surat te fida / some were fascinated with my face

koi mangda meri si vafa / some demanded my fidelity

na koi mangda merian bala / none wanted my demons

tere bin / besides you

hor na kise / no one else

mangni merian bala / wanted my demons

tere bin / besides you

hor na kise / no one else

karni dhup vich chhan / shall shade me in the sun

jiven rukia / (the) way you paused

si tun zara / slightly

nahion bhulna / i shan't forget

main sari umar / all my life

jiven akhia si akhan chura / you said, looking away

"rovenga sanu yad kar" / "you shall weep in my memory"

hasia si main hasa ajeeb / i laughed a strange laugh

(par) tu nahi si hasia / but you didn't

dil vich tera jo raaz si / you had a secret in your heart

mainu tu kyon ni dasia / why didn't you tell me

tere bin / besides you

sanu eh raz / none shall tell this

kise hor nahion dasna / secret to me

tere bin / besides you

peerh da ilaaj / what druid

kis vaid kolon labhna / has the cure to my ills

milia si ajj mainu / i found today

tera ik patra / a note of yours

likhia si jis 'te / on which you had scribbeled

tun shayr varey shah da / a varis shah couplet

park ke si osnu / upon reading which

hanjnu ik duliya / a teardrop fell

akhan 'ch band si / what was locked in the eye

seh raaz ajj khulia / was revealed today

ki tere bin / that other than you

eh mere hanjnu / these tears of mine

kise hor / won't be kissed by

nahio chumna / none else

ki tere bin / that other than you

eh mere hanjhu / these tears of mine

mitti vich rulnha / will wither in the dust

Courtesy : rabbism.blospot.com

07/12/2008

2008-12-07T14:48:00.000+05:30

To all those who know what this day is ... Happy seventy-twelfth..! :)

Happy 13th

2008-11-22T22:26:00.000+05:30

It is the 13th of something that had probably gotten over around the 8th... :-D But still happy 13th..!

And yeah, this time around, it was Thursday, the 13th... Fingers crossed...! :-)

Disappointments

2008-11-22T22:01:00.000+05:30

October 2, 2008

2008-10-02T22:15:00.000+05:30

October the 2nd is here, and diferent people remember it for different reasons. During one conversation at office, my manager was talking about it being a dry day, a colleague (who loves to just go home & chill-ax) was jubilant about getting a holiday mid-week, I was thinking of all the markets being closed ( & dad and Sandy being unable to book their cars today ), while another colleague ( Bulb ) was plainly pre-occupied about it being the day on which Ramadoss's anti-smoking law comes into force. Still others were busy planning out-station trips to make use of this extended weekend, while others, who have come far away from home to work at Adobe, were going back home. The jigsaw-dudes were busy putting the pieces together (and mighty long it is going to take them to do it), while the newspapers were busy telling us that Gandhi is the toast of the web-space this week...

But there was one person who had nothing to do with 2nd October on her mind, all she cared for was catching a glimpse of Imran Khan. So we went, 4 of us from office, to the

neighbourhood mall, to sneak a peak of Imran Khan & Minnisha Lambha. Well, we managed to see 'Suited-Up' men with their trophy wives & kids tagging along, lots & lots of bouncers, even a trained K-9..! But nahh, an hour passed, we finished our cups of mochas & cappuccinos, but they were still nowhere to be seen. But just as we were leaving, the 'little one' did manage to see someone.. Here is the pic.. Guess who ?

Of Japs & Brits

2008-10-02T21:53:00.000+05:30

There is this one particular author whose works I really like, Kazuo Ishiguro. I have read two of his books so far, Never Let Me Go & When We Were Orphans, and currently have a third on my shelf, The Remains of the Day. I hope to start reading it soon ( like 5-6 more ).

Despite the fact that I don't usually go for books by their popularity and just pick them off the shelves, I find it quite surprising that almost nobody I know has read his books. If anyone is reading this entry, well, I would recommend his works. You would be pleasantly surprised.

And yeah, as you must have guessed, he is a Japanese. And this leads me to a confusion, do I call him Kazuo-San or Ishiguro-San ? Hmph, I'll never get the hang of this.

Google Chrome logo

2008-09-28T00:33:00.000+05:30

Amidst the hue & cry raised by Google Chrome, a small albeit decent amount of attention was focussed on the logo of Google chrome. Check this story out for more details. Do not, for anything, miss the video on the page as well...!

Raman

2008-09-27T23:22:00.000+05:30

I have been working at Adobe Systems for over a year now. I have written about my life at work & my friends a few times. But I haven't yet written about the man to whom I owe it all. Raman Nagpal.

He is a true leader, a man with a towering persoanlity ( both literally & figuratively ). Ask anybody in my team , and I mean the 100+ strong Print Technologies Group, and they would all tell you that they are inspired by Raman, awed by him, shocked by him, and most importantly respect him. A lot. Every man & woman here knows that he is a brilliant person, with a razor sharp mind, it is never easy to fool him, as emplyees frequently fool their managers ( :D ) He needs just a couple of minutes to get to the bottom of any problem, and see the idea in its entirety. I could go on & on... But that is not why I wrote this post.

His most endearing quality, and that is the reason why I work at Adobe, is his knack of picking a person and backing him to the hilt. That is what he did to me. While in my last year at college, I was offered an internship by Raman, during the course of which I worked on an interesting project under him. On the basis of my work, he offered me a job here. And that was despite my disastrous interview just a couple of weeks back. He called me & told me that while he knew that I had basically sucked at my coding interview, but he had received a very positive response in others, and he personally also felt the same after having worked with me for a better part of my 4 months at Adobe. And the reason he was offering me a job was nothing but his willingness to back me inspite of my having been rejected in my interviews.

Since then, well, I have had the good fortune of having worked with him on something or the other a number of times. And each experience leaves me further in awe of his ability to think of crazy ideas, execute them, and prove to the (higher) powers that be at Adobe, that it ain't so bad to think out of the box, something that Adobe magnanimously fails to do...!

Time & again, he thinks of crazy stuff and it is precisely this crazy stuff that helps me land up a patent here, a spot award there & many many interesting interactions with great minds at Adobe, be it Shantanu, Naresh or Ajay.

It might sound very inane & tacky, but I am forced to make a comparison. Harry was accused of being Dumbledore's man through & through by Rufus. Well, I confess that I am Raman's man through & through. I hope, as he put it, that I don't let him down. This one is for you Raman.

Anwar

2008-09-27T22:28:00.000+05:30

Nauheed Cyrusi..

That's the name that has been stuck in my mind the last couple of days. And some can guess why. She has acted in all of 10-11 movies, one of which was Anwar.

Though this movie was trashed at the BO, and though I haven't yet seen it, still, the songs are awesome. Songs like Aankhen Teri, Javeda Zindagi are quite

beautiful. And so is Vijay Raaz, a wonderful wonderful actor. He lies firmly in the list of the precious few method actors that Bollywood has produced. I have been t

old that, if not for the story, Anwar is a must watch for his acting.
I would love to watch the movie, if anyone is willing to watch it with me..! :)

Btw, all the TV Channels are hell-bent to inform me that it is

Daughter's Day tomorrow. All right, I give in. Happy Daughter's day to all daughters of the world..!

Truly Rats Galore...

2008-07-20T18:22:00.000+05:30

Many a times I have been asked for the reason behind the name of our blog ( in fact I started up another blog with a name in the same vein ), and whenever I explained the reason, the reactions I received from the incredulous to the amused to the downright irritated. And I was always like.. ok.. whatever... !

Anyways, so the reason this thought popped up in my head, yet again, and is fast becoming an obnoxious little blog post is the spate of 'RAT'ty things happening of late. The movie Jane Tu... Ya Jane Na (which is not a bad movie by the way), the dead rat in my auxiliary bedroom, the movie Ratatouille are all having a very Rat-ish effect on me. Whatever that means.. Blah...!

Waise, Ratatouille is a cool movie...!! First and foremost, it is set in France, in Paris...! Secondly it has a rat as the lead. Thirdly, the awesome animation. Fourth, the love angle and lastly (and quite importantly) the delicious looking food ...! This movie is a must watch, if you have missed out. (Though this review(-ish) is kinda late in the day, but still).

Talking of nice, off-beat movies, one must not miss Juno as well. It is well, different, and cool, and fresh, and nice, and... you get the point. Juno is Good. Period. Watch it.

All for today, gotta go back to my usual slumber and recharge myself for the god-awful week at work coming up...!

Cya

Ahh.. Slides...

2008-07-09T01:58:00.000+05:30

So, slideshare seems to have taken my office by storm. It seems as if now everybody is making slides & uploading them in the hope of their being adjudged the World's Best Slideshow. Well, no, I am not going to end up making one (that doesn't stop me from dreaming though). This post is firstly to say that hey Akash, well done, and secondly to give you a link to a very good slideshow indeed. Check it out here.

| View | Upload your own

Citius, Altius, Fortius

2008-07-06T23:38:00.000+05:30

My first encounter with these 3 words was in class 10 or so, which is quite unbefitting even for an amateur quizzer. For almost all the guys in my school-friend circle, the trio was associated with the olympics, but for me, it will always be the ESPN school quiz hosted by Harsha Bhogale. If you don't know what I am talking about, look here & here.

Though I never managed to end up in the quiz, in any capacity, be it participant or the audience , and certainly not as the quiz master (heck, I didn't even try...), the quiz still held some charm upon me. Throughout my middle & high school days I was in what I have been told as the 'elite set', the group of nerds who did well (academically) at school, who were expected to crack the JEEs and the PMTs, the guys who would win all the quizzes and prizes to boot, the ones who would land up a majority of the coveted school appointments and the jerks who would never be looked at by girls even for the first time. But I was always among the lesser known among the set, not with the teachers, but definitely with the fairer sex. I was an amateur quizzer at best, never applied for any school appointment (that I was made one is a completely different story), did not manage to crack the JEE (ho.. hum..), but was completely at peace to be in this group. And most importantly, that is what my parents desired. Damn, I am on JEE & parents again.. digression.. digression..

Yes, I was just trying to from this picture in your mind, of the kind of guy I was in school, and the kind of people I used to roam around with. And quizzing was a big part of all our lives. For Bong, Shape & Sen it meant infinite legalized bunks, innumerable prizes and an equal number of looks of envy from the likes of me. Whereas for me (& others I can't name for the fear of incurring their wrath) it meant just taking part in such quizzes (to make up the numbers, it seemed), watching the big guys invariably walk off with the glorious prizes (irrespective of what they got, it did seem glorious in all that colorful cellophane). So I just used to relive my quizzing fantasies watching show upon show of the ESPN quiz.

Yesterday, I was suddenly reminded of this long-forgotten phase of my life, when I came upon a mail that wordlessly reflected my opinions on the Beijing Olympics. It is not an opinion about the Olympics in particular, instead it sums up my attitude towards the Chinese way of getting things done, the Chinese political scenario, the complete lack of democracy & freedom that we in India take for granted. (Oh, how I miss those heated discussions we used to have in college, & of course aboard the 764 guys... !!) How I got to rambling on upon my school days from that mail was through the subject of the mail & that of my post : Citius, Altius, Fortius.

PS : Did anyone manage to catch the olympic torch relay in person... ?

Too much free time on my hands

2008-07-06T23:26:00.000+05:30

In yet another attempt to make my weekends meaningful, I found myself on a page full of personality tests (Don't even ask me how I landed up there, that is something that I could probably write an entire post upon). From the very serious to the pure pranks, from the most insipid to the most cranky, these tests do have a lot of variety, which is something that Ekta Kapoor could learn. What devilish serials her factory churns out. But, again, that is fodder for some other debate. But, yeah, in the end these "persoanlity" tests did give me a few laughs (with the inevitable self-introspection phases thrown in their midst). I suggest you to try out some of these. They were fun...

Which File Extension are You?

Career Inventory Test Results

Extroversion	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	53%
Emotional Stability	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	36%
Orderliness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	40%
Altruism	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	73%
Inquisitiveness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	70%

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I seriously have too much free time on my hands. I should do something meaningful for a change. History walk anyone??

Wordle

2008-06-30T23:51:00.000+05:30

Here is the wordle for the blog till now. Thanks Akash for the link...!

Imaginative Poetry

2008-06-29T23:33:00.000+05:30

Today I am posting verbatim a page I had come across recently. I found it to be quite beautiful & pretty clear and accurate on the analysis part. Plus, I really loved the song; heard it after a long long time...!

At times I tend to have moods where I just keep admiring and appreciating things for hours and hours...like this song today I heard it sometime in the afternoon...being played in the neighbour’s otherwise irritating radio. Really beautiful song one with those melodious overtones...Also, though very difficult to sing perfectly but thankfully easy to sing decently well so that you don’t have to worry about molesting the song when u want to sing it aloud…The song goes like this

is mod se jaate hai, kuchh sust kadam raste
kuchh tej kadam raahe
patthar kee hawelee ko, sheeshe ke gharondo mein
tinako ke nasheman tak
is mod se jaate hai...

aandhee kee tarah udakar, ek raah gujaratee hai
sharamaatee huyee koee, kadamon se utaratee hai
in reshamee raahon me, ek raah to wo hogee
tum tak jo pahuchatee hai
is mod se jaate hai..

ek door se aatee hai,paas aake palatatee hai
ek raah akelee see, rukatee hain naa chalatee hai
ye soch ke baithhee hoo, yek raah to wo hogee
tum tak jo pahuchatee hai
is mod se jaate hai..
This song is from the movie Aandhi(remember Sanjiv kumar and some Sen)...the movies also has other nice numbers like "tere bina zindagi se koi shikwa" and “Tum aagaye ho noor aagaya hai...The music is amazing all right but what caught my appreciation today is the lyrics aspect...Beautiful lyrics by Gulzar...what makes me admire his lyrics in particular is his imagination...to me it seems like after he thinks of a particular scenario he imagines and imagines many analogies...once an analogy fits the next thing to do would be to fit other aspects of the scenario in the analogy and vice versa what i would call giving sub-analogies...like in this case the scenario "a just committed(or just married) couple wondering abut the future and expressing love and apprehension by thinking of the number of ways their relationship could go...and the analogy is 2 musafirs in journey who meet at a point and wondering abut the number routes one could take at that point....the analogy of raahein and raaste is a quite often used one in the industry but what stands out here is the way he proceeded fitting the analogy much better by giving sub-analogies

The first 3 lines lata(mangeshkar) says by taking whatever different routes until now hum is mod pe pahunche hain aur ek saath khade han..ab is mod se kuch raste aise jate hain jahan log tez chalte hain(people leading life mechanically and life goes past you) aur kuch aise raah hain jahan sust chalte hain(haste khelte going slow enjoying life with partner to the fullest)...then kishore(kumar) adds that some routes go to patthar ki haweli(signifies a strong relationship)...sheeshe ki gharondon mein(a decently strong relationship but could break by a slight turbulence)...tinkon ki nasheman tak(nasheman is basically sort of a nest tinkon ka ghosla is supposed to be very weak...so signifies a weak relationship)....and then they talk about more routes

in reshamee raahon me, ek raah to wo hogee
tum tak jo pahuchatee hai
Towards the end lata says I am in search of that path which will lead me to you ..To which kishore says

ek door se aatee hai,paas aake palatatee hai
ek raah akelee see, rukatee hain naa chalatee hai
there r routes which from far look like they r approaching me but as soon as u get closer they turn away making it impossible for u to reach me...n there is a route...where our relationship is just stagnated

PS: I just felt like sharing the meaning of this song for the underprivileged ones if ever one comes across this he could appreciate it....and not to show "studdaps"

PPS: This is my interpretation with some help from some sites and some dictionaries...so if some1 begs to differ or finds any faults anywhere please feel free to comment!

That’s all folks (with the Looney tunes muzik in the background)...will come back when something excites me again...till then adios! J

And here is the video too...

The Vizag trip

2008-06-08T23:50:00.000+05:30

This is coming after almost a year, but was browsing through some pics right now and remembered that I hadn't really shared the vizag trip with many people. Hence, this post.

Now that I come to think of it, it is funny that each one of us has worked on some NLP technique or the other. It started off with John & Maddy doing their stint under Neelu. Then gauri, danny, Himanshu & I also followed them into this and our BTP came out of our work with Neeladri. And then Deepak and gauri also made something ( a synonymn finder...??) using LSA and all... Anyways, that is a huge digression.

So, Shampa sent our BTP as an entry to the ISTE National Convention of 2007 which was to be held in Rajam, some 200 kms off Vishakhapatnam. As it turned out our project did get nominated for the (pls don't laugh) Kerala Government National Award for the Best Engineering Design. We guys were definitely thrilled. After all, we had put in quite a lot of (genuine) effort into this project, but, much more importantly, we had thought of writing atleast one paper out of this project, but us being us, we never managed to do that. But here, something good was happening of its own accord, and all we had to do was to give it a little nudge. And then the words 'National' & 'Best Engineering Design' did send us in a state of frenzied excitement. So, we started our preparations. We were supposed to deliver a presentation & (possibly)a demo at the national convention that was being held at the GMR Institute of Technology, Rajam, which, as I said is a rather bucolic though very beautiful place a few hours away from Vishakhapatnam. Himanshu was unable to come for the event and unfortunately Danish caught chicken pox at the very last moment (on his birthday too..!!)

So, there we were, Gaurav and I. We boarded our flight ( a very antique looking Alliance Air behemoth ) to Vishakhapatnam, which is the nearest airport to Rajam. Non-airworthy it had looked from outside, but once we were inside our primary problem was the leg room...! It was ouch..! Cramped seats, pathetic service by the air hostesses, and useless food. But the view obviously compensated for everything..! By the time we landed at Vizag we had forgotten all about the seats and were ready to take on Vizag, explore it a bit and then head off to Rajam. Especially since Gaurav had spent much of his childhood here. But, lo & behold, what greeted us there was incessant rainfall. It was the starting of October and south India was caught amidst some really foul weather. But, insistent on enjoying our time, we tarried on nevertheless. We booked a taxi, had food and even managed to dash off (in a really torrential downpour) to a submarine that had been converted to a museum. Standing inside the submarine with the rain pounding us from all sides was really an experience that I wouldn't be forgetting in a hurry... :-) Thanx Gaurav for that one..! Well, after that we just went off to Rajam, it took us about 4 hours and that night we just went up to the rooms allocated to us, had food, made ourselves comfortable and slept.

(Fast-forwarding the boring part... ;-) ) The next morning we went for our registeration, rehearsed our presentation, and gave it to a panel of 3 jurists in the evening. By the time everything was over, we were exhausted. Then we just roamed about the beautiful campus and marveled at everything that was so peculiarly south Indian. The trees, the food, the way everybody seemed to practically live off sambar-chawal or dahi-chawal and ate it the way I always prefer too, with their bare hands... Yummy..!! But the most astonishing thing we came across at that college was the immense amount of control that was exercised over the college students. These poor guys still have to wear uniforms..!! Their shoes were checked every morning and the defaulters were punished. This is college for God's sake...! I am no supporter of school uniforms and seeing this state of affairs in a college was really disheartening. All over the country, the girls hostels are usually locked up after around 9 at night. And well that is reasonable considering the kind of society we live in. But, here even the boys hostel was locked down after 8:30...! Strange.. very very strange..! Despite all this, our hosts did really make a big effort to make us feel comfortable. And I don't know why, but I got the feeling that they were somewhat intimidated by the fact that we had come all the way from Delhi and that too, by air..!

Nevertheless, rested and nourished and with the presentation done and over with, we had only two things on our mind. Firstly & obviously, whether we would get the first prize (which we did, eventually....! :-) ). And secondly, we had come to hear about the really bad weather at Vishakhapatnam, due to which all the flights to & from there were being canceled. And we had a flight to catch from Vishakhapatnam bound for Hyderabad, from where we were to catch our flight back to Delhi. And if the flights from Vizag were being canceled then we were almost certain to miss our second flight from Hyderabad. And seeing that the ISTE biggies (who had come from Delhi) were worried about the exact same thing, we decided to take a bus to Hyderabad at the earliest and catch our flight from there.

So that is what we did. We went from Rajam to Vizag by bus, and along the way witnessed some astonishing natural beauty, the likes of which I have rarely ever seen in my life...! What a pity that my camera (actually a friend's cam) was deep inside my bag, which I couldn't possibly unpack there. Well, then from Vizag, we took a bus to Hyderabad. On reaching Hyderabad, we went over to Gaurav's masi's place. They had a pair of immensely loveable Chihuahuas. After fooling with them to our heart;s content, we moved on to a whirlwind tour of Hyderabad ( we had only two hours before we had to rush off to catch our flight to Delhi). So we saw the Hussain Sagar lake, the Salar Jung Museum (regrettably, we couldn't find the Nizam's jewels. Would have loved to catch a glimpse of those...!!), and managed to catch a glance of the Char Minar from a little distance too... We could have gotten closer but we were caught in a traffic jam in what the cab driver explained to us to be the Chandni Chowk of Hyderabad. Disappointed, we gave up and turned back to the airport but not before we got some famous Hyderabad Biryani packed for us for the flight back home. Once on the flight, there really wasn't much to be done. We had some biryani, talked a bit, and fell asleep, and before we knew it, we were back home...!

It was a very interesting trip indeed, the most planned one I had ever gone on for sure, and as it turned out, was the most haphazard one indeed. And yeah, we later came to know that the flight from Vizag to Hyderabad, which we had thought would be cancelled, was the only flight that had taken off..!! So much for all our planning...!!

When Voldy met Gandalf

2008-06-02T01:19:00.000+05:30

Among fantasy fanatics a very common past-time is drawing up comparisons among the two most popular fantasy fictions doing the rounds currently, The Lord of the Rings & Harry Potter. Whenever I have gone ahead on that path I have ended up comparing Harry with Frodo, Ron with Sam, Voldemort with Sauron, Dumbledore with Gandalf and so on.... One interesting set piece I had never thought of is what would have happened if Gandalf was to meet Voldemort. Who would have prevailed (disregarding the prophecy linking Harry & Voldy, of course). Go on, take a shot. My vote is for Voldemort, but that could always change.

What say you (Aragorn style.. :) ) ??

Kal Ho Na Ho..

2008-06-02T01:05:00.000+05:30

Har Ghadi Badal Raha Hai Roop Zindagi
Chaav Hai Kahhi Hai Dhoop Zidnagi
Har Pal Yahan
Jee Bhar Jiyo Jo Hai Sama
Kal Ho Na Ho
Har Ghadi Badal Raha Hai Roop Zindagi
Chaav Hai Kahhi Hai Dhoop Zidnagi
Har Pal Yahan
Jee Bhar Jiyo Jo Hai Sama
Kal Ho Na Ho

Chaahe Jo Tumhe Poore Dil Se
Milta Hai Woh Mushkil Se
Aisa Jo Koi Kahin Hai
Bas Vahi Sabse Hasin Hai
Us Haath Ko Tum Thaam Lo
Woh Meherbaan Kal Ho Na Ho
Har Pal Yahan
Jee Bhar Jiyo Jo Hai Sama
Kal Ho Na Ho

Palko Ke Leke Saaye
Paas Koi Jo Aaye
Lakh Sambhalo Paagal Dil Ko
Dil Dhadke Hi Jaaye
Par Sochlo Is Pal Hai Jo
Woh Dastan Kal Ho Na Ho
Har Pal Yahan
Jee Bhar Jiyo Jo Hai Sama
Kal Ho Na Ho
Har Pal Yahan
Jee Bhar Jiyo Jo Hai Sama
Kal Ho Na Ho

Just felt like putting up the lyrics of this song, for no apparent reason. Kind of fits my mood right now (again for no apparent reason) :)

Catch ya later..!!

One year after college.. taking stock of my life

2008-05-25T17:25:00.000+05:30

Has it really been one year ? It sure doesn't feel like it. Seems like just yesterday, when we had bid our 'final' adieus to each other at good ol' CP. Hugging each other, solemn faced, and with heavy hearts. Wondering if we would ever find friends like these again (at least I was...). But somewhere deep inside, there was a hope for a bright future, a hope for friends who would be just like the ones that I was saying my au revoirs to, a hope for a life as content and satisfaction-filled as I lived thus far.

And it was with that hope, that I joined Adobe. Hoping to meet great minds and even greater people. For the first 4-5 months I even managed to live the kind of life I was hoping for. Cool work, recognition at the work place, making a couple of amazing friends in my team, and a wonderful environment, I thought that I had it all. Going to office really early in the morning to chat with others, partying at least once every week, passing time with like-minded people, and leaving late after having played a game of tennis. I loved it.

What I did not realize was the cost at which all this was coming. I failed to fathom the simple fact that the more the time I spent with these friends, the lesser the time I had to share with my family. Leaving early and coming late became a source of irritation for my parents. And rebellious that our generation is, I felt victimized at being told how to lead my life. I was 'working' now, after all. And financially independent. Never for a moment did I sit back to realize the effect that the harsh words I spoke at home were having on my relationship with my family.

Not only this, the plans that I had made for my future were suffering too. Content with my state of work and very very satisfied indeed to be taken under the aegis of a couple of very sharp fellows at work, I started thinking about changing my plans. And then there was her. Coming into my life like a fresh breeze and literally taking my breath away. With her in my mind, all my well laid out plans were bunked.

And the third mistake in my life (couldn't resist it, accusations of plagiarism be damned...) was taking my old friends for granted. Just like I had neglected my family, I had foolishly lost touch with my friends, who just a few months ago had been part of my every day life.

And now with the exceedingly strained conditions and frayed nerves at home, with my career plans having gone for a spin & the mentors having deserted me just when I needed them the most, with my relationship with her at the nadir of all nadirs (and with me to blame almost completely for it), and having forsaken my old pals, I can only sit back, pause for a moment and realize that nothing worse could possibly happen to me right now, and that anything that happens now is gonna be for the better only.

This one year has passed really quickly, did I say? Maybe not. So much has happened in this one year. I have experienced emotions I used to scoff other people for having. I have been both marveled & shocked at my parents', my friends' and my attitude and reactions to various things. It certainly doesn't seem possible to fit it all in one year. And yet it has been just that much time since we all left for distant shores (and for not so distant ones too) to pursue our dreams & aspirations. It has been just that much time since we decided that we would keep in touch and some of us have failed to do so (u listening madda...??? ... er, reading... )

Please let's get back together some time really soon guys. All of us. It has been so long since I have genuinely had fun...

And then some....

2007-07-02T00:45:00.000+05:30

More stuff from Shantaram...

"The facts of life are very simple. In the beginning we feared everything - animals, the weather, the trees, the night sky - everything except each other. Now we fear each other and almost nothing else. No one knows why anyone does anything. No one tells the truth. No one is happy. No one is safe. In the face of all that is so wrong with the world, the very worst thing you can do is survive. And yet, survive you must. It is this dilemma that makes us believe and cling to the lie that we have a soul, and that there is a God who cares about its fate. And now you have it."

"She kissed my cheek, and turned away. I couldn't obey the impulse to hold her in my arms and kiss her lips. I watched her walk, her dark silhouette a part of night itself. Then she moved into the warm, yellow light near the door of her apartment, and it was as if my watching eyes had made her shadow come to life, as if my heart alone had painted her from darkness with the light and colors of her love. She turned once to see that I was watching her, before she softly closed and locked the door."

And now the eerie one... "One of the reasons why we crave love, and seek it so desperately, is that love is the only cure for loneliness, and shame, and sorrow. But some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths about yourself are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you." ... true?? I don't really know. Moving..? Oh hell yeah..!!

A few good ones...

2007-07-01T11:52:00.000+05:30

Was just reading this book aajkal.. And came across some pretty neat lines in it. just wanted to share them with you guys..

It starts off like this...

"It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn't sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it's all you've got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choices you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life."

... Now I remember hearing something to that effect in The Shawshank Redemption.. I think it goes like this. "Hope. Now that's one thing they can never take away from us, one place they can never reach, one thought they can never kill." Liked it then, like this now.. :)

"The only force more ruthless and cynical than the business of big politics is the politics of big business" -- hmm..

"A man has to draw the line somewhere. Civilization, after all is defined by what we forbid, more than what we permit."

"There's a truth that's deeper than experience. It's beyond what we see, or even what we feel. It's an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever, and the reality from the perception. We're helpless, usually, in the face of it; and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any heart would willingly pay. It doesn't always help us to love the world, but it does prevent us from hating it. And the only way to know that truth is by sharing it, heart to heart, just as Prabaker told it to me, just as I'm telling it to you now." - - nice, eh???

The book is Shantaram, by the way, the bestseller by Gregory David Roberts. Will put up more stuff as and when I come across it.

Device uses waves to “print” on water surface

2007-06-16T20:16:00.000+05:30

Now, I just stumbled upon this some time back. Very interesting to say the least..

Researchers at Akishima Laboratories (Mitsui Zosen), working in conjunction with professor Shigeru Naito of Osaka University, have developed a device that uses waves to draw text and pictures on the surface of water.

The device, called AMOEBA (Advanced Multiple Organized Experimental Basin), consists of 50 water wave generators encircling a cylindrical tank 1.6 meters in diameter and 30 cm deep (about the size of a backyard kiddie pool). The wave generators move up and down in controlled motions to simultaneously produce a number of cylindrical waves that act as pixels. The pixels, which measure 10 cm in diameter and 4 cm in height, are combined to form lines and shapes. AMOEBA is capable of spelling out the entire roman alphabet, as well as some simple kanji characters. Each letter or picture remains on the water surface only for a moment, but they can be produced in succession on the surface every 3 seconds.

Researchers at Akishima Laboratories have developed similar devices in the past that used waves to draw pictures on the surface of water, but those devices had trouble producing letters with straight lines (such as the letter K). Additionally, it took the previous devices up to 15 minutes of data input time to produce each letter.

The newly developed technology uses improved calculation methods for controlling the wave generators, relying on formulas known as Bessel functions. In addition to being able to draw letters consisting of straight lines, the input time has been drastically reduced to between 15 and 30 seconds for each letter.

Akishima Laboratories expects the technology to be incorporated into amusement devices that combine acoustics, lighting and fountain technology, which they hope to see installed at theme parks and hotels.

Now, hvnt we studied Bessel functions sometimetime in coll?? Under Jhakkas(JKS) maybe :D ??

A place called home...

2007-06-10T10:51:00.000+05:30

Driving back from college some days ago, lost amidst the songs playing on the stereo, a sudden sight arrested my attention. I have no idea why it did, I guess it wouldn't have on any other day.

A small house, with a light on in one of the rooms. A woman standing in the balcony chatting with (I guess) a neighbor, and two kids playing in the small park right underneath. I suppose it just reminded me of my childhood, of maybe about 10-12 years ago. We also used to live in a small(er) apartment near JLN stadium. Lots of friends (read children of the same age group), and a couple of rather special ones as well. I still remember the way we kids used to rush off to the stadium grounds every evening in the summer months, buy our customary lick-lolly from our old ice-cream waale uncle. Then rush off into the fields and just roll down the slopes, play hide-and-seek, chain-chain and u know, basically have the time of our lives. Our mothers standing in the balcony just like that woman, chatting with the friendly neighbors talking about all and sundry. Dad coming home in the evening in the rain, with my sis worried ki the car would get wet (she was arnd 3-4 and sooooooooo cute..!!).

Ohhh, how i wish those days would return. Those uncomplicated days. No mad rush, with the life so peaceful. And john, irrespective of whatever u might think, i really do wish that we were born some 50 years ago or so... Just think of it. In the hills of Darjeeling, romancing with the love of ur life, meeting in the evenings in the cloud-covered dales. Peace all around, no tension of getting home early to be able to mail back some stuff to ur boss/colleague/professor. Just being able to spend some real quality time with the people u like.

I digress. So as I was saying, this sight really did move me. I was forced to pull over and stop. Another thing that shook me was how a small piece of land could so easily turn into such a special place. A place called home. Do you also get the amazing satisfaction/enigmatic feeling , when u return home after a trip, even if you had been out with your entire family..?? Is this home-sickness as well?? Or house-sickness?? I don't know.

But, such things do put everything else in perspective. That night, at danny's place, when we were all talking about our regrets/satisfying moments/learnings from our 4 years of college, I did mention something about not taking the ones close to you for granted, especially your family. I don't know as to how many of you actually paid attention to what I said. But I say it again yaar. There's nothing like home, nothing like family. I guess nothing, and nobody in this whole wide world is worth neglecting your family for. Not even the special 'one'. But obviously that is not to say that you forget your friends, which brings me to my last point.

We all are going our own diff ways now. John and maddy off to meet uncle sam. Danny would most probably do so too in a couple of years. Deepak off to bangalore, (i guess for quite a long time..). So just Gauri and me here.. We will all be making new friends. But please please let's not forget each other as well. I have the ugly tendency to indulge a bit to much in/with anything new that I get/find. But not this time, not with friends. So, milate rehana yaar. Please. I am extremely lucky to have so many great friends at one go. Now I don't want to lose all of them at one go as well.

So, here's to us, the geeky gang..!!! :D

Goodbye

2007-06-07T00:17:00.000+05:30

Goodbye

by Rosebud

Well maybe now I should just say goodbye
You used to be my friend
But I never felt I really was yours
So maybe this is the end.
I'm different from you, all of you
Each other we've never understood
I hope that if I do tell you goodbye
That it won't be for good.
Whenever I'm mad it hurts me so bad
And you don't even care
I don't know why, I just want to cry
And someday I won't be there.
The streaks on my arm they've done me no harm
They're only made of pen
But once they are blood that turns brown like mud
They'll be there again and again.
If I'm mad at you I'll hurt myself too
But that doesn't really matter
Although when I hurt I feel like dirt
And my spirit's bruised and battered.
I do not know why it has to be so
I really wish it did not
But the way this has been going
it is basically shot.
You don't need me and we don't need we
And that's how I think I know why
These words are the ones I have to speak-
I love you, but goodbye.

Here are some really nice poems i came across...

2007-06-07T00:16:00.000+05:30

Am I Alone?
by Megan Hance
I get a funny feeling,
it comes from deep inside.
I get all mad and angry,
wanting to go and hide.

My doctor calls it depression,
my dad says it's just me.
But the thoughts and feelings,
no one will ever be able to see.

Some say I'm psycho,
some say I'm just weird.
It's like I'm a different person,
and the old me just disappeared.

I get really edgy,
I want to commit suicide real bad.
Then I get a headache,
followed by feeling sad.

I wish I could get help,
I wish it would go away.
Maybe if I keep praying real hard,
it will some day.

Very interesting...

2007-03-02T23:25:00.000+05:30

This is the product of a research undertaken to study the baisc human usage over the net. The image is a 24-hour clock showing what people look for at different times of the day. The font size is proportional to the no. of times the term appears in an hour.. This data was collated from over 1997-2000 with the innermost ring representing 1997.

Some very interesting observations can be made:

Overall

* There appears to be a dramatic shift away from chat and towards information retrieval between 1997 and 2000.
* People are diurnal - search activity dies down at night and picks up again as people get up for work.

1997

* It is clear that chat is most prevalent when people are home (evening). You can see chat frequency starting to grow around 11am, dominating by 5pm, and tapering off around 1am. It is supplanted by sex around 5am.
* It seems people are curious about adult topics throughout the day. You can see sex jump in frequency around 11pm, reaching a climax around 2am (no pun intended) and dying down to nominal levels by 5am. However, since everyone is in bed, it clings to the top spot until pictures jumps to life, snatching the top spot as people roll out of bed.
* Secondary terms are interesting as well. Entertainment oriented terms are popular in the afternoon and evening. University and software make their main appearance during the work day (8am-5pm). Warez makes it into the top five from 5am-7am thanks to late-night pirates and people who can’t get to sleep.

1998

* Chat and pictures vie for the top spot starting around 5pm, continuing until 2am. However, mp3s (and download) make a strong appearance, especially at night.

1999 & 2000

* These two years are similar, and so I've grouped them for brevity. The data shows chat, mp3s and porn begin to lose out to information, which dominates around the clock. MP3 remain popular in 1999. By 2000, e-commerce has matured; people are increasingly searching for things to buy.

For more info, visit http://charrison.net/projects/searchclock/index.html

Random thoughts...

2007-02-11T16:28:00.000+05:30

Getting bored.. so sat down to write...

Lots of interesting stuff happening rt now.. England on the verge of defeating Austraila in the second final in the Commonwealth Bank series..(YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!), Ganguly scoring another well-made half-century (echo previous sentiments..), non-stop rain in delhi for 2 days now (awesome weather yaar!!), neelu agreeing to see us, some people from techtribe coming to college to give a talk on entrepeneurship, danish attending william darlymple's talk (huh...???), I got my offer letter from atrenta, the moksha quiz also coimg up, plus two projects to finish and last but not the least, me finally taking part in a topcoder match and sucking big time...(atlst thts not a surprise..)!!

So, as u see, am pretty occupied with all this. In between there is a little bit(okay, more than a little) of book-reading, movie-watching, music-listening, sketching, coding, making web pages, orkutting and blogging :D

Coming back to the weather, man.. really awesome weather.. Does grow on you, though it grew too much on danish. That man went for a 250 km long drive coz he liked the weather!! Wish I cud be as reckless as he (is)... But, seriously, weather's nice. It had me making plans for movie marathons, till I realised that watching movies all day doesn't give you much of a chance to enjoy the weather.. hehe.. So, junked the plan (or pseudo-plan, whatever..) and am going for a drive myself. Though not far, just to the neighbourhood market, to buy some books.. (divide danny's trip's distance by 50 and you get the idea..)

Apart from that, all is hunky dory. Well, almost all. Just that teh stupid Adobe ppl aren't calling me for a written exam or interview.. phew.. been waiting for so long now..(sigh!!) Hmm, what else.. Yeah, have been reading Bhagwad Gita of late.. nice funde there.. A pretty logical outlook towards life, wish I had the determination to follow the principles laid out there.. But, fat chance! So, u guys are stuck with me. for the time being.

And yeah, going to HPCA tomorrow.. It's some school for handicapped kids, let's see if we could do something meaningful for those unfortunate kids. They really are in a pitiful state yaar.. I don't men the kids at HPCA. I haven't even met them. Rather, generally. Those kids suffer so much. So much discrimination, and no real help from most of us. I remember the countless times I have seen some guy in our college, who goes around in a wheelchair, being carried up (or down)the staircases, especially the one leading to the canteen.. Heart-wrenching scene that. I really wish we could do something for them..

So, on this cheerful note, would say tata, and as john said/requested/threatened, WRITE!!!

Discrimination - a sin??

2006-12-02T18:35:00.000+05:30

Continuing with what I had been talking about with Madhav and Gauri... Is being discriminative always bad?? I routinely find myself feeling a bit superior to other (less-advantaged) ppl. Is it a bad thing to have this feeling?? Irrespective of the reason??

For instance, take the time when some guy had asked me to work on a project with him. (for the record, u guys don't know him..). I plainly refused. Why?? Just because I thought ki that guy just wasn't good enough to work with. Now, I didn't think about it at the moment. But now, in retrospect, it seems as if that was just the kind of discrimination champu was talking about.. "Meritocracy".. I looked up the word at wiki and found quite a lot. Among the things I discovered was the fact that Singapore is a self-confessed meritocratic state. If anybody is unfamiliar with this word, let me help you. Meritocracy is a system(usually of a government) that is based on demonstration of merit and talent and not the power that one yields. Such a system proposes to be free of all kinds of cronyism, and lackeys pestering the ones with the power. That should sufficently help us get along for the moment. Otherwise, well, wiki is not going anywher anytime soon... ;)

So, as I was saying, I was left wondering whether that refusal along with the countless other similar things I must have done sometime or the other, make me a bad person! Or, perhaps, a person unft for this society. Because as aptly mentioned by mad and gauri (again), the reference point to judge you standpoint is always the society you live in. Either you try and fit in with the views of the society, you try to compromise, or you rebel and are termed an outcast. Or as I said earlier, a varying degree of a psycopath. But, what if the society is wrong all together. What if some people do realise that everything is going all wrong, and who would be the one to judge that these "rebels" are indeed correct??

Take my eariler example. Meritocracy. Aren't we essentially discriminating against people who are less apt in using their brains than we are? What parameters do we use for such a judgement? Because, throughout my life, there is atleast one thing that I have learnt. That the majority of people are always wrong, and (ironically) the majority of people also believe so. I'll leave it to you to figure out what I mean. Take this Manu Sharma incident. The one where Ram Jethmalani stepped in to save this kin of some powerful stalwart or smthng. (It's the Jessica Lal case, ain't it??) We, (and by we, I mean the media) have already tried Mr. Manu Sharma and convicted him finding him guilty on all counts. But wait, did we know any any, and i mean ANY, of the intricacies of the case?? Or the Mohammed Afzal case?? Or take the biggest fish of the pond, Mr. Dawood I(E??)brahim himself. For years, we have heard that he is the biggest don. He's the one responsibel for a thousand crimes. Maybe, he is. In fact yeah, I think he is. But the point is simply this, who decides it?? Certainly not the court. If my memory serves me well, I'd say that it was us, the ppl of India who convicted him first.

But why?? Maybe because he killed a hundred people?? Or ordered them killed?? Or extorted a gazillion ultra-rich film stars?? or kidnapped their kids?? Yeah, I thnk he did all this?? Yeah, and I think that that is very wrong. But wait.. Pause.. Even Halt.. Why this sudden jump from stating that he kidnapped ppl(or whatever...) to calling him a criminal??

Our entire lives we have been conditioned to think this way. Links are what are sub-consciously formed in our minds between these things.
Steal -> Bad
Kidnap-> Bad
Beg -> Bad
Cheat -> Bad
Threaten -> Bad
Kill -> BAD

and just one more...

question the dogmas of the society.. -> BBBAAADDD!!!!

WHY?? We believe Mr. Dawood killed. Yeah, agreed. But whom did he kill?? Innocent people not in any way connected to him or whatever his cause might be. Yeah..

But is that really wrong?? Did we ever stop to question his reason for doing so?? Don't think that I am trying to condone this guy's actions. I am not. But, what was hi reason. We've all heard of Robin Hood. And how, he was, is and would probably always be treated as a hero. What differentiates him form Dawood?? Or for the killings, why is that any different from the Holy wars, where so many ppl were killed for so mindless a thing a stressing on the superiority of one religion over another (though indirectly, but still..). Did we ever, EVER try to find out?? I sure didn't. Can't say about u guys specifically. But ,I can assure you that if you did, you would be among the miniscule 0.001% of the population..

My point being, that we decide what is good and what is bad. It's like Black or white.. No other combination's possible.. But come on man.. U can't ever judge a perosn's absolute skill depending on just a few discrete factors. There are just too many things to look at.. Heck it all, even GOD doesn't ever discriminate amongst us. We all die, don't we? We all return to dust, don't we?? Then why all this discrimination. which brings me back to the moot point- Does my being discriminative - irrespective of the reason, as i mentioned before - make me a bad person??

The basis for discrimination could be anything -colour, looks, money, sex, something as mundane as marks, or something as (seemingly) equally profound as "intelligence". What is it?? How do we judge people?? From the level of happiness they spread or their efficiency at work. The proponents of ree market would have us believe that it is the latter that is more important than anything else. In fact, they would say that the two are nmutually exclusive. But, then these people would have us believe a lot of other useless crap too. What do you think?? Am I being too damn harsh on myself?? Or am I just plain stupid to even raise the question and this entire post serves no purpose whatsoever?? Whatever you might think, I would surely like to know...