Life, as experienced by me

2011-11-29T12:50:00.000+05:30

Today I chatted with 3 people simultaneously for a long time, without neglecting even a single one.

2011-11-28T19:41:00.002+05:30

I am very Happy with the state of my mind right now. I want many things more but I am Happy now too. That is the only thing that's important in life. All this is due to blessings of God and love and care of family and friends. Thank you all.

2011-11-28T19:18:00.003+05:30

For THE first tIME EVER no friend is visible online on GTalk. Amusing and sad at the same TIME.

2011-11-28T13:18:00.001+05:30

There was a time when I was able to type just 7-8 characters out of 26 and now you see - atleast 20 are present. I know many are missing like z and q and maybe v too. But now you see I am back on track. Thanks to the Almighty God for it Now I can chat with friends, type emails, reply to blog posts etc etc. Life has become much better again.
Life has its own twists and turns. Sometimes small things make you very happy while big things fail to do it and vice versa.
Today I am very happy and satisfied with whatever I have. I don't know why its so even when nothing new or great has happened.

2011-11-28T12:37:00.000+05:30

I was not keeping well since few days hence my absence from blog world. Hopefully I am back with a bang. I have started reading Chetan Bhagat's new novel - Revolution or something like That. He writes good love stories which I like to read. Hopefully it will Turn out to be a good one.

2011-11-27T17:13:00.000+05:30

The most difficult part is to fill The void. I m very lonely.

2011-11-27T12:48:00.000+05:30

I was very angry and frustrated with myself because I was unable to type. Now too its very hard. But I never lost hope and tried and tried. Will power and constant practice was required. Hopefully I will keep typing like This only.

2011-11-09T10:59:00.000+05:30

I want to write long posts but failing to find a bright idea. It will help me in improving my typing speed as well.

2011-11-09T10:51:00.000+05:30

I was not able to type since few days. I was very unhappy aboUT it. But I practiced hard. See the results today.

Bored..

2011-11-03T15:53:00.001+05:30

Today I am getting bored. Nothing to do. So sad....

01/11/2011

2011-11-01T09:42:00.002+05:30

Today is more colder then usual. I guess winters are setting in. Foggy days would be soon ahead. When you just feel like snuggling in a blanket/quilt and enjoy its warmth while chasing your hazy dreams.

31/10/2011

2011-10-31T17:06:00.002+05:30

Today I went to a barber's shop for shave. Earlier he used to come home for it.

30/10/2011

2011-10-30T18:37:00.001+05:30

hey i am able sit without help for 2 min and without any support. I also went outside on wheelchaiir twice for more then 1hr each time. I am happy about it.

29 oct 2011 contd.

2011-10-29T20:19:00.000+05:30

Memory management is the process recognizing when allocated objects are no longer needed, deallocating [freeing] the memory used by such objects, and making it available for subsequent allocations. In some programming languages, memory management is programmers responsibility. The complexity of that task leads to many common errors that can cause unexpected or erroneous program behaviour and crashes. As a result, a large proportion of developer time is often spent debugging and trying to correct such errors.

This I wrote from a pdf I had. Its nothing but typing practice.hehe

29 oct 2011

2011-10-29T19:58:00.000+05:30

Today I did a voice chat with Anu and Saurav[my sis-in-law and brother]. It was a nice experience. I talked with someone for that long and that fast after a long time.

my 1st post

2011-10-29T19:49:00.001+05:30

This is my first blog post after a long time. I will write about my daily doings from now on.

Drinking, Smoking, Eggs and Non-Veg

2011-08-03T12:26:00.000+05:30

I do not drink. Neither do I smoke.
I guess that has to do with my growing up years. I went to the best school in the world. Best for me. D.A.V Public School, Shmla. A lot of what I am today has to do with that school and its teachers. As the name suggests, its a Vedic school but not overtly so. Emphasis was always on knowledge and ethics and values. It was taught that do not accept, follow or believe anything that you just hear from someone even if he/she is highly respected or you read it somewhere. Find out everything about it from multiple places, listen to both good and bad sides of it and then form your own opinion.
Apart from that my mother was a believer in Radha Swami, Beas. In fact, most of my mother's side is a believer in that. Hence, there were never any egg or meat made at home, no smoking, no alcohol. The only exception was that my father used to drink a bit of alcohol once in a while.
But probably the most lasting impression that kept me away from it was made by an uncle. He was an addict and had ruined his life. Once you see that sort of a thing with your own eyes, you will never get close to alcohol. Thankfully he has abstained from drinking since 10 years now, is happily married and had two beautiful kids.

When I was a teen, many of my friends used to smoke and sometimes while roaming with them, they used to hand me an ignited ciggerate. So, I'll hold it in my fingers and just to check my resolve I would bring it close to my lips, very close, just half a millimeter away, almost touching but never quite touching. Never did I felt like taking a puff even at that time too. So, I would just blow air out my mouth to pretend that I was smoking. They used to laugh at this and sometimes deliberately hand me the ignited ciggerate to see my antic. None of my friends ever forced me to do it.

After I was 22-23 years old,it became an impossibility that I will ever smoke for the rest of my life. I have asked many people why they smoke and what kick they get out it. No one ever gave me a satisfactory answer. Most said that its just a habit which they want to stop but unable to do it.

As far as drinking is concerned I have tried it a couple of times but have never drank more then 1 peg at a time. Most then anything it was just an experiment to find out what really happens and why so many people do it. The first problem I always faced was its taste. It tastes yukkk..so bad. Why should I torture my tongue with such a bad taste. Just because other people do it. Yes, there is that feeling of being carefree and loosing control. But, that sort of a thing I can manage without drinking and better and long lasting too.
So, its like this now - I can say that I have tested it and do not do it because I do not like it.

Eating eggs and non-veg
I have crossed some barriers in it. You see if a person has never eaten an egg or meat he will not be able to eat it the first time. He'll just vomit it out. I have crossed that barrier. I have eaten and can eat eggs as well as meat - only chicken.
But I do not eat it because of the principle involved that no living thing must be killed to feed me. But if a rare condition arises [for e.g. once I was at Seoul, Korea and nothing was available to eat so I went to McDonald and ate a burger there] I can eat non-veg. Else I do not do it.

My younger brothers are ten steps ahead of me. The fools don't even drink tea.......beer, non-veg is a very far off thing....

Operation BB - A Story - Episode 2

2011-07-10T12:15:00.005+05:30

If you have not read episode 1, please read it here

'Shut up, you idiot. Next time you watch....', I got worked up by his abuse.

Far away, the sun was about to set in all its glory, behind the lofty, green, sky kissing mountains, and its soft orange-reddish-golden rays were bathing the scattered white clouds to provide us with beautiful, mesmerizing views. Nature was about to paint its best pictures. The trees were blossoming with orange colored palash and gulmohr flowers and roadsides were flooded with those unlucky ones which had dropped from the trees.
We stopped at the edge of the road to soak in its beauty.I plucked three beautiful orange colored flowers from the low lying branches of a nearby tree and handed one each to Professor and Aashiq while keeping the third one in my own hands.

'Hey Jogi, Let's get married', Aashiq pleaded.

'Shut up, you retard', I retorted back.

'Hey man, listen first. I have heard that in some US states its legally allowed and they even greet them with open arms. They provide unemployment benefits too. Imagine, we won't have to clear IIT or PMT or work for the rest of our lives but just enjoy and enjoy.', Aashiq blew five-six kisses in the air to signify what he was talking about.

'Shut up, or I'll kill you just now'.

'Only thing is that we have to sneak into some cargo ship going into that US state and then fun, fun and fun.....', Aashiq tried to put an arm around my shoulders.

I backed two feet away from him. 'Don't you dare come near me, else I will throw you down this steep slope. Professor, ask him to stop this nonsense', I looked at Professor for help.

'First you give me this beautiful flower and when I respond to it.. why are you sulking like a innocent girl?', Aashiq inquired.

'That was - for you to give it to the girl you like', I explained.

'Shut up you fools. Let's, at least, enjoy the sunset in peace', Professor quipped.
Mercifully, that put an end to the brimming altercation between us, which otherwise would have surely ended in a dog fight.

The sunset was indeed very beautiful and the three of us, holding flowers in our hands, started looking at the sunset - soaking in the soft warmth of the Sun rays on our faces and enjoying the immense beauty that lay all around us.

Looking at the setting Sun, Professor started to speak in a very soft deep tone, 'I am sure three beautiful girls would be looking at this very sunset and wishing that someone, somewhere would be made for each one of them too. Hey Sun, please give these flowers to them and tell them that we will meet soon'.

Professor raised his flower towards the Sun and then proceeded to carefully fix it on low lying branches, nearby. Not knowing what else to say or do, Aashiq and me did exactly the same.

Without saying another word Professor, Aashiq and me kept looking at the sunset for a long time.

I started thinking about my dream girl and wishing that she was here with me to see the sunset instead of these two lunatics. I was sure Professor was having similar thoughts. But about Aashiq. He was definitely dreaming about at least three-four girls at the same time.

After a long time we started slowly dragging ourselves towards home.

Professor spoke again. 'We will have to do something, man'.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

To be continued...........

Operation BB - A Story - Episode 1

2011-06-29T11:20:00.002+05:30

'Churrake Dil Mera,... Goriya Chali...', I waved my arm like a flowing river to signify girl's harmonious, rhythmic walk, while singing this beautiful song loudly.

'SHUT UP, you discordant ox', Professor thundered back at me.

'Udaake Nindiya....Kahan Tu Chali...', I shut my eyes, as if totally engrossed in its melody and moving my arm rhythmically,started singing even more louder.

'Aashiq, kick this idiot Jogi so hard, so that he forgets to sing for the rest of his life', Professor shouted, looking towards Aashiq but pointing towards me. 'I can't tolerate him raping such a beautiful, romantic song, so badly'.

Aashiq folded his leg to mock a kick, just to satisfy Professor.

The three of us, Aashiq, Professor and me[Jogi] were coming back home, after watching 2-5 pm show of Akshay Kumar and Saif Ali Khan starer, latest movie - 'Main Khiladi Tu Anari'. Ritz cinema hall - where this movie was showing, was a good four-five kilometers away from our homes and we were leisurely walking back home, side by side, through the Forest Road that connected the Shimla's major hub [where cinema hall was located] with our smaller township.

Silence prevailed for a while. We could hear the faint murmur of a distant bus or truck, somewhere in the lush-green, densely populated, cheel and deodar trees' forest below, using all it might to slowly move up on the steep uphill national highway.

Then, ''Churrake Dil Mera,... Goriya Chali...', now Aashiq started singing it loudly. This is the trouble with catchy songs, they are highly contagious. Once they enter your head, you can't help but keep singing or humming them all the time, until a new one replaces it.

'Now the ugly crow has started his cacophony, which is even worse then the fat ox', Professor shot back, getting even more angrier.

I burst out laughing out loud. Seeing it, Aashiq also joined me and we both started laughing - uncontrollably. Professor was trying his best not to laugh, by keeping his mouth tightly shut, but you can't remain poker faced, when you are seeing your buddies laugh out mad, unless of course, the joke is on you.

'You can also sing it, man.... No one expect us.....will hear you', I tried to cajole him, while speaking in-between bouts of laughter.

More roaring laughter.

'Ok, we will close our ears, now sing', Aashiq tried to help and placed his hands on the ears.

I followed, and placed my hands on my ears.

'Churrake Dil Mera,... Goriya Chali...', finally the hyena aka our Professor sang in such a inharmonious tone that even frogs started to run halter-shelter. .

Roaring hysterical laughter. All three of us burst out laughing so loud and so uncontrollably that our stomachs began to ache. We had to sit down on the slanting slope of a nearby tree trunk and stop looking at each other, because that was inadvertently leading to even more laughter.

After laughing out guts out, I gave my hand to Aashiq, to pull me up from the sitting position.

We started walking again.

After a while.

'What was that Take-Take scene, yaar?', Professor inquired.

Aashiq came forward facing Professor,'What did you come here thinking?', mocking anger. 'That its a film shooting going on and you can take as many re-takes as you feel like?'. Aashiq paused for the dramatic effect and made an imaginary gun by joining and folding both hands. With first fingers stretched forward like a gun's nozzle, he placed it in the middle of Professor's forehead. 'We get only ONE take in real life and if there's even a slightest mistake....thiskau, thiskau, thiskau...'. Aashiq fired three shots from his imaginary gun.

Professor pretended to be getting three shocks, limped his body, took out his tongue and dropped his head, pretending to be dead.

More laughter followed.

'Oh man, Did you see Akshay Kumar. How he fights?', Aashiq made a pose like that of a warrior in a battlefield and started talking excitedly. 'What amazing body.man. If you have a body, it should be like Akshay Kumar, else you shouldn't have a body Did you see his flexibility, yaar'.

'If you have flexibility it should be like Akshay Kumar, else you shouldn't be flexible - just like a electric pole'. I pumped him more.

'Exactly. Man, how he fights?, Round kicks, side kicks, jumps,somersaults, there he goes sliding on the floor and kicks two guys five feet away and then rotates legs and two more and then two more and then he just puts his feet on the floor and gets straight up without even using his hands. In like 5 seconds 6 guys are on the floor and he's the only one standing. Just wow man', Aashiq started talking enthusiastically. Once he starts that, the best way is to just shut up and listen.

Professor and I nodded in agreement.

'Did you see his flexibility', Aashiq joined both his arms from hands to elbow and then moved them outward and bent them horizontally while keeping them joined at the elbow. 'He stretches his legs sideways at one eighty degrees, forward stretch - one eighty degrees - just awesome, yaar. Have you seen, Chetty?', Aashiq inquired.

'Who the hell is this Chetty?', Is he related to Shilpa Shetty'. Professor asked, genuinely concerned.

'No yaar, nothing to do with Shilpa'.

Professor breathed a sigh of relief. His Shilpa was safe, for the time being, at least.

'Chetty is in fourth year of Medical College, and is in the same fourth year since three years', Aashiq explained.

'Wow man, what an intro. what a great man he is?', I mocked Aashiq by showing four fingers to Professor and then displayed three fingers, 'In fourth year.... three years...Shall we go and put some garlands on him for his mighty achievement?', I asked Professor.

'Shut up, you idiot. First listen to the whole thing. Don't open your filthy mouth until I say. Understood?', Aashiq shouted back.

'You should see his body yaar. Carved out of stone. Muscles just ripple over and his terrific flexibility. You know, a guy was standing just one or two feet away from him and Chetty moved his leg so fast, round kick, that his foot just brushed past the guy's nose and the next movement Chetty was standing normally and talking as if nothing had happened. I tell you, if he wanted, he could have just easily kicked the guy's head and he would have been lying on the floor without even knowing what actually hit him'.

'Wow, yaar', Professor exclaimed, looking impressed.

'That's not all. Eight-ten beautiful girls, medicos, that will become Doctors soon, come to him for training.', Aashiq fired his most deadly salvo at the very end.

'Really', Professor was now bowled over by Mr. Chetty.

'Forget it Aashiq. Even if you become Mr. Chetty, no girl will come to you', I exclaimed with a wicked, satisfactory grin on my face.

'Dog, you started barking again. Didn't I tell you to keep your mouth shut. Why wouldn't any girl come to me?', Aashiq placed both his hands on the sides of his waist, stood in front of me and demanded an answer. 'My face is very photogenic and people tell me I look like Salman Khan', Aashiq added emphatically.

'Because...you always start the story from the wrong end. You'll go to a girl and say - Hey, I am Mr. Chetty and I am in fourth year since THREE years. Hearing this, the girl would run away ten km from you, much before you could even start showing some of your style to her', I mimicked a few boxing punches towards Aashiq to infuriate him more.

Professor started laughing out loud.

'Dog, donkey, monkey - forget about me. You tell me about yourself. At least, I will go and say something. What about you?'. You can't even open your filthy mouth in front of a girl. Just like a big idiotic dodo you stand there and the girl laughs and giggles at you and goes away, Can't even croak out a monosyllabic - Hi....Ugly, mute frog.Tell me', Aashiq counter attacked.

'Its nothing like that. I just get mesmerized by her beauty and keep on thinking - which nice words to say to her', I tried to explain.

'Yes, you will keep on thinking for the rest of your life and by then she will get married, have two kids and then you can go and play with her kids and she will say to the kids - see your maamaji is there, play with them and I will go to shopping', Aashiq stressed the words maamaji to sting more.

'Shut up, you idiot. Next time you watch....', I got worked up by his abuse.

....................................................
To be continued....

Souvenir 1999

2011-06-17T19:49:00.009+05:30

Quick Post....
A batch mate of mine just got hold of scanned copy of Souvenir.
Here I am sharing two pages of it.
Click on the images to read text....

Exactly twelve years down the line, I would like to say to her - 'Yes Mam, we have achieved all that. Thank you so much....'

See what was written about me - ha ha..

Phantom Menace Over

2011-06-07T10:50:00.005+05:30

We are taking a break from the series - Collections. Rest assured, we will be back on track - after a while - just a few diversions along the way.

I was reading my old posts and stumbled upon this post - http://navjotkashyap.blogspot.com/2005/11/phantom-menace.html - written back in 2005. Please do read it, before moving forward on this post, so that you can understand the full context.

Phantom Menace was tamed longed ago. The book I was referring to was - Phantom by Susan Kay. My younger brother had gone to US sometime back and I had asked him to bring it for me from there. Although it cost me a bunch, but that was immaterial.

Last week, I read it again and have penned down all the beautiful lines, I could come across. I might have missed a few as I was skipping paragraphs while reading it.

My suggestion to you would be to make Patiala Lassi [Recipe here - http://www.indobase.com/recipes/details/lassi-patiala.php] and pour it in a big silver glass and drink it slowly, while reading it. Do not rush. Read slowly, Read a line. Take break. Think about it. Let your vivid imagery draw up anything that it feels like. Then move forward. Enjoy it maximum.

Enjoy.
Cheers

None of us can choose where we will love. -Erik

In that last, lonely moment of thrusting anguish, it seemed to me that there was no one left alive in this world but me, that I would be shut up for all eternity in this black poison of pain. -Erik's mother

But music was the keystone of his extraordinary genius. Music welled up from some bottomless pool within him and flowed like a ceaseless fountain through his fingertips, making an instrument of virtually every object that fell into his inventive hands. -Erik's mother

The words were for God, but the voice, the acquisitive, irresistible voice, was for me and it pulled like a magnet somewhere deep and unseen inside my body. Erik's mother

There was no plan, no coherent thought, in my head, just a deep instinctive need to get away, far, far away. -Erik

There was no better way to raise a demon in my brain then to tell me a thing could not be done. Impossibility was not a concept that I acknowledged. -Erik

POWER. I was beginning to acquire the taste of it, to see it as a very satisfactory substitute for happiness.... for love. -Erik

Creation - and destruction - were the only lusts I would acknowledge henceforth, I would be like God, an absolute force, beyond question..... beyond restraint. -Erik

There is nothing, I cannot do, if I choose. -Erik

Perfection, always perfection . . . nothing less would ever do in anything to which he set his mind. -Christine

My mind has touched the furthest horizons of mental imagination and reaches even outward to embrace infinity. There is no knowledge beyond my comprehension, no art or skill upon this entire planet that lies beyond the mastery of my hand. And yet, like Faust, I look in vain, I learn in vain.....For as long as I live, no women will ever look on me in Love. -Erik

I wish I could hate him, but I couldn't. He was still my conscience. -Erik

I'm beginning to realize just how much of a child she really is, how terrifyingly immature and vulnerable . . . even unstable. There's a fatal flaw running though her like a crack in a Ming Dynasty vase, but that imperfection makes me love her with even greater tenderness. -Erik

Even in silence there was music in his hands, a cadence which seemed to flow irresistibly through his fingertips. -Christine

I hated broken promises and dishonored pledges; I hated going back on my word. Disappointment is such an exhausting emotion- all that energy dissipated first in painful hoping and then in futile, hopeless resentment. -Erik

I was alive, and I had never lived. Erik

Like a house with no foundations, unable to resist the first tremor of an earthquake, my existence had tumbled all around me to ruins. -Erik

Hell is not a place, its a state of mind and body, hell is obsession with a voice, a face, a name....-Erik

I was obsessed with Christine Daae, irretrievably and disgustingly fixated with the desire to possess which I knew I could not have. -Erik

I punished myself without mercy for the wickedness of wanting. But still I wanted her.... -Erik

I began to lie to myself, to cheat and deceive that other half that cried out that this could not be, this must not be. -Erik

But his voice is my inspiration and my reward. It lifts me from my earthly shell and carries me to the very edge of the universe, a wondrous flight of body and soul that leaves me utterly exhausted. -Christine

I am living in a dream. There is no reality, no existence, beyond those fleeting hours in which I teach her. The time between her lessons is a meaningless void, and the nights when she does not comes to the theater are one long, unending fever of anguished waiting. It seems to me that I do nothing but sit staring at the clock, willing time away, so that once more I may be close to her. So near, so near ....and yet so far away. -Erik

The calender tells me three months have passed, but they could be three seconds or three centuries for all the difference it makes. -Erik

At length I carried her through to the second bedroom and lay her down on my mother's bed, covering her tenderly with a shawl and watching the pale material slowly settle and cling to the outline of her form, enveloping her with the warmth and intimacy that I could never share. If its possible to be jealous of a shawl, then I was wickedly jealous. -Erik

Her head drooped lower and lower until it almost rested on my knee.... almost, but not quite. -Erik

To every tear that went down her cheek, I have shed hundreds. -Erik

I won't beg. Not even for your love. I have asked you to marry me, but I don't want your answer now. I would like you to come back tomorrow evening. Will you promise me to do that Christine, Will you promise to come back and tell me.....even if the answer is no. -Erik

Twenty four hours I had given her because I did not yet have the courage to face her answer without making a disgusting spectacle of my grief. -Erik

But, as I looked at the ring, I knew without question that I was going to have to find that courage and let her go with dignity. She did not love me, but respected me enough as a man - a human being - to honor me with a decency of a considered reply. And, I in my turn, must honor her decision. I would keep my pride, this time, no tears, no degrading groveling to make me burn with shame at the memory. Pride was all that I would be left with to sustain me through the ordeal of her refusal, pride would make me wish her well and let us part with civilized curtsy.....-Erik

Such a little thing really, a kiss .... most people don't give a moment's consideration. They kiss on meeting, they kiss on parting, that simple touching of flesh is taken entirely for granted as a basic human right. I have lived on this earth half a century without knowing what it is to be kissed ... and I'll never know now. -Erik

I'd totally dismantled this child... taken her to pieces in my crazed determination to make her heart tick in harmony with my own. I'd taught her to sing like one of God's angels, I'd loved her more than anything else upon this earth... but my love had destroyed her, reduced her to a pitiful creature barely aware of her own actions... made her as mad as I was myself. -Erik

He had given me the wings of an angel and taught me how to fly. -Christine

Slowly, hesitantly, as though fighting against the wavering instincts of a lifetime, he offered his gloved hand to help me ascend the carriage step. It was the first time he had ever directly invited physical contact from me and the moment was fraught with tense significance for us both. My fingers had only to close that little distance between us and I would be a child to him no longer.
In the moonlight his gloved hand was elusively normal; it looked warm and strong and quite curiously reassuring, the hand not of a monster and a murderer, but of a gentle, loving man, who waited with infinite patience for one little sign of hope . .-Christine

I want to build something beautiful... something in this world that he would have been proud of. There had to be a purpose in being in this world.... There has to be some purpose in living... -Erik

My voice was my only one beauty, my only one power, my only hope; my voice would open a magic pathway into her life.

I realized that his voice had become, for me, a drug as powerful as morphine, necessary to my senses, vital to my existence. His silence was a punishment beyond my strength to bear. -Christine

This nervous, anxious, well-meaning lady had taught me to respect all members of the weaker sex. She had dropped one pearl of purity into my soul, and even now, after all these years, it was still there, displacing a little of the dank, disgusting sludge of depravity. I had done many terrible things, but I had never harmed a helpless woman. -Erik

There's so much darkness in my head, sometimes it frightens me too... but it need not be like this, Christine. If I could just live like other men, walk through the Bois in daylight and feel the sun and wind upon my naked face... Oh Christine, I would be dare to do so many things if you were there beside me as my wife. -Erik

She was a lovely, wilting flower that I longed to rescue from the strangling creep of weeds. I wanted to plant her safely in the labyrinth beneath the Opera House, to hide her from the world so that no one else should ever find he, hurt her . . . take her away from me. I could make her grow . . . I knew I could make her grow . . . if only I dared to reach out and lift her from the barren, acrid soil that was stifling her natural talent. -Erik

Guilt, I thought, with a flicker of remorse for my heartlessness ... guilt is surely the saddest of all human emotions. But guilt is not love; it is a fire that consumes without giving warmth to those not embraced in its tangled coils. -Erik

He moved with a slow majesty, as though his whole body was informed by the rhythm of a music he alone could hear...-Christine

The thought of that white rose filled me with bitter shame... Yearning to turn and reach out to him, I remained unable to conquer that inner fear; it was a chasm I dared not cross. And so I sat there, like the little mouse in Aesop's fable, not daring to look upon the lion bound by cruel ropes. Chained by fate and shackled by pride, he starved in silent pain; and because I lacked the courage of a rose, I could not set him free. -Christine

Happiness is like the first blissful intoxication of morphine. It doesn't last very long. -Erik

I do not languish in his power like a pale prisoner, denied the light of day, but I grow ever upwards beneath the benevolent sun of his genius. Where once I was content to be a wilting marigold, I now aspire to the glorious height of a sunflower. He has captured all the wonders of the universe, enchanting baubles that reflect shafts of incandescent light. And like the child, starved of toys, I reach out eagerly with both hands, turning my back gladly on the world I left behind. -Christine

Collections - 2 [Marbles]

2011-05-31T10:30:00.003+05:30

Now that we have started talking about my collections, the next thing to talk about is - Marbles[kanche in hindi]. Yes, those small round balls with which kids play on streets. I had a fascination for them, loved them, collected them and treasured them. More then two jars were filled with them - hundreds of them.

They are simply beautiful. Having transparent outer shell covering and with fascinating multicolored beautiful designs woven into them, they sparkle with life if you hold them with your thumb and finger and watch them with light falling on them from the back side. It seemed that each marble had its own story to tell, with it's unique design and color combinations. They came in all varieties of colors and color combinations - red, blue, purple, orange, green, pink to name just a few. Pure or totally white marble, like a small ball of homemade butter, was very rare, considered lucky and was expensive too. It was aptly called the makkhani.To me its was extremely beautiful and I could easily exchange it by giving five or more ordinary marbles. The other rare variety were very small, round or oval marbles which were called chiddis or piddis owing to their sizes. They too formed a part of my collection even though they could never be used for playing.

There was a shop nearby where an old uncle used to sell everyday-need goods and had kept big transparent jars of chocolates, toffees, chewing gums and of course marbles on the front glass showcases of his shop, to lure innocent kids like me to buy those items from him. His trick always worked, at least for me. I used to watch those marble jars whenever I used to go to his shop to buy something and if I could locate a few beautiful marbles on the top of the jar, I was desperately scouting for 50 paise or one rupee to buy them to add them to my ever increasing diverse collection. I always used to buy marbles from him only because he was the only one in the market who let me choose the marbles I wanted to buy.

The other way to acquire those gems, was of course, to win them. Definitely,a harder and more laborious and risky task then just buying but nevertheless extremely enjoyable and joyful. Two types of marble games were most popular at that time - goli pill and ticha.

Goli pill is played by two or more kids. A small hole called pilley, roughly the size of a ping-pong ball is dug in the earth.It should be easily able to hold just one marble. Digging a good pilley in itself is an extensive work of science and art. One kid then stands on the pill with one foot on it and throws the marbles collected from each player after juggling and mixing them thoroughly in his hands. The kid whose marble goes furthest away from the pill gets first turn and then the second furthest and so on and so forth. The task is very simple - you are supposed to first hit any other marble by your marble and then subsequently put your marble in the pill or vice verse, by placing the thumb of your hand at the location of your marble and using the first finger and fingers of other hands for hitting. If you do that the marble you had hit is yours else its next guy's turn to try the same .

Ticha is played by drawing a line on earth - mostly by a sharp stone, standing behind it and throwing the marbles collected by all players further away. Then while standing behind that line and without bending forward you are supposed to hit any marble on the ground. If you hit it, its yours for the taking and you get one more chance to do the same. Otherwise its the next guy's turn.

If you lost all his marbles while playing, it was considered a big disgrace and all the other kids used to laugh at you saying - 'poda ho geya tera'.

Needless to say, I was good in both - Ticha and Goli pill. The filled jars at my home were testimony of that.

Imagine me as a young kid, lean and thin, short curly hair, wearing spectacles with oval glasses and thin black frames, in white shirt and dark grey pants and playing Ticha and Goli pill. The feeling of unlimited joy and happiness after winning a marble as if I had conquered a country and celebrating it with a wide grin and pumping the fists. The sorrow of loosing a marble as if I have lost a fortune. In those days the life rotated along such uncomplicated wonders. Imagine me playing Ticha, taking an aim at a marble on ground by holding two marbles in my small hands, close to my face, clicking the two marbles to hear the sound of the click, not satisfied, taking out another marble from my dirty pant's pocket, clicking again, adjusting my spectacles at my nose, by the tip of my little finger and then finally hitting. Or slowly walking towards home, sad and dejected, with head sunk low - after loosing all the marbles that I had brought to play. Or desperately trying to brush off the dust and earth from my dirty clothes after the play in order to avoid a scolding from my mother. Trouble was, hands itself were dirty, so there was always a dilemma whether the clothes were getting cleaned or more dirtier.

I used to take out all the collected marbles once every fortnightly or so, sitting on a bed, with soft sun rays falling on the entire bed from a nearby large wooden framed open window and see all of them glittering and shining in a falling sun rays. It was a wonderful experience. Then I used to count them slowly and remember the count, so that, if my younger brothers [twins] had dared to steal them, I would know. While counting I used to hold the beautiful ones up across the sunlight and enjoy its beauty for a while. The whole exercise took hours to complete but who was worried about time then.

Slowly I grew up and stopped playing marbles but was not ready to part with my collection. My mom used to ask me to give them, at least a few, to my younger brothers and other smaller kids, as I had no use of them now. But, I was stubborn and always said no. One fine day, I don't know what came to my mind - I took out all of them and gave 50 each to my younger brothers. Still there were too many left, so I just called up the younger kids of my neighborhood and distributed all the marbles to them without keeping a single one with me. The joy and satisfaction in seeing their smiling faces was greater then the sorrow of parting with my beloved jewels.

Hence came an end of a fascinating, beautiful journey and the story of me and the marbles.

I did not know at that time but realized later that it taught me very profound Lessons of Life. Learn to play the game. Learn to play it better then the others and then play it without cheating or using unfair means.Success will be yours Enjoy the learning process, the game and the earnings and then finally let it all go. Give it away. Give all away.Give learnings to others. Give earnings to others. Find a new interesting game. That's all there it is.

To be continued.....

milte hain break ke baad..ding..dong..ding..
Keep Smiling....

IABPD continued....

2011-05-27T11:42:00.001+05:30

Feeling is Everything'. That's the quote with which one of my batch-mates used to sign-off all his emails. It might just be 3 words but have a very profound meaning. Most of the things we do daily are related to feelings, either the cause or the result or in some other way related.

I can go on rambling about quotes and dialogues till eons and eons.

That makes me think, I have always liked anything beautiful and collected various beautiful things throughout my life so far - beautiful in my eyes. I have always liked heart-tugging, beautiful words, sentences, paragraphs, poems, thoughts, lyrics,and other similar literacy works. When I was a kid, I used to write down any beautiful,heart-touching lines I came across, in a diary and treasure that diary.It was always a wonderful experience to sit down and read the diary once in a while, especially when I was sad or otherwise in low mood. It was an instant mood elevator in those times. Otherwise too, it was always a great read.

I also used to collect pictures, photographs and articles of exotic places, wildlife, natural beauty, cars, bikes and anything and everything that looked beautiful to my eyes. Back then, there were no digital cameras, mobile phones and other electronic gadgets or accessories by which you could capture pictures easily. Personal computers were hardly found in any house and the world 'Laptop' was totally unheard off in those times. So, cutting the pictures and articles and storing them in a file or folder was the only option and probably the only known way, The major hunting grounds were the daily newspaper and the old second hand magazines, which were available at dirt cheap prices in the nearby market. I used to always scout for those cheap and easy preys, whenever I went to the market.

The newspaper - 'The Times of India' used to be black and white then, but once or twice in a week, there used to carry out additional pages - magazine sections like wildlife, nature, cars etc, which were delightfully colored and the paper used for printing them was thick, smooth and glossy, making them an ideal hunting ground for my expeditions. I used to eagerly wait for those days and in the mornings of those days, as soon as the newspaperwalla used to throw the newspaper at my doorstep, I was over it, enthusiastically hunting for my preys. But, I couldn't kill the prey on that very day itself. I had to painstakingly wait for the next day to do that - my dad would had killed me with his bare hands, had I made big rectangular holes in the current day's newspaper. The next day, the newspaper was all mine to play with and with a big scissors having orange colored handle, mercilessly, I used to make big glaring holes in the paper and was always satisfied and happy to hold that butchered pages high in the air and see through them.

The cutout sections went into an Arts file specially saved and devoted for that very purpose only If you are of my age group or older, you might remember that, we used to have a thick cardboard made, hard, glossy from the outside, roughly about one and a half feet wide, 10-12 inches long and about one inch thick - Arts file. In that we used to store white drawing sheets which were of slightly smaller length and breadth then the file itself.Some of them had small triangular silver metallic edges.Files with those sort of edges were always preferred from those without them, for a very simple reason. Edges of those type of files did not crumple with daily use and wear and tear of the file Needless to say, you had to shell out one or two rupees extra for getting those types.

Both the file and drawing sheets had two holes in the middle-top to hold them together. A long thread - always green in color and with shiny metallic-silver colored endings was used to hold the sheets and the file together. There was a very subtle nuisance involved with tying the sheets and the file together, if you had covered the Arts file with brown paper. If you tie the knot of the thread outside the file i.e. on the cover, then you will have to dig two holes in the brown paper over the file cover, and if you do that, very soon you will find that due to daily use - the paper has torn at the places you had so efficiently dug holes, and even sooner then that, it has spread like a wildfire all over and the brown cover of your beloved arts file requires a replacement. In order to avoid that, the best way was to always tie the string on the top of the drawing sheets itself, inside the top hard cover of the Arts file.

To be continued.....
milte hain break ke baad...isi channel per...tring...tring..tring..ding...dong..ding...
Keep Smiling...

I am Back on Popular Demand

2011-05-23T18:45:00.003+05:30

'I am back' on 'Popular Demand'. 'I am back' is a famous Arnold Schwarzenegger dialogue He says it when he reappears after everyone has assumed him to be dead. The world is doomed, on the brisk of major catastrophe, just a few minutes away from coming to an end and only he can save it. I came to know that the blog world is heading for the same fate, so His Highness dutifully makes his appearance.All standup and applause, bring the garlands and flower malas, drum rolls please.

'Popular Demand' was a dialogue used by VP in our engineering college days. VP was my classmate and he would say it whenever he was surrounded by 8-10 or more classmates and they had pleaded with him for like 15 minutes. After that he would reluctantly yield to their demands and say - 'All right, on Popular Demand, make sure there is no girl around'. Then he would give a sensual, seductive dance performance with all the boys surrounding him in a circle and booing him. Hell, not sensual, it was purely striptease - sometimes male, sometimes female - but without removing the clothes. He was a good dancer too I wonder what he would think, say or do about Munni and Shella or today or maybe rather what Munni and Shella would think if they would have seen his dance.

This post will be continued, its just a trailer to show you that many many and more many exciting and interesting posts are yet to come. So, start making preparations for making chilled mango shake with a bit of ruhafza syrup and lots of cherries in it - so that you can leisurely sit down and savior its taste while you enjoy reading my posts and beat the scorching summer heat.

Test..

2010-07-12T20:03:00.001+05:30

You can catch me at kashyap9_navjot

That's on yahoo servers.

A Story...to do..

2008-05-05T08:36:00.005+05:30

I had started writing a story a while ago.Never went beyond the third page.
Anyway, I am posting here, whatever I had written so far...
It requires lot of refinement and is quite boring...
Here it is..

--------------------------------------

It was a cold December evening in Delhi. Although the freezing winters had not yet fully arrived, it had started to become quite chilly – especially, during the evenings and night.

Tired and exhausted from the day’s work at office, I was sitting alone, in my third story 2-bedroom DDA apartment in Munirka, mindlessly flipping channels of the TV. I am not much of a TV viewer, but then it was already 11 p.m. and sitting alone in my lonely apartment, I had nothing better to do.

Before that, like a zombie and man on autopilot, I had gotten down from my company bus at Munirka bus stop and strolled towards Anupam restaurant for my dinner.This sequence – getting down from bus, stumbling towards Anupam, ordering dinner, gulping it down the throat and then back to the apartment - had become so much of a daily routine that I hardly had to think about it. It was like brushing teeth or driving a car, which once practiced and perfected doesn’t requires any conscious thought or effort for doing them.

I usually ate dinner at Anupam, because, firstly, it was near my apartment and secondly, its kitchen was always kept neat and clean and food was also made in a hygienic way. There wasn’t much of a variety in menu - the same sort of common dishes found everywhere – some paneer ones, chana masala, rajma masala and the like. All the dishes always tasted the same. I had stopped caring much about the taste, anyway. Food becomes just a way to fill your empty stomach once you start living away from your parents and stop getting home made food.

Watching the TV, I had already half dozed off and was almost asleep, when my apartment’s metallic door opened with a huge thud, banged into the back wall and kept vibrating for quite a few seconds. The loud noise startled me and brought me back to my senses. Dreamingly, I looked at my apartment door, which was visible from my bedroom. Firstly, I thought that I was seeing some sort of a dream. Then I had a vague impression that I knew the guy standing at the door and in the next few seconds it registered in my mind that it was my roommate, Vishal, standing at the door.

We have been living together for the past six months or so. Prior to that I had been living alone for almost a year and the loneness had taken its toll on me. It was pretty depressing to come to the apartment in the evenings and finding no one but just the empty walls to talk to. So, once when, out of blur - Vishal had called and asked me if we could share an accommodation, as he was shifting from Bangalore to Delhi, I had happily agreed. We had studied in the same college albeit in different branches and in the four years of our college, we never became anything more then mere acquaintances. Nevertheless, I had agreed, even though my past experiences living with other roommates had not be pretty good, but I wanted to give it a try – moreover, at least there would be someone to talk to in the evenings.

The joy and excitement of his shifting to my apartment had short-lived. Firstly, because he had a shift job and we hardly got any time to talk. In the mornings when I had to go to office, he would be coming back from his office and when I came back in the evenings, either he was fast asleep or had already gone to his office. Secondly, he didn’t do anything much at the apartment except sleeping all the time.

Nevertheless, over the months, slowly and steadily, we had known each other better. I wouldn’t say, we were very good friends, neither were we much bad either – it was okay sort of a thing.

“Hi Romeo! Welcome to the palace. How’s your Juliet?” I tried to start conversation with him. He had gotten engaged with a Chandigarh girl, a month back.

He was an average sort of a guy, average height – nothing much attractive to look at but not bad either – the sort of guys you meet everyday in crowds – whose face and features are easily blended and lost in the crowd.

He didn’t answer my question and kept standing at the door, with his both hands firmly placed on both sides of his waist and kept scanning the whole apartment with his perturbing eyes – first left, then right, then above and then bottom. I didn’t understand what was going on in his mind or what he was up to – maybe he was drunk, I couldn’t figure out. I already had the TV remote in my hand, so I started playing with it, flicking channels. Star Movies was showing Terminator for the umpteenth time and HBO was showing Ghost – I settled for Ghost.

After about thirty seconds or so, which seemed like eternity to me, Vishal slowly walked towards me and sat on the edge of my bed. His walk suggested that he was disturbed by something and his eyes still looked vague as if lost somewhere in his own world.

I tried once again, “What happened man? Are you all right?”

Still, no response. Patrick Swayze was about to be murdered in a dark alley, so I concentrated on the TV. After the scene was over commercial breaks took over.

“Aman, Let us go for a walk outside”, Vishal spoke for the first time.

“Are you crazy? It is well past 11 pm. You want to go for a walk at this time? I also have to go to office early morning”, I thundered back.

He didn’t answer but his eyes looked almost pleading. I got up from my bed, “Ok, but just for a little while”, I gave in.

I opened the cupboard and put on the first sweater I could lay my hands on and started combing my hair in the mirror.

“There won’t be any gal waiting for you in the streets at this time”, he resorted back, urging me to hurry up.

“You never know man! You never know”, I replied with a wicked smile and started singing – “Kahi karti hogi vo mera intzaar… jiski tamanna mey firta hu bekraar …” along with moving my limbs a little bit, as if trying to dance along with the singing tune.

Seeing them, Vishal smiled for the first time, that evening.

“Ok, ok, Majnu, Hurry up!”, he pleaded again.

After locking the apartment, as my usual habit, I dashed down the three levels of stairs, at full speed, taking two steps at a time, covering the last few steps of the bottommost stairs in one go, landing on the ground with a huge thud and stomping on the floor a few times. Most times, seeing me Vishal also used to follow suit and after that we used to grin like small kids, who had just performed some mischievous wicked act.

I guess, some part of me will never grow up.

But today, he was miles, miles away – lost in his own world. After waiting for a long time that seemed like eternity, I saw him coming down, slowly dragging himself through the last of the stairs.

We started walking towards the main street road, which eventually led to the ring road. At that time of night, the scene on the streets was in total contrast to the one seen in the daytime or the evenings. In the daytime, the streets are always crowded and noisy, full of hustle and bustle with people and vehicles moving everywhere just like a swarm of bees. But at this time the streets were totally deserted and silent. With neon streetlights after regular intervals, bathing the roads with their yellow light, it looked calm and beautiful.

We kept walking, but neither of us spoke anything. This time I also didn’t offer any help to start the conversation. I had already tried twice.

If you don’t want to tell – I don’t care.

New President of India....

2007-07-29T17:52:00.000+05:30

Usually I am not interested in politics and don't give a damn about politics and politicians, but this is the matter of the next President of India. Our India - one of the fastest growing economies, young & vibrant India, taking on the world - India. And Who will be the President of India? Pratibha Patil..........
Who?????
Who is she????
That was my reaction when I first heard that she was being nominated for the next President of India. I guess, most of us Indians, would have had similar reaction.
I have nothing against Pratibha, nor I am much concerned about the various controversies regarding her and neither I am against a female President... but, excuse me...Don't you think that The President of India should at least have a strong and impressive personality??? After all she/he will be THE PRESIDENT...
Yeah, thats true that in India - the President s just a rubber stamp (I read it in civics books of my school... I hated civics & history)..but then also...even if its just a show piece.....it should at least be impressive one...
Side tracking from the above issue - A Doctor can't practice medicine without getting a medical degree..a lawyer can't...then How come a politician become a CM, PM anything ..without any degree? without any entrance test????

I am back...

2007-07-14T19:12:00.000+05:30

My absence from the blog world has stretched to more then three months now. A very long time by any standard. Initially, I thought I'll take a break from it for a short while and then resume blogging. But that break first stretched to one month, then two and then three...Its not that I didn't want to write, in fact, countless times I thought to writing a post but that never quite actually materialized.
Its like a story once I read through the chain forwarded emails that we keep getting everyday. I don't remember the full contents or the complete story. But, it was something like - I have a friend down the road whom I have not met for a long time... I will go and meet him tomorrow...today I have to do this... I am very busy..I have to do that..but yes surely tomorrow... and the next day - the tomorrow becomes today, and again I have to do this, I have to do that...the tomorrow that I was supposed to meet my friend never arrives...
Procrastination is a very big weakness and I have been its victim for quite a long while now..
So, What changed it? Why are you reading this new post today? Why on 14th July 2007?What made me come out of my slumber? My hibernation?
No, no - the answer to that question has nothing to do with the date mentioned in the previous sentences. The date was just put there to have to have a little fun...
Yeah coming back to the reason - It was the book The Zahir. by Paulo Coelho. I just completed readng it a few hours ago. The book is terrific. I'll write about the book in another post But here I mention it just for the reason..In The Zahir, the author does everything else..but does not write a book. Finds every possible reason, not to write. The situation was something similar to mine and I connected with it immediately. The author had to travel through road to Santiago, Spain and after that he wrote a book. Of course, I didn't have to do such a thing. I just had to switch on the laptop and start typing.While reading the book, I got a strong feeling, to just stop reading the book there and then and write a post first. But then the rational mind popped its head that, its a weekend - you can very well complete the book first and then write the post immediately after that. As, the book was also becoming quite interesting.
So, here I am writing the post after completing the book. Intoxicated by the book? Yes, I am. Lot of varied thoughts and feelings going on in the mind. Its not that something entirely new is discussed in it. Almost everyone must have thought on similar lines in one or the other phase of life. Yet, it makes you seriously sit down and ponder on a lot of things. Anyway - leave Zahir for some other post.
During these months I have been dreaming of getting a cellphone with full keyboard and GPRS support, etc..so that I can write posts sitting anywhere and at any time, because many of the ideas and the urge to write come at places where you don't have access to any means for writing a post. Laptop is quite a bulky affair, which can't be carried everywhere and used with ease at all times. Nokia 9300/9300i was on the radar. I even bid for it on ebay.in, but nothing materialized. I have junked the idea for the time being.
I have also found out that my thought process is much, much faster then the time it takes for me to write a post. I don't have much patience, so thats why many times I end up without writing anything. I don't even read my post again before posting it to weed out the grammatical errors. The same thing happened while i used to sit down and give 3 hours examinations in school and college. Even if I completed answering the paper well before the 3 hour time, I never quite re-read it for finding mistakes. What was done was done - I wanted to get over it - didn't have the patience to go through whole of it again.
So, thats the story so far. hope that I'll be regular from now on.

2007-04-07T19:05:00.000+05:30

I had planned to write the second post on Kids, but have been unable to do it so far, primarily because I was busy in the last couple of days and secondly I haven't been in the mood to write anything.
So jotting down just a few lines - in order to keep the show going.
I usually read the newspaper in the evenings and it's more like an exercise of turning pages rather then getting much of any information, because I find most of the articles and news as boring and total crap. Just a few, probably one or two articles in the whole 40-50 pages are worth reading. Nevertheless I do read the headlines on every page and try to search for those one or two interesting articles that might catch my interest.
One was - Rahul Khandiwal a 30 year old bachelor - well educated, well paid wants to adopt a girl child but the authorities are not allowing it. Strange - a unmarried women like Sushmita Sen can adopt a child, even married couples can, but a unmarried MALE can't.

Song in the mind....

Aye ajnabi tu bhi kabhi aawaaz de kahin se
Aye ajnabi tu bhi kabhi aawaaz de kahin se
Main yahan tukdon mein jee raha hoon
Main yahan tukdon mein jee raha hoon
Tu kahin tukdone mein jeen rahi hai...........................

Kids!

2007-03-25T18:55:00.000+05:30

I had to buy some gifts for my niece and nephew, but wasn't aware of any good gifts' shop stocking goodies especially for children So, on Saturday, I did a bit of net surfing and made a list of 8-10 shops that looked promising for my adventure. Mostly were greeting cards' shops and I didn't have high hopes on them, but anyway - What was the harm in trying?
As it turned out, the first few were huge disappointments and didn't have anything much apart from one or two dolls and a few racing cars. My hopes were rapidly diminishing with every entry I striked out in the list. But, before I striked out the last entry, I did find the kind of shop I was looking for. The first thing I liked about that shop was that it was quite large and yet no greeting card was stocked in it. The collection of gifts was vast and unique and some of them very extremely beautiful.
After selecting the gifts, which itself took a considerable time due to the sheer number of different options available, the owner started to gift wrap them. In between he also had to take care of a few others customers. His 2-3 years old son was playing around in the shop, so I just went ahead to have a chat with him and probably play with him if he seemed interested. The kid was very cute, with a pencil in hand, which he was assuming to be a gun, he was running here and there - ignorant of anything going on the world - just enjoying himself. I tried to shake hands with him, but he didn't seem interested. Then he started to point his pencil towards me as if it was a gun, and started shooting - I acting as if injured or dead. Then he smiled. A smile so beautiful & cute - I wish I had a camera and could catch that moment. Instantly, we connected and played for a long time. I wished for some more customers to arrive, so that the gift wrapping was delayed further and we could keep on playing. But after a while, the gifts were wrapped and after paying the bill, I had to leave. The kid looked sad at my leaving - I was too, but he'll forget it in the next few minutes and be his playful self once again, on the other hand I'll never forget it. I'll surely go to that gift shop again - maybe not to buy and gifts but just to meet the kid.

This makes me remember one more instance, which I'll write about in my next post.

Of this and that

2007-03-18T20:36:00.000+05:30

Three Hindi movies down, this weekend was pretty enjoyable. And the movies were - Main hoon na, Pardes and DDlJ. All pretty oldies but nevertheless it feels nice to revise them after a while. I hadn't seen Main Hoon Na earlier, so it was the first time. The story line is very boring and ghatiya. The college life has been depicted in all the wrong way(unable to find a better word to describe it), with no resemblance to actual college life. Below average sort of a movie, which I won't see again.
Pardes and DDlJ are good, but in Pardes too, that Kabaddi episode is out of place and shouldn't have been there. Apart from that, its worth watching and DDLJ - no comments are required for that I suppose.
Next movie in the pipeline should be - In Pursuit of Happiness - Let's see when I can see it - probably the coming weekend.

Went to Palika Bazar after a long time. The place is almost always crowded, but mostly there are electronic shops there - selling the same times of goods - apart from that nothing much variety available.

About the World Cup Cricket Match between India and Bangladesh, which India lost - the least said the better. Tons of newspaper articles, blog posts etc etc must have already been written on it.

Some beautiful lines...

2007-03-11T20:06:00.000+05:30

Yesterday I was trying to find something and went through all of my cupboards and things and junk, I have collected over the years. I found out quite a few things which brought back remembrances of a bygone era. For e.g. there were hand written letters from two of my close friends, which had been written many years ago. There were many other things also - photographs, cards etc etc.
Here I'll share with you a few lines that I found written on a piece of paper. They are not mine - but I must have read them somewhere - found them nice and jotted them on a piece of paper.

Life is like an Ocean...
Sometimes still, like a drop of dew...
and sometimes rolling, like a drop of tear...
Joy, Happiness, Tears and Pain...
are all part of Life,
but after every night
there's always a
Bright New Morning...
a New Sunrise...
And at the beginning of this New Year,
Let's promise to be each others Joy in Celebrations,
Strength and Hope in Problems,
with hearts full of Love always...
and faith to last forever...
Let's sail in the Boat of Companionship...
and win across every test in life...
Wishing a wonderful year ahead...
With you..
With Lots of Love....

That seems to be for a new year ....

Two other entries are -

Life isn't a destination, it is a journey
We all come upon unexpected curves
and turning points , mountain tops and valleys,
Everything that happens to us
shapes who we are becoming.
And in the adventure of each day,
We discover the best in Ourselves.

Some pictures are never seen
Some words cannot be uttered
These are only sensed in the heart
There presence is only felt in the soul
and when that happens.......all is bliss....

Contrasts in songs I like ...

2007-03-03T21:14:00.000+05:30

This song I used to hear & hmm a lot & liked it very much...

Aate jaate hanste gaate
Socha tha maine mann mein kai baar
Vo pehli nazar halka sa asar
Karta hai kyon is dil ko bekaraar
Ruk ke chalna chalke rukna
Na jaane tumhein hai kiska intezaar
Tera vo yakeen kahin main to nahin
Lagta hai yahi kyon mujhko baar baar
Yehi sach hai shaayad maine pyaar kiya
Haan haan tumse maine pyaar kiya

Aate jaate hanste gaate
Socha tha maine mann mein kai baar
Honthon ki kali kuchh aur khili
Ye dil pe hua hai kiska ikhtihaar
Tum kaun ho batla to do
Kyon karne lagi main tumpe aitbaar
Khaamosh rahoon ya main keh doon
Ya kar loon main chupke se ye sweekaar
Yehi sach hai shaayad maine pyaar kiya
Haan haan tumse maine pyaar kiya


In "Maine Pyar Kiya" movie this background music is at several places -

Sa re re girdhar dhani sa..re re girdhar dhani sa..nessa ree re nissasa......
I don't know why but there is something....something in this tune which makes me like it very very much...

And the contrast and other song which I always liked very much is -

Koyi kisi ka nahi ye jhoothhe,
Naate hain naato ka kya
Kasme waade pyaar wafaa sab,
Baatein hain baato ka kya

Hoga masiha ...
Hoga masiha saamne tere,
Phir bhi na tu bach paayega
Tera apna…
Tera apna khoon hi aakhir tujhko aag lagaayega
Aasmaan mein ...
Aasmaan me udne waale mitti mein mil jaayega
Kasme waade pyaar wafaa sab, baatein hain baato ka kya

Sukh mein tere ...
Sukh mein tere saath chalenge,
Dukh mein sab mukh modenge
Duniya waale ...
Duniya waale tere bankar tera hi dil todenge
Dete hain ...
Dete hain bhagwaan ko dhokha,
Insaan ko kya chhodenge
Kasme waade pyaar wafaa sab,


Baatein hain baato ka kya

Any psychiatrist out there? Could he/she figure out the inner workings of my mind? lol ! & help me too figure it out!!! :-)

A New Taggie!

2007-02-24T20:47:00.000+05:30

Tagged from Anks

Here's a list of activities - classify them as have done, have not done and want to do.... its fun!

Have
1.Climbed a mountain! – Till class 12^th I was at Shimla, so you can guess – climbed countless mountains & mountains….
2. Said 'I love you' and meant it…No comments…
3. Hugged a tree…You can guess from the first answer
4. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise… Oh yes, many times…& once probably 3-4 days at a stretch….those crazy days…
5. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment…oh yes! Quite a few times
6. Ridden a roller coaster…Yes, maybe at Appu Ghar, don’t remember much of it though
7. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking
8. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
9. Had two hard drives for your computer – I am a computer engg. so that seems a childish question
10. Had amazing friends – Of course, not ‘had’ but ‘have’…childhood friends still there
11. Midnight walk on the beach – Oh yes, at Goa. It can’t be explained in words, you have to experience it yourself.
12. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger's table and had a meal with them – In crowdy places that’s pretty common.
13. Played in the rain – Many many times. Although havn’t don’t it quite for a while now.
14. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
15. Spoken more than one language fluently – Hindi, English, Punjabi, Urdu – to an extent, Sanskrit to an extent (forgotten now)
16. Sang loudly in the car, and didn't stop when you knew someone was looking
17. Ridden a horse
18. Had your picture in the newspaper – 10^th CBSE board results one.
19. Changed someone's mind about something you care deeply about – Must have done it many times with my friends but don’t remember any specific instance at present.
20. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
21. Changed a baby's diaper – my nephew’s – pretty easy
22. Had a food fight – In college hostel I think
23. Adopted an accent for an entire day – Must have, in my school days
24. Taken care of someone who was drunk – quite a few times, because I never get drunk myself so the whole damm responsibility ends up on me.
25 Pretended to be a superhero – Must have but don’t remember the exact instance.
26. Played in the mud – Many times.
27. Grown and eaten your own vegetables – Feels very nice plucking the home grown tomatoes etc.
28. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over.
29. Survived an illness that you shouldn't have survived.
30. Had major surgery.
31. Gone back to school. – To see how it looks like now & to refresh those fond memories of years spent there.
32. Slept under the stars – A few years back – not lately though.
33. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope – At Bangalore I think, not much remembering though
34. Had a snowball fight – Many times at Shimla.
35. Taken a road-trip
36. Lounged around in bed all day
37. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours – I am Kumbhkaran the great.
38. Visited more foreign countries than India.

Have not

1. Gotten drunk on champagne – I don’t like alcohol. Have never drunk more then 1-2 pegs.
2. Bought everyone in the bar a drink – If I don’t drink myself, I couldn’t have done that either.
3. Swam with wild dolphins – No desire of that. First I have to learn swimming I suppose.
4. Alphabetized your cds – I don’t have many cds.
5. Toured ancient sites – No interest in history.
6. Won first prize in a costume contest – No desire for that either.
7. Gotten a tattoo – I don’t like them.
8. Performed on stage – I have stage fright I suppose.
9. Broken someone's heart.
10. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol – I don’t like rifles, pistols as such…
11. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive – Arre yaar, kaha Ferrari aur kaha hum! Space shuttle hi lekar jaeygey test drive pey…
12. Held a tarantula – No, and don’t have any desire either
13. Had a booth at a street fair
14. Watched a lightning storm at sea – Havn’t been close to sea for long
15. Gone to a huge sports game – I prefer seeing them on TV
16. Given more than you can afford to charity – I don’t believe in charity as such
17. Bet on a winning horse – I don’t like gambling of any sort
18. Asked out a stranger
19. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
20. Held a lamb
21. Seen a total eclipse
22. Hit a home run – In India we play cricket
23. Watched wild whales
24. Stolen a sign
25. Been heartbroken longer then you were actually in love
26. Milked a cow
27. Gone scuba diving
28. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight – What is D&D???
29. Crashed a party – I don’t like parties as such – with close friends it good.
30. Gotten divorced – Shubh shubh bolo – pehley shadi to ho jaey bhiya!!!
31. Gone without food for 5 days – I don’t even believe in fasting for a day, forget 5 days at a stretch
32. Rafted the Snake River – Where is this river?
33. Recorded music
34. Eaten shark - :-( I prefer to eat veg food only – rarely chicken – nothing more then that.
35. Been in a combat zone – I hate wars
36. Buried one of your parents
37. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
38. Created and named your own constellation of stars
39. Had plastic surgery
40. Lost over 100 pounds – Mereko mota hona hai, 100 pounds loose kar gya to skeleton bhi nehi bacheyga.
41. Held someone while they were having a flashback- WHAT????
42. Petted a stingray
43. Helped an animal give birth
44. Broken a bone – Thank God! Not till now
45. Had a body part of yours below the neck pierced – Don’t like these sort of things.
46. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
47. Had a snake as a pet – ewwwww
48. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
49. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
50. Eaten kangaroo meat
51. Parasailed ????
52. Petted a cockroach
53. Eaten fried green tomatoes
54. Read The Iliad - and the Odyssey
55. Selected one "important" author who you missed in school, and read
56. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
57. Skipped all your school reunions – There havn’t been any reunions.
58. Been elected to public office
59. Written your own computer language – What for?
60. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
61. Built your own PC from parts
62. Dyed your hair – They are good as they are.
63. Been a DJ
64. Shaved your head – Havn’t gone crazy till now.
65. Caused a car accident
66. Saved someone's life
67. Sung karaoke
68. Been on television news programs as an "expert"
69. Got flowers for no reason
70. Won money on a T.V. game show
71. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn't know you – almost did that once!

Want to

1. Eaten sushi – I might like it, might not even be able to eat it, but could give a try once.
2. Watched a meteor shower – Would like to see it.
3. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
4. Gone rock climbing
5. Gone sky diving
6. Visited Ireland – Ireland is known for what? Flowers I think. I’ll like to visit every country in the world provided I have the time and money.
7. Been inside the Great Pyramid
8. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
9. Visited Japan
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited the Great Wall of China
12. Visited Paris
13. Seen the Northern Lights
14. Started a business
15. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
16. Been to Las Vegas
17. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
18. Piloted an airplane
19. Touched an iceberg
20. Gone on an African photo safari
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Backpacked in Europe
23. Kissed in the rain
24. Gone to a drive-in theater
25.Taken a martial arts class
26. Gotten married
27. Been in a movie
28. Made cookies from scratch
29. Ridden a gondola in Venice
30. Gone to Thailand
31. Bought a house
32. Been on a cruise ship
33. Raised children
34. Wrote article for a large publication
35. Visited all 7 continents
36. Thought to yourself that you're living your dream

"that thing called LOVE" by Tuhin A Sinha

2007-02-18T19:36:00.000+05:30

A good successful story, be it in the form of a book, movie or any other form, is a one that engages you, transports you in its world of characters and instances. You get so involved in it that you forget everything else and feel that everything is happening in reality, in front of your eyes.
'that thing called Love' does all that and probably even more. A thought provoking, page turner, its more like a bollywood movie rather then a book.
Rather I should say its a peculiar DJish sort of story.
the back of the book says -
"Mayank thus lives in disillusionment hope, to fall in love in all Utopian earnestness and with his 'perfect woman'. the irony eventually arises when he identifies the image of his 'perfect woman' in an older happily married woman. The dreamer in him sets aside ground realities to flow with natural impulses, leading to a dangerously complicated relationship between the woman and him.

Thus Mayank's relationship with Revathi unfolds during the course of one Mumbai monsoon, the first that an anticipating Mayank, experiences of the city, only makes this Utopia an even more surreal experience.

Will Mayank's romance ever strike a balance between Chimera and Actuality?"

Read it to know for yourself...
Some lines from the book...

"Woh shakal pighli to har shay me dhal gayee jaise....
ajeb baat hui hai use bhulane me." - Javed Akhtar in Tarkash

"Kabhi kisi ko mukammal jahan nehi milta
Kabhi zameen to kabhi aasman nehi milta
Tere jaha mey asa nehi ki pyar na ho
Jaha umeed ho ootana wahan nehi milta..." Nida Fasli...

"Hazaron khawaaishein ki har khawaaish pe dum nikle...
Bahut nikle mere armaan, lekin fir bhi kamnikle." - ghalib

One day love and friendship met. Love asked, "Why do you exist if I already exist?". Friendship replied, "To put a smile when you leave tears".

"Tumhe bhi yaad nehi aur main bhi bhul gaya,
Woh lamha kitna haseen tha magar fazool gaya." - Javed Akhtar in Tarkash

Best one is...

"Taruf rog ho jaey to usko bhulana behtar,
Talluk bojh ban jaey to usko todana acha,
Woh afasana jisey anjaam tak laana na ho mumkin,
Use ek khoobsurat mod dekar chhodana acha"

All these lines are not authors' original but certainly have relevance and written at appropriate places.
Need I say more? Read the book.

Mungeri Lal ke haseen sapne.......

2007-02-11T20:19:00.000+05:30

This blog seriously requires a update, so here it is...
I have been very busy with office work for quite a while now. I did think about updating the blog quite a few times but the lazy fellow I am - I kept postponing it on one pretext or the other.
Lately, I have started having strange sort of thoughts....
Wouldn't it be nice if we could be in other professions also - for e.g. a Doctor for one year, a businessman for another, an architect for another... a cricketer for another... a singer for another...a Bollywood actor for another...
Being a Doctor - How would it feel to cure someone and seeing his smiling face as a reward...or for that matter making a 100 for India in one day match and seeing all that millions of fans going crazy for you....or maybe the pride you will feel by standing near a big skyrise or maybe a flyover which you had designed or maybe seeing your own Bollywood movie sitting in a multiplex....
Or for that matter - What would you do, if you had enough bank balance so that you could easily spend your life doing whatever you felt like doing?
Well, enough of dreaming I suppose... No.. no.. I am not drunk or anything like that....Sometimes the amount of work also gets you...you start having strange and weird thoughts....enough...let me go back to solving that damm bugs(in computer code).....I tell you.. Life itself is a big bug which I am trying to solve...
Mungeri Lal ke haseen sapne.......

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Deaai

2007-01-21T19:07:00.000+05:30

This book is 2006 Booker Prize Winner. Must be a great read? You would say.
Well, I didn't like it. This book reminds me of - Gone with the Wind, genre type of books. Everyone says that, Gone With the Wind is a very great novel; America's most beloved Epic Novel,huh! But, even after countless, sincere tries I have never reached beyond 100th page of that book.
Although, I did read 324 odd pages of Inheritance of Loss, but that was more like forcing myself to just complete the book and get it over with, rather than enjoying it.
The story is about a retired judge living in Kalimpong, with his grand daughter Sai and his cook. The cook's son Biju. has gone to America to make it big there. The plot is set up in 1980s or so - at the time of Indra Gandhi and people in an around Kalimpong rioting and demanding a separate Gorkhaland for themselves. The story revolves around the judge's own past - How he was able to go to London, how he became judge etc. etc. about young Sai, the cook, his son Biju in America and of course the strikes and riots etc. - very very boring I would say.
The plot is nothing to write about, the story doesn't moves much - doesn't have much of a great start or for that matter any great end. When I reached the end I didn't expect it to finish so abruptly.
If you want to go to sleep then start reading the book. This book helped putting me into sound sleep at night, continuously, for more then a week.
I read most of the books in long stretches, which I typically call - long sessions - but, it was impossible to read this book in long sessions at one go.
The only parts which I liked a little bit were the meetings between Sai and Gyan. Gyan was a teacher just a few years older then Sai, whom judge had appointed to teach Sai.
I have been thinking - Why did this book got a Booker Prize?
The only reason I can think of is that probably all the judges who were appointed to select the Booker prize winner were old, buddha log - who might have liked the story because its about their old buddha times - so they ended up selecting it.
There is other thought also lingering in my mind that probably there is something missing in me which makes me fail to appreciate this kind of work, whereas others are able to appreciate it.
Anyway, according to my personal views, this book is very boring and not much worth to write about but others might have different views.

"Anything for you, Ma'am", An IITian's Love Story by Tushar Raheja

2007-01-03T22:34:00.000+05:30

I got to know about this book from Mehak's - 'Book Shelf'. Just seeing the title brought a smile on my face. After reading 'Five Point Someone' by Chetan Bhagat, I always had a firm conviction that some other author or publisher will soon use the IIT tag to sell a book and fail (probably miserably) and here I saw my prediction coming true - I had to smile.
I immediately placed an online order to get the book.
The next day the website(om-books.com) said that it has been dispatched and will reach in 2 days. It didn't even reach in 5 days and a call to them revealed that it will take 5 more days. Damn! it was my first order from that site - I'll never buy any book from them again. Why the hell do they mention that it will reach in 2 days, when then can't deliver it in that time?
Anyway leave that - finally, I did get the book to read.
The first thing I read was the reviews at the back of the book. They looked pretty ordinary, nothing much to write about.
Then I read that the writer was a fourth year IIT student, which lowered my expectations from the book by a considerable amount. They weren't much high to begin with, especially due to the IIT tag used at the top as a sub-title - 'An IITian's Love Story'. First, no matter How much one tried - a comparison of this book with FPS is sort of inevitable and FPS will win hands down. Secondly, the plot itself didn't seem much engrossing or captivating (from the reviews at the back). Thirdly, the publisher was some obscure one, about whom I haven't even heard before. Fourthly and more importantly, I hated the IIT tag being used again, just to sell a book.
This book did teach me a lot of things. Mainly, as a writer, which blunders should be avoided.
The starting of the novel is a sequences of pasts, presents and futures. That keeps the reader totally confused about the flow and sequence of the story. Sometimes suddenly the author dashes into the past then back, then again back, then forward. It's difficult to keep track of things especially in the starting one third of the book at least. After that its much better.
Of course, the author might have done this to keep the audiences hooked to the book, but sadly it doen't work. It would have been much much better if the writer had started from the beginning i.e. when, how and where - Tejas and Shreya meet and continued from their on, in the sequence as it had happened rather then darting from present to past to future, countless times.
The plot itself has nothing much to write about. It revolves around - How Tejas an IIT Delhi student could bunk his Industrial Tour and visit his beloved,Shreya; at Chennai.
The author's self important, self-centered style, me have brains, me can do anything, me can find a way to anything is also a big put down. I understand that at time of youth, in which Tushar, the author is - the thinking is of that sort. I also had the same sort of thinking at that time of my youth. But, sadly, as a hero of the book, it would never have worked. FPS worked because the characters in it were portrayed as normal human beings with their faults and fallacies and not as some super heroes. In fact, Chetan Bhegat was successful because he downplayed his characters. Hari, the topper of the class or Hari knowing answers to everything, wouldn't have sold.
There is a mention of DISCO in the book, but the author doesn't describes it much. Although, he does mention about it, but, then skips it totally. It gives a feeling that Tejas never went through DISCO, and the author just cooked it up.
Also the author has a nagging habit of straying from the path whenever something important or exciting is about to happen. He writes irrelevant or unnecessary things for a few lines or even paragraphs before coming back to that important issue. For some effects! I suppose, but this teasing by the author will be seen as highly irritating by the readers. At least for me, it was.
As said earlier too - the IIT tag has been wasted and is just there on the cover page to sell the book. The whole of the book has nothing to do with IIT, in fact, Tejas could have been studying in some commerce or art college, the story would not have required any change. There is no mention of IIT life, hostel life, about grading system or the countless and numerous things that go on there - except the crazy and absent minded professors; that would be present in any pajamachap college too.
The string of coincidences has also been taken too much far.
The story is good in some bits and pieces. For example, Tejas's heart to heart talk with his sister, candle light dinner on a roof top etc.
Overall - 2/5. You can neglect it.
Read Rashmi Bansal's review here.

Indian Post

2007-01-01T21:01:00.000+05:30

On 28th December, 2006, I used the Indian Post after several years - probably five years, ten years or even more - I don't even remember the last time I used the Indian Post to send anything. But surely, it has been a long, long time.
The special occasion was - the New Year itself and I wanted to send greeting cards to various relatives and friends. Although in today's age, with the use of e-cards, smses and e-mails, the culture of sending greeting cards by post is almost dead, but anyhow I just thought of reviving that culture a bit. Many many years ago - I loved the times when I used to receive the postal greetings cards, mostly on Diwali and New Year and mostly from relatives. Today also I find those greeting cards much better then the e-cards, so I thought probably others will like it too. Even if they don't, the sheer joy of writing the wishes inside the greeting cards, then writing the addresses on the envelope and then finally sending them were enough for me to revive that years' old culture.
While writing, I also found out that my handwriting has deteriorated more then a thousand times it used to be in college and it was not much good, even in the college days. For the past few years, I have hardly written anything with the pen, so it was like drawing flying sparrows and crows rather then writing anything good and easy to understand. That time I even promised myself for writing at least one page with a pen everyday, to improve my handwriting. But these sort of promises are made at the spur of the moment and never quite materialize to anything.
It was a nice surprise to know that even today it took just Rs. 4/- to send a greeting card by Indian Post. I remember, it was Rs. 1/- when I used to send them - years ago. So, today also its pretty cheap - I had hoped it would be around Rs. 10/- or so. But, I have not received any aknowledgement from the people I have sent the cards, of receiving them. But, probably its too early - I don't expect the cards to reach them before the end of this week - if they do reach.
Hope that they'll receive them.

Dissection of Sunday Newspaper

2006-12-17T12:43:00.000+05:30

"Govt finds most Auto meters faulty".
Gosh! Govt found it now? Each and every citizen of Delhi has known it, for years. What a stunning discovery, by the Govt! I should add.

"Paying Ransom is a harsh reality, says Anant's father".
Naresh Gupta had to pay about Rs. 50 lakhs to rescue his son Anant from the kidnappers. Now the Income Tax Department is after him. IT people must be saying to him - "Where is our share man? You paid Rs. 50 lakh to the kidnappers - we also want our cut on that - 30% - nothing less."
On further thinking, maybe the finance minister can pass a law in his coming budget by which money earned by kidnappings will be taxed @ 30% in the hands of kidnappers and probably @ 20% from the person paying the ransom.

"$10,160 per year is poor in US? That's rich"
According to US Government guidelines, as of 2005, an individual with an annual income of less then $10,160 or a family of two with annual income less then $13,708 is considered to be below poverty line.
Wow! That deserves a party. I'll give all my colleagues a treat tomorrow. You know, I just came to know that, I am above the poverty line - although barely, but anyway - a very big achievement, I should add.

On a serious note-

"We were young and crazy to think we would succeed..."
"Authors are getting younger and younger. What's their winning formula?"
It describes two 17 years old twins - Suresh and Jyoti Guptara have written a book and got it published. A nice article, which also inspired me to write something and guess what? To begin with, I ended up writing this crap post - you are reading now.

"Venus Samosas and Mars Bars"
In this article Bachi Karkaria writes about the samosa. Sunita Williams carried a packet of samosas on the Discovery Mission. Samosas not only rule every nook and corner of the world, but will now rule the space too. A good humorous article.

Times Life has a big nice photograph of Aishwarya Rai, beautifully dressed in green, on the cover page and in big bold green letters it says - "I want to get Married!".
Gosh! I have been waiting for you to say that, for so many years. Come on, let's get married tomorrow itself. Should I come to receive you at the airport? Then we'll go straight to a temple and get our saat phere.

So my dear readers, see you after our marriage! Bye, bye till then.

DLF Series - India vs Australia - The Art of Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

2006-09-24T13:07:00.000+05:30

If you ever wanted to master that art - see the Indian cricket team playing a few matches. If Rahul Dravid or any of his teammates write a book on - How to loose a match? - it would become an instant success in India. Well, sometimes I feel - they would be better off, if they start doing that only.
I didn't see India bowling, but I heard that it was good. Australia were less then 100 for 5. Good early wickets.Yet they were able to score more then 200. Its something that keeps happening with fair regularity. We getting a excellent bowling start - knock of almost half the team in less then 20 overs and yet after that the grip is lost and the opponent is allowed to recover to the maximum extent. Well, something about Indians having a big heart comes into play I suppose. They can't crush anyone ruthlessly, without mercy.

In India's batting - top order was gone even before the spectators could blink their eyes. It was again left to the likes of Dhoni, Mongia and Raina to atleast provide some decency to the scorecard, forget about winning. They did a good job at that too - but they have many things lacking. Both of them(Suresh and Dhoni) threw away their wickets in a reckless manner. I didn't see Suresh getting out, but yes Dhoni lost his head after getting a few deliveries above shoulder height and the end result - he packed himself up back to the pavillion - exactly what the Australians wanted. Mongia was the lone fiigher, who did give a great performance but eventually he was left alone, without any partners at the other end. I feel, when India were 8 down - he made a big mistake by taking singles and letting the tailenders get the strike. He should have himself taken all the strike - should have taken only 2 runs or tried to get boundries and taken single in the second last or last ball only. There were plenty of overs left and it could have been easily done. There is an interview with Mongia in TOI today in which he is saying that he had faith in the tailenders. I disagree wth him.Would he have done the same thing if that was a World Cup final match? Imagine a heart surgeon letting an intern handle a major complication while performing a heart surgery, just because he had faith in him?
Oh yes, Why am I being so harsh on the Indian team? - afterall they are human - everyone makes mistakes. It is easy to say things sitting here - but it would have been very difficult to face the pressure and be in the middle of things.
That argument was totally banished by my mind, firstly because they are professionals not some street cricket playing team - they have been trained to handle pressure and play at world class level. Secondly, once in a while - some mistakes are acceptable, but this is happening with fair regularity now.
I had stopped seeing cricket matches for quite a while now - saw this one after a long time and sadly it turned out to be a big disappointment. Well! I should have expected that only.

Computers also catch the cold!!!

2006-09-04T21:05:00.000+05:30

Till friday night, my laptop was running fine. As usual, I slept very late - it was weekend ahead - How could I have slept before 2 a.m.? The next day, I got up around 1 p.m. and the first thing I did, was to switch on my laptop. The OS started and asked for the password to login. I entered it with half-closed eyes and pressed the Enter key - but what the hell! - nothing happened. Then I re-entered it and again nothing happened. I thought probably, I am still sleeping and all this is happening in my dream. I rubbed my eyes again and tried to enter the password and was also now sure that I am awake and actually pushing the keys. I realized that I was pressing the keys but nothing was being typed on the monitor. I tried pressing some other keys - nothing appeared to work. The keyboard of my laptop was dead.
I shut down the laptop and restarted it - maybe it had some problem while startup. No use - keyboard was dead - no arrow keys, no tab, nothing working except the on/off key. I couldn't even enter the CMOS settings - it also requires F10 to be pressed.
After trying for sometime, I realized that I'll have to call some serviceman. Desktop PC is fine - I have opened it countless times - its nut and bolts - every chip - everything inside it. There was a time when my room was filled with desktop components littered all over the place. But laptop is another thing - I didn't want to open it myself.
It was raining heavily on saturday, so no serviceman was ready to come. On Sunday it was a holiday, so everyone said that they can come only on monday. In the meantime, I tried to run the laptop many times. Nothing seemed to work. I even put my laptop upside down for 4-5 hours thinking that probably the plate below the keys had been dislocated and it might correct itself. A silly thing to think and do, but anyway - What was the harm in taking the chance? As expected - it didn't work.
On monday, I had to goto office and I didn't want anyone to open the laptop in my absence, so the serviceman could come only after my return from office in the evening.
In the office, my office desktop machine, started shutting down on it own - without any warning or anything - whenever it felt like. By afternoon, it refused to even start. That had to be sent to hardware department for repair. Hardware guy have not been able to correct the problem so far.

In the evening, when I came back from office, the first thing to do was to call the serviceman. He was't there, so I tried to start my laptop again and to my utter surprise, its running fine since then - no problem - touchwood. Infact, I am typing my post on the same very laptop and using its very keyboard itself.

The latet theory is - "mere laptop ko thand lag gyi...delhi me ekdum se thand hui to bechara mera laptop zhel nehi paya. Ab dhere dhere usne adjust kar liya hai".

Well , I am thinking of asking my office hardware guy to keep my office desktop m/c in a warm place for a few hours - probably thats the main problem with it too. Hehehaha

Another one after a long time!!

2006-08-08T22:41:00.000+05:30

It has been a long time since I posted anything. My last post was on July 14th-almost one month has gone since then. Two-three posts earlier to that are also spaced by more then 15 days apart and they seem to be posts that have just been written in order to write something, without any much of a desire for writing.
So what should I assume by all that? My interest in blogging has ended? No, certainly not! Then what? The reasons are not much clear to me also - I didn't feel like writing anything. If I wanted I could have written about a lot of things. There were other reasons also - but they were just mere excuses - I could have written if I wanted to - nothing could have stopped me.
So, am I back to blog world? Maybe yes, maybe no - only thing I am sure of is that I'll try to write.

Well - holidays are coming around 15th August. I might write then - Hope I will.

Small post after a long time!!!

2006-07-14T19:42:00.000+05:30

A few months back a friend of mine was blessed with a baby boy.

No, no thats not the reason to write this post. But, I had to write the above line in order to make the following lines understandable.

After spending 3 months maternity leave she now goes to office. Why the hell we men don't have paternity leaves? Okie, okie - leave that apart. The thing is now her husband stays at home i.e. works from home and takes care of his child whereas she goes to office. Means he does everything from changing diapers to feeding him and all other things that a stereotype society like ours, expect only women to do.

There are two very heartening things here -
1) Many men have started taking active roles in the domains which were only labelled as that for womens' and vice versa.
2) Many companies have started realizing that their employees also live a life apart from doing work and have started some favourable policies in this regard. The number of companies doing that is quite few but hopefully in the coming years situation will improve.

And on personal fromt - These days I don't know why sometimes I like sitting idle - doing nothing - just thinking. There was a time when I was unable to sit idle even for small while and always required to do something or the other. Probably I have gone crazy or knocked off a few nuts and bolts of my mind.

Happy Birthday to my blog

2006-06-26T22:24:00.000+05:30

My blog completed a year - on 2nd June, to be precise - but a lazy bum like me forgot as usual. Anyway - be late then never - Happy Birthday to my Blog. So, it has been more then a year in this blog world and I have made many nice friends. When I started blogging I didn't have a clue what I'll write and what not? I wasn't even sure whether I'll continue with it or not. Inspite of all that I just gave it a try and its really nice to know that I have completed one year, althought there have been long breaks in-between - nevertheless.
I can't say that I have made a lot of friends - just a few - but I always prefered quality over quantity. I always like to make long term friendships - short term, just for fun friendships or friendships formed on give and take hypothesis are not my type. I am also a selfish type, who never likes or wants any friend to leave, but many of bloggers have stopped blogging and have gone out of touch. I really feel sad thinking about them.
I'll like to thank all of you, each and everyone reading it, each and everyone who used to blog and have stopped blogging now - all of you have helped me complete one year here. Without your encouragement, support and comments it would never have been accomplished. Thanks again!

The Letter "T"

2006-06-11T22:15:00.000+05:30

I have been tagged by Silky Moon. She tagged me earlier also on some other topic, but I didn't take up her earlier tag and so let me atleast try this tag. The alphabet she gave me is - 'T". God, couldn't she find any other more difficult letter? You tell me - How many names or things start with "T"? Come on, come on - try to name atleast 5, then you'll understand my situation.
The first thing that comes to my mind is -
Tea - Wel, I am neither a tea addict not I have any allergy from it. But thats the first thing that popped into my mind, while thinking about T, so just writing it here. I normally have tea twice daily, once in the morning and once in the evening. But, there is no hard and fast rule - I might skip the morning one, might skip the evening one, might have 4-5 cups of tea in a day. It all keeps varying to seasons, mood, situation etc.
the next thing that coes to my mind is -
Time - I value time a lot. I strongly dislike people who are late, waste their or other's time. Or in other words - time is precious to me.
Taj Mahal - I don't think I have to write anything about it as everybody knows about it. To add my personal views - I havn't gone to see Taj Mahal yet, inspite of me living in Delhi and it being not too far. Probably the reason could be that I am not much interested in seeing it.
Tomato - I like tomatoes. Sometimes when the food is being made, I just go into the kitchen - pickup a red tomato - slice in into two halves - put salt and pepper on it and eat it - its delicious.

Thats all I can think about - 'T'. Sorry, dear - 'T' - you wern't meant to be in such a sorry state that I have put you in, but you know, you knocked at the wrong door - this nerd can't even remember names of people - How did you expect this junkie could have listed 5 or 10 things starting by you? Extremely sorry, dear.

Busy! Busy and Busy

2006-05-27T13:13:00.000+05:30

I wanted to write lots of posts - quite a number of ideas came into my mind. But, last few days have been very busy, so they have just remained thoughts, so far. Probably, I'll write down some day - Sigh. - Don't know when that day will come.
Firstly, at office it was very hectic and busy - quite a number of clients wanted there things to be done and problems to be solved with utmost importance and urgency. So, it was just sheer maddening at office - nerves of quite a few people went loose. Managing all that was really challenging.

Secondly, I am looking to buy a car - probably Alto Lxi. I liked Mercedes Benz SL200 - hehehe - but probably some other time - some other life. Next choice was - Accent, but then didn't have that much money and didn't want to take a high loan - especially car loan, that comes at high interest. So, was talking to dealers, looking for options, researching etc.etc......

Thirdly, my younger brother, who stays at Bangalore was here. He's going to US for a month - left yesterday - was busy with him - arranging things, shopping etc.

Hope, I'll be back to - a post a week routine after next week - when things should come back to normal again - but you never know...

The Kite Runner -by Khaled Hosseini

2006-05-11T20:22:00.000+05:30

Just completed read it. In 3 days flat. Some friend of mine gave it to me to read, saying that it was a nice novel. Although I was a little skeptical as he himself hadn't read it. But, he insisted that its reviews were good, so I thought of giving it a try atleast.

The first 20-25 pages were quite boring and I kept wondering - Why the hell I was putting so much effort in trying to read it? At that time I never even dreamed of completing it - the story wasn't moving much, infact it was not going anywhere at all and moreover because it was set up in Afganistan, I wasn't able to relate much to it. Finally, I decided that I will read a few more pages and if I didn't start liking it, I'll dump it.

But slowly the story begin to pickup and just like the old wine has its effect slowly but surely, this story also kept me hooked and I couldn't leave it till the bottle was empty - I mean till it was completely read. All the characters are built very beautifully and its not like a Hindi movie that they are black or white. Everyone is in shades of grey, some less, some more. Moreover, there isn't anything extraordinary like the hero alone killing hundreds of people in the Hindi movie Gadar - everything in it appears real life like. Probably thats why I liked it more. Its pretty emotional in parts and the author has been able to express the emotions very well.
Highly recommended if someone likes reading emotional novels.

Money Matters!!!

2006-04-29T19:55:00.000+05:30

'The main reason people struggle financially is because they have spent years in school but learned nothing about money. The result is that people learn to work for money... But never learn to have money work for them'. -Robert T. Kiyosaki.

Everyone, no matter who he/she is, no matter what he/she does, has to deal with money all along his/her life and yet nothing about it is tought in school. Years and years are spent in learning world history, geography, science and other abstract things, which probably won't be even used by the students in whole of their lives, but the very practical and fundamental things that each and every child will have to deal with in their lives, are never even taught. Parents don't teach their children anything about it, teachers don't, infact no one does. Life itself might teach them a lesson or two about it, but only if they are willing to learn from it. But, more or less thats it. Infact, in most of the Indian households, like sex, money is also considered as a dirty black thing which needs to be shoved under the carpet and never even talked about.

A few days back, I was with my friend and as it was around the end of the financial year so the discussion happened to circle around taxes. He was very happy that he didn't have to pay any tax as he had taken two policies and paid 50-60K as premium for it. When asked about the details about the policies, he could only say that it was from Aviva and that one was Life insurance and the other he didn't even remember which one. When enquired further, he didn't even knew any term and conditions of the policy, when he will get any money back and how much. The answer was - probably after retirement, but not sure. 'But, you see - I don't have to pay any tax' was a happy reply from him.
I came to know that some guy had befriended him and sold 2 policies to him, saying that it will save tax. My friend will pay that amount every year, probably for 15-20 years or even more and I am not even sure - How much he will get back after that.Moreover, there is. no one dependent my friend, he is not married and his parents are quite well off and don't require any of his earnings. So what was the point in take the life insurance? About the second policy, neither he nor I know, what it was - so can't even comment on that.Point to be noted is that - my friend is quite well educated person.
This was just an example. I meet many people frequently that don't have any knowledge about - How money moves, how it increases, how it degrades. People selling various financial products like policies, mutual funds etc. take advantage of these facts and use it to fill their own pockets. In most cases the victims are highly educated people.
Many people are also of the type - Who buy everything on credit cards,spend like kings and queens and then keep paying hefty interest rates for the credit. Credit card companies love them - Why should they? They are making the companies' rich. The most common pretext on which the credit taker does it that - he will be able to pay it easily in monthly installments. He forgets the hefty price he's paying for it.
There are people at other extreme end also. They have a habit of saving everything they could. Everything goes into their saving account in the bank. Little do they know that - the value of their savings are decreasing with time - due to inflation and increase in cost of things over time. So even if they save 1L today its value over time will decrease unless that 1L grows and increases faster then the inflation and rise of costs over time.

I am not saying that anyone has to be an economic expert, but a basic understanding of finance or money is a must for everyone, so that he/she is better equipped to handle his/her money/finances.

The Inscrutable Amercans by Anurag Mathur

2006-04-22T19:59:00.000+05:30

"The Inscrutable Americans" is a nice and humorous novel. Its a story about an Indian brahmin named Gopal, who lives in a small Indian town and goes to America for the first time, for a year, to persue a doploma in chemical enginnering. His journey from India to America, his time spent there and the return journey have been very well captured in words by the author. The disasterous English that Gopal uses, the funny, hilarous instances that he had all the time are very well narrated. The letters written back by him to his younger brother are humorous, funny and entertaaining. His resolve to eat only vegetarian food, not drink alcohol, not go near girls and yet somewhere deep in the mind - a feeling to break all these resolves, lands him in very awcard and funny places and situations. The way the American speak English languge or rather speak American(language) and the way, Gopal ends up misunderstanding everything is also worth reading. Once you start reading, you can't stop unless you reach the end and most of the time you'll be laughing and smiling while reading it.

In all a very good humorous book. Highly Reccommended.
Rating - 4/5

Please note that its not a new novel - the story is about the time of Rajiv Gandhi, nevertheless good read.

India and Pakistan

2006-04-11T16:21:00.000+05:30

India and Pakistan.
Two sides of the same coin.
Our people seperated by just a border.
We look the same, we talk the same.
We both dip biscuits in our morning cups of tea.
We both love Abida Parveen and Nurat Fateh Ali Khan.
We both laugh at the same jokes.
And cry at Karan Johar films.
Then why do we have borders seperating our sameness?
Friends Without Borders began a few months ago where group of volunteers began visiting schools throughout India to collect letters from Indian children, to give to their friends in Pakistan.
This Feb 19th the children of India created the world's largest love letter, which was presented at the wankhede Stadium.
Over thirty thousand letters have been collected to send to children of Pakistan.
We are hoping this movement gains momentum and touches a crore Indian children.
Let's teach our children love, kindness, caring and compassion.
For only then will they inherit a world without borders tomorrow.

For more info - FriendsWithoutBorders.org

This add came in the newspaper a few times, so just reproducing it here.
So, the eternal question is - Should India and Pakistan unite together? After all if South Korea and North Korea can unite, if Germany can, then Why can't India and Pakistan? So, As an Indian - What do you say? Should they unite? Yes/No and Why?
So guys and gals, tell us about your views on it.

Nerds trying to write poetry !!!

2006-04-05T19:00:00.000+05:30

Now this is what happens when two nerds aka software engineers don't have anything to do and they try a hand on poerty. So, once it happened that one morning, I sent a few lines to my friend via email and he sent a few lines back - just in 5 minutes. Then I replied in next 5 minutes and so the time limit for replying was set to 5 min and it went on and on, till we really got scared that if someone tried to read our mails at the company server and told our bosses, our bosses will literally come out running from their cabins and kill us with their bare hands.
So, sssshhhhh don't tell anyone about it
Some are original some pirated

Me said -

Kabhi bhulae bhatkae hamae bhi yaad kar kiya karo

Mana aap hamae apna dost nehi samzhtae

kbhi dushman samhaz kar hi yaad kar liya karo

Aapnae to hamae zaasae bhula hi diya hai

Kabhi na yaad karnae kae bahanae hi yaad kar liya karo

ham aapkae intzaar mae nazrae bichae baathae hai

aana na sehi aakhae band karkae hi hamae yaad kar liya karo

Had hai intzwar ki bhi

phone na sehi kbhi mail karkae hi yaad kar liya karo

He replied -

dost...

thak gaya mein karte karte yad tujhko

ab tujhe mein yaad aana chhahata hoon..

aa tujhe mein gun gunana chhahata hoon..

I replied

DOST

tere yaad mae hi guzara hai sara waqt maine

par ab mae tuzhae saamnae dekhnae chatha hu

pata nehi kab zindgi ki ye shaam dhal zaayae

mae tuzhae sirf nazar bhar deekhna chaata hu

He replied -

kabhee bisteroon mein jab lete tum honge..

takeeya ko seene se lagayaa to hoga..

kabhee aankho se jo tapke honge yeh aansoo..

gaaloon pe haatho ke firaaya to hoga..

tum bhool gaye mujhe iska gila nahien mujhe..

gam to sirf yeh hai ro ro ke bhulaya hoga.

I replied -

DOST

zindigi kar har pal guzrata hai yaad karkae tumhae

tuzhae bhulana ki to mae soch bhi nehi sakta

ek choti se zindgi to mili hai

Iska ek bhi pal mae tuzhae bhulanae ki koshih mae kho nehi sakta

He replied-

woh shaam ke khamoshi.

woh raat ke tanhaaee..

isee pal mujhko teri meethee see yaad aayee..

yaad tere haath ko choone ka narm ahesaas.

yaad ke lagta hai tu hai kahien aas paas..

yaad kaho ke ek ada, ke har ek cheez hai mujhe yaad..

yaad ke tujhe kabhee na bhool paane ka ek ahessas.

dost, tuhje bhoollao mein yeh kabhee mumkeen nahien hoga..

agar hoga to mereee zindgee ka aakhree din hoga..

I replied-

Dost

tu pass na sehi teri yadoo ko hi pass rekhna chathta hu

Mae to tamam umr tare yadoo mae hi guzarna chata hu

Chae yae zalim zamana tuzsae milnae na dae

Phir bhi mae tare milnae ki aas mae zindigi guzarna chata hu

He replied
paata hoon har pal paas tujhe

tu abhee bhee hai bas mere liye..

jo amar hai mere man mein abhee.

woh bas tere hee yadden hain..

aansoo ke nanhee boondo se..

aksar kartee abhishek mera..

woh shaayad meri ______ hai..

pooree hone se dartee hai..

( last two were self composed ... that's probably new face of ur friend for u.)

I replied
Bas kar saley, varna aaj hi hum dono ke boss hamara Happy Birthday manva dangey. Kuch kaam bhi kar le ab.

India Wins! Three cheers for Raina

2006-03-31T17:45:00.000+05:30

Today India won the one-day cricket match against England which was played in my own backyard, oops I mean Faridabad - the place where I am presently residing. India required a modest total of 227 to win the match and they were going smoothly at 60 for no loss. Then as usual, disaster stuck - from 60/0 India went on to 92/5. No words can describe the poor cricket the top order batsmen played. At that time, I wondered whether India would reach even the 100 mark? But, it was only because of S.Raina's brilliant knock, along with the help of Dhoni, that India could win the match by 4 wickets.Inspite of the tremendous pressure Raina's performance was brilliant. Dhoni got Out just before finishing off the game, but nevertheless, he had already done his job.
The most heartening thing to see in the Indian team these days is that, there is some one or the other with a brilliant performance and the team is not dependent on just 2-3 players' performances, as it used to be the case earlier.
The fielding of Indians today was nothing to write about - too many dropped catches and missed chances.

Bas yaadey! yaadey! yaadey reh jati hai

2006-03-25T21:47:00.000+05:30

I read about the post by Preeti on Chandigarh(here) and started remembering all that 4 years spent at my college - Punjab Engg. College, Chandigarh. That was one of the most beautiful years of my life and today also thinking about them, I am feeling very nostalgiac. Sometimes I deliberately try not to think of those 4 golden years, because those lead to flood of emotions with many many sweet memories etched into my mind. Chandigarh itself is a very beautiful city to live at, as you might have guessed it, if you read Preeti's post and on top of that - PEC - it's just beyond words. In this post, I'll not go into those funny, sweet and other exciting instances that kept happening - each and everyday at college, but I'll just post some of the pictures here. Those instances - may be in some other post.
This is the main building of my college. Countless hours were spent here. There are rows of

rooms visible on the first floor (right side) which are drawing halls and our semester exams were held here.






The same main building
from a
different
angle.















Our library - not much time was spend here, but outside the library
there were a few stairs to sit. A lot of time was spent there, just sitting
and talking with friends.





My CSE Deptt. building. Much more time was spent sitting
on the 3-4 stairs that you can see in the picture and very
less time inside the lecture halls



Last but the most important - our Verka booth, which was
near our deptt. building and literally the whole day
was spent there sitting on bikes and scooters and enjoying.


Remembering the song....
Purani jeans aur guitar
Mohalle ki vo chhat
Aur mere yaar
Vo raaton ko jaagna
Subah ghar jaan
Kood ke deewar
Vo cigaretee peena
Gali mein jaake
Wo karna daanton ko
Ghadi ghadi saaf

Pahunchna college hamesha late
Vo kehna sir ka
"Get out from the class!"
Vo bahar jaake hamsha kehna
Yahan ka system
Hi hai kharaab
Vo jaake canteen mein
Table bajaake
Vo gaane gaana
Yaaron ke saath

Bas yaadein
Yaadein
Yaadein reh jaati hain
Kuchh chhoti
Chhoti
Baatein reh jaati hain
Bas yaadein..

Vo papa ka daantna
Vo kehna mummy ka
Chhodein ji aap
Tumhein to bas nazar aata hain
Jahan mein beta
Mera hi kharaab
Vo dil mein sochna
Kar ke kuchh dikha dein
Vo karna planning
Roz nayi yaar

Ladakpan ka vo pehla pyaar
Vo likhna haathon pe
A + R
Vo khidki se jhaankna
Vo likhna letter
Unhein baar baar
Vo dena tofe mein
Sone ki baaliyan
Vo lena doston se
Paise udhaar

Bas yaadein
Yaadein
Yaadein reh jaati hain
Kuchh chhoti
Chhoti
Baatein reh jaati hain
Bas yaadein..

Aisa yaadon ka mausam chala
Bhoolta hi nahin
Dil mera
Kahan meri jeans aur guitar
Mohalle ki vo chhat
Aur mere yaar
Vo raaton ko jaagna
Subah ghar jaan
Kood ke deewar

Purani jeans
Aur guitar..

Chasing one's dream

2006-03-18T23:43:00.000+05:30

I read this article. Here. Its about an IIM grad. who is to graduate this year from IIM, Lucknow - turned down a lateral placement job of 9 lakhs to persue his dream. How many of the people in this world would do that? Possibly, a very few. Most of the people I meet, just want to be successful - earn big money and be popular. No, there is nothing wrong with earning big bucks or being popular, but most of them are doing what they are doing - because either someone asked them to do so - or thats the way they knew to become successful. If you ask - What they like? most of them would say - things like - But, if I do what I like, it won't earn me big money, let me become a computer engineer or probably do an MBA and then I'll be successful. Then they say - I will be happy - once I do that.
So, then end up spending countless hours in persuring false dreams, the dreams that were never their's.
This article is an example to those people and might inspire them to persure their dreams, the dreams they might have seen as an innocent child, the dreams if fullfilled will make them really happy from the core.
After all you have only one life.

Pool,Liking, Love and Americans!

2006-02-22T22:11:00.000+05:30

For a past few days, I have started playing Pool on Yahoo Games. I am an avid game player and don't play much games, but this 2 player Pool really hooked me - maybe because its a live multiplayer game which can be easily played on Net.
I am not very good at playing Pool, so I always played with people who had played less then 50 games so far, because, then I would have a fair chance of winning the game. A person, who had already played more then 50 games would have gained a lot of experience and would have easily won.'You are clever', you might say. Oh yes, I am.
Yesterday, I was waiting for a free table, which had a person, who had played less then 50 games and after waiting for a few minutes, I recieved an invitation from someone to play Pool. The person had played around 25 games and had won only one or two. I thought, I'll easily win, so I started playing..
After a few shots I recieved a message - ...
The Person - 'Hi'
What was I suppose to say? Of course
Me - 'Hi'
Few shots later -
The Person - 'Are you a boy?'
Now what was I supposed to answer to that? No, no - I didn't have to think what I am, but usually the question is Male/Female, not boy/girl. So, I thought most probably there was some kid playing out there with me.
Me - "Yes"
The Person - 'Do you like me?'
Now that was a question that jolted me. I blinked my eyes in order to see whether I was reading it right. How can you like someone whom you have never seen, never talked? Just by playing a few shots of Pool with him/her you start liking him/her? What was I supposed to answer to that?
Me - 'Where are you from? How old are you?'
The Person - 'NY, I am 14'
The Person - 'Do you like me?'
Me - 'Yes'
The Person - 'Do you Love me?'
Now that was another heavy duty jolt. Yes, I Iike kids, I love them, but that little girl was thinking of me as her boyfriend. I was totally unsure - How to answer the kid - I didn't want to hurt her but on the other hand the conversation was going in totally wrong directions and I had yet to pot 4 balls. She hadn't potted even a single one and I didn't want to leave the game and loose it. So, I just played my turn and didn't reply.
Now, she was talking a lot of time in her turn and I had no choice but to wait for my turn.
After a while -
The Person - "Do you Love me?'
What the hell?
Me - 'Yes'
The Person - "I love you?'
I potted two balls, two yet to go.
The Person - 'Do you Love me, MORE?'
Me - 'Yes, Please take your turn quickly'
The Person - "I love you more?'
The Person - 'Okie'
The Person - 'Will you go out with me?'
Me - 'Yes'
The Person - 'How do you look like?'
Me - 'Okie, okie type'
I have one ball yet to pot and after that the black one. She hasn't potted even a single ball yet.
The Person - 'I have green eyes and brown hair. What are yours?'
Me - 'I have grey eyes and black hair'
The Person - 'Kool'
Now I have only black ball to pot.
The Person - 'Do you love me?'
Me - 'Yes'
The Person - "I love you?'
The Person - 'Do you love me MORE?'
Me - 'Yes'
The Person - "I love you more?'
The Person - 'Are you hot?'
I potted the black ball, won the game, left the table and didn't login to yahoo games again that day. That was enough for a day I suppose.

Although my concept of liking and love is not the same as it was when I was 14-15 years old.But, I couldn't have said - 'I like you' to a stranger, whom I havn't even met and just played pool with her on net.

Maybe its the US, the great.

Another instance of pool which happened a few days back.
I am playing pool with someone having id - something like - bigmom - something...Now I had the criousity of asking her - How many children she had.
Me - 'Where are you from?'
Bigmom - 'Texas, US'
Me - 'How many children do you have?'
Bigmom - 'Six'
My God! six. These days Indian villagers(Now don't remember Laloo now - he's an exception) also have 2-3 kids, 4 max and she had 6 and on top of that - she was American. Maybe Americans have stopped using birth control methods.
Me - 'How old are you?'
Bigmom - '35'
Oh my, just 35 and she has 6 kids. I didn't believe her.
Me - 'Are you kidding?'
Bigmom - 'No'
I surely thought that she was joking.
Me - 'How old is the eldest one?'
Bigmom - '20, he just left home'
That 20 means that 35 - 20 = 15 years or in other words she got a kid when she was just 15 and from then she has just producing kids, as if nothing better to do.
Me - 'Are you kidding? That means you had your first kid, when you were just 15?'
Bigmom - 'No, I have 2, rest are my husbands'
Now what the hell was that supposed to mean? That the 2 were not her husband's, rest were? Oh then I remembered that someone told me that Americans marry atleast 4-5 times in their life and its common place for a 50 year old man to marry a 20-30 year old gal. What she probably meant was that she haid just 2 kids of her own, the rest four were of her husband's earlier marriages and that also meant her husband was somewhere in 50s.
Americans you are great!

KABHI KISI KO MUKAMMAL JAHAN NAHIN MILTA ...

2006-02-19T20:23:00.000+05:30

KABHI KISI KO MUKAMMAL JAHAN NAHIN MILTA ...
kabhi kisi ko mukammal jahan nahin milta
kahin zameen to kahin aasman nahin milta
jisay bhi dekhiyay woh apnay aap mein goum hai
zuban mili hai magar hum zuban nahin milta
kabhi kisi ko mukammal jahan nahin milta....
bujha saka hai bhala kaun waqt kay shoulay
yeh aisi aag hai jis mein dhuaan nahin milta
kabhi kisi ko mukammal jahan nahin milta....
teray jahan mein aisa nahin kay pyar na ho
jahan umeed ho iski wahan nahin milta
kabhi kisi ko mukammal jahan nahin milta
kahin zameen to kahin aasman nahin milta...

A Rose would be a Rose, by whatever name it's called

2006-02-16T19:22:00.000+05:30

Okie, it has been a very very long time since I posted anything and Mehak keeps demanding a new post. So here I go.
I was just sitting and a thought came to my mind. Did you even notice - How most of the names given to relationships are rhyming and 2 syllables. For example - pa...pa(papa), mu... my(mummy), cha.....cha(chacha), cha....chi(chachi),ma...ma(mama), ma....mi(mami), da...da(dada), da...di(dadi), na....na(nana), na...ni(nani)....and so on and so forth. Male relationship names always end with an 'aa' and female with 'ee'.
Maybe our old ancestors one day sat in a gathering and gave names to all relationships in one go or maybe the names gradually evolved over time. So, it could have been that instead of calling your mama as mama and mami as mami, we might have been calling them by the names of rara or rari or maybe lala or lali or maybe fafa or fafi. Seems funny. Try calling your mama by the name of rara and it seems totally absurd, but it could have been true that rara could had been the name given. Same is the case with other relationship names.
Maybe we have been associating names with people and relationships since childhood, so we get used to the names.

There is a saying - "A Rose would be a Rose, by whatever name it's called". Try calling it by a name say - 'ooku' or whatever comes to your mind and see what happens!

My trip to Seoul - Part-2

2005-12-11T15:28:00.000+05:30

There are many checks and entries in the passport. The most important is the VISA for the country you are visiting. The next thing is the ECNR check, that is - Emmigration Check Not Required. I had the proper VISA stamped on my passport, but the stamp for the ECNR was something like - "Emmigration Check Required (ECR) for countries except North America, Japana, Korea, Commenwealth countries .. . etc".
Reading that, anyone will tell you that for going to Korea I did not requre the Emmigration Check, which is put at the passport, but the airlines people were insisting that the ECR was required. Now, I can't get that check at the airport and would have to go to the passport office for that check, which would have taken atleast a day and of course the flight wouldn't have waited for me.
I tried to make them understand that the stamp written has "except" in it, that means the check is not required for the countries mentioned after that dammed - "except".
The immigration check is not the airlines department. Its done at the airport - by the government officials - after we get the boarding pass. So, we went to the immigration check official and only when he told the airlines guy that it's clearly written that its not required, the airlines guys gave me the boarding pass.
They did feel sorry for it, but what the hell - my day was bad - nothing wss supposed to go right - I had started getting that used to it by now. I also got a hell lot worried, thinking about what next was about to happen.
The immigration check went smoothly, the security check also went smoothly and I was sitting on the Boeing-777 plane, on the window seat, by 7.10 a.m..

To be continued....
If you have not read Part-1, read it here

My trip to Seoul - Part-1

2005-12-05T18:30:00.000+05:30

This post is going to be a very big one, so I'll write it up in parts and keep posting them over the next few weeks.
To say about the trip, it was a mixed sort type, with many unexpected problems cropping up from no where, a little enjoyment. I will rather say thank God, its over.
There are some days in life, when nothing goes right - the day, I had a flight to Seoul was one of them. The Cathey Pacific flight was connecting, that means first I had to catch a flight to Honk Kong and from Honk Kong, I had to catch second flight to Seoul. The day was Novermber 20th, Sunday,2005, flight time - 7.20 a.m.
We are advised to reach the airport 3 hours before the flight time and as it takes around an hour to reach the airport from my house, so I had booked a taxi for 3 a.m The taxi did arrive at 3 a.m. and I was ready by then, but my problems started from there on. The taxi, the driver had brought was a diesel one, and in the chilly morning of Delhi, the taxi refused to start. Now, at that hour of the morning, you won't even find any other means of transport to make you reach the airport. The driver tried some car battery arrangements and said that it will take 15 minutes to warm up. after that we will have to push the car by a few meters to start it. Sitting anxiously for 15 minutes, I was thinking of other alternatives, which might be required in case the car did not start. But eventually, after warming for 15 min and pushing by a few meters it did start and i just gave sigh of relief.
At that time of the hour, the airport road is flooded with heavly loaded trucks. Thank God, there wasn't any traffic zam and I reached the airport by 4.30 a.m.I hurridely got the check-in baggage tied up after security check of the baggage and went straight to the Cathey Pacific counter and guess what? To my horror they refused to give me the boarding pass required for the flight.

To be continued.....

Saat Samundar Paar!

2005-11-18T19:32:00.000+05:30

Hi All,
I am going outside India tomorrow, for a week or so. The trip might get extended by one more week. I don't know, how much busy I will be there, so I might not be able to blog from there. I'll try my best to blog from there. Let's see, how things work out.
Till then have a great time. Enjoy.
By the way, till then, you can read 20 Things about me, if you havn't read them earlier.

20 Things About Me

2005-11-14T11:56:00.000+05:30

I saw the '20 Things about me' at Divya's and Neetie's blog. Its easy to think about 20 things about others but its really very difficult to think about 20 things about yourself. You can always easily say that he likes this, she hates that, he is this, he is that - because when you come across people you observe what they say and what they do and based upon that you make perceptions about that person in your mind. But you never quite think of yourself. Of course, we have perceptions about ourselves also in our mind, but mostly they are pretty vague. So, this exercise of listing 20 things about me, might help me in knowing myself better.
It will require a lot of thinking. Let me give it a try - here I go...
1. The first thing that comes to my mind is that - all my best friends are childhood friends i.e. we have been friends since class second. We were a class of 25-30 students in class second and till date out of them atleast 10-15 are still bonded together by that beautiful thing called friendship. Out of which 5 are very close to me. Although I made a lot of friends at various places and stages of life, but no one ever came even close to that childhood friends.
Oh, I think I had to mention things about me, as the title "20 things about me " suggests - and I have started talking about my friends. Okie, now I am getting to more personal level from the second point itself. Come on - understand - the first point was a warming up exercise - you already know that its becoming very difficult for me to think about myself.

2. I love kids. Rather I should put it this way - I love kids that are between 1 year and 10 years of age. The age limit being due to the fact that a kid lesser then 1 year can' t talk, can' t play much and beyond after about 10 years of age, the innocence, the playful nature of the child is gone. The age limit of 1 year and 10 year is just to get an idea, not a hard and fast rule.

3.I am shy and reserved sort of a guy. It takes time for me to open up and make friends.

4.I did my schooling at Shimla. Ohh.. those beautiful gals of Shimla. St. Bedes Girls College. Don't ask me. I feel like packing my bags and heading off to Shimla right now.

5. The next 4 years after schooling were spent in Chandigarh. Chandigarh is also a very nice place. Clean, greeny, well planned and a great city to live in.

6. I like hill areas, natural beauty and living a simple life. Maybe I'll just work a few more years, collect enough money and then go and live at a hill station.

7. I am a Virgo and have most of the characteristics of a typical Virgo. If you want to know more about these characteristics then read Linda Goodman's Sun Signs.

8.I hate waiting for anything.For me time is precious - I can't tolerate wasting time.

9.I love reading books. In fact, I have such a huge collection of books at home that I can open a library.

10.I am deeply interested in understanding humans i.e. human physology, human behaviour, human brain etc.

11.I like to go along new unproven paths. Going along the herd is not my way. I will listen to other people, get their viewpoints, but even if all of them are going along a certain path and I feel that I should go to some other, then I' ll not hesitate to follow it.

12. I get easily bored by doing mundane daily tasks. I like doing something new or something different now and then to keep my neurons working.

13. I don't like giving arms to beggars but I will give money to him for finding a job.

14. I had a short temper. I have been working on it - its much better now.

15.I am good at planning and executing things.

16. I am a simple and down to earth person.

17. I like honest and true people. Honest, simple and true people go a long way with me. I can' t tolerate liers and selfish people.

18.Anyone in need, will always get help from me and I always try to do, whatever I can, in order to help him.

19.I have just gone once outside India - to Seoul, Korea.

20. In India I have gone as far as Bangalore in the South.

Phew, Thank God! I see that 20 in the above line. It took me days to complete the list. Did you see that the last few things are just one liners. Thats because, I wasn' t able to think of anything much.
I done want to tag anyone - whoever wasnt to do it, is most welcome.

Flop Show - Bloggers meet

2005-11-11T20:27:00.000+05:30

There was an article in the newspaper that there was a Blogger's meet arranged by some one named Tarun, in Delhi.. Yeah, thats the same city I live in - fortunately or unfortunately.

He had arranged a big place in Saket expecting hundreds of people to arrive. Lot' s of arrangements made. Tons and tons of expectations!!

But, guess what? Only 4 people arrived. Man! That was shocking, even to me. Guess! what would have happened of the poor soul. He has gone nuts, read about him at his blog - here

I came to know about it from the newspaper only.

If you want to know more about it - read this

Interesting......

The Phantom Menace !!!

2005-11-05T17:11:00.001+05:30

This story or rather I should say the - Phantom Menace started, many years ago, when I was in Engineering College and till date it has not ended. God only knows -How much I wish to end it, but I am not able to do so. And it keeps haunting me, time and again and it has bugged me again now.

It all started when I opened an library account in the State Library of Sector 17, Chandigarh,. They took 100 rupees for a year and you could take any book for a period of 15 days, after that if not returned, there was a penalty of 1 rupee a day. The books could not be reissued.

Once, I got a novel issued, and the saddest part is that now I do not remember the exact name of the novel or the author. The novel was pretty old, with the pages turned deep yellow, as if it were centuries old. On the backside, the condition was so bad that even after staining your eyes you would not be able to read the reviews. The name of the book was "Phantom" or "The Phantom of the Opera". I am not sure about the name, only just a slight memory at the back of my mind, something to do with Phantom, I guess. The story was good, but the more important thing was that, there were many paragraphs, sentences and lines in the novel that were so emotional and such beautifully written that it touched your heart at the deepest levels. After reading those heart touching and emotional paragraphs many times I stopped reading and just gazed in the emptiness for hours. If Hitler had read those lines, his heart would have also skipped several beats. Okay, that is an exaggeration, but I think you are getting the drift.

I completed the book in 20 days or so, but didn't want to return it. So, I read it again and copied all the sentimental and emotional paragraphs on sheets of paper. Those accounted to about 5-6 pages and that was my treasure. If you have read the previous sentence carefully then you will notice that there is a "was" in it, I lost my treasure. I paid 12-15 rupees fine for the late return of the book, but that fine was well worth it. At that time I did not have my computer and moreover computers were hardly used by us for anything other then writing programs in BASIC and C language, so that bunch of handwritten pages were the only copy I had.

I made a second copy of the pages and sent them to my friend in Shimla. After a few months, another friend from REC Warangal, came to Chandigarh for a few days and I took the original copy of the papers, just to show him. We were sitting at his place when he read them. We were chatting, laughing and cracking jokes on each other before that, but after reading them, he suddenly became very quiet. He did not speak anything for 10-15 minutes and after that just said, let us go out. We came downstairs to the market, hired a rikshaw and headed off to Sector 17. He did not speak a word. After reaching Sector 17, we roamed form a couple of minutes, after that he said, "That stuff is nuclear bomb, man, it is highly explosive, I exploded into thousand bits". After that the conversation drifted in other directions. While returning back home, I asked him to return the pages, but he said that he would return them later in a few days. I reminded him that it was the only copy I had and at no cost should he loose them or give it to anyone. He promised that he would return them in a few days.

After a few days, I again went to his home and asked him to return them. He searched, but could not find them. I felt like killing him on the spot, with my bare hands. How could he loose them? In spite of my repeatedly telling him that it was the only copy I had, he did the same thing, I had so feared about.
After that I tried to search the same book in the Sector 17 State library, but could not locate it. The state library is like a jungle. They have all the catalogues there, but all the books are scattered here and there on all the shelves. Even if you are able to locate a book in the catalogue, it would be nearly impossible to find it on shelve or block written on the catalogue. The shelves are open to everyone and while searching for books; everyone just dumps the books anywhere he/she feels like. In the catalogue, there were more then thirty books with the names matching Phantom, Phantom of the Opera etc. from various authors, but without the specific book name and author it was almost impossible to locate it. Then also I searched for several hours and several times, but of no use.

I had sent one copy of it to my friend in Shimla. That was the only chance I had left up with. He has a habit of saving every textbook and other reading material and has been collecting it since second standard. So, I thought that he might have preserved my letter. When I got a chance of going to Shimla, I asked him about it. He said that, he had put it somewhere in his collection and had not thrown it. We searched the whole of his awful lot of junk books and all other nonsense but could not find it.

I had forgotten all about it, but I had these Diwali holidays and had time, so was resetting the collection of my books and I just saw a thin pale novel "The Phantom of Manhattan" ?by Fredrick Forsyth, in my collection. Then I remembered that, over a year of so ago, that Phantom worm had again infested my mind and I was on the lookout of that lost novel. In that hope, I had bought this Fredrick novel, thinking that maybe if it is a sequel or continuation of the novel I was searching then I might be able to find my treasure. I had read the first two pages and had junked Manhattan..

I read the book again and thankfully I was able to read it completely."The Phantom of Manhattan" is a sequel of "The Phantom of the Opera" by Gaston Leroux. But neither are the books, which I was searching for. Fredrick novel is okay, but it is just that.
Now again - the search goes on and on and on....

Tagged.....

2005-10-29T22:06:00.000+05:30

Now everybody is doing this these days, so I thought Why not me too? After reading Tony's post I thought let me try it out myself also. Its pretty difficult to think of seven things, because dreams and ideas keep on coming in my mind each and everyday, but I never tried to pen down those ideas. So, its pretty difficult to sit down and think of all the ideas in one go and then write them also.

Seven Things that I plan to do -

1. Opening my own company.

2. Going to Switzerland

3. Retiring from permanent job and doing whatever I feel like doing, whenever I feel like doing it

4. Getting up early morning (I am trying it)

5. Writing a book. Have the concept and material in my mind, but never got time to put it in writing

6. Owing a Mercedes Benz - S Class

7. Making an Robot, that works exactly as a human being

Seven Things that I can do

1. Work continuously for hours and hours

2. Keep quite for lengthy periods of time.

3. Read books and novels non-stop for hours

4. Learn about anything new

5. Keep up whole night, probably even 3-4 nights in a go

6. Talk with friends for hours and hours

7. Remember each and everything

Seven Things I can't

1. Tolerate liars

2. Stand in a queue

3. Wait for anything

4. Watch Hindi movies

5. Sit idle for a long time

6. Watch someone wasting time

7. Learn to swim

Seven Things I say most often

1. Sirji

2. Khotya (Punjabi word for a donkey)

3. Abhi ho jata Happy Birthday

4. Well

5. Sahnu ki lena Gurdas di karmayi tau (Punjabi for - Why should we be concerned about Gurdas's engagement)

6. Let's see

7. Tussi dil te na lou ji (Punjabi - Don't take it on your heart)

Seven People Iâ€™ll like to Tag

1. Ankita

2. Kaush

3. Nitin Madnani

4. Nupur

5. Ricky

6. Sadik

7. Shantanu

Getting up early!

2005-10-26T19:43:00.000+05:30

Now - getting up early has always been more then Mission Impossible for me. I have tried to get up early many times earlier also, but always in vain. But, hurray - today I was able to get up at 7 a.m. Oh yeah, 7 a.m. might not seem early morning to you, but a person who is used to getting up at 8.30 or 9 a.m., 7 a.m. seems like midnight. All the credit goes to my blog friend Nupur, who shared her - "Do Withouts" a few days ago and asked others also to share their's with her. And as usual I like a "shareef bacha"(innocent kid) told about my Mission Impossible. Then she urged me to get up early, go for a jog and maybe if I could find a good-looking gal in the park, it will be motivation enough for a week. The idea was great and I also started thinking that maybe like Hari of Chetan Bhagat's novel - "Five Point Someone" - someone like Neha might bump into me. So, I slept at 11 p.m., hoping that early sleeping will make my getting up easier. Yeah, 11 p.m. is early for me as I sleep at around 1-2 a.m. But, then your body clock gets used to a particular routine and even after lying on the bed for an hour, I was totally awake. Then I thought, maybe I should start reading something boring - that might make me sleep. But, for that I will have to keep my eyes open and maybe some part of my brain also open and reading was never boring for me, so I just dropped that idea, closed my eyes and started concentrating on the blackness. When I fell asleep, I don't remember.

The next thing I heard was the alarm of my cellphone - it was 7 a.m. I closed it and got up. This is the most critical moment - because, whenever I have tried getting up earlier, I start getting the thoughts - "Let the world go to hell - a little more sleep won't hurt anyone". Moreover, most of the times you get very wonderful dreams in that part of the morning sleep, so the odds are almost always tilted towards going back to sleep after switching off the alarm. But, today I did get up, partly maybe it was because that I had told Nupur that I'll get up and it wouldn't fell nice to tell her that I slept like a Kumbhkaran today also.

After getting up, I deliberated whether I should go for a jog or not, because it would have taken almost half an hour and I wanted to reach office by 9 a.m. Moreover, being a thin fellow, with no fat to burn - I took it easy - or maybe I am too lazy. If I can maintain this schedule of 7 a.m. for a few days continously then I might shift my getup time to 6.30 a.m. and squeeze in a jog too - meeting someone like Neha is tempting nevertheless.

The real fun started after my reaching the office. After getting ready and commuting I reached office 10 min before 9 a.m. The security man give a strange look at me - saluted me and I went inside. The office was totally empty and I was thrilled to be the first one to reach there. Office buses reach office around 9.05 a.m. and I was excitedly waiting for that moment only - to see the expressions on the faces of my juniors. Everybody was shocked to see me there - they never expected to see me at that time. Some even asked me whether I was all right or whether something had happened. I really loved those moments - grinning.

Till lunch it was fine but after that I started feeling drowsy and sleepy and by evening it has gone worse. Maybe my body clock will adjust if I am able to keep up this routine. But, I know the hardest part is to keep doing it for a long time, without any skips, so that it becomes a part of your habit. So, mission is not accomplished yet, the hard part is yet to come. Let's hope I keep it up fot the coming days also â€“ chances are slim.Thanks to Nupur again.

Understanding

2005-10-25T10:17:00.000+05:30

She â€“ â€œSoâ€�

He â€“ â€œSo, whatâ€�

She â€“ â€œShall I go now? I have some important workâ€�

He â€“ â€œYeah of course, you just cameâ€¦â€¦. Shall we meet on 19^th?â€� Getting irritated and angryâ€¦.

She â€“ â€œWell, Iâ€™ll tryâ€¦.. Oh, but 19^th has already gone, it was â€¦.. (seeing the small round watch on her wrist)â€¦.. 4 days agoâ€�

He â€“ â€œYeah, I waited for 3 hoursâ€�â€¦ Getting more angrier

She â€“ â€œOh I am so sorry, you understand my problemsâ€¦ naâ€¦.â€�

He â€“ â€œYou donâ€™t understand meâ€� Getting more angrier..

She â€“ â€œHuhâ€¦. â€œ

He â€“ â€œDo you think I am a fool?â€� Getting even more angrier

She â€“ â€œNow who said you are a fool?â€�

He â€“ â€œYou think I am a fool? You donâ€™t understand meâ€�

She â€“ â€œPlease try to understand my problemâ€¦.â€� â€¦ From her face it looked that sheâ€™ll start crying in a few momentsâ€¦

He â€“ â€˜WHY DONâ€™T YOU TRY TO UNDERSTAND ME?â€�

She turned and leftâ€¦

He kept looking in her direction for a while then turned around in the opposite direction and left.

Both are 25+ in their age and both have plans to get married in the near future. Now, whole of this episode kept me wondering and thinkingâ€¦ With that sort of understandingâ€¦..Happily Married????? Doubts, doubts, doubtsâ€¦. Of course I donâ€™t have any personal experience to backup my doubts and maybe I might have been blowing things out of proportion in my mindâ€¦But, hey, give me a break â€“ Canâ€™t this have been handled in a better way â€“ Both of them could have sat and one by one could have tried to explain his/her side and the other could have tried to understand it. Hmmm. Maybe, I was witnessing it as a third person and was not involved in the situation, so it might be easier for me to say all this, but then also I canâ€™t get over the fact that itâ€™s no way you can expect everything from the other person without putting effort from your side.

Workaholism

2005-10-21T21:43:00.000+05:30

There a strange thing about us youngsters these days. Workaholism is a disease thats engulfing us more and more with every passing day. And yes, I am not a spectator in it, I myself actively participate in it. I don't know, what makes most of the guys crazy about work, including me. See at my office, most of the guys, stay late till 9.30 p.m. everyday or even later and are on their desks at 9 a.m. the next day also. Doing work, work and work - as if nothing else mattered in life, and maybe it even doesn't. Most of the Saturdays are also spent in office and if not there, the weekend goes in sleeping and performing other essential life dragging tasks.

No, its not just me - its not just people of my office, this disease is prevalent in almost all of the software companies - all over India. When we were in college, we used to dream, dream a lot - that once we get a job and have money - we will enjoy. That will be life man - we will have money and all the worldly pleasures will be on our feet. But, that seldom happens in reality - you might have got all the money that you might have dreamed of - but you never get much time to spend it. Somehow - some other things start controlling your life.

" Competition!!!
Thats what its all about..... and especially if you are in the IT industry...where things change every minute, if you don't catchup and keep yourself up to date - you will be left behind!

And I guess... thats the fear in your mind and in the minds of all ur workmates and others in this industry....." -missnupur

Well right I guess. The reason is absolutely right. I started remembering a reading somewhere - It went something like this - A very wealthy person who had worked like a mad dog in his whole life was on in his death bed and someone asked him - "What he wished for?" He said that - I wish I had spent more time with my wife, with my family, with my friends. I always wanted more money, the more I had - the more I wanted. Every year I wished that after this year I will slow down, spend time with my wife, with my kids, but that year never came.

To put things in right perspective, I have been working in this IT industry for the past 6 years now. Earlier I was just a workaholic like others - mad about work. I think I also have the record of maximum hours spend in office in a month, but that was long ago. Now, I have started having doubts about all this workaholism and mad race. There is no end to it. You cross one ladder, then try to jump to he next one - madness goes on. Trying to search meaning of life - what's it all about. No clues, nothing.. totally blank....

"hi there, competition is everywhere in every field because new things and new innovations are being made everyday. But like you said, it is indeed important to slow th epace down..question is how? Its hard once you get on the bangwagon to get back off. Like nupur said, hard to catch up once you get off." -kaush

Yeah, exaclty - Its like saying to a runner, who has been winning one race after the other - "slow down man, let others also win".

Back after a long time

2005-08-17T23:25:00.000+05:30

So, I am back to my blog after a long long time. Lost someone very near to me. Hope it never happens to anyone, but then that's life. Didn't keep up with waking up at 5 a.m. as mentioned in my previous post.

Hope that I'll keep posting again.

Early morning wakeup

2005-07-17T19:50:00.000+05:30

Got up at 5 a.m. After a long long long time. Many times wished to getup early, but invariably it never happened. Always getting up at around 9 a.m. and reaching office late. :-( Many times while going to sleep - promised myself that tomorrow I'll get up early, but somehow in the morning always got a feeling that - what the hell... sleep is the best thing in the world and world is not going to fall if you don't sleep a little more.

But, today somehow - I was able to get past that thinking. Feels great - outside the weather is simply awsome.
I hope I'll continue to wake up early from now on - I'll definetly try to...

I am a caveman :-(

2005-06-26T09:21:00.000+05:30

Inspite of all the knowledge and education - I am just like that - A caveman. What do you do when someone comes to you with daggers and start fighting? Just like a cave man used to fight back, when attached by any animal or wild beast - you fight back - try to kill the beast? Right?

Wrong? Knowledge tells me that you should maintain your calm. You should try to calm down the person, who is yelling at you. You should try to understand his/her point of view and let him/her get mad at you, without retaliating back.
But inspite of knowing all that, at that time I almost always forget all that and end up justifying my point of view and he/she just tries to do exactly the same. End result - nothing - neither of us reach anywhere - neither of us understand each other - only thing that results is bruised relations.
It takes a lot of courage to keep your calm at that time - even more then that required to fight back. Once, I did remember all the knowledge, while someone was try to gulp his wisdom down my throat. At that time - each and every cell of my body was trying to retaliate - How could you say - I am wrong? You don't even know the facts? But, then, fighting back only makes things worse.
I am trying to improve on that. But, I find it extremly difficult to do - scientists say that the part of brain which was present in that brain of the caveman - who used to fight back - is still present in the human beings and it just takes over in fear/fight/flight situations. I have to kill that cave man instinct. God help me. I'll definetly try.

Five Point Someone by Chetan Bhagat

2005-06-24T10:59:00.000+05:30

I just completed reading Five Point Someone - by Chetan Bhagat. A very nice and engrossing book - couldn't stop reading it untill I had finished it. Although, as the author himself says that its a work of fiction, you relate to the characters very easily. Maybe, because I studied at PEC, it was easier for me. Anyway - A great work - simpale and to the point.

My trip to Seoul, Korea !

2005-06-13T03:19:00.000+05:30

A few months back, I happened to go to a week long trip to Seoul. It was a memorable trip, especially, because it was my first foreign trip. Before that, I havn't even happen to see an plane from near, let alone sit in it. So, my excitement level touched statosphere, maybe even beyond that, just by dreaming about the whole trip.
Packing done, visa done, air tickets done, our "Asiana Airlines" plane was supposed to leave at 1.40 a.m. on Saturday morning. Excited, dressed in casual clothes, we reached Indra Gandhi International Airport at about 11 pm on Friday night. After saying good bye to parents and friends, we moved inside and from there on, the real show started. Once inside the Departure Area, first of all, we reached a place where people were getting their luggage tied up. I was told, thats the first step in a lengthy procedure that was supposed to follow. There were about 4-5 people standing in the queue. I simply hate, hate and hate standing in a queue. But, on that day, I was so excited that, I didn't mind even that. After standing for a while, my turn came. I handed the person, my heavy luggage. He just put it on a machine. It got automatically tied up with a strong white plastic strip around it and I moved on to the next step i.e. finding an Asiana Airlines counter. Reaching there, I handed over my passport and ticket to the operator there and I was asked to put the check-in luggage, which I had tied up earlier, on a metallic strip beside the counter. The operator put a white patch around the luggage plastic strip, which I think is used for the identificaion of luggage. Later, when I saw it after reaching Seoul, it contained the flight no., my name, country of origin, bar codes etc. After that the roller of the metallic strip moved and my luggage vanished inside a hole nearby. I specifically asked for a window seat and I was obliged by them and given a boarding pass. That done, we were supposed to fill an emmigration form. There are two different forms. One for the Indian nationals and the other for non-Indian nationals. Seeing the speed with which we were moving, I thought we will just pass whole of the procedures in half an hour and therefore, I was wondering, why was I supposed to reach the airport 3 hours before the flight departure time. Then, I realized, it was India. There were no Indian national forms available at that time. Many of the other pessangers were also eagerly waiting for the forms to arrive. We couldn't do anything, except for waiting for the forms to arrive. After waiting for about half and hour (and cursing the airport authorities hundereds of time), forms did arrive. They all vanished as soon as they arrived. Thank God, we got ours atleast. After filling them, we again started in a queue, waiting for the emmigration check. After waiting for a long time, that seemed ages to me, my turn came. The officer there was a typical Indian government official. I simply hate them.I handed over my documents to him and he took them, put them on his table and started drinking his coffee. Once, he looked at me and I just gave a smile back. Meanwhile the queue started becoming quite a long one and I could see people staring at me and wondering - Why I wasn't moving ahead and Why their turn was not coming. After drinking the coffee at his own leisure, the official stamped my papers and I moved on. It was already 12.30 and only the last thing that was left, was the Security Check. After that we could sit in the Departure Loudge and wait for our plane to start boarding. Reaching the Security Check, we were told to wait till 1 a.m. and were not allowed inside. I didn't understand, why they keep wasting other people's time, as if others have nothing important to do in life. Anyway, after waiting till 1 a.m., we again went to the security check guard and this time we were told to wait 15 more minutes. Our plane's boarding time was 1.20 a.m., anyhow we waited. After the Security Check was over we reached the final frontier and now just boarding and take off were left. There is a display panel there, which keeps on displaying the status of various flights, so that the passengars are kept informed and could take appropriate action. Some Indian Airlines plane going to US was boarding, but still our plane's status showed - "Security Check". It was already 1.40 now, the official departure time and still the panel showed - 'Security Check" and not boarding yet. I had a perception that although Indians don't have any value for time and one hour late is normal to them, but International flights were on time. I was mistaken on that. Now it was already 2 a.m. and I started worrying a lot. Maybe the flight left at 1.40 a.m. without taking us, who knows? There was no way to know that, only that screen display, which kept showing "Security Check". At 2.05 a.m. we got a hell lot worried and found an airport official there and asked him about it. He immediately called someone on the wireless and came to know that the flight had already boarded and was about to take off. Huh! Its India. a fool like me could have expected anything better. We and a few other pessangers who had joined us by then, were rushed down from the staircases at the back of the loudge and from their a small vehicle carried us to the plane. It was already boarded and we and a few others were the last to reach. If we had waited at the Departure Loudge for another 10-15 min, then we would have surely missed the plane. Huh, In India, nothing works as it should.
Entring the plane, around 3-4 Korean air-hostesses were standing in a line. They bowed at us, and not knowing what else to do - we also just bowed at them and moved foward. One of them took our boarding passes and started walking in front of us, leading us to our seats. I came to know that first there is a Bussiness Class block in the plane, followed by 2-3 blocks of Economy class. The Business class had 3 seats in the middle, 2 each on the left and right side whereas the economy class has 4 seats in the middle and 3 seats each on the left and right side. In the second block of the economy class, we were given seats in the second row on the right side. I just thanked the airhostess and sat on my seat. Scanning the surroundings, there was a big LCD screen in the front of the block, whole of the block could see it. On the back side of every seat there was also a small LCD display screen, which could be tuned to see whatever was being displayed on the front big screen, or you could customize it to see the preloaded movies etc. At that time the security features of the plane, how to use the seat belt etc. was being shown both on the big screen and the small LCD display. We were asked to fasten our seat belts as shown on the screen, as we were about to take off. I had thought that fastening the seat belt would be quite a complicated job, but it turned out to be a fairly easy one. As I was sitting on the far right, there was a window on my right side and I could look outside. Seeing outside, I could see that I was sitting just a few meters back of the right wing of the plane and I was able to see almost whole of the right wing. Although the wing did obstruct my view a little, but nevertheless it was a fabolous view. The plane was standing with its head towards the airport and there wasn't any much space for the plane to move foward. I wondered - How the pilots will manaveur that. Slowly, the plane started to move and I was very excited and thrilled to see that. It was just like sitting in a train and as if it had started to move foward. No jerks, no bumps, nothing.The plane made a U-turn and slowly and slowly started moving foward. After a while I could see small lights at the bottom on the road and I just thought it was the runway of the plane. At that time it look just like sitting in some moving vehicle like a car or bus or trian, nothing extra-ordinary. After a while, the plane had gathered quite a speed and suddenly I felt a small thud and we were air-borne. The small thud was due to the tyres of plane, leaving the ground. Nothing else was felt inside the plane. We could have been moving at 1000 km/hr straight upward, we could have been standing still - sitting inside, it just felt the same. Nothing changed. Technology surely has advanced a lot. After soaking all that, I just saw outside and saw that the outside view was tilted at around 30-45 degrees. We were moving up. It was night and I could see the airport, it appeared to be very small.I could see small lights of Delhi, lighting in a very beautiful manner. The scene was marvellous. It cannot be explained in words. As we were moving up at a rapid pace, greater and greater part of Delhi came into view and everything became smaller and smaller. I wished I could stop everything just there and keep watching the view for a long long time. After a few seconds the view below vanished, everything appeared dark outside - all black, nothing to see.
The big screen and the small LCD displays are connected to the navigation system of the plane and they keep on displaying, where we are, at how much height and what route we will follow. It showed that we were moving towards Kalkota and then we will move towards far east and then go straight up to reach Seoul, touching only some of the eastern edges of China, while moving North. I failed to understand, Why we have to first towads straight east and then move North? As far as I know, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line connecting them. On Earth, its understood that we have to move along the road, so we might not be able to go straight, towards the destination. But, in the sky, we have all the degrees of freedom required, we can move in any direction we feel like. Then, why were we supposed to take that peculiar right angle path Economics also failed to explained that, it was only a wastage of fuel and money. I kept wondering about it, as there was nothing outside to see, except for blackness. The only visible light outide was that of the the tip of the right wing of the plane, which was constantly blinking.
As we moved over some parts of China, the plane sometimes came to a lower altitude and I could see clusters of light on the ground of some Chinese cities. The view was very beautiful and I could only say - Wow! due to lack of finding any appropriate words to describe it. Most of the people in the plane were sleeping by now, but for me, sleep was the last thing I could ever even think of. I was thoroughly enjoying the journey.
After a while, I could see faint glow outside and it became clear that morning was about to arrive. Only after a few seconds, there was enough light outside to see everything. It was a fantastic view. The sky was very dark blue and the Earth also seemed to be of that color itself, just having a greyish tinge. It was difficult to locate the horizon, although it was clear that the horizon was well below us(I had to lower my eyes to see it) , but the sky and the earth were merging so seemlessly that it was very difficult to locate where one ended and the other began. I love natural beauty and it felt great to enjoy such a beautiful view. After a while golden Sun rays began to illuminate the sky and earth. I wasn't able to figure out - where the sun rays were coming from, but most probably, they were from the front. I wished, I could just enter the cockpit of the plane and see the sun rise. It would be so beautiful, beyong imagnation. Nevertheless, now the horizon was showing different colors. Sometimes it was turning purple, some times blue, then reddish, then orange and finally bluish. As the amount of light increased, the mountains, rivers, patches of greenery and other things also started becoming visible on Earth. Earth looks beautiful from sky. The entire view was so mesmerizing that I wished - I could keep seeing it for the whole of my life. It cannot be explained in words. Someone who has seen that with his/her own eyes can only understand, what I am trying to explain and what I am not able to put in words.
The journey was supposed to be of 7 hours and a 20 minutes and we were supposed to reach their by 12.20 p.m., Korean time. When around half an hour was left for the journey, some papers were handed over to us to be filled. After filling them, we were waiting for the plane to land at Incheon International Airport, Seoul. The big screen was saying that just 2 minutes were left for landing. I looked outside and now the sky was overcast with clouds and below I could see the ocean. The ocean wasn't of blue color, as I had imagined it would be. It was of greyish color. I don't know why it appeared like that, but suddenly, a thought came to my mind. Just 2 minutes to land! Have they gone crazy? Are they landing on the ocean? man? How could they land in just 2 minutes when the only thing below I could see is the vast ocean? Only, 1 minute left for landing and still no land in sight. God! either their navigation system has gone crazy or this is my first and the last journey on plane. Just 50 seconds to go, still no land, only ocean. 40 seconds - still ocean. Okie let me say my last prayers, thats the end, they'll just drown us in the ocean.It started raining, a perfect setup for the great tragedy, I am going to witness. 30 seconds reamining, huh, a sigh of relief, there I could just see the land below, we are fast approaching towards it. Now I could see small roads, a small truck moving on it and just in 5 seconds we are now above the airport, ready to land. again a small thud and we have touched land after 7 hours and 20 min of hovering in the sky.
It was raining when we landed. We were the last ones to move out of the plane. as at the time of departure, airhostesses were standing in a line at the entrance of the plane and bowing to everyone, who was leaving the plane. as we moved out of the plane, a Korean was standing on our right side. He also bowed and Welcomed us to Korea and Wished a happy stay. Korean airport is so well built that if I compare the Delhi airport with it, it won't even be 1% of it. There also, first thing was immigration check. There were more then 20 counters for that and a lady there made sure that each and every counter had just 4-5 persons standing in the queue. In just 10 minutes all the pessangers had passed through. In India, it will takes ages to reach an effeciency like that. Maybe, we never will reach that sort of efficiency. Now came the luggage claim part, which we had checked in at the Asiana counter at New Delhi. as we reached there, an official was standing their with our luggage. We were the last ones to reach there and all the other pessangers had already taken their luggage and might even be heading towards their destinations. He cecked our passports, matched it with the luggage slip and handed us our luggage while welcoming us to Seoul. In 15 minutes flat, we were outside the airport with all formalities complete and ready to go.
Seoul's international airport is located on the sea coast and the city is at an hour's drive from there. The 12 lane highway that connects them is a wonderful peace of engineering and Seoul city is itself a very beautiful one. If you want to learn the meaning of cleanliness, visit that city. The only Indian city that comes closest to its comparison is Chandigarh. Delhi - I won't even think of comparing it. Most of the red lights at Seoul are meant to allow the people cross the roads and in my week's stay there, I didn't see even a single person jumping any red light or not following any traffic rules. People are very loving and caring and if they see that you have some trouble. then gladly come foward and offer their help. Although their is a language problem, most of the people don't understand or speak English, but, nevertheless they helped us in everyway they could. Food is also a very big problem there. You dont find Indian food and you can't even go to any restaurant and ask for anything because firstly everything is in Korean and secondly you don't knw what to ask for. The only place where you can go is McDonald or Pizza Hut and ask for a burger or pizza. There also, they don't understand English, so you have to point to them - what you want. Burgers and Pizzas are also made in that Korean style and the ingredients in them are also typical Korean. Moreover you can't keep eating Burgers and pizzas, three times a day, for the whole week. Searching for an Indian resturant, we did find one. You had to walk for 5 kilometers to reach there and one roti costed Rs. 100. A lunch for two will cost atleast more then Rs. 2000/-, which will include a dal, some rice and 2 rotis, but anyway atleast it was Indian.
Apart from these two problems(language and food), you'll love the city and won't like to come back. Living there for a week, first time in my life, I understood, what hunger was. Although you do eat there, but your stomach is never filled and you always get a feeling that something is missing. I desperately wanted to come back to India and eat a lot of Indian food. Staying there, you start to miss very small things, which you don't even notice when you have them. For e.g., tea, newspaper,office people and other small things which you are used to.
At last, the week was over and time to return to India came. As I already told earlier, the Incheon airport is marvellous, I simply loved it. For departure, you can reach anytime of the day of flight, goto the respective airlnes counter, get you luggage checked in and after your security ceck you are inside and can roam around wherever you feel like. It just took us 15 minutes to do all that. That's called efficiency. Once inside, we had a lot of time to kill, as we had thought that it would take a lot of time for the procedure(as in India), so we had arrived quite early. The departure time was 4.20 pm. and we were already inside, with all the formalities done, by 3 p.m. Inside, the airport was like a mini-city, with everything built into it, shops, eating joints, banks etc. We roamed around and bought some gifts for our friends and families. After that it was time to catch the plane and head home. This time also I got a window seat, but, on the far left side. In the return journey, there wasn't much to see outside because mst of the journey was at night and you could only see darkness outside. Again, on reaching top of Delhi, the view below was marvellous.
After being used to Seoul's life for almost a week, I had slightly forgetten - what life in Delhi was like. Just landing at Delhi, made me realize all that. Coming out of the plane, we were again greeted by the airhostesses and after crossing the connecting corridor(that connects the plane with the airport building), we had to move a floor down. As it was India, the rolling stairs wern't running, so people had to walk down the other stairs. It was easy for us as we didn't have any luggage in our hands. But, you are allowed to carry upto 30kg in your hands and many people especially women had heavy bags in their hands. For them it was a struggle, to get down the stairs. Welcome to India - here everything is a struggle. After that it was the immigration check. Seeing the place there, you almost felt like running from there. All the walls covered with black tar, shabbily dressed Indians, no centralized AC running, people sweating badly, standing in a single line, that was the picture India was projecting to the world. My India - I used to be proud of it - standing there, I just feel like crying. The land of snake charmers, elephants, the land of dirt and poverty - if foreigners projected India like that, I thought they wern't wrong in that. After all an American or Korean bussinessman who might have come to India, along with me on this plane, must be seeing all that I was seeing and mnd you, I just had lived in Korea for a week and just in a week, I could see so much of stark difference. They have lived whole of their lives in their native countries, what would they all be thinking about India? On top of that Korea is just an Asian country, similar to India. What about America?
After standing for almost half an hour in a single line, sweating badly from head to toe, my turn did come. As usual the official took his own time to stamp the papers. That done, the luggage had to be collected. To my nightmare, there was a round metallic rolling strip and one guy was standing on one end. Luggage was coming on another belt, from the plane. The guy was dumping the luggage from that belt to the rolling metallic strip. People were standing all around the metallic strip, concentrating on each and every luggage that was moving in circles on the strip, looking for their luggage. It was totally a mess out there. Anyone could have taken anyone's luggage, no security, nothing. Moreover, all the crowd standing all around the moving strip, it was just a typical Indian drama. It took us almost an hour to find our luggage, get it out from there and after that we were out of the airport. Thank God, I was still alive.
After that reaching home took me 2 more hours, whereas it should have taken half an hour. Who else the culprit - traffic zams - even at 2 a.m.
Reaching home, I slept and slept and slept of God knows - how many hours. after brushing my teeth, I had a cup of tea. The feeling that I got by drinking it - I'll remember that whole of my life. Its just beyond words. I asked mom to make "aloo paranthas". I ate 6 of them - the highest number I had ever eaten in whole of my life. After that again slept for a long time. Slowly and slowly, I again became used to the Delhi life - i.e. STRUGGLE.

Not a good day !

2005-06-06T21:13:00.000+05:30

Sometimes nothing goes as planned. Today, after getting up, I had thought that its the beginning of the week, so no matter what happens, I'll try to be happy all day. But, life had some other plans for me. I reach office by changing two autos. The first one leaves me at the Delhi border, the next one takes me to my office in Delhi. Getting an auto to reach Delhi border isn't much of a problem, because its something of the type - "janta autos", the autowallah takes 3-5 bucks from each person and around 7-8 persons go in one auto. The service is very frequent, so you hardly have to wait for more then 2 minutes to hop on to an auto. As, I do everyday, I hopped on to an auto, which was almost empty, enjoying the passing scenery it took me just 10 minutes to reach Delhi boder.
But, after reaching there, my ordeal started. The autowallahs of Delhi never take people on meter, inpite of having electronic meters and inspite of strict instructions from the Delhi government to do so. Usually it happens that you have to stand there and ask each and every passing auto and hopefully after asking 15-20 autos, you get one autowallah who is going in that direction for some or the other work and agrees to take you via meter.
Sky was overcast and with no nearby place to stand in shade, I was sweating in just 3 minutes flat. Its better if its sunny, because even when the temperature is above 40 degrees, some breeze keeps blowing, which keeps you sweat evaporating. But, today it was worse, cloudy sky, with no breeze blowing and high humidity. On top of that, no autowallah willing to take you via meter. "50 rupee me chalna hai to bolo" - comes a arrogant reply from most of the autowallahs. "Per bhiya ji, sirf 6 km to jana hai, meter se 25 bantey hai, aur aap to dugney maang rahey ho. Theek hai aapko bhi pasey kamaney hai, per aapki to mushkil se 5-6 rupee ki CNG bhi nehi lageygi, aur meter laga to hai. Meter se chaley". "Bola na, 50 me chalna hai to bol" comes the reply. I do a hand gesture to the autowallah to move on. Although there is a helpline also and you can call the helpline if any autowallah is unwilling to take you on meter or misbehaves in any manner. But, all that is just a rule. Most of the time , you don't get connected and by chance even if you get connected, nothing I done. So, its useless to call, you only end up loosing your money on the call.
After standing for about 15 minutes there, I was sweating very badly, and started cursing the government. I pay so much of tax every year and govt. can't even provide sufficient transportation facilities. Then I started thinking, was 25 bucks more precious then your sweat? Certinly not. I can easily pay 50 bucks, not a problem, but then something in me told me, not to pay 50 bucks, inspite of the miserable condition I was in. After asking about 20 autowallahs, I did find some very honest person, who took me on meter. He didn't have the change, so I don't know what occured in my mind - I asked him to keep that 50 bucks that I gave him and said that it was just because you took me on meter and I sincerly hope that you'll keep taking people on meter.
After reaching office, I drank lots and lots of water and it took almost an hour to come to normal.

Simple Questions

2005-06-04T12:18:00.000+05:30

Sometimes, the simplest of the questions are the most difficult to answer. Infact, most of the times, I am not even able to arrive at any satisfactory answers. Who are you? What are you doing? Why are you living? What do you want to achieve? Why did you come on Earth? What's the purpose of life? Why do you do all the things that you do in life? Is growing up, getting education, earning a living, getting married, having kids, raising them and then dying the way to live life? Is their any purpose of life? After all a monkey or a fish also lives life on the same protocol or sequence? Isn't it (except for education, I suppose)?

Hey, but, you'll say - "There is a difference between a fish and a human being. A fish doesn't have a brain like that of a human being. A fish doesn't have feelings and cannot experience things like a human being. It can't think. Have you gone crazy? You are comparing fish with human beings?". Just for arguing, I'll say - So, what great did human beings achieve by having a so called brain, that they are so proud of?

Let's move a little bit outside from Earth. Let's goto Moon and sit there. Let's also keep our clones on Earth, i.e. the clone of you and me, and let them keep doing - What we do each and everyday on Earth. Let's also take with us, some sort of sofisticated telescope, by which we can zoom in and see - What all is going on earth? Now you would be wondering - "Why the hell are we supposed to goto Moon?" We are going to moon, just to get a different perspective of things. Sitting there, you'll see that Earth is a very small planet, as seen from there, maybe a little bit bigger then the moon as seen from earth. There are zillions of other planets and moons in this Universe, Earth will just be a tiny speck in all that, maybe even smaller then that. Now you'll ask - "Why are you telling me all that? Don't I already know that from all the science text-books, that I read in school?"

I don't reply to your question directly and say - "Let's use the telescope and see - What all is going on Earth?". We zoom in the telescope to some part on the Earth and barely able to see the human beings. They are appearing as just small dots. Some dots are stationary while others are moving here and there. Some dots are moving in some sort of a very small tin, steel and plastic boxes. Those moving in boxes have greater speeds then the normal dots. Some dots are entering some sort of boxes that appear bigger then the tin ones and the other diffeence is that the bigger boxes are made of something different and are not moving as the small ones. Some dots are moving out of those big boxes. In a nutshell, something similar to Brownian motion is going on.

Let's move to some other part of the Earth, keeping the zooming level same. Maybe we'll find something different. We move on to various parts on the Earth, but almost everywhere, where we can see the human beings - the story is the same. Yes, the dots appear in different colors at different places, the boxes are also of different shapes and sizes and color, but, other things appear to be same.

Now, let's move on to some sea or ocean and see what all the fish is doing. We increase the zoom level by a little bit, so that now the fish is also appearing like dots. Similar kind of movement of dots is seen here also. although, there arn't any boxes out here, but nevertheless, other things appear to be the same.

Now let's zoom further and see - What all my clone on Earth is doing? Today, he's at his office, inspiring people to work harder and reach greater heights. Just what a good leader should do, he's instilling in them, that spirit of going beyond the edge and becoming a great success in life, by working harder, putting extra effort and achieving excellence and perfection in whatever they are doing. I start laughing at seeing all that and wonder if my clone ever saw the things from this perseptive, from where I am presently seeing them(sitting on the moon). Things that he is so crazy about, don't even have any meaning from my perspective. I feel like asking him some simple questions - Does it all matter? If not, What matters then? Why are poeple like you, rushing madly behind something unknown, you don't know, What? you don't know, Where? Why do you have to do the same things which others are doing, just because other's are doing that and you don't want to be left behind? Is that the reason for dong them? Do you really have to be successful? What is success? What's right? What's wrong? Is there anything right or anything wrong? Again, I have started thinking of the same simple questions that I started with and whose answers I havn't found untill now.

Some progress...

2005-06-02T21:56:00.000+05:30

Great ! I did figure out - How to add other links... maybe with time.. I'll learn other tricks of the trade also :-)

My First Post

2005-06-02T21:31:00.000+05:30

Read about some of the blogs on this site. So, I thought - Why shouldn't I also start blogging? After all, you spend a lot of time thinking and thinking, about useless things, about life, about world etc. etc... , so why not, others also share some of your thoughts? So, here I am.....I am a pretty lazy sort of a person in many things, so I don't know whether I'll be a regular blogger or not... but, let me try... there isn't any harm in trying, atleast..

Seeing the blogs of other people, I get very delighed - How beautifully - they have decorated their pages. How nice it looks reading them. But, here see my blog, I don't even know - How to add that blogging roll, that lists the nice blogs on other sites. I did try to do that on my site. Went the blogroll, registered there - but, don't know - How to add that to my blog site :-( I should be ashamed of myself - Technical Leader in a MNC, working on computers for more then 15 years & can't even make a good blogging site... :-(

Hey, If anyone reads this post, please help me & tell me - How it's done...

Thanks in advance