lekha-jokha

Mughal-e-Azam review

2008-04-03T11:23:00.000-07:00

There are very few things that I have willingly reviewed. My reaction to most things is monosyllabic so I don't go much further than saying something rocks or sucks. But this movie was so simply awesome that I can't stop raving about it. My first brush with this movie was in the good old days of Chitrahar. प्यार किया तो डरना क्या was a very popular song on this program. At that time, I had no clue why the Akbar dude was getting super angry by the dancing lady. The शीश महल was permanently etched in my memory. Well that was the end of that.

Cut to 2004, when this movie was colourized and re-released. Ever since then, for 3 long years, I had been planning to watch the movie but never actual got down to doing it. So finally last week I put an end to this procrastination and got down to viewing. Needless to say I was blown away. K Asif got the idea of making this movie in 1944, but the movie was finally released only in 1961. It was definitely worth the wait.

This movie is about Prince Salim and his love for the courtesan Anarkali; which is frowned upon by his royal parents. The beauty of the movie lies in its dialogues and songs. Unfortunately, the heavy Urdu made a lot of dialogues go above my head, but whatever I could understand was amazing. And I can keep going on and on about the songs. These songs are actually meant to be viewed, not just listened.

प्यार किया तो डरना क्या is probably the most famous song of this movie and rightly so. This was the first colour sequence in Indian cinema and coupled with beautiful Madhubala ... The song needs to be watched in the context of the movie, and everything begins to make sense. Why the king is super angry. Or like why Salim, who is initially disinterested at the beginning begins to perk up later. The cinematography of this song is simply amazing.

छुप ना सकेगा इश्क हमारा
चारों तरफ़ है उनका नज़ारा

And on cue, the camera pans to glass ceiling above to show many images of the dancing Madhubala. Waah waah ...

Another of my favourite songs is the मोहे पनघट पर which marks the entry of Madhubala in the movie. She was extremely beautiful and I don't anyone in Bollywood can hold a candle to her. The last song of the movie, यह दिल की लगी है क्या होगी , which is a part of the climax is extremely moving, depicting the last meeting of the two lovers.

Looks like what started off as a movie review ended up as a music review, I guess that was always going to happen, since I have been listening to these songs non-stop for the past few days. So coming back to usual review stuff, Prithviraj Kapoor was impressive as Akbar, Durga Khote excellent as Jodha (the perpetually suffering Indian maa of the Nirupa Roy kind). I was not too impressed by Dilip Kumar as Salim. Probably that had something to do with the character of Salim who doesn't do much studappa ( I mean he gets defeated by his aged father in hand to hand combat).

Which bring us to Madhubala. I have not watched any other movie featuring her, but going by stuff floating around the Internet, this was probably her best role. So to conclude, I'll shut my trap leave you to feast your eyes on these:

Movies

2008-03-29T11:31:00.000-07:00

I have been watching a lot of movies of late. Here is a list of them. Hopefully some day I'll get around to writing reviews :).

Nishant
Katha
Parichay
Kosish
Victoria No 203
Kissise Na Kehna
Aandhi
Jewel Thief
Bootpolish
Do Bigha Zameen
Daag: A Poem of Love
Mughal e Azam
Thoda Sa Roomani Ho Jaayen

Happy Independence Day

2007-08-14T08:10:00.000-07:00

Nice day this Independence Day. Comes regularly on the 15th of August, giving one a well deserved break. This day, along with New Year and Republic Day forms the three MOST IMPORTANT days for media companies. They can publish all kinds of stories and conduct worthless surveys. In the xth year of our Indepence or the yth year of the Republic of India; it becomes so much easier to begin the first sentence of the article. Good bye writers' block! The more ingenuous among the journalists can probably recycle the crap that they wrote last year.

Its all the same anyway. Bejan Daruwala announces that India will become a super power in 2020. Nice number 2020. 20 years ago, it was probably 2000. The poor chap will be unemployed when we actually become one. Then there are the inane surveys which I could whip up in less than hour. They are usually conducted by impressive sounding agencies. I mean, if IBN-ABC-XZY-DADS conducted a survey, would you have any reason to disbelieve them ? If you are ToI, you can probably publish the same stuff as the results of the survey in Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai etc etc in the Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai times respectively. Who cares any way, the survey was there just to fill up the blanks around the ads.

Another interesting aspect of this year's media circus is CNN-IBN's stories on the most significant blah in the last 60 years. I mean, why go back all 60 years and do the hard stuff of calculating everything all over again. Use an algorithm as below

Assume you already have the list for the past 50 years. (Of course you would - if you hadnt dished out mindless crap over the last 10 years, you would be out of business).
Assume that the ordering of events doesnt change. Now this is a very important assumption, which is mostly valid. I mean, if in 1997, you decided that the 1983 World Cup win was more important than the 1992 reforms, the ordering shouldnt change today right ?
Now just pick 2-3 random events from the past decade. You neednt pick more than 2-3 because all of independent India's history was not created in the past 10 years. Otherwise the list might be changed to "Events of the past decade" rather the past 60 years.
Randomly insert them in the previous list.
Profit!!

In the midst of the all hype, you have nonsensical chain messages floating around. Everyone on Orkut should change their profile pic to the Indian flag. WTF!?!! How does it change anything, except show that Indians are a bunch of childish school children who refuse to grow up. The very people who put these flags will not think twice before paying bribes or jumping lines and pulling a few strings or defaulting on tax. Well some might, but not a whole lot of them. So why this yearly charade ? I-Day has become a sad farce, where politicians mouth usual slogans and media publishes the same stories. The aam aadmi gets shafted as usual. Life continues.

In life, nothing is inevitable but change, but apparently someone forgot to tell our politicians and media about it.

PS: I had a brainwave that I will repost this article on the 26th of January. If no chain message is floating around, I'll send out one myself. :)

Muzzik

2007-08-05T12:06:00.000-07:00

I was never a big music fan and despite some of my friends being the most accomplished musicians in the insti, I don't know how to play even a single instrument (save blowing my trumpet). But this philistine attitude of mine didn't prevent songs from leaving indelible impressions on my mind. On hearing certain songs, I am transported back in time, because of of these songs was associated with a particular phase/incident of my life. And repeatedly listening to those songs at that period probably caused permanent damage to my brain! Some songs which I can recall are:

Random kiddy songs : early childhood, when I had lots of tapes with songs/stories for children.
Bhajans: Ram chandra kah gaye siya se ... These words bring back shivering cold, foggy mornings of Delhi. The driver of the school bus used to put them on in the morning. For some reason, I cannot recollect him playing this tape in the summer mornings.
Songs from Taal : Remind me of a trip to Haridwar. Kept playing the tape over and over again, for a period of 3-4 days.
Songs from Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai : Torrid summer months of 2000, which were spent going to FIITJEE. This movie seemed to find flavour with loads of bus drivers. Special mention: Dul Hum Le Jaayenge - A movie starring Salman and Karishma.
Dil Chahta Hai and Lagaan: First few weeks of first sem in IIT. Listening to these songs brings back memories of the hot summer months, when I would come back to my room from the insti, passing through A-Parallel where the songs would be blaring.
Raaz and Filhaal: The winter months of the aforementioned sem. Laddu Singh played these again and again, day in and day out. There was a time when I knew the lyrics of Jo bhi Kasme Khai Thi by heart. Fortunately, that evil time has passed.

After this point, lots of ppl got PCs and everyone had their own choice of music. No longer were people forced to listen to the latest Hindi movie songs as the LAN had come to their rescue. Recently, with the popularity of Himmesh, all songs have started sounding pretty much the same too (oooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu huzoooooooooooooor).

Commentors are welcome to reply with songs which were popular at other points of time the hostel.

42!

2007-07-11T10:49:00.000-07:00

विद्या ददाति विनयम् विनयाद्याति पात्रताम् ।
पात्रत्वा धनमाप्नोति धनात्धर्मम् ततः सुखम् ।।

Vidya dadati vinayam,
vinaya dadati paatrataam,
paatratva dhanamaapnoti,
dhanat dharmam tatatsukham.

(sorry I was too lazy to configure Indic fonts - just copied from somewhere)

Education gives Humility; Humility gives Character; from character one gets wealth; from wealth one gets righteous (dharmam) life; from righteousness gets happiness.

I school, I was taught that using wealth for charity gives happiness. Things to ponder on ...

The Anatomy of a Mousehunt

2007-06-17T02:49:00.000-07:00

Our blissful existence was shattered one day when Roomie 1's parents informed us that our kitchen had an unwanted inhabitant - a mouse. He behaved exactly opposite to what children are ideally supposed to, he was mostly heard and rarely seen. He could be heard at night, gnawing away at the cardboard boxes of our TV, fridge and washing machine. Our relations by and large were cordial, we didn't disturb his nocturnal routine and he didn't bug by intruding in our rooms (at least to the best of our knowledge).

But change was underway. The mouse was getting more adventurous. Roomie 1 was once seen blazing a trail out of the bathroom, because the mouse had decided to use the loo at the same time. Yours truly once disturbed his rest by banging utensils a bit too loudly. He responded by streaking between my legs and I jumped, almost touching the roof. Roomies 2 and 3 also reported sightings. It was decided by general consensus that the mouse was HUGE and it was best that we steer clear of it.

Our cook tried to pass off valuable advice, like telling us where a mouse trap could be obtained. Lazy people like us were content to let things be. Roomie 2 after detective work discovered the fact that the mouse was using the kitchen sink drain pipe to gain entry into our house. Recently the poor fellow (the mouse) got locked inside a cupboard in the kitchen and wrecked havoc. But life continued as we were willing to forgive and forget. Till today.

The mouse became a bit too bold for our liking. The absence of Roomie 1 might have contributed to this sudden change. Anyway, on fine Sunday morning aka Today morning, the mouse ventured out of this adda (viz the kitched) into our hall. Roomie 2 and I were going through our mindless Sunday ritual of watching Boogie Woogie. Roomie 3 had gone to buy milk for his cornflakes.

The ritual was suddenly interrupted by the shriek of Roomie 2 - he had spotted the mouse in a corner. This was a particularly crowded corner, with 3 folding beds and 2 suitcases piled there. I quickly shut all the doors out of the hall, except the door leading to the balcony. Roomie 2, a true football fan boldly started kicking the junk in the corner, hoping to make the mouse come out of his hiding. I was content cheer him on. At this point Roomie 3 arrived with his was greeted by this spectacle. After being told was going on, he headed to the kitched. After he came out with a glass (which looks like a mini-jug) of milk, he too joined into the Mouse hunt which underway.

After carefully removing stuff from the corner, the mouse was exposed, he rushed back towards the kitchen, and found the door closed. This sight brought the all the wild life photographer instincts of Roomie 2, who rushed to find his camera. He bravely went close to the mouse, getting closeups and video clips, that would hopefully one day earn him name and fame.

The mouse went around the hall 3-4 times, never once going out of the door that we had invitingly opened for him. Roomie 2, with compassion welling up for the mouse in his kind heart, said that we should open the kitchen door, as the mouse "just wanted to go home". Roomie 3 suggested a novel method to trap it, spread jam on a tray and the mouse will get stuck in the gooey stickiness of the jam. I was merely content to jump about and make noises last heard in the song Hum bewafa hargiz na the from the movie Shalimar. For those who are clueless ... the sounds are Jhinga-lala-ho Jhinga-lala-ho.

After an animated debate among us about the fate of the mouse, we decided to open the kitched door and let him go home. The mouse responded by scooting toward his gandi naali. We too called it quits for the day. We all lived to fight another day, but I have a feeling that this battle between man and nature is not yet over.

Iss desh ka kuch nahi ho sakta :(

2007-06-13T02:05:00.000-07:00

The entitlement economy is causing a crisis of selection—it is impossible for India to be competitive globally unless it can put together its best team, regardless of groups the players belong to. Competitive intolerance is beginning to hollow out intellectual and cultural life. And leaving political violence unpunished is not only wrong in principle, but extremely dangerous in practice—not least in the context of caste/community-based entitlements.[Mint]

The author's blog is here.

Do we even need to think twice why educated Indians fly abroad?

Counting blessings

2007-06-10T11:39:00.000-07:00

Readers of this blog may have noticed, my general mood is that of being pissed off with life :). However, it is good to sometimes take stock and count blessings. After all, life cant be all that bad, there must be something going for me.

So where do we begin. I have a regular job, which pays good money. Never hurts to have some money in the bank. I am treated reasonably well within the workplace and have made a set of friends there. Due to the intensive nature of the company's training program, we have a lot of shared experiences to talk about. Many people are from Delhi and we often talk about our beloved city. I can afford to take a week off every 3-4 months or so and go home by plane. Considering that 2 years ago, I had never sat in one, this is quite an achievement.

On the home front, I live in a nice house in one of the better areas of Bangalore. There are lots of avenues for shopping and eating out nearby. My office is not too far away and if autos misbehave, its quite easy to walk back home. The place is quite, with lots of greenery. This peace is ritually disturbed by the yelling and screeching from the people living below us every morning. But I am usually asleep, or in office so am not frequently disturbed.

The inmates of the aforementioned house are all batch mates who spent 5 years together. The set of shared experiences and common acquaintances has made our existence an extension of hostel life. In addition to my flat mates, there are more batch mates who are neighbours. Some old hostel friends are frequent visitors. The presence of all of them has helped to reduce the shock of shifting to a new unknown place. Given all the rush in Bangalore over the weekends, time can just be spent by talking about the good old days in IIT.

Sometimes I wonder how other people who move into new surroundings get by without the presence of old friends ? Many people who I studied with might now be working or studying in places where they do not have old friends to lean on for support. It takes time to build up relationships and you have to start all over again with new people. With the help of the Internet however, old friends are never out of reach.

These are by no means an exhaustive list of things going for me. There are other things like good health, family, good education, the stamp of India's premier college. And many more things which I probably take for granted. I mean, how many of us a grateful about the fact that we got to go to school ? Last weekend, I watched a movie, Blood Diamond which is set in a remote part of Africa, where children's limbs are amputated by warlords and children are made to use guns to kill people. This kind of made me look at my life and that of my peers in a new light. We are not even aware of the kind of handicaps that many people around the world face.

Why look at the world, even in India people face various challenges due to their caste, religion, region, gender etc. The problem is that people try to level the playing field by striving for equality of outcome, rather than equality of opportunity. But I am digressing here. The point is that there is always a silver lining to a dark cloud.

The ideal state of affairs, as it is said in the Bhagvad Gita is that a person should stop distinguishing between lab-haani, sukh-dukh, jay-parajay. There should not be any difference between the dark cloud and its silver lining. I think that I have a long way to in this regard.

Chutti ho gayi!!

2007-06-01T12:41:00.000-07:00

The importance of most things in life is realised only after they are taken away. Same is the case with summer vacations; that period of bliss, with power cuts, mosquitoes and sweltering heat thrown in for good measure. In lower classes in school, vacations were always accompanied by loads of "holiday homework". It mainly consisted of useless chores like cursive writing or writing essays on "my summer vacation", which were probably concocted to save mothers from going mad with kids tearing about all day with nothing better to do. Other stuff like making charts was homework for family members, rather than the student!!

I dont even remember my first summer vacation, which would have been in KG. Life back then was one big vacation. I was recuperating from chicken pox, so I didnt join school when the session started in April. I started going a few weeks later and after a short period, there were vacations. I do remember that in the excitement and confusion I lost my water bottle, which if memory serves me correctly, was a red plastic one. It was a new one; bought especially for going to the Big School.

Vacations were also the time for visting my Nani's house, which I have covered in another post. Back then, in the good ol' days there was no cable TV or Internet to pass time. Time was probably passed by reading books and playing with friends in the evening. The last few weeks of the vacations were spent in hurriedly doing some bits of holiday homework, which had been put on the back burner for a long time. As one grew older, one became wiser to these tricks played by teachers and stopped doing this homework stuff altogether. This was my answer to W.H. Davies when he asked:

What is this life if, so full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.

TA-DA : Summer vacations!!

People would expect that life would be all work and no holidays in IIT, but that was surely not the case. With 10 weeks in the summers, and another 3.5 in winters, were certainly had more than our fair share of holidays. My parents were initially shocked at what they thought was a waste of time, when their ward would have been better off studying :).

But as they say, all good things must come to an end and so has this saga of summer vacations. The last of them was sighted around a year ago, when I completed all the requirements for my degree and spent a good month and a half at home doing something which I excel in - doing nothing. The past 5 years in IIT had led me to take vacations for granted. Life was one big vacation with major and minor irritations thrown in. The vacation was not in terms of no work, it was in terms of no tension in life. There were occasional cases where a frustoo fight was required to pass a course, but other than that, life had a nice regular pattern. In my final semester with no courses and a good job, I had a golden period of 4 months, as did all of my friends. Perhaps that what the IITs need to sell about the dual degree program!!

So coming to the present, I am working my ass off for a release, which in all probability will not be used by any customer. It will be a build number preserved for posterity; or atleast as long as the backups hold. It shall also be noted that I was the one who fired some builds, long after I am not around. Now every weekend is savoured down to the last second. All vacations, or rather apology of a vacation, is used to go home. Still, I am better off than many others, atleast I do manage to get a week off once every 3-4 months. Summer vacations were always a big occasion; I guess that their loss means that finally we are in the BIG BAD WORLD of adults.

Awwal number

2007-04-30T13:22:00.000-07:00

Bachpan mein I was urged by my well-meaning parents to always strive to come first in class. One may argue that coming first in a class 4 exam has no relevance whatsoever with what one does later in life. Although this view is largely true, such an attitude of irreverence does not contribute towards a fighter instinct, where you do your best to come out tops. Anyway, this post is not about such philosphical stuff.

Coming back to coming first, this was to remain an unfulfilled dream. There was another chap in my class who always used to come first. Every year. Every terminal exam. Almost every exam. Every unit test. In short everything. My luck with getting the prized number 1 was so bad that even though my initials were AA (not AC for anon coward ;), there was a chap whose surname was Abraham who piped me to the post. Later on it was Abel. *#%I#**#)(&$@#

The chap who always came first (lets call him ASC for the want of a better name) was a nice chap, but a maggoo kutta fighter in every sense of those words. The stories of his maggai were legendary. It was alleged that he mugged up entire chapters in Hindi (or was it someone else ?). With as much certainity of an Aussie victory in the WC final, his coming first was also a certainity. My poor ego took a big battering on account of this. It wasnt that I was not good enough to get more marks or anything, it was always that he was so much better.

We were on reasonably friendly terms and had taken part in quite a few quizzes together. In class 11th, he took Sci with Eco and yours truly with CS and so our paths diverged. Apart from the occasional contact, we didnt talk much about acads. While I whiled away my time in 11th, he had joined a prominent coaching center for IITJEE.

I had no idea about the 'level' of JEE or what one needed to do in order to clear it, but it was graudually becoming apparent that ASC might not clear it. Many people from other schools had joined my school in 11th. They too had joined various coaching centers, and while there was lot of talk about their marks in various phase tests, ASC's name was conspicuous by its absence. He was also not mentioned when people talked about the BIG studs at the centers.

I think it was in 12th that he stopped going to that coaching. People were uncharitably saying that usski fat gayi thi and that was now trying to get good marks in the boards and go abroad or to some good college in DU. By this time I too had joined a coaching and with 7 days working, I had no time to listen to what others were saying.

I had pretty much stopped going to school before the screening. Except for the one day that there was a phone call from school that I was required to sign some board related document. So the week before the JEE screening, I relucantly went to school (wearing the uniform - BIG mistake). My smart friend came in casuals, signed and went away, whereas I on the other hand sat in an almost empty class with less than 10 others. I probably met ASC for the last time at the end of our last common board.

Through friends, I heard that he had got into Venky. By now, I too was busy with college (and having healthy interaction with my seniors). I never heard of him, till day before yesterday. I had met an old school friend of mine who was a common friend of ASC and me. He told me that ASC had finally gone to Canada for studies, but 2 years hence, an eye problem forced him to return. After that matter was resolved, he joined Venky in 1st year and had recently completed his degree. This was certainly not the future I had thought a person of his calibre would have. Even though I have said he that he was a maggoo fighter, it didnt take a genius to figure out that he was an extremely intelligent chap.

I was stunned to know that this person who always topped in class was such a cruel victim of circumstances. We take so many things for granted. Eye sight, hearing, speech, health limbs, mental health are all taken for granted. Do we ever pause to think what would happen to us if any of these things were taken away from us ? Fate can play havoc with even the best laid plans.

To conclude, as the poet Robert Burns said

The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

An unfortunate and sad fact of life, but karm is our duty and throwing up hands in despair at the vagaries of fate is a big no-no.

My right to privacy

2007-04-18T11:08:00.000-07:00

I am extremely pissed off and I have every reason to be. Left, right and center, companies are invading my privacy. I get irritating SMSs from cell provider, emails and phone calls from banks for everything ranging from low interest rate loans to lifetime free credit cards. I dont even want to talk about my poor email inbox, which is perpetually overflowing with spam. I have been reduced to object who can be bombarded with advertising crap against his will, even in the privacy of his home. Personal information can be blatantly demanded from me, as a matter of right.

This post is mainly about my gripe with a big retail chain in the neighbourhood, but no post about this unwanted soliciting can be complete without a mention of my cell provider. I got an SMS on V-Day, informing me that should I need some tips to patao girls, I just need to call on xxx number. Call charges of Rs6/min. Cool, they are so concerned about my love life. Another priceless example of their mindless stupidity was the afternoon after India got thrashed by Sri Lanka and put out of their WC misery. The SMS, as thoughtful as ever politely asked the reader if they were unable to find the result of yesterday's match ? Perhaps they were sleeping it suggested. So have no fear, coz we are here, just send an SMS to this number and we will tell you the complete scorecard.

This SMS came around 3pm in the afternoon, by when probably India's disgraceful defeat would have been discussed in the Parliament. Of course, charges of Rs6/SMS applied. Only the cost of my cell phone kept me from hurling to the other end of the room. I have tried calling the provider and asking them if they knew that something called the DND registry existed. But I have been told that DND is only for phone calls, we are still free to bug you with SMSs.

What literally broke the camel's back was the experience had a couple of days ago at a big retail store, owned by a BIG Indian company, which sells fruits and vegetables. The store had newly opened close to home and a friend and I decided to check it out if it offered anything better than the friendly neighbourhood sabziwala. Apart from the lack of choices, low prices and a 30 min line, it offered some pretty rude and intrusive staff. Like all big chains, this store too had a system of collecting 'points' which could later be redeemed. Since this was very close to home, I decided to get the free card made and got down to filling up the form. One page of the form had the 'mandatory' information. Stuff like name, address. It also asked for date of birth and sex, which I think were unwarranted. My email and phone number ? Dont have either!

The next page proclaimed that the information there was to 'know me better'. Aha! It didnt say it was mandatory, so I was pretty much within my rights to refuse to cough up the info; something which I did. After all, what the hell did that company want my PAN number for ? Why did they want to know in which income bracket did I lie ? Why was my profession important to them ? Did they intend to discriminate against me on the basis of that ? I filled up the mandatory section and handed it over. The person at the counter asked me to fill up the remaining portion too. I protested, saying that it was not mandatory. Why do you need my PAN number anyway ? Its not like they were issuing some ID card and needed government identification.

That person told me that the company was going to launch some financial services soon, and needed the PAN number for that. The question which immediately comes to mind is why ? Will the government allow them to launch it only when a particular number of taxpayers have given them a vote of confidence ? What do the services have to do with the retail chain's shopping card anyway ? The chap refused to listen to my point of view, assuring me that they were not a front for the IT dept and anyway, everyone had filled up that section of the form, so why was I being so paranoid.

He was correct on the last count, everyone had filled that section up, like sheep in a herd. Whether the information was correct or not is a different issue, but people had dutifully done the needful. Have we become so used to random people asking us for personal information and giving it up without a thought ? Have we started thinking that its for our own good (the store chap seemed to think so) ? Do I need to cut off myself from the outside world in order to have some semblance of privacy ?

Mera Dabba

2007-03-27T11:19:00.000-07:00

First of all, I would like to start off by saying that this post has been inspired by Atish's post. It made me pause and think of my own first PC. I had just entered class 11 and taken Computer Science as a subject for the boards. Many seniors and other random wagging tongues had claimed that it was impossible to get good marks without a PC at home. It was not so much as the marks, but the fascination of getting a new toy that motivated me to bug my parents to get one. This was the time when the PC boom had just started in India. To back up my point, I observed that many of my class mates got a PC around the same time.

Around a month before we had even thought of buying a PC, a computer magazine landed at my home, along with a free CD. I had participated in some Intel sponsored competition a few months ago, and was going to get this magazine for the next one year. With no use for the CD, it carefully placed in some cupboard, waiting for the day when a PC would be bought. I think it was the arrival of this CD which hastened the whole process of getting a PC. My uncle's friend had just bought a PC and he had apparently scoured the whole of Nehru Place to find a decent dealer. I had used Powerpoint, Excel and Word at school, but beyond that, a PC was literally a beige box to me. I had never opened one and did not even have the faintest idea about what lay inside the box, or what the various ports were for.

There was a lot of discussion at home about the PC. The cost was one factor. Another important factor was that the kids would play games and neglect studies. Where would it be kept ? There was also some concern that an Air Conditioner was needed to keep a PC happy. Finally all these doubts were overcome and one fine day, 14th May 1999 to be precise, my father, my uncle, uncle's friend, friend's son and yours truly set off for Nehru Place. The most ignorant people in this party were my father, uncle and me, placing all faith in the other two. We had planned to buy the same configuration as they had bought. I had seen lots of ads in newspapers, so I had a feel of the numbers, but no clue about their meaning.

The shop was a typical Nehru Place shop. Small, cramped and crowded. It was the same one where Atish bought his PC. And Laddu will buy his PC from here too. Uncle's friend chatted with the owner for some time. People kept coming to the shop, asking rates of various things. The owner used to type the rate on his calculator and secretively show it to the person. One of us jokingly remarked that give the calculator-wala rate too. The owner just smiled. Dont remember if he said something about small margins or other such crap. The configuration was decided and the flunkies went away to get all the stuff from godowns or whatever.

It was India-vs-SA that day. We saw the match on the shopkeeper's PC, which had a TV tuner card. India was batting too slowly, which ultimately lost us the match. All the things were loaded in the car and taken home, where they were reverently placed in my room. Some dude was supposed to come the next day and assemble it. I could barely sleep the whole night, with all the excitement.

That chap dutifully arrived the next day. I was breathing down his neck the whole time he was assembling it. Finally everything was rigged up and the only thing that remained was the installation of Windows. And then everything began to unravel. The installation stopped giving errors. Random BSODs with lots of stuff in hex. That chap fought out for a long time and left the PC in a barely working condition. I learnt my first lesson, PCs dont just work. Second lesson, Murphy's law exists. And third lesson, did I mention that yesterday was Saturday ? The evil Shanivar when nothing should be bought ?

The next day, we went back to Nehru Place, where the shop keeper obliged us by changing practically everything in the cabinet. RAM and hard disks were replaced many times, as we watched India get thrashed by Zimbabwe this time. It was restored back to working condition but some problems remained. There would be periodic Windows Protection errors and messages that Windows has performed an Illegal operation. We wondered what the problem was, after all we had an original Win 98 CD!! This continued for a few days, when one day we landed back in Nehru place and finally got the damn thing fixed. It took the whole morning, but finally it was working. There were still some issues with the UPS because of Delhi's summer low voltages, but it was for the most part working.

A few months later, the graphics card gave way. It was duly changed for a better one. Some more months later, this also gave way and an NVidia card was bought. With the onset of winters, some new problems emerged. The bloody thing would not start. After pressing the start button, there would be some noise from the hard disk and then silence. Trying doing this some 10-20 times and it would finally start. Yours truly, the budding engineer figured this one out and concluded ki compooter ko thand lag gayi hai. So I caught hold of a hair-driver and warmed it up a bit and voila ... it worked!! The problem was the (()%&(&*#@^*( do koudi ki chinese RAM. Back to Nehru Place, and this time round, the addition was a Simmtronics module.

Finally all ghosts had been exorcised and the PC was well behaved. It was on this PC that I explored the innards of a computer. I enjoyed taking it apart and putting it back together. It was on its tiny 4GB hard disk (my mp3 player has 5GB) that I first installed Linux. There was only one partition, so conventional distros were out. But once there was some WinLinux or something on a CHIP CD, which installed in the Windows Partition and could be booted from there. So there went 500 MB to Linux. There was another OS on some CD - BeOS. Another 500MB gone. I enjoyed triple boot on that tiny disk for some time :D.

After coming to IIT, this PC got its first major upgrade, getting a new 40GB hard disk and 128MB more RAM. 2 years later, the 15" monitor gave way and way sold in Nehru Place and a new one bought. Soon the mouse and the CD drive had started misbehaving too and were duly replaced. An offer in Digit resulted in the addition of a DVD Combo drive. Save the motherboard and processor almost everything had been changed.

Last year, when I was in Bangalore, XP crapped up and people at home were forced to get used to Ubuntu (YAY FOSSS!!). When I went back for Diwali, the time had finally come for this old warrior to be laid to rest. The keyboard stopped working too and the machine refused to boot. This machine was traded in for a spanking new Athlon 64 based system. Its various add-on parts were cannabilized for the new system. I assembled this system myself, times had indeed changed.

So today after reading Atish's post, I bid farewell to this PII-350MHz friend, which had served me faithfully for more than 7 years. And as I type on my new laptop, I wonder how long this one would last ? Hopefully it would outlive my old friend!!

Ctrl - Z for life

2007-03-13T08:47:00.000-07:00

So how many times have you said something, only to regret later ? How many times have you faced a situation where a tough decision needs to be taken ? I have often thought that a Ctrl-Z option (undo for the uninitiated) would be the perfect solution. When writing something on a computer, do you really care that whatever you are doing will spoil the existing work ? Ctrl-Z makes you fearless, making lions out of meek mice. Dont worry keep typing ... keep that keyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy pressed and see what happens. Dont like the results ? Undo, as simple as that.

So, you are not sure what something should look like ? Simple. Just try out all your options, save as different files and compare. No pain at all. It should not be much of a problem to map this model to our lives...

In school, when the choice is between streams, do I want to be a doctor or a CA ? A journalist or an engineer ? So we choose one, secure in our choice that we could come back and start over. Of course, you might end up disliking all the options, which doesnt help matters, but that would stop all thoughts like ... what if I had done XYZ ? We you did do XYZ and found that it sucked too!

Such an option may have unintended consequences. When everyone starts turning the clock, funny things may happen. Actions do not occur in isolation and are the sum of the actions performed by all the actors. If any two of them try to separately undo their actions, something very different might happen. When editing a file, there is only one person doing the editing and not a whole bunch of people pounding away on the keyboard at the same time.

The charm of life lies in its uncertainities. We have the freedom to do whatever we want to, but the consequences are usually beyond our control. If we already knew everything that was to be known, where would the thrill of discovery be ?

I guess there is a pretty good reason why things are the way they are.

Flashback

2007-03-03T10:13:00.000-08:00

I dont what happened today that made me remember this incident which took place nearly 2 years ago. At that point of time, I was preparing to go for an internship abroad and was generally involved in visa, insurance and other such formalities. I was also trying to get hold of an ISIC student card, since I had heard that these cards could be used to avail discounts in many places.

So the search for this card led me to CP one afternoon. After doing the needful at the this shop in the Outer Circle, near Rivoli, I was done for the day. I saw Mc-D's golden arch across the street and thought that I would go ahead and have a bite. It was around 2 pm or so. I must mention here that this area has many memories associated with it. It was a stone's throw from my school and so I pretty much knew the ins and outs. Also, my family used to do all their shopping for "nice" stuff from CP, so again I had been coming to this area ever since I can remember.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I was happily munching my burger when I saw an old teacher from school. She was with some friend who I didnt know and kids. The kids were wearing school uniform (since it was pretty close to 1.30 when the school got over) and one girl looked quite like my teacher, so I guessed that she was her daughter. After recognizing her, I did talk to her, but didnt really have any hopes that she would remember me.

She had taught me in class 4, almost 13 years ago. So many batches would have passed before and after me. Even the kids who joined school when I was in 4th would be in 12th now!! To my surpise, she not only remembered my name, she also remembered that I had a younger sister!! It was a very pleasant and satisfying experience. The kick that you feel when you realise that your old teachers remember you after all that time ...

I had only one Hindi teacher in class 4, but she probably taught 2-3 sections in class 4, each with around 50 boys. And she taught more people in those intervining 13 years, but I went through class 4-C only once. I wonder how teachers manage to remember students after such long periods ?

Of course, it is possibly that she bluffed her way through the meeting, but being the nice person that she was, it seems unlikely. Contrast this with when I met my KG-C class teacher at a school fete. This fete was just after I had left school and so another good 13 years had passed. This teacher did seem to recognize me, but her only comment was - you were tall then, you are not now!!

I mean, she could have asked me anything she wanted to, but this comment was totally unexpected. When people meet after such a long time, they generally indulge in polite conversation, not fire random remarks!! Hope the next time that I run into an old teacher is better than that encounter.

A Language rant

2007-02-27T09:22:00.000-08:00

A long time ago, language meant English or Hindi or French or whatever and had absolutely nothing to do with C, Java or ML. Children spoke their mother tongue at home and English was drilled into their head at school. Although they finally managed to get a grasp on English, their thinking was still in their mother tongue.

But nowadays, I am witnessing a strange phenomena. Possibly such things were happening earlier too, but I am sure I was not exposed to it. On the streets, in the airport, in the malls and parks, you can see young parents with little kids. And invariably, they are conversing in English with their kids. For some reason, I am repulsed by the sight of a small Indian child talking to his parents in English. Mind you, this is Bangalore I am talking about, not some US city with NRIs. The parents converse freely in their mother tongue, but for the child, English is the only language.

I am unable to understand why parents would deliberately alienate the child from his own culture and country. Has the craze for English reached such heights that we are willing to make Englishmen out of our children, who look down upon their vernacular brethen and be unable to communicate with them ? I, like most of the people from the plains speak, understand and write only Hindi and English. Many of my friends from other states are able to speak their non-Hindi mother tongue fluently. The same might not be true a few years hence.

Here in Karnataka, people are protesting and fighting to preserve the Kannada language. It is compulsory for all shops to display the signboard in Kannada too. But these protesters must realise that their fight is not against migrants from other states. The real threat is from those upwardly mobile parents who consider it too "common-place" to talk to their children in Kannada. The Hindi or Tamil speaking people will not lead to the marginalization of Kannada, the obsession with English would. And what goes for Kannada would probably hold true for any other Indian language.

When people make a noise about such issues, it is very easy to dismiss them as chauvinistic and give examples from the past to show that it is a natural process, but one must not forget that language defines the people and their culture. There are many things which are a part of our lives, but we would be hard pressed to explain them in an alien language. When you are in an extremely stressful situation, do you think and speak in English or some other language ? How does on translate a muhavara ? Dhobi ka kutta .... will English ever express what a dhobi is and what a ghat is ?

There are many arguements put forth that knowledge of English is a passport to success in today's world, but shine of gold should not make one forget his identity. People adopt various extreme emotive positions on the issue of language. May it be Hindi vs others or English vs Hindi or Tamil vs Kannada, a balanced approach is needed. Junking English in favour of the mother tongue, as was the case recently in Bengal is short sighted, but the reverse too is not the solution.

Trip Update

2007-02-14T09:39:00.000-08:00

I started off on last Friday, to a trip back home to Delhi. Little did I know that how eventful this trip would be. It started off with a on Friday evening itself, when my low-cost flight was delayed for 1.30 hours from Bangalore airport. With no on board food, I was clutching my tummy pretty soon, as pangs of hunger grew. There was a lot of turbulence on the way and pretty cloudy down below. Along the way, there was a long stretch in which flashes of lightning could be seen from the clouds. It was a wonderful sight to behold, given that we are pretty much used to seeing lightning above us and not below.

As we neared Delhi, the pilot announced that there was a 1.30 waiting time to land at the airport. After some aimless circling, he updated the time to 45min, mentioning that many aircrafts have been diverted to Bombay. After a some more mindless circling, I had a sneaking suspicion that those flashes of lightning were from fellow hapless aircrafts, caught in a vicious circle. Anyway, soon afterwards, we were told that we 16th in line to land and will land shortly.
After some time, when we were actually about to land, the pilot dropped a bombshell. He said that when we had come to Delhi, we were told that the holding time was 2.30 hours. Since we lacked fuel to hang on for so long, we had pretty much decide to head off to Bombay!! But we persevered and will be landing shortly. So to cut a long story short, I managed to reach Delhi, although more that 2 hours late.

The weather in Delhi was fantastic, being a bit more colder than normal, thanks to the Western disturbances. It rained the whole of Saturday, bring the mercury further down. I was really pissed off at Bangalore's lack of a proper winter season and celebrated this cold weather with pakoras. Next day, I headed off to the market on a rickshaw, with a drizzle and cold wind chilling me to the bone. It felt nice to be all wrapped, perched defiantly on the edge of a wet seat, daring the elements to give their best shot.

An uncle was in town for a meeting, someone I hadnt met for quite a few months now. This meeting can, in some ways, be regarded as the trigger for the meetings which I had with many more long lost relatives and acquaintances in the following days.

The next day I went to the airport to receive relatives coming from US. It was quite a coincidence that I was around in Delhi to meet them. Another relative from Bombay came yesterday, someone who I hadnt met in years. And today, I went to the reception of former neighbours-emigrated to London-returned for wedding. Again met loads of people.

The way this trip is going, looks like I will meet more people in this month that I normally do in the entire year!

Dukh darshan

2007-02-11T01:53:00.000-08:00

Back in the days when I was a kid, TV consisted of 1 or 2 channels broadcast by an entity that is (affectionately ?) now called Dukhdarshan. TV was something that was not meant for kids and considered (quite rightly) a waste of time. Colour television had come to India before I was born in 1982, but it took a bit more for a colour TV to arrive in my home. I have pretty hazy memories of our old TV set.

From what I can recollect, it was probably made by some sarkari PSU like UPTron (for the lesser informed ... UPTron was something like UP Electronics. There was a Keltron too; from Kerala). It had a two wooden panes in front of the screen, which had to be opened in order to view the TV. Dont have much idea about the controls, wasnt allowed to fiddle too much with it.

Sometime in the mid 80s, the old made way for the new and a colour Beltek television was bought. It had a control panel which had switches for 9 channels, which was a bit of an overkill for those times. It wasnt till the advent of cable TV did 9 channels feel woefully inadequate. This Beltek TV was the one on which I watched most of the TV in my life. So just for the sake of nostalgia, here are some of the popular things on TV of those times:

Buniyad: This was a serial watched mainly by the adults of the family. I have no idea about the story, or even a vague recollection of its content.

Humlog: See Buniyad.

Nukkad: I have a vague recollection about this serial. There was some drunkard called Khopdi in it. Apart from that, no clue.

Ulta pulta: A Jaspal Bhatti offering, I was too small to remember the contents of this show. However, I vividly remember his Flopshow, which will be mentioned later.

Karamchand: The carrot chewing detective, with his bumbling moll called Kitty. Pankaj Kapoor rocked in this serial. As a matter of fact, I saw a hoarding the day before ... Karamchand is going to be back on TV (Sony) after 20 years!! Eagerly waiting for it.

Byomkesh Bakshi: This was a fanstastic serial, with National award winning actor Rajit Kapur playing the lead role. Everyone used to eagerly wait for each episode and it used to be the topic of discussion in school the next day. Last year, I got an urge to to read the stories of this Sherlock-like detective. After many disappointments, Midlands was able to order the book from me. I was realy happy to get my grubby hands on it!

Dekh Bhai Dekh: The serial which established Shekhar Suman as the funny man. It was probably the original serial about a rich joint family, before Kekta KKapurr unleashed her creative (?) instincts. The episodes shot in London were probably a first for Indian television. It was eagerly awaited each week, I even followed re-runs for some time on Sony.

Flopshow: Iss serial ke baare main jitna kaha jaye ... kam hai. Jaspal Bhatti is the king of comedy. The crisp dialogues, the hilarious parodies all woven into situations which the aam-aadmi faced. Should be preserved for posterity, so that future generations can get a glimpse into what life was like. In today's day and age of the mobile one, one would be hard pressed to understand why someone was willing to marry his daughter to a telephone line man!

Ramayan: Ramanand Sagar's best known work, probably best known for its cheap "special effects". It set the guidelines for all mythologicals made henceforth, especially regarding the behaviour of arrows in battle. Kind of arrows shown, with their appearance and "effect", it was truly mind-boggling.

Mahabharat: BR Chopra's Mahabharat was light years ahead of Ramanyan in terms of everything (except the story :P). I have heard that streets used to be deserted and Parliament and Cabinet meetings were re-scheduled around it. The sets and acting were superb. Have watched many re-runs.

Chandrakanta: An extremely confusing serial telecast in the mid 90s. Chandrakata, as the name suggests was named after a character named Chandrakanta, who was a princess. The confusing part is that she probably never made an appearance after the first few episodes. In fact, the kingdoms of Naigarh and Vijaygarh (jinn main thi takrar) were also largely absent. Instead, a parallel story line forked off somewhere in Junagadh, where comic characters like Kruror Singh, Pandit Jaganath etc abounded. As a friend remarked a few days ago, all that Pandit Jaganath did was to throw dice and do some mumbo-jumbo ... do char aath matlab Junagadh par khatra!! The presence of duplicates and duplicates of duplicates made things all the more confusing. Good riddance.

Didi's Comedy Show: A German show; it dubbed into English for telecast. Starring Dieter Hallervorden it was as the English title suggested, Non Stop Nonsense. There were many reruns of it on Doordarshan and I remember watching each one of them. The strange thing is that none of my college friends seem to have watched it. Any reader who had watched this serial is urged to comment in support!

Telematch: Another German show dubbed in English, it showed teams from different German cities competing against each other in funny competitions. Kind of the stuff seen on Pogo these days, with a voice-over by Javed Jaffery; only Telematch was infinitely better, given that it did not have Javed Jaffery.

Polti Baba: Nice children's serial with puppets telling a story.

This is of course not an exhaustive list about the nice things on TV in those days. Havent purposefully mentioned Tu Tu Main Main and Shriman Shrimati. Zabaan Sambhalke was also nice. Might write about the nice things on Sony sometime in the future. I Dream of Jeanie, Dennis the Menace, Different Strokes, Bewitched and Who's the Boss were really great. Too bad they stopped telecasting them. Chamatkar starring Farukh Sheikh was awesome too.

It is a pity that now television consists only of rich families consisties of weepy bahus and scheming vamps. The only watchable Hindi serial, The Comedy Show on Star One appears to have been cancelled. Looks like everyone wants to cater to the lowest common denominator. Thats why Kekta Kapur and Karan Johar are laughing all the way to the bank :(.

Kal aaj aur kal

2007-01-23T04:35:00.000-08:00

People often say that the times are a-changing, which is quite true. People of my age group have got a first-hand experience of this change, since the Indian economy started opening up when we were small children. We would have faint recollections of what things were earlier, but probably didnt bear the brunt of the circumstances. The motivation for this post was a discussion I had over the weekend with some of my friends, one of whom is visiting the US in a few weeks time declared that there is no point in bringing stuff back from the US any more.

That statement got me thinking. If I remember correctly, US was a BIG thing in my childhood (probably still is, but not as big). I remember that one of my aunts married an IITian living in the US; it was a time when I didnt know what America was, on account of my geography being limited to Delhi and Lucknow. I also remember that each time she came from the US, there
used to be a lot of excitement about what she will be bringing for us, partly because lil kids are always excited when they get stuff and partly she was going to come in an aeroplane from AMERICA!! I still treasure that Radioshack remote-controlled car she brought once. It used a 9 volt battery, another thing which I had never seen before and it was a big pain to find
that kind of a battery in India. Heck, even travelling in a plane was a big deal, since most of my experience of travelling was limited to overnight train trips.

Which reminds me, train tickets were bought at ticket counters only. In fact, as my father told me once, before Rajiv Gandhi went about his computerisation, there used to be big registers for each train. The ticket for the return trip could be bought only from that place itself. I have never stood in a line for a train ticket. I barely know the location of the ticketcounter close to home, only that its somewhere in Karkardooma. In my first year at college, I never had the need to buy a train ticket, since my home was in Delhi. By my second year, it was possible to buy tickets online from the Railways website and have them delivered to your doorstep. So thanks to my SBI account and my knowledge of "computers", for the next 3 years, I was the travel agent of my entire family as they slowly embraced the digital revolution.

Of course, now I rarely travelled by train, being the jet-setter that I have become :-). The fact that any train trip from Delhi to Bangalore will eat up 3-4 days of my precious leave has a lot to do with it. As a friend and fellow blogger remarked on his blog, "train kab hai" has been replaced by "flight kab hai". Anyway, the Bangalore airport is much closer to home than the railway station and vice versa in Delhi. But Bangalore roads being what they are, air travel rules!

Today anything and everything is available in India. There was a time when a friend of mine made a long shopping list for his foreign bound grand parents to get Reebok shoes and Levis jeans and what not. Today Nike shoes are available at the small shop from where I have been buying rubber chappals for the past 20 years. Certain things however never loose their charm. The allure of imported chocolates still remains; the fact that we have been voraciously attacking the stock of imported chocolates at home speaks for itself. Chocolates are cheap to buy and small to carry ... Go Toblerone.

The easy availibility of mobile phones and the reach of email are things that many young people today would take for granted. One only needs to watch Flop-Show's "Telephone" episode to realise how bad things were a few years ago. When I was quite small, we got our second telephone and I remember that there was a lot of hype about it. Dead telephones, wrong numbers and busy lines were the norm. And above all a long waiting period. Another ancient beast was the trunk call, which had to be booked. If someone was yelling into the handset, you could be pretty sure that it was a trunk call. The instruments themselves were heavy ugly brutes. An instrument with push-buttons was considered pretty advanced (by me). Today it is
difficult to imagine life without a mobile phone. Even school going children have one now!

One of the biggest grouses is TV. With no Cartoon Network or decent movie channels, life was decidedly drab. Sunday was the only day when some decent cartoons/serials were telecast and the whole morning was devoted to it. He Man and Spiderman, Ducktales and Talespin were followed. If you were an early riser, Popeye was on at 7am. There was also a pathetic attempt at Sci-fi by the name of Zigma (?). On all other days, there was Chitrahar (Wed. and Friday only) or Krishi Darshan. There were no good English or Hindi movies or timepass MTV etc. The great thing about those times was that there was no Ekta Kapoor either. Instead, we had Mahabharat rescheduling cabinet meetings. I missed the episode where Arjun wins Draupadi by hitting the fish's eye since I had gone for my uncle's wedding and the bloody train came after 9. This was an event that is a part of even a super duper condensed version of Mahabharat and I sulked for a long time this incident.

Now there is no dearth of channels, although some things never change, like the fact that I missed the India-West Indies match yesterday because the channel wasnt available. I wonder how today's kids would live in a world with only a single TV channel, which wasnt 24x7. Perhaps thats where my habit of reading newspapers comes from, since that was the only source of information. Computers were only in school labs and they too were with a black-n-white display and an unfriendly command prompt ( well unfriendly for a 7 year old).

I wonder what surprises are in place for us tomorrow. Cybernetics ? Teleportation (plane travel is soooooooo 20th century) ? Invisibility cloak ? Mind readers ? More intelligent bloggers who know how to end a post on a good note ?

Alone

2007-01-06T08:21:00.000-08:00

For some strange reason, I like being alone; left all to myself. No man's an island yada yada yada, but I don't mind being alone. Being alone gives you a kind of freedom, with no one judging your actions or thoughts.

I have often wondered why I enjoy solitude so much. I have come to the conclusion that it is because at almost each major change taking place in my life, I have been alone to fend for myself. This has probably made me capable of taking care of myself in new surroundings without much need for outside support.

In school, I didn't know anyone in my section. There wasn't even anyone from my bus/locality in my class. There were other friends in different classes but since they were older and had there own friends circle, I generally went around alone and friendless for some period of time. It took me a good 1-2 years to make friends, some of whom I am in touch with even today.

Another change was joining a coaching class. Many of my classmates had joined the same institute, but as luck would have it, my classes were held at a totally different time and place. And once again, I had to sweat it out alone. There weren't even any people living close to my home.

Which brings us to the biggest change, joining college and moving to a hostel and generally finding myself in a totally new environment. Here again, I didn't know anyone in my hostel or my department. Two of my friends were good friends in school and got adjacent rooms in the hostel! Talk about luck.

In my company too, I was the only one who joined from my college.

There is of course no particular reason for this rant. What pisses me off is that in each of these situations there are many people who have some connections with each other. Being from the same school, coaching class, college etc. They have some shared memories they can talk about and a comfort level with each other. I on the other hand have to start afresh all over again ... which irritates me. A benefit is that you are given a clean slate to start over and are not burdened by any past baggage.

The motivation for this post was that I was all alone at home for the past 24 hours and I found that it wasn't too bad. I didn't mind it (as has been stressed many times), but the sheer boredom of being alone made me go to visit friends. Boredom is a big enemy of a loner :(.

A Happy New Year ?

2006-12-31T04:06:00.000-08:00

Its that time of the year again ... when greeting card companies, restaurants, hotels etc etc make a killing. Actually thanks to our progressive media, we are being inundated with various other "days" like Fathers' day, Mothers' day, Friends' day etc etc. I am strongly against any such "days" celebrated for random stupid reasons, whose one and only purpose is to part me with my hard earned money!

Actually it is not just these "days" which are guilty of promoting a consumerist culture. Take any festival like Diwali or Christmas. All shops will be offering "special" discounts to encourage people to loosen their purse strings a bit. The real reason for the celebration of a festival gets lost amidst these "great" offers. In a country like India, where population of Christians is quite small, it would be a bit unrealistic to assume that all of your friendly neighbourhood shopkeepers are Christians and are offering you a Christmas discount to do their bit to spread the festive spirit.

So most probably, given the demographics of India, they are not Christians, but still doing their bit to celebrate Christmas. That of course, would not bother me, but the fact that they are probably pretty much ignorant about the story of Christmas does irritate me. Without any knowledge about the reason behind the celebration, a festival gets reduced to just another ordinary day, with a big hype behind it. I was witness to this ignorance at a function at my workplace, where people were gorging on free food and booze but appeared to be pretty ignorant about the Nativity of Jesus or Christmas carols.

If there is no particular reason to celebrate a festival on particular day, it could just a well be celebrated on any other convenient day. Given the tendency to reduce festivals to just days to have a good time, we might as well bunch the whole lot of them conveniently together, in order to give a boost to the tourism industry!

There other days like National holidays, which have pretty much lost their significance. Trampling over all of Gandhiji's principles for the whole year, remembering them just in time for 2nd October is quite revolting.

But days like New Year deserve a special mention. I remember that there was a time when New Year meant sending cards out to people, probably just to keep in touch with them. The Internet with all the IMs and sites like Orkut have pretty much rendered this exercise irrelevant. Today New Year more about partying at the most expensive places and generally spending lots of money on gifts. The newspapers are full of advertisements of all kinds of places offering unlimited food and drink and some even touting the presence of minor celebrities. At the dawn of this millennium, some people had hired a plane to go around the world with the rising sun, to celebrate the New Year in every time zone. I doubt that 2nd Jan was any different for them than for their other less fortunate fellow earthlings.

Well these revelers may be forgiven because the millennium is a once in a lifetime experience, but otherwise, the New Year does come every year! It is also a pretty meaningless day, just denoting the start of the year. You could count 365 days from any day to make your own year. This anniversary is not even something personal like a birthday.
Everyone milks this day for their own benefit ... the media with its extremely boring analysis of the news of the year, the various top 10 lists for X of the year, the hotel industry hosting the various new year bashes, the astrologers who predict your future for the next year etc etc etc.

It is just a bloody day. And you guessed correctly, I will not be doing anything which would have a remote chance of being construed as celebration on the 31st of Dec. Life will go normally on the 1st and I will go to office. Take that New Year!!

The year gone by ...

2006-12-26T09:49:00.000-08:00

Although it may be a bit premature to ponder on the year gone by, since its not yet officially over, I shall nevertheless take the liberty to do precisely that. Having been given two days off, the workaholic in me is already bored of sleeping and desperately hunting for more challenging activities.

The year began on a pretty good note, I had already been placed and my sincerity towards work was the only thing between doing nothing the entire semester and slogging to get my degree. Being a sadist for punishment, I chose the latter and put in my long hours to achieve a dream I had cherished for long - getting a dassi!! Critics may point that 15 credits, with 12 being of a project do not make a valid dassi, but my grade sheet says that I had an SG of 10 and thats the end of that discussion.

Another high point of this year were my Goa trips! A normal man may go to Goa once or twice in his lifetime (unless he has friends or family there). A man who goes there twice in a year is decidedly not normal, although since both the trips were corporate junkets, it can be said that he is pretty jugaadu. As a side note, both trips were not much to write about, other than experiencing 5-star treatment I didn't do much. In one trip, I attended a conference, in the other I slept and ate alternately!

This year also marked my arrival as a seasoned air-warrior as I logged up the miles, flying all the various airlines in India. Spice, Deccan, Indian Airlines, Kingfisher, Sahara, Jet ... all except newbies, which I am sure I would experience pretty soon. For someone who sat in a plane for the first time only two years ago, this is not a bad report card. Kingfisher is of course head and shoulders above all the others, but thats another story.

Somewhere in the middle of this year, I was able to complete my degree and in one fell swoop, I was proudly ticking the "post-graduate" box in any form that I filled. From 12th pass to PG is a pretty big jump and it took me all of 5 years to complete. The final test in this saga was the actual convocation itself. It took me a lot of blood, sweat and tears; not to mention two nighouts to actually make it to the ceremony. Koun jane koi aur degree milegi ki nahi. A convocation in hand is worth two in the bush!

The year was also a time when I stepped into the BIG BAD corporate world. After working for so long on "interesting ideas", it is a different ball game altogether to make your customers successful and happy.

And amidst all this, I also moved to a new city, made new friends and took on new responsibilities. Like paying for the electricity bill or the rent. It was a time of great change and excitement. It was a new experience for all of us, coming from the sheltered environment of hostel, where you deposited a lump sum at the beginning of the semester and didnt need to bother about groceries or bills for the next 4 months.

I hope I haven't missed out on anything important which happened in the past 365 days.

PS: I am not much of a new year celebrater and think that the whole concept is over-hyped to increase consumption. Will have a post on it later.

PPS: This view has nothing to do with the fact that I read "Brave New World" yesterday. The book merely reinforced my long-held belief.

Wanderlust

2006-12-20T05:56:00.000-08:00

Orkut is a wonderful place to catchup with old friends (and for some; make new ones). I mostly stick to keeping in touch with friends and discovering long lost ones. One such freak incident took place last week when a classmate from school popped out of nowhere to announce his presence. He was a nice chap who left when we were in 11th standard to go to the US of A, where his father had been transfered. Being technically backward at time, and with low net penetration in India (a time when dialup ruled and broadband was unheard of) I did not use any IMs, leave alone social networking site.

I did have an email address and got my friends email too, but never bothered to send him one and promptly lost that scrap of paper which he had given me. A few months ago, my batchmates from school made a community on orkut and I actively started hunting for other lost souls.

Anyway, the purpose of this buildup was that this dude was in Montreal, had been in Montreal for quite sometime. Now you might wonder whats so great about this chap being in Montreal. Well, the fact is that I was also there sometime in the recent past. Of course we didnt know that we were in the same city and so we didnt meet up or anything. Just the thought if I had spotted him somewhere (or he had spotted me), it would have gone a long way to show that the world is a very small place indeed.

Well, the above thoughts were mostly a digression from the main topic of this post. The main topic is something which has been troubling me with quite some time - Wanderlust. Whenever I look at my orkut friends' list, I see places like Barcelona, London, Paris, New York, California ... places where I would really really love to go. I have often discussed this with my friends and it seems that I am not the only one with such desires.

However, at this point life plays a cruel joke. If you are a student, with loads of time and vacations in which you fidget and sulk at home ... you probably dont have the money to finance yourself half-way across the world. On the other hand, if you are working, you probably can finance yourself, but I guess you dont have the time to go! Welcome to the real world.
Still working to solve this riddle.

To end, life always looks greener on the other side of the fence. Probably many my of riends in these exotic places are pining to come home to India. Or perhaps they are happy and content that their grass is the greenest ... Dont know, dont care.

Home Sweet Home

2006-12-15T08:17:00.000-08:00

There is of course no place like home. Especially, when the current place where you are living makes you feel like an outsider. Much is written about about Bangalore being a cosmpolitan city, but I feel that murky depths below the shining glass and steel IT buildings tell a different story. Of course, any comparison by me is probably biased in favour of Delhi, but nevertheless, I shall persevere and try be an impartial observer.

So firstly, lets talk in terms of infrastructure. Delhi has perennial water and electricity woes. Approaching summers herald a time of sleepless, sweaty nights and furnace hot afternoons. A time when stepping outdoors means getting drenched with sweat and sapped of all energy. And add to this a water and power shortage, which means that cold baths and comforts of an AC or cooler are out of bounds. Bangalore seems way ahead of Delhi on this count. We have had (touchwood!) no such problems here, although I am yet to experience the peak of summers here. Another factor which might affect the comparison the place of residence. In Delhi, NDMC areas dont suffer from these issues, since all the politicos live there. Since I am staying in a posh area of Bangalore, I might have been sheilded from a fate reserved for lesser mortals.

But one thing where Bangalore sucks big time is the condition of roads, or rather the lack of pukka roads. In Delhi, alot has been done to improve road conditions. A large number of flyovers have been constructed and many busy intersections paved with special reinforced roads. There is no way that the clogged 2 lane Bangalore roads can compete with the wide tree-lined avenues of New Delhi. In terms of drainage ... both cities suck! Bangalore has the excuse that its a hilly city, Delhi doesnt. All in all, one can use gensets or order water-tankers, but one still has to use the roads to commute!

Talking in terms of climate, its a bit of a no-contest really. Bangalore's pleasant climate vs Delhi's extremes. However, yours truly, being of a slightly masochistic kind, longs for the chilly winters and the hot summers. Seasons, where you do seasonal things (revri/gajak anyone ?) and wear seasonal clothes. The same kind of weather throughtout the year kind of takes the variety out of life :).

Places to visit/see: Again a no contest. Delhi, with a thousand year history has infinitely many places of interest than Bangalore. With so many people and so few hang-outs, the weekend crowd in Bangalore's hotspots like MG Road or Forum Mall makes me claustrophobic. The only time in Delhi when I faced such a crowd was at Priya when RDB was released. We have never been turned away from restaurants in Delhi on weekends, since they were full. Probably never been turned away from any restaurant in Delhi. But in Bangalore, we once needed to book a whole day in advance!!

Which brings me to an additional point - the food. Yahan par halwai ki dukaan nahi hoti :(:(.

Public transport : Delhi's bus system is much better than Bangalore's. Buses are more frequent and less crowded. The names of places are written in English too, as opposed to Bangalore where only Kannad is used, leaving you to decipher destination from the bus number. Delhi autowalas are a bunch of crooks out to fleece you, and Bangalore is going the same way. Only that, in Bangalore you dont have any other option, apart from autos. If any autowala showed any attitude to me, I used to show him the finger and go by bus.:D

Now the final point of comparison. I find that Delhi does not discriminate against its citizens on the basis of their region. That is definitely not the case in Bangalore. With pro-Kannada activists indulging in hooliganism at the smallert pretext, one cannot help but feel a little insecure. Be it the autowala with a flag fixed on his vehicle who jumps out of the auto and starts arguing for more than his due or the bandhs and rioting for Kannada pride. It is difficult to adopt this place
as your own, with people howling for jobs for Kannadigas and baying for the blood of outsiders. Delhites have their flaws, but we do not display this xenophobic attitude towards "outsiders". Probably the influx of a large number of people into Bangalore with no roots in the city is the cause of resentment. A large percentage of Bangalore's population probably works in the IT industry and is a largely floating population, which can easily migrate in to other places, searching for better opportunities. In Delhi, a larger number of people are engaged in other occupations (IT hubs being NOIDA and Gurgaon), hence they have a greater sense of belonging to Delhi. And having people from all over the country living in Delhi makes it difficult to mobilise the masses against "the other".

Like I said earlier, my bias in favour of Delhi is pretty evident :D .... mujhe ghar jana hai!!

It was not meant to be like this ....

2006-12-08T11:02:00.000-08:00

Or was it ? How many times do we ask this question to ourselves ? I have been asking this pretty often of late and so have some of my friends. After finishing college from one of the top colleges of the country, one would expect all of us to be happy.

A high paying job with a life free of cares and worries. A job of a "software engineer" no less, something which lots of bright young students in school dream of becoming. We were(are?) one of them too. Everyone enters college with a lot of enthusiasm, however, the system sucks out whatever drive you have pretty soon.

As the hour of graduation draws near, one is suddenly snapped out of the reverie and begins to make frantic efforts to get a "good" job. So after following this script, we should have had a sense of accomplishment and been happy and content.

Then again we come back to the refrain ... it was not meant to be like this. I mean, come on, who wants to sit and code all day ? That too in an alien place where you cannot even communicate with your maid without an interpreter ? Where the lunch in the office is full of surprises everyday ? Where the roads are clogged .... oops my mistake, where there are no pukka roads? After the wide open roads of Delhi, its openness, it largeness, Bangalore makes me feel claustrophobic. More on that in another post.

So coming back to the point, it was not meant to be like this. After busting your ass to get into college, and then busting some more to get out, leading to further busting to earn money..... I guess the script writer of this story was a bit of a sadist ? Methinks that he didnt like the color red (for those who dont understand, please ignore).

But then, what about those who sleep on the pavements each day ? Or those who see islands of shiny buildings and bright cars dotting their filthy oceans of poverty ? Those in the heartland of the country, who struggle for survival each day ? Where drinking water is a luxury and caste a reality ? It was not meant to be like this for them either.

So where does the solution lie? I am currently reading a book called "Holy Cow", where an Australian woman details her experiences in India. She remarks that people in India count their blessings. No matter how bad their position may be, they thank God for what they have; that they are better off than those below them. Perhaps this is where the answer lies.

For the job which is a burden for you, there will probably be hundreds of people more than willing to take it up. For the person living in some remote village, living in Bangalore might be a dream come true. In fact, it could be the dream of many a NRI, longing to come back home. For each grouse in your, there will be someone who will look at it as a blessing.

Life is not always what you want it to be. The only thing that you can do is keep your chin up and weather the storm. Always try to make the best of the situation and remain positive. Having just embarked on a careers, one should keep the big picture in mind. Minor irritants in the present should not distract from the bigger goal (dont know what it is at the moment and pretty confused about that).

To end, I would like quote a shloka which I learnt in school which goes something like ...

In life, who has got only happiness or who has got only sadness ?
happiness and sadness in life are like a wheel, which keep coming back again and again.

Nani ka ghar

2006-11-26T09:00:00.000-08:00

Like many other children my age, summer vacations meant going to my nani's home for a long period of time (more than a month). So till I was around 12, I would spend a month in this really really old house, which was built sometime in the 1920s (or the date on it claimed).

My nani lived in the Hazratganj locality of Lucknow, which is a commercial area. There were no playmates for me in the nearby area, so I spent a whole month each year just roaming around the house and visiting other relatives. Coming from Delhi, with its entertainment channel DD-Metro, Lucknow used to be a huge culture shock. With no TV and no friends, the house itself was the only place where I could amuse myself.

So onto a description of this house. Like I said, it was a very old house, and reflected the prevailing mindset at that time. The fact that rooms did not have attached bathrooms was one of them which struck me immediately. All the electrical fixtures too belonged to a by-gone era. The wiring was all visible, the switch-boards were mounted on the walls. The fans were of a breed which I saw next in my hostel room!

But apart from these changes which were visible, I was fascinated by what I couldnt see. There were many rooms and cupboards all over the house which were locked with big heavy locks. My vivid imagination ran wild with their possible contents. After alot of pestering, I was able to get some of them unlocked. And was I right about their contents!!

Old dusty toys which were mostly broken. As someone who had spent a large part of his childhood playing with GI Joes (which I regularly got on each birthday) and other electronic wizardry, these toys without even a clockwork mechanism appeared to be from other planet.

More addictive than this was the treasure of old comics which I dug out from somewhere. The were stashes of them all over the house and each time I thought I had found the last of them, there was another one waiting to be found. These comics too were quite old. They were the Indrajaal comics, containing the mythical tales of the Phantom and the magical tales of Mandrake.

Of these, Phantom was my favourite, although that may have something to do with the fact that there were more Phantom comics. The stories of the first masked hero, who was respectfully addressed as the chalta firta pret or the "ghost who walks" had a very vivid description of the whole Phantom mythology. Most of the stories concerned the current Phantom (the 21st one), but in many the exploits of his ancestors were recollected, usually by the Phantom reading old family records or by Old Man Moz, who was probably as old as the records themselves.

The Phantom had a skull cave, which contained many treasures that had been lost for centuries ... Excalibur, Charlemagne's crown, the asp that bit Cleopatra, Alexander's diamond cup etc etc. In addition to these, the Phantom possessed the gold beach of Keela-Wi (made of gold dust). There was a jade hut there in which each Phantom spent his wedding night (although I did not realize what this fuss about THE night was ;) ). At home, my parents mostly tried to steer me away from comics and each summers, this was a welcome break.

Of course, these comics were at best, a temporary solution to my loneliness. There was an element of mystery about some rooms on the terrace, where I rarely went. The huge terrace was a place where I was not allowed to go alone. After doing the same things, exploring the same places and reading the same comics, I still was BORED.

Once some cousins of my age shifted to Lucknow, I would spend little time in this house where I had spent many magical moments. Playing cricket or computer games or cards was definitely more appealing than moping around indoors. Soon I stopped going there altogether.

One fine day in college (almost 10 years later), when I was supposed to make a quiz, I thought that I will put a question on the Phantom. After some researching on the net, all my old memories started rushing back. All that I had read in the comics made more sense, as I had a complete picture of the Phantom myth now. And with the comics, I remembered about the times I had spent in the house. A time, when summer vacation meant VACATION; where there were no board exams or summer projects of MTPs to worry about.

I sometimes miss that place which I have all but forgotten. With no one living there now for years, it would probably be in a dreadful condition. I have no desire to see it again. I want my last childish recollection of it be a happy one.

Democracy ka tamasha

2006-11-18T03:59:00.000-08:00

Every society tries to organise itself and comes up with a system of governance to ensure that order prevails and it is not engulfed by the darkness of chaos. Our founding fathers opted for a democratic system of governance, since it was the reigning favourite at that time. It still is the favourite, with the Big Brother of the World (aka US) trying to bring it to any country which doesn’t bow to it. As a side note, certain countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are exempt since they are the “good guys”.

This creature called democracy is supposedly based on the will of the majority. How is it different from mob-rule, I do not know and will leave the user to ponder on. I often wonder if the majority demands something like all people should not wear clothes, is it legally and morally enforceable ? Usually it is a simple matter of passing a law or two, perhaps even amending the Constitution. Courts can be taken care off by putting it in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution, along the lines of what the Tamil Nadu government did on the issue of reservation.

Democracy assumes that the electorate supports the candidates on issues. There are no permanent loyalties or captive vote-banks. This compels the winning candidates to actually fulfill their promises. The group of people (or party) getting the majority form the government whereas the remaining people are in the Opposition. The Opposition’s role is not, as the name suggests to oppose the government, but rather to offer constructive criticism. It can try to be the “inner-voice” of the government, although Sonia Gandhi’s “inner voice” is doing that for the moment. Another prerequisite for democracy is a free media and an independent judiciary.

Let us now reflect on the current situation prevailing in our country. Voters are unable to break away from caste or religious loyalties. Each group is looked upon as a vote-bank to be cultivated. The influx of Bangladeshis in the NE is a part of this trend. This kind of divisive politics has led to fragmentation of legislatures, with big parties relying on the support of 1-2 MP parties to form governments. An extreme example of this can be seen in Jharkhand where an independent MLA has become the CM!! (Incidentally, this article has been motivated by the absurdity of the said situation). With this kind of fragmentation, every group in the minority becomes more important than the majority. A vocal minority can get books and movies banned. As explained earlier, the judiciary is an irritant which can easily be taken care off by our politicians (who only value the oft quoted “junta ki adalat”). The media, which is supposed to help us make informed decisions is too busy tracking Lakme Fashion Week or John Abraham’s cold.

In such a gloomy scenario, uneducated voters are paid for their votes. Although, given the state of student politics, where the electorate is supposedly educated, violence and money make a potent combination. With such issues, comes the trivialisation of the electoral issues. The public may want free power or colour TV or free pay, but they should not be given the same. Responsible parents do not give into all the demands of their children. The case here shouldn’t be any different. But with unstable coalitions, politicians cant be blamed for playing Santa Claus to all and sundry. Nobody likes a Santa who doesn’t give presents to the naughty children, especially the naughty children.

The present system of democracy based on the noble ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity has been corrupted and needs to be fixed or replaced with something better. At each stage of human civilisation, people have tried to think of a better system of governance. Unfortunately in today’s world, democracy has become a dogma, which cannot be questioned. Anyone doing so runs the risk of being labeled a fascist or elitist or whatever-ist.

Indian society is facing challenges on all the three foundations of demcracy. Equality should be understood as equality before the law and equality of opportunity. With it should come the acceptance that all of us are different and can never be “equal”. No efforts should be made to impose an artificial equality, as the government is doing in the case of reservations in jobs and educational institutes. The global economy is not going to be bothered with our noble intentions and leave us far behind.

Liberty too is an interesting concept. My liberty stops where yours begins, but that holds the same for you too. Today people take offense at the slightest pretext making us an intolerant society as a whole. Fraternity cannot be present if we look upon others with an “us or them” approach that was made famous by George Bush.

To sum up, the system is screwed but something needs to be done to stem the rot to make a conducive atmosphere for a successful democracy. For every verdict of 1977, we have people voting for petty personal gains. For every bill passed, we have ten others that were stalled due to the House being adjourned. Of course, the honest tax paying public is paying for this “democratic experiment”. All the deadwood bureaucracy and politicians are supported by the public, which is being taken for a ride more expensive than the Palace on Wheels.

This section of society is growing quite fast, with the middle-class increasing at a very fast pace. But it is a very silent section of people, who are kicked into action only when their comfortable lives are threatened. Hundreds of people are killed by terrorism or Naxalite violence, but the middle class only takes notice when someone like Jessica Lal is shot dead in the heart of the Capital. This apathy does not augur well for the middle-class. It takes to the roads to protest against reservation, but is too busy to go out and vote. The day of election is a public holiday to enable people to vote, not to take a well deserved break by waking up late.

Arm-chair politics makes good drawing room conversation, but doesn’t do anyone any good, except perhaps the speaker’s ego! Instead of making grandiose plans of changing the system by far-fetched means, voting and convincing others around you to vote would be far more effective. You cannot be heard in a democracy unless you speak up and voting is the means by which you can express yourself. At the cost of sounding tacky, I would like to end by saying be the change you want to be!

From Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

2006-05-26T09:42:00.000-07:00

So it ended yesterday. I had the final presentation of my project. Now only administrative formalities remain between me and my degree. Its funny that I don't feel much different from yesterday. But as read somewhere, the trick is that you are now a much different person than you were 5 years ago.

The only feeling that I have is a sense of purposelessness. I remember this feeling quite well. The last time it was felt was exactly 5 years ago, when the JEE result was announced. Till the time of admission, I roamed around in a zombie like state, without any sense of purpose in life. Sure there is excitement about future plans, but future plans will be carried out 6-8 weeks from now. There is nothing one can do to change that and there is nothing one can do right now but wait.

Its not a particularly nice feeling. Rather like title of one of Wodehouse's stories - "Jeeves and the Impending Doom". Only Jeeves can be replaced by me :). In a way, this post is a reflection of my aimless wandering mind, which is currently the HQ of "Devil Works Inc", just as the saying goes. So I loads of time to watch tons of movies. I also have time on my hand to attend rallies and demonstrations if I feel like. And slip in some excursions to DU. All in the burning Delhi sun. Which reminds me ... I better enjoy these last few days in this sun. Its not going to be like this in Bangalore :(.

Majors over!

2006-05-09T10:31:00.000-07:00

Actually I have no clue if the title of the post is totally correct, but methinks that I am not too far from the truth. This is because I didnt have any courses with exams this semester. None. Zilch. Zukk. Take your pick.

This is possibly one of the perks of being a dulla --- no exams in the final semester (unless you have to pay for past sins like audit fukkas and such like:P). Having diligiously managed to avoid the same, I was clear of all lecture courses. Which leads us to the fact that I didnt have any majors. It feels a bit weird because I cant remember what my last major was. I mean, I dont remember what I felt like when I took that exam. The feeling of joy, relief etc. was distinctly absent. I had not forseen that the lack of lecture courses would make it my last exam in IITD. Just that I cant remember what "it" is. Was it High Speed Networks or Distributed Computing ? Perhaps someone can help out on this.

Well, I dont have much to write about the last exam, but plenty to write about the first one. I remember that day with all its gory details. The "interaction period" had just ended and we were trying to get used to the heat (no water coolers here), the water shortage (2 showers day ?! in your dreams) and the long hours of classes and labs. Particularly tortuous was the engineering drawing class whose only consolation was the fact that it was the last class on Friday and I could go home after it!

Anyway, coming back to the point, our happy, mundane existence was suddenly shaken by the advent of something called the "minors". As the name suggests, they are nothing more than a minor irritant once you get used to them. But the these were going to be our first exams in IITD. And the FIRST of them was a maths course - MA111. The terror of first year CS and EE students. Almost half our seniors had got Ds last year (rumour had it) and many were repeating. And this was the awe inspiring minor which was going to be our first exam.

The more observant among the readers might have missed the fact that I didnt mention power shortage along with the rest of the problems earlier. As far as I can remember, there wasnt any. Atleast not till the day before the minors. We were wading through sets and metric spaces, theorems and proofs. And then, there was a power cut. There was panic and confusion all around. Some relief too, since now there was a valid reason to stop studying.

We trooped down to the mess where something wonderful called extra-messing was going on. The mess had a line from a genset and the tubelights were on (no fans ). In that stuffy, sweaty atmosphere, progress was made on MA111. The more enterprising took off to the institute, where there was power in the academic area. Some time into the night, the valiant genset of the mess gave up and darkness reigned.

Details from here on are a bit fuzzy. I cant remember if I studied under candles or something, but I do remember that I gave up and went to sleep in the heat. My bed was soaking wet ... with sweat (what else !). Around 5am or so, power finally did come. Seniors claimed that this was a regular feature before all minors and majors. The institute authorities, in their infinite wisdom supposedly didnt want us to study on the eve of exams. We were supposed to have done that earlier. But this is mostly an urban legend (readers who have more on this are welcome to post).

The exam surprisingly went off quite well. I also heard lots of stories about what others had done. Apparently one of my friends went to sleep on the cold stone of the WindT !

The power saga repeated itself in minor 2 and possibly the majors too. In case you are wondering what the scene is today -- we have generator backup in the hostels now. Of course, this doesnt mean that there are no power cuts before the exams!

Nothing is permanent but change!

2006-05-06T11:40:00.000-07:00

Its not me but the ancient Greek philospher Heraclitus who first said 2500 years ago. Somewhere deep down inside us, we dont want to change. Change kicks us out of our cosy, comfortable existence that we have got used to and makes us start all over again.

It was the morning of 11th April 1988. I was small boy (most probably a crying small boy) was begging my father not to take me to school. School was a big red building, far away from home. The people were all new and scary. Hell ! Everybody even spoke in English, something which was yet again NEW. The first few days (weeks ? months ?) were pure hell. I didnt have any idea what was going on, I just knew that I had to go to someplace in the morning and would be back home in the afternoon. I didnt know ANYONE in that damned place. Speaking in Hindi was discouraged which was extremely unsettling.

Gradually things changed (yeah that word is going to crop up many times) -- for the better. I got friendly with one or two other people. Its nice to know that I am in touch with one of them even today. A senior at school was my neighbour and we were really good friends for the next 10 years. Newer friends were made, old friendships were forgotten. Going to the next class was a ritual that was followed in an uninteruppted manner for the next 10 years. The 10th boards were a minor hiccup in the scheme of things. But mostly they were a gentle kick, the kind I talked about earlier, to serve as a reminder for the future.

Having followed a simple process of elimination in all academic choices, I decided to take Science and with it came the accompanying baggage of preparing for JEE. Lots of classmates were going to various coaching classes and a lot of discussion in school revolved around various things that happened there. Life was going along happily, till another kick landed me at a coaching class too. Again, I was the loner -- my batch was the weekend one. There were no friends from school who had classes at the same time or even the same place as me. Once again, meeting new people, who as our chemistry teacher said were our dusman.

To cut a long story short, 6th May 2001 was the D Day (please note --- exactly 5 years ago). The day 20000 people fought it out in a day long battle. The upshot of this battle was that yours truly again landed up at a strange place devoid of any friendly faces. Once again, the slow tortuous process of meeting new people and adjusting to new places. The Healthy Interaction of course didnt help much :P.

Anyways, life again settled into its own rhythm and the strange morphed into the familiar. Life consisted of 4 month long semesters with vacations at the end. The semesters themselves consisted of various activities, only some of which had to do with academics. But the change monster struck again with a vengeance. Just as I thought that things couldnt go wrong 4 years were up. Some of my closest friends passed out and went to different corners of the world. I wondered how us dullas were going to pass the final year. Things werent so bad as I imagined. Alot of people were posted around Delhi and many turned up every weekend, leaving us confused if they had left at all. And somehow, this last year has almost passed too.

Surely but slowly, the biggest kick was coming my way. The transformation from student life to corporate life. The care free life of a student, with its time bound promotions and big vacations, the freedom to bunk classes whenever you want, the long nights spent on pointless discussions -- all this is about to be taken away ( not the pointless discussions probably, but pretty much everything else).
The only difference is that this time round, I am prepared how things will change. I was too small to comprehend the school change. Change after school was filled with uncertainities. But atleast I have some idea of where I am going to go after IIT so this change is not so random. The same old process will be started again.

Which brings us back to the biggest change --- leaving my home of than 20 years, the city that I have grown used for a new place with different climate, culture and language. The extremes of Delhi's climate will be missed as will jerky rides in buses, no respect for traffic rules etc etc. But thats a different story altogether, which will be penned probably in 2-3 months.

Practice makes a man perfect but probably one is never perfectly equiped to handle change. Tackling change has taught me one thing - resistance is futile. Sure some things are permanent but they are not particulary nice (depending on ur POV). As Benjamin Franklin once said - "Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes." Food for thought ? ;)

Why do we have Page 3 ?

2005-01-19T08:35:00.001-08:00

Of late, newspapers in Delhi have started this business about Page 3. Page 3 is the worst thing probably ever thought of in the world of newspapers; atleast it would make it to the all time stink list. So what is this Page 3 and why am I pissed off with it ?

Well Page 3 is this weird thing in the "magazine section" (the accompaniment to the main paper, which once contained interesting stuff is now mostly a tabloid) which contains useless stuff about the life of unknown people, who would have remained unknown, had not the media in its infinite wisdom decided to bestow on them celebrity status. These people could be any one ...... out of work fashion designers, fading starlets, wannabe startlets, shady females willing to expose flesh, unknown industrialists, pot-bellied politicians, socialites ( what do they do for a living ? inflict themselves on society ? :p ) .............................., in short anyone.

Well these misfits in society go to book launches, inaugrations of shops, pubs, boutiques, weddings etc. Their existence at the venue is justified by some random reason to party. I haven't seen anything useful to the reader yet (unless you are one of the aforementioned people).

The language used is also pretty sickening. It has an extremely sickly sweet tone, with loads of dears and darlings thrown in; along with embarassing nicknames of the people concerned. Oh ! Of course we know all the people; they are our old friends. Never mind that we haven't ever heard of them, never want to hear of them again; the language implies that we have lead a pretty useless life if we don't know these people.

The reason why I don't like page 3 is that it swallows up alot of pages 1 and 2 too ( sometimes even 4 :( ). That could have been devoted to some worthwhile news. Instead we are told that Mister.High-n-Mighty has been engaged to Ms. Snooty Nose. How it affects the life of any of the readers is beyond me, unless you are one of their friends, in which case you smack your lips in anticipation of the wedding dinner ( slurp! ). I don't that this number would run beyond a few hundreds at the most. With newspapers claiming circulations of the order of hundreds of thousands, these people are neglible. Yet they are forced on us.

Even as I write, I have picked up today's tabloid of a major newspaper. As said earlier, page 3 has gobbled up page 2 as well ( wonder when we start calling it Page 2+3 ?). We have the report of some fashion show, actually we have mostly pics of scantily clad women; the text is there just to justify the presence of the pics. :P

Loads of ads, the comic strips. Then shady stuff about some polo party, complete with pics. The report tells us loads of useless info; we would have been much better off without it. The names are of unknown people, in whose life I don't have the least bit of interest. These people are not even filmstars, whose lives provide alot of material for the gossip columns, they are people who we don't know and have never seen.

By now, if you haven't left already, you should been convinced that Page 3 is a pretty stupid thing. I mean why should I pay for those 3-4 pages in full colour if they are filled with crap like this. I mean, even if that space was devoted to advertisments, it would have been more useful. But shady parties makes me feel left out ( waaaaaaaaah!! they didnt call me :(( ).

So why do we have it ? They are not something you would read, unless you had absolutely nothing to do. People generally just ignore this section, they have become conditioned to behave in this manner. I suspect that the reason we have a page 3 is coz the media wants to create a class of psuedo-celebs, who are totally dependent on the media for their celebdom ( of course, the reporters get to go to parties too ;) ). So these people create news, and the media, which is forever news hungry passes this trash to us :(.

This is also a good way of advertising new restraunts, pubs, hotels, books etc. Just ensure that some these p3p ( page 3 people ) species turn up. The media is able to bloat it into a BIG event (arre bhai, if these people were there it has to be big) and perhaps ( or probably) get money for selling it. I don't know the exact reason. But believe me, there has to be some deep rooted conspiracy ;) ; otherwise why would we have something as useless as page 3 packaged as the best thing in the world of newspapers since the printing press.

Feel free to let me know if this page 3 has any use, I am really curious; and for the rest, feel free to add anything against page 3 I have left out!!!

here we go ...

2004-10-07T08:13:00.000-07:00

hi everyone, and welcome to the first serious post on this blog.

it is exam time at college and with nothing else to do, i thought that blog ka shree ganesh kiya jaaye!

a little about myself at this juncture. i am a student in india. my interests are varied -- along with the usual movies and books, i spend a lot of my time surfing aimlessly and come across some really weird stuff.

i generally have a quick opinion on nearly everything under the sun and this blog will be used primarily to air it !!

hope u find it interesting.

bye for now