World form the other side...

I never thought I would be placed in that situation so soon. Never had even
a vague idea about it.


It was sudden transformation. And it took a lot of courage. The new role
demanded a lot more responsibility and also the fear of what if
? When it came I had not thought it would come with so much
stealth.


I was enjoying my day at office. Having completed most of what I was
supposed to do; I was 2 weeks ahead of schedule. That made me suspect that
either I've improved or else the people who had estimated the time to
complete the project were pathetic, poor at estimation. Obviously being a
youngster in this young industry (merely 60 years old) I believed in the
latter. The former had no chance of acceptance. I had read somewhere
Thou know Thy the best. But at same time some words were resonating
Boss is always right . Whatever be the reason, the point is I was
ahead of schedule.


My project manager came to me and said Hi, LM. How's it going. For a
moment I thought what? What going? Confused beyond any more confusion,
perplexed I looked at him and said Comfortable. Comfortable!
Comfortable, what was supposed to be going went comfortably. I smiled at my
witty answer. Ok. So let me give you some work. For once I was very
excited, thought I might be asked to mentor the new trainee. No prizes for
guessing who (s)he was. I was being asked for last 2-3 weeks to prepare to
transform to a mentor's role. No doubts she looked beautiful.


Ok. Tomorrow 3.30 pm you take 3-4 interviews. What?
Interview! Shocked I was. I had never been on that side of the table. Have
always been the one whose ass was on fire. The interviewing panel drumming
on my bums. Hmmm. You answered this question. How about this one. Gee I
knew you couldn't! I took me a while to brush together my lost senses
and I replied, interview, well that's a difficult task and I don't think I'm
ready for it now. Oh! It shouldn't be difficult for you. You have been in
interviews. You'll do a good job. ??!


I am still as of writing very scared, what if. What if the person knows
everything I ask? Does it mean he's good or I've lost my edge? What if (s)he
doesn't answer any question, does it mean that he's bad or I'm worse in
taking an interview? What if I find him/her good enough to be recommended
and the other panel members do not, does it mean I've failed in making
judgment? What if I found him/her good enough and recommend, (s)he is hired
and then fails to perform, does it mean I've failed?


Yes and No.


Maybe some questions don't have binary answers.


Let's wait for tomorrow.


Sometime it has to be a first time, so why not it be at the first
opportunity itself!

Few good things in life

Past few weekends have been great for me. Specially the last week. Lot many good happened to me and to people around me.

My cousin took the last step to enter the black hall. The Passing> Out Parade (POP) . He's now going to Indian Military Academy, Dehradoon. After two years he'll be a commissioned officer in Indian Army. He'll wear that green uniform then. And I'll ask him to salute his elder brother and have a snap taken. He's the same boy who used to wash his feet every time he went outside. And now he's typical> army man.

My school time friend, we are still in contact even though its been more than 10 years since we met for the first time and 3 years since we last met. He was posted somewhere in Assam and now he's been transferred to the Pune air base. He's been put into the Sukhoi squadron. He was earlier with Mig21 as far as I remember. He stood first in his entire batch of air force pilots. I just can't wait to go to Pune and see him as well as the Sukhoi. In fact the excitement of seeing the bird is more than that of seeing him.

One of my 6 PG (Post grad not paying guest!) time friends is seeing girls and will probably settle down with one of them. He's getting married in next 3-4 months.

This weekend we cooked food at home and the demand was for pumpkin (kaddu) and poori, a deep fried bread kind. We made delicious pumpkin dish and 30 poori's to be savored by 3 of us.

Last week there was not much work load, so I could browse a lot. Everyday 6pm to 8pm I swam across sites, urls.

Had great fun.

This kind of week should repeat more too often.

Worst Case Scenarios

Having planned for a week long vacation with my family almost a month before, worst things start happenning.

Just before start of vacation there's network outage in the company, I cannot do any work and the work pressure mounts.

One day before I have to leave the network is alive again and to add to my woes there's a deluge of mails asking me to do "some" more work! That day I stayed back in the office till 5 in the morning to finish most of what I could finish. The vacation seemed to be too much far, too much needed.

The next day I come to office, in half sleep, with my luggage, work for few more hours,well actually 6, before I plan to leave and catch my train. I meet my Lead and say "I gotta go, have train in 1 hour". And he looks at me with hollowed eyes. "Are you leaving" with an expression on his face which suggested "Is it necessary to go?". I make a sorry face, an expression that suggested "What? I couldn't hear it. Anyways I couldn't understand it. You know I as planning for it for last 1 month" "BYE".

I reach the railway station.

I'm very tired and want to sleep. Habitual of the habit (!) I browse through the reservation list to see how many F's are there in the list. None of my interest. Too old or too young. There is a group of students in the next coupe. They make my life hell. Playing Antakshri all night. Yelling at the top of their voice, the act they fondly called as singing, they ruined my night. Humble request falls falt on its face. Its already 1 in the morning; I had boarded the train at 5 in the evening. I fell asleep. The cries and yells were now acting as lullabies.

Morning 5'o clock. Its time to alight the train. Destination.

2 days into the vacation.

Accusotmed to doing something in the office, being busy, I end up in a shock. Boredom, nothing to do. The evenings turn into a torture. I am forced to watch those mega soap operas on Sony Television, Start Plus... all those which mysteriously always start with alphabet K. Kyonki Saas bh kabh bahu thi, KKusum, Kahani ghar ghar ki. Amazingly all the serials seem to have same cast same plot and possibly same ending!

Twice in a day I start a discussion with my uncle and loose the battle. But like Rana Pratap who ate bread made out of grass but didn'tsurrender, I continue my war.

The TV remote control malfunctions unannounced. I can't watch WildOn or Poor Man's Bikini Beach on AXN. To those who find it difficult to understand why, we in INDIA still avoid doing some things infront of elders, which might be as mundane as smoking, even when we are parents of dozen children!

I go to a VCD/DVD shop to get some movies to watch. The store (?) has none except "Bride and Prejudice" and that too in hindi "Balle Balle: Amrtisarto LA". I thought "Dheere Dheere yahan se sarak le".

Come Diwali and I am in no mood to fire some crackers. "Loudmouth, what happened no crackers?" For once I had a good feeling of refraining from polluting the air, not burning those fancy fireworks, the products of an industry which employs a lot many children. Well this was a ephemeral feeling. But those raid of questions certainly made me feel like grabbing all the crackers from everybody I could catch and fire them all at onego.

Finally, Diwali and come a lot many invitations for dinner and lunch. Eating is my favourite hobby pastime and also possibly the only kind of work Ienjoy. In fact I at 3kgs of bitter gourd (karela) in this one week.I'm so fond of it. The connoisseur of food had a good time eating all the dishes and that too in huge quantities.

Back to usual. Same old food served by company caterer, same old cubicle...

And so was born the legend ...

Not so long ago in a non-descript village in countryside people did talked about this Legend, nicknamed DD. The old called him Debar Donst but the youths preferred to call him Dare Devil.
The children couldn't understand what it was, nor were the stories of this DD narrated to them so often. This village, like many other of kinds, had a cemetery not very far from the village limits. A cemetery not like other cemeteries. This had an eerie silence surrounding it, a cast of ill omens. This cemetery lived in the shadows of the dead.
For ages grandparents told their grandchildren, mothers frightened their children if the kids didn't have their glass of milk or the meal finished. Going out in the night was considered darest of the dares. Bedtime stories were told before the sun settled in its nest in west. Doors were closed before moon lightened up. People asleep before the stars came out. This was the village with a burial ground, which used to become the playground of the dead. So was said and told to others. Nobody knew how is started. Nobody ever questioned. Nobody ever dared to venture out and find the truth. Like the universal truth the dictum of gray haired people was accepted and honored. But as with any other place, as with any other story, there was one called DD.

Though he wasn't too brave and daringthough he wasn't too smart to be an outright maverick, he had many dares under his belt. Having traveled a lot to many distant lands across the seven oceans he didn't subscribe to the ghost stories his parents told him and their parents told to them and their parents told to their parents.
At a very young age he had traveled to far off lands of long eyed people. It was told that the country, called China, was full of dragons fire spitting beasts that could fly. Strange was the land and strange were its people. DD had also been to someplace where everywhere there was ice. As far as one could see it was ice. He called it the land of the Queen. Such strange were the ways and equally strange was DD's life. When DD came back from his tour he revolted against the dictates of the village council and the fear of the cemetery. He said he would go to the cemetery and come back alive to prove that everybody was wrong all along. They were captivated by the imaginations of their ancestors and riveted by their own imaginations and uncanny conclusions.

That day he waited till it was dark. A lunar eclipse. Even the stars didn't dare to have a peek at what was being done. An old man already on the verge of death was asked to keep a watch on DD that he did what he said he would do. He entered the cemetery roamed around. Prayed at his mother's grave, talked something to the grave of his neighbor and then started to return. The ghosts as if were woken up by his prayers and his talking were waiting to pounce on him and shred him to tatters. The moment he got up from the grave he felt his trousers being pulled from behind. Somebody was holding the end and pulling it. GHOSTS! The kingdom of DEAD was indeed alive. He saw a flash of light cross the sky. His eyes reddened, he started sweating profusely, breathing very hard. DD felt strong pain near his left shoulder. Someone was pressing hard on his chest. Someone was trying to gorge out his thumping heart. He had a cardiac arrest and he died on the spot. The old man saw everything. He was in tears, shaking as he witnessed this gory act. He had seen DD pray and talk to so many graves. He has seen him walking and now he was seeing him dead. The ghosts had feasted on him. It was more than what he could endure. The he had been a witness to all, the kid growing into a man until now was, witness to all his mischiefs and now witness to his beastly drama of death.

He had also seen his trousers get entangled in that thorny bush. In the morning the villagers took his body and buried it in the same place he had fallen dead.

And so was born the legend of DD, Dare Devil for some and Daring Dude for others who had challenged the creatures of the other world and laid down his life.Even now going out in the night is considered darest of the dares. Bedtime stories are told before the sun settles in its nest in west. Doors are closed before moon lightens up. People go to sleep before the stars come out.

END.

Different flavors of Suicide

Agreement: If you read beyond this point you agree to be 18 years or
older.

"This seems to be surreal but nice"

Have you ever tried committing suicide? Yes, then you are pathetic
looser to not have tried again without making all those mistakes! Go back to
design board and plan a fool proof and "effective"
way.

No, I knew it or else you wouldn't have been reading this, you would have
been working on a new plan.


To explain a few niceties about suicide and types of suicides:


1. Suicide. Plain and simple like those you read in
newspaper and see in movies. No thrill, no excitement in committing suicide,
color-less, flat. Way of the losers or laz(y)-ers.


2. Auto Suicide . This one is more interesting. Don't
compare this with the Biography and Auto-biography analogy, as then you'd be
grossly confused, like those Theory Of Relativity Concepts.
Auto-suicide differs from suicide in the intent for suicide.
Suicide is out of desperation, with hopes in abysmally low state, life in
deep shit, in stinky gutter (well almost all gutters are stinky, though I
never verified); it is more stable and persistent, both the feeling and the
aftereffects! Precursors to Auto-Suicide are more temporal in nature. This
chain of self-sustaining desires can be initiated by both good and bad
feelings; the research has mostly shown it to be good feelings, willingness
of being happy. Auto-Suicide attempts are most effective and rarely
does the deceased person haunt the woods or whatever he would otherwise have
liked to haunt


3. Automated (Auto) Suicide . This term is bequeathed
to the English language by the new world driven by technology. With
automation spreading its wings into every conceivable domain of operation,
suicide, a field, which required extreme courage and determination, is not
left untouched. To help those who fail on both fronts there are Automated
(Auto) Suicide packages, 100% result oriented and very dirt cheap,
neglig(ee) -ble rates of failures, available off the shelf at a very low and
affordable cost. Here the readers have the freedom of asking me "Why does
money come into picture?" Loot, plunder get the cash or else steal the
package itself and who cares what they do after You've used the services??
Why Kamakazi pilots wear helmets?? Effortless, is what the promoters
say.


4. Third person Suicide Murder is a euphemism for
this.



This post is dedicate to Brayandranath

Test of Macroni as Lunch Diet

One day this week we were served a special salad. Macroni Salad.
Waiting for our turn to serve us some, my colleague turned friend
and I started talking about this new dish. Actually he coined this term
"Test of Macroni as Lunch Diet". To me it looked like as if somebody had
drilled into Maggi noodles, boiled it and then zoomed in it and
served it. As we waited for our turn we saw that most of people, who had
served themselves lavish quantities of Macroni Salad, take it as is
to dump in waste bags. We got suspicious but decided lets test it out. Being
the gourmet we are, we served ourselves plenty of it, looked nice the way it
was kept in the bowl. Slimy looking curved things with black patches on it,
more like as if somebody had taken the spinal chord of a goat, pulled out
everything inside it just keeping the protective tissue sheath, washed it in
an antiseptic and served it for eating. A perfect Chinese dish.


A thought just flew by, What if they were actually some kind of insects,
strange creatures something like maggots, which would suddenly come to life
and start crawling on the table; What if they grew all of a sudden with
their tentacles closing in on everybody first me and then my unfortunate
friend. And then say to their less fortunate friends "Hey! Those fresh,
nicely dressed humans tasted well. Real Good. Burrp. Burrp"


"Move your ass you day dreamer!" yelled my friend. The (un)usual research
process started. First came the visual inspection. I need not comment on it.
Then the taste.


Eeeh! Pathetic. That's all we could say. It seemed to us that they wanted to
dispose off some stale Marconi so they dressed it up as salad!



We then puked on the seats of all the cars in the parking our lot
(exaggerated event) to our heart content, or the 'seats' content!


Test of Macroni as Lunch Diet failed miserably.

The other day I was reading a novel about a student, a country bumpkin, from a nondescript town in India going to America for higher studies. This is what he wrote to his brother about his first flight to America.

nZai.

Beloved younger brother,

    Greetings to Respectful Parents. I am hoping all is well with health and wealth. I am fine at my end. Hoping your end is fine too. With God’s grace and Parents’ Blessings I am arriving safely in America and finding good apartment near University. Kindly assure Mother that that I am strictly consuming vegetarian food only in restaurants though I am not knowing if cooks are Brahmins. I am constantly remembering Dr. Verma’s advice and strictly avoiding American women and other unhealthy habits. I hope Parents’ Prayers are residing with me.

    Younger Brother, I am having so many things to tell you I am not knowing where to start. Most surprising thing about America is it is full of Americans. Everywhere Americans, Americans, big and white, it is little frightening. The flight from New Delhi to New York is arriving safely thanks to God’s Grace and Parents’ Prayers and mine too. I am not able to get to go to bathroom whole time because I am sitting in corner seat as per Revered Grandmother’s wish. Father is rightly scolding that airplane is flying too high to have good view. Still please tell her I have done needful.

    But, brother, in next two seats are sitting two old gentle ladies and if I am getting up they are put in lot of botheration so I am not getting up for bathroom except when plane is stopping for one hour at London. Many foods are getting served in carts but I am only eating cashew nuts and bread because I am not knowing what is food and what is meat. I am having good time drinking 37 glasses of Coca-Cola.

    They are rolling down a screen and showing film but I am not listening because air hostess ladies are selling headphones for 2 dollars which is Rs. 26 and in out beloved Jajau town we can sit in balcony seats in Regal Talkies for only Rs. 3. I am asking lady if they are giving student discount but she is too busy. I am also asking for more Coca-Cola but she is looking like she is weeping and walking away. I think perhaps she is not understanding proper English.

    Then I am sleeping long time after London and when I am waking it is like we are flying over sea of lights. Everywhere, brother, as far as I am seeing there are lights lights. It is like God has made carpet of lights. Then we are landing in New York and plane is going right up to the door so that we are not having to walk in cold. I must say Americans are very advanced. And as I am leaving airplane, air hostess is giving me one more can of Coca-Cola. Her two friends are also with her but why they are laughing so much I do not know. I think Americans are strange but friendly people in their hearts. I hope she was not laughing for racial. Perhaps she was feeling shy earlier.

    Then I am going to long bathroom. As I am leaving I am making first friend in America. This is gentleman named Joe, who is standing at door and as I am opening it he is holding out hand so I am shaking it and telling him my name and he is telling me his. I am telling him if he is ever coming to Jajau he can ask for National hair Oil Factory. If I have not returned from Higher Studies please tell Father that if a black gentleman named Joe is visiting Jajau he may kindly do needful.

    In this way I feel each and every one of us is serving as Ambassador of out beloved Motherland. Joe is doubtful I feel because he says “Far out, man, far out,” but I am reassuring him that India is only 16 hours away by plane and that is not very far. I think he is accepting this because he is not saying anything any more.

    Next I go to place marked “Baggage” as Father has advised and suddenly place I am sitting starts to move throwing me. It is like python we once saw in forest, only rattling and with luggage bouncing on its back and sometimes leaping to attack passengers. I am also throwing my self on bag before it is escaping. I think if I am not wrestling it down it would revert to plane and back home India. I am only joking of course.

    Before this I am meeting very friendly gentleman at Immigration desk. I do not know why all relatives had warned against this man, because he is so friendly. He is talking English strangely but is having kind heart because he is asking me about nuts and I am saying that I am liking very much and eating many on plane. “Totally, totally nuts,” he is saying, which I feel American expression for someone fond of cashew nuts.
Before this he is showing friendliness by asking “How is it going?” I am telling him fully and frankly about all problems and hopes, even though you may feel that as American he may be too selfish to bother about decline in price of hair oil in Jajau town. But, brother, he is listening very quietly with eyes on me for ten minutes then we are having friendly talk about nuts and he is wanting me to go.

    At Customs, brother, I am getting big shock. One fat man is grunting at me and looking cleverly from small eyes. “First Visit?” he is asking, “Yes,” I am agreeing. “Move on,” he is saying making chalk marks on bags. As I am picking up bags he is looking directly at me and saying “Watch your ass.”

    Now, brother, this is wonderful. How is he knowing we are purchasing donkey? I think they are knowing everything about everybody who is coming to America. They are not allowing anybody without knowing his family and financial status and other things. And we are only buying donkey two days before my departure. I think they are keeping all information in computers. Really these Americans are too advanced.

    But, brother, not I am worrying. Suppose this is CIA keeping watch or else how they can know about our donkey? Anyway please do not tell Mother and Father as they are worrying , but lock all doors and windows. If CIA wants to recruit me to be spy in Jajau, I will gladly take poison before betraying our Motherland.

  
 Then I am going out and cousins are waiting and
receiving me warmly. I will write soon after settling down.

                                                                                                                                                Your brother.

What amused me so much was that this guy’s respect for his Parents and Grandparents, even their prayers, and Motherland and everything other related to his Motherland is also reflected in this writing. Did you notice the capitalized words? The next hilarious thing was imagining this person at the immigration counter, who out of courtesy asked our fellow “How is it going?” and our hero pours out all that he had to say about everything. The immigration person in bewilderment says “Man you are nuts” and our hero says, “Yes I like nuts.” I rolled over the floor like anything. But the king of show was ass and CIA keeping watch even on the donkey?

Definitely a wonderful reading.

Aboriginals Unknown

Aboriginals Unknown

"I believe certainty is simply an illusion. At one point or another, we all indulge in this illusion because we need some sort of order to justify our actions. How can we put one foot in front of the next if we're always afraid of the probability we might stub our toe, step on a nail, or trip on a stone? I'm fairly sure I'll be brushing my teeth in the morning, but I don't KNOW this for certain -- I could die of a stroke or a heart attack in the middle of the night, or the Tooth Fairy in a fit of rage might come by and rob me of all my teeth. Uncertainty is an inherent quality of every particle, action, and moment in our world. It's a poetic way for The Creator (whichever you believe in) to make things a little more interesting for us.

So if you're certain that you WILL BECOME the President of the United States, a movie star, a porn star, a chicken farmer, a computer engineer, whatever, then I'll say you probably will get closer than most, and I'll even say you will probably succeed, but maybe you won't.

Then again, is that really so terrible?

In a world dominated by results, numbers, money, efficiency, and the need to succeed, it's natural for us to be raised thinking in these terms. But it's not the only way to think.What we forget as adults is what we knew so inherently as children. You might argue this point, but I believe that as children, we had a totally different mechanism for enjoying life. As children, our pleasures were rooted in the act of discovery: learning to play a new sport, finding Easter eggs during scavenger hunts, figuring out how a Rubik's cube works, or eating ice cream for the first time. If you don't believe me, try observing a baby for just a few minutes. Infants have a miraculous, indomitable spirit for learning -- they will gaze in wonder at even the most mundane of things, simply because everything they see is new to them. We see less and less of this as we grow older, and that is exactly why "the heart of a child" becomes so endearing, valuable, and scarce with coming age.

As we grow older, we begin placing everything in terms of a goal -- we want that promotion, new car, bowling trophy, trophy wife, etc. Although not so terrible in and of itself, these goals can become mindless compulsions. We forget the REASON we wanted these things in the first place, becoming lost in an obsessive delirium, when all we really wanted was to be happy. I myself have fallen into this trap many times, and I still don't know all the reasons for it. Maybe it's our competitive spirit -- we must win to prove our worth. Maybe it's our desperate need to define ourselves against the billions of other people trying to define themselves. Or maybe it's some more primal desire -- instead of urinating on trees, we build up stockpiles of accolades, expensive toys, and superficial trinkets that we hope others will recognize as status. The exact mechanism isn't important; it's good enough that we recognize this aspect of our lives.

So I'll ask you now, when was the last time you had fun? I don't mean the last time you were in a drunken stupor that helped you forget your troubles. I mean some genuine, wholesome fun that let you laugh out loud without embarassment or self-consciousness. If you haven't had that kind of fun in more than 24 hours, then go to your best friend, drag him/her out to watch a movie, grab a cup of coffee, play some games, learn something new. And if you don't have that kind of time on your hands, then why not put on your favorite song and dance -- no one's watching, so you can do it in your underwear if you want. You'll feel happier afterwards, even if you didn't think that was possible. My point is, you don't need a reason or purpose in every little thing you do. Sometimes it's just enough to do things because they're fun -- children do this without a moment's hesitation."

Is he smart ?

Looking at his son, whom he was seeing for the first time, "Is he smart?" Forrest asked Jenny. And I had wet eyes with tears running down my cheeks, as I watched Forrest Gump for the nth time.

Lieutenant, this is my Jenny!

The unforgettable, lost Voice

I was new in the city. Felt lonely for first few days. It so happened that one day loitering on one of those most frequented by females street I heard a group of people listening very eagerly to what a lady had to say. I couldn't see who that lady was. Not withstanding the fact that I normally do not listen over shoulders or evesdrop on others, I got immensly curious about the speaker. The speaker had built an aura aorund herself. Everybody present heard as there was no tomorrow, this is going to be the first and the last!

The speaker probably was all too concious of the listener's emotions, was putting in a lot of energy and excitement in what she had to say. I was glued to the road. The voice had certianly enchanted me. Some kind of hypnotization, maybe. As the primary motive of being on that road lost it's very source of being high in priority I returned back home.

Lazily turning in bed on that sleep deprived night, my thoughts inadverently returned again and again, involuntarily to the speaker. She had so much charm in her speech. The speaker was certainly a good orator, not that I'm a very good critic of speakers, but the speaker was awsome. Or else how can one make a group of so many listen so eagerly?

Next day I again went to that most frequented by females street, although this time it was more to see if the speaker was there and to listen her. The priorities had now reshuffled and reorganized and now listening to this no face speaker gained high priority. Good fortunes that day. The speaker was again there and with the same corwd.

I realised that I had fallen fatally in love with the voice. Not the speaker. How I wished I could hear her voice everyday. How mcuh I wished every morning I could her voice, the first thing in the morning. What if my alarm clock instead of yelling in its irritating tone I could have her voice in it, a soothing pleasureable and once more kind of call! How much I had wished that the first Good morning and the last Good night was her's. Why not my whole life be stacked with her voice anywhere and everywhere.

Fatal attractions of last kind.

Then Gods favoured me. It so happened that what ever I thought of was turning out to be true. I woke up and the first voice I heard was her. I could sense her so close that I could feel her lungs pump air into her vocal chords. I could listen to her daily 24/7.

2 years have passed since then. I still like to hear her but the vigourous intensity of want has died. I still like to hear her but now it stands last in the priorities. I still hear her but to kill time. She still rejuvinates me but not to the extent she used to do earlier. For me she has lost her edge.

Sunaina Lal. Radio Jockey (RJ). Radio City @ 91 FM.

Ghosts. I’m screwed. My life in deep shit!

So what happens when a soul is desperate? Desperate for everything. Say craving for anything that can exist on earth. Deep craving. This is what happened to me and one of my friends. We thought a lot about it. We cannot necessarily get all what we seek.

And finally we’ll die at age of 60 half satisfied; more the years more the desperation and as many more desires; shorter the life lesser the desperation, lesser the desires. Buddy, why not start dope, cigarettes and all that stuff. This way we can cut short our life! Suicide was never an option. It takes too much of courage to do so. If you do not believe me then see one of the suicide videos (shot by a Russian couple), you can download them from Kazaa. Even the mere thought of it the beats the shit out of me! Moreover we never wanted to die as cowards but as knights in shining armor who unfortunately died in their quest.

Hmmm.

Murder each other? Nah. We are not killers. Wraparound. Dope cigarettes blah blah… All that which cuts short your life by few seconds every time you relish them.

How does that help? Well it’s simple. Either me or my friend would die earlier. We’d become ghosts, for some of our desires were unfulfilled when we breathed our last. The one who becomes the ghost would kill the other or drive him to the limit so that the desire to get killed kills him. A heart attack. Something. Something fatal. But, wait a minute.

Darn, that suspicion! No matter how good friend we arte this thing never bids adieu.

What if after becoming ghost my friend doesn’t come to my rescue? What if he doesn’t kill me?

I’m screwed. My life in deep shit.

A Tribute!

We brought them home young. They were brother and sisters. In their clan nobody was brother to any sister. I use the term to identify the fact that they were born to the same mother and see their relationship in the way we see in our world. Both were beautiful naughty little fellows. When we brought them home I too was a child, a little child. So I had company. We used to play together, go for a walk together. Do everything except some things, together. When I used to come back from school and later on vacation from college they used to jump on me and my first day used to pass being with them. I loved them so much.

He was macho man type. Chasing all the boys and girls in the neighborhood. Chasing and yelling at the top of his voice every vehicle that honked more than necessary. She was more homely type. Every morning before sunrise she would come and sneak into my blanket and sleep close to me. I could feel her breath. Ah! Bad-Breath. Both were very fond of milk, mangoes and green vegetables. They’d eat any vegetable, of course if they’d like it!

Some years later he, the one known for his notoriety in the neighborhood, one who would loiter around with those of his likes, contracted a contagious communicable disease. The docs told it was some kind of skin infection. We never wanted to do so but had no other choice to save him from all the misery and also save us. We had to mercy kill him.

Now she feels all too lonely. Mom and dad are at office and she feels all alone at home. I can feel how happy she feels when we all come back home. She never leaves us; and gets very upset when she finds we are going out for a couple of days and not taking her with us.

She is getting old and would die soon. I already miss him and would soon miss her too.

My pets.
Tuffy and Tipsy

Distance leads to enchantment

We were having our lunch on one of those mundane routine office days. Actually we here refers to Loudmouth and Recursive Sindhanai. Happily enjoying the lunch, which we felt tasted all the same it did yesterday and the day before yesterday and those innumerable days before all those yesterdays, we drooled (well actually we did) over a new trainee who had joined. In fact she was sitting few tables ahead of us actually 6. Well 6 isn’t that great a distance when you feel so close to that anonymous face. We talked how good she looked, her smile, the dimples and what not. But then sometimes she looked all too flat , igniting no feeling either of want or denial. Slowly we drifted to more intellectual Posh Bullshit. Don’t ask me what it means because then you’ll have to endure what we lived through those six months when we had "company", of a person to whom we were the Hawkiest people alive on the face of earth! Believe me it’s a real pain and you know where.

Having finished our lunch we moved on to have a short walk before we settled in our seats; well actually that’s a euphemism for me smoking after lunch and Recursive eagerly watching how much of it is left to burn, both the cigarette and me. (!) Then. There. We saw that trainee again. Walking a slow paced walk with her friends, talking something we couldn’t hear or understand, though we did want to. She crossed us.

Yuck. Goodness gracious. What a look! What a face! What a smile! What teeth!

True very true. Distance leads to enchantment.

Good from far;

Far from Good.

Dementor. The guard of …

Silently he comes near, without your notice he’ll do so much harm that no creature in your worst nightmares can do to you.

Dementor.

I have seen the dementor, a real life dementor. He is as horrific as those seen in the movie Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaaban. But unlike the dementors in the movie, who suck every last bit of happy memory every good feeling, this dementor of mine sucks every ounce of confidence, every bit of belief you have in yourself that you can achieve what you aim for. The faith that makes you do all that effort you do to reach where you wanted. Imagine you are all geared up to take that first small step of your long journey and then he comes to say that’s not all possible. “You can not do it this way. That way it can be done but then there are lot more problems. Why not do it the easiest way though it’s not all that elegant (?). In fact the idea has some inherent contradictions that make it far from being worth called an idea. You can never make it.”

He wears spectacles and is composed of bones and only bones. In fact its bones only covered with skin. You can actually call him a moving alive hangar on which somebody has hung some clothes. So thin and light that if you sneeze he would be blown off. In fact we tried a lot many times to do that. Still no success. Someday we will.

He calls himself Ash. I don’t know why! Maybe he’s a great fan of Aishwarya Rai that he calls himself with her pet name “Ash”. Or is he motivated by the mythological bird phoenix which rises from its own ashes. Why phoenix? Because when people try to reduce him to ashes by turning a blind eye to him, ignoring him he comes back again and again and again; and with all the more force.

He’s one guy to be dreaded most of times but many a times he’s a good pal for all the jokes he cracks. But alas they too …

Paap(Sins) and Punya/Anti Sins

This weekend I was thinking about Paap and Punya which is Sins and anti-Sins(?). I wondered why people devote so much of their life in praying to God, doing all that penance, starving themselves, indulging in all that self-denial. The thought of me being too loud an example of a soul having gone awry in this physical material world weighed too heavy on me. I started feeling too low of myself, so I began to study. And here is my final conclusion:
King Bhaageerath, the great King in Hindu mythology who prayed to God Bramha to get Goddess or 'Ma' Ganga on earth so that his forefathers could get the final peace, salvation.
So he did tapasya, penance, for half of his life. He denied himself food and water and stood on one leg all the time until God Bramha appeared. So his highness King Bhaageerath asked O Lord! I prayed for you for half of my life why did it take you so long to appear? God replied O my Son! All this time until now you have done tapasya with unwavering dedication. But listen. Your ancestors were great Kings. They did rule and many ruled without any mercy for the common man. Many did atrocities on the people. So they gathered Paap (sins). Till this time all the penance that you and your forefathers had done, all the Punya (brownie points, anti sins(!) ) that you all gathered were spent in counter balancing those sins. The day your Punya got more than sins by one unit of atomic measurement I appeared. King Bhaagerath understood so did I.

Since I do not have any balance sheet of how much punya or paap (sins) have been done before me, could be either way, but I don’t know. So if I now start doing tapasya (penance) then it could very well be the case that I do it for my rest of the life and none of the punya, brownie points that I earn actually help me get salvation. They all go to compensate for whatever paap was done by my forefathers, unless they were all saints (Oh! How hard I wish they would have been). So I grind my ass all my life denying myself all the worldly pleasure (read UFO) (read the second comment), all that masti, all that bindaas life ishtyle (what the fuck that ever means) and get nothing for myself. Gone are the days when Menakas danced around a hermit else even then,without all those punya's in my pocket, it would have been a better scenario, we could have killed as many birds with just one half of a stone!

So Baap bindaas jeene ka. Bhaad main gaya punya aur jahanuum main gaye paap!
Matlab To hell with paap and punya (brownie points).

As MunnaBhai MBBS said Aish kara nu, Majja nu life

Laugh.

So I had been on a long vacation to my home. After 1 year. Had a lot of good experiences. Changed a lot. Witnessed many humorous incidents where I laughed and rolled over the floor like anything.

I. This is about the son, about a year old, of lady who was doing Ph.D under my mother. So a caretaker mostly looked after this little kid, both the parents had to go to the office. Poor Kid. So this caretaker used to say Accha hai (It's good) and this is what the kid learnt and this is what this kid always said. So one fine day the kid’s aunt, father's sister, was eating mangoes while this kid was sleeping. Just as the aunt was about gulp down the first bite the kid woke up and said Accha hai. Poor aunt she was so embarrassed, and I who witnessed the whole episode was head over heels lauffin.

II. I was enjoying the evening tea, looking over the balcony thinking how much my colony had changed. while doing so I realized that there was this Honda Activa oscillating between the ends of the main road of the colony. Putting my specs where they are usually supposed to be I saw a fair, beautiful girl probably in her twelfth grade riding her bike up and down the poles (!). To enjoy this show were a bunch of guys sitting on every place which could accommodate their bum(-py) base of at least six. I too started to enjoy the free show, then suddenly. SCREEEEEcH. There was a twist in the fairytale. The Honda slipped and the princess fell flat on the road. The onlookers lauffed, so did I, and left. The poor princes, I can never understand how can a princess be poor(?), brushed her dress and riding slowly left the road. I didn't see her again for next couple of days.

III. If you have traveled on Indian rail-network you would have certainly found these. You can actually sense them by that peculiar clapping sound. For a second you are compared to every other hero in the Bollywood and you pay a heavy price for it. So this was when I was returning back from home. This guy was sitting in the next coupe. When this troupe approached him Oye Hritik, Salman la de de this guy very irritatingly said I have been giving money since last day and have almost given Rs. 150. The troupe very calmly said Those would have been from U.P, M.P and Maharashtra. We are from Andhra Pradesh.

IV. This guy in flashy clothes, humming some English chart buster and trying his ring tones every now then. The one I'm so modern and different from others kind. I couldn't understand why he behaved so cos I didn't find any good-looking females in the compartment. Anywayz, so this guy for some reason to show brave he his goes to the door of the bogie and sits at the door with his legs on the footboard.See I'm so cool kind. After some time he came back red face holding his leg. A big branch of a tree had hit him on his toes. The show had a big scratch mark on it and his foot had gone pale blue with swelling. Fracture for sure. Good for shoe that it was there to save his foot from any more damage. I had a nice time laughing for all that he did.

V. To endure a 3-day train journey in summers and that too when you are going towards the oven, read north, its pain in You know where. The pain was assuaged by the presence of lot many kids below 1 year of age. Though their crying was sometimes irritating but they were good pastime during the day. Felt like watching the Kid Videos on Discovery Channel.

One more for accusations...

Ok so now it seems that controversies and accusations have a natural liking for me. Male Chauvinist Pig. Interesting. By the way I couldn't understand that why anything despicable is always compared to pig? In fact I would be honored to be compared to a pig. Do you know how much it helps the cities? It cleans all the garbage! Do you know how much it helps the 'farmers' in France or Italy somewhere there, to find that much-valued underground mushroom. For all that help the pig gives to us we are always there to make it a benchmark for lowliness in everything, character, behavior...!

So coming back to MCP (Male Chauvinist Pig).

When I could understand the dynamics of the society we live in and the complex networks of dependencies amongst individuals, how families are structured, what roles different people have to play in it, etc. I would stare at them in amazement. How complex yet so simple. I was trying to understand the role of females in the society, how they affect it. The newspaper and the TV were all too informative. Conclusions: The females are an oppressed lot, denied opportunities, education and almost everything. So I became a supporter of women liberation, equal rights and everything the NGOs find to come to limelight.

But then something happened. Tip of an iceberg so to say??

Job. Equal rights for men and women for job opportunities. A man gets a job and a family of 4 has at least one bread earner; mostly its two, the man of the house and the woman. So far so good.

All earning men do not mind marrying a non-earning woman. So a family always has at least one bread earner, the man. If both man and woman have a job, that increases the purchasing power of the family to live a modestly luxurious life. Right. But see it the other way round.

Will a woman be willing to marry a non-earning man?? Maybe, but I haven't seen it. See the matrimonials, you'll find it there. NRI, Earning 6 digit salary, good company, MNC blah blah blah.

So that job that goes to the woman if had been given to a man would have one more family have a person earning! Right.

Do all these rhetoric about women rights commensurate with the complex nature of our society?

You may say I'm wrong.

Introspection... Realizing Self...

Hi guys and the others,

I know every time someone writes something ... I give a reply even if its just bakwaas (bullshit) ...
Please don't be angry with me as this is the only way I can get through the 8 hours in office...also I am this kind of person who has to reply... See don't u see all this makes me the affected part... It makes me feel like a bait.

Sometimes I am so vela (one with plenty of free time to loiter around with any wierd stupid "idea") that I keep writing to myself even if it's bullshit... and of course I am prompt in replying or commenting to myself.

In the two years that I've spent in college it was really uneventful for me... nobody noticed me... and whenever people did they always thought I am a loudmouth only... (so that's why my blog is Loudmouth) what to do.

Now in the mails and blog posts also people are just tripping upon on me instead of recognizing the talent that I have. I am really a very amusing and bemusing fellow... see the smiles I bring on ur faces with whatever i scribble!

Please accept my mails, my posts with a smile and consider them as a work of art because I spend a lot of my faltu waqt (free waste time(??)) only on them. Its not my aim to offend people and I dont pick on XXX by choice... its a matter of habit...(whether i make sense or nonsense)

Hope from now on u guys will recognise my potential

Love TT

I'm learning to be modest.

An abridged and adapted version.

Probability of me getting married! Very Low!

Everybody around me is getting married. It seems as though if one doesn't get married now one wouldn't ever get married. Some sort of very very good omen. So I thought I would first use my brain, whatever of it was there and is left, to see if I could really get married and if so then what 's the probability.

The Indian Census report gives a lot many details which I've used to get a dismal result.

The sex ratio in India is 933 females for every 1000 males. That gives 495,738,169 females in all, residing in India. The prospects of getting married looked very good until I started peeling off this figure.

Living far away form my home I'd definitely like to have my from a nearby city or some city in the state so that whenever I visit my parents we both can squeeze meeting both of our in-laws in that brief vacation. The census report states that of all the females there are 30% of them from my state. So the number now is 148,721,405.7 females. I can safely discard the 0.7 female, obviously I can't marry 0.7 female. A weird thought.

Being a literate I would like to have a literate wife. The census report says of all the females 54.16% are literate. So that brings down the figure to 80,547,537 females. Almost half, as expected. Being hindu I would like to marry a hindu girl. Hindus being a majority, I can lavishly assume 70% of population being hindu. The number of probables reduce to 56,383,276 . Even now there are pretty good chances of me getting married. But there are still more filters society, my family and myself have put.

The would be bride should be of my caste. The hindu caste system is very complex: there's caste and then a sub caste and lot more. So there are 40% belonging to my caste. The number of females dwindle to 22,553,310. Even now the picture seemed to be pretty interesting.

These were all the necessary "traits", if I may, for girl to be eligible for being my match. These are mandatory eligibility requirements from my family. Roger that.

But putting some sense to it, not all these many females would be of age to marry. Some 10+2 level mathematics reveal that 40% are of age to marry. Hmmm. The number of females now are 9,021,324 . I would definitely have a working wife, that gives much more space to "breathe", when in evening you both come back home tired from work nobody's interested or in mood for that must have husband-wife fights! :) Joke. That gives you a lot of spending power and you can give your children a lot more than you probably had. There are 57% working ladies. So the probables lessen to 5,142,154. Also, I surely do not want my wife to be a doctor or journalist. Meaning, there are few fields of work I'd prefer my wife to work in. Assuming 40% of them are in the domain which I feel my should be wife. Then there are.... 2,056,861 females.

Definitely I would like to have my wife in a good paying job or else what's the point in a professional working lady?? 50%. Left are only 1,028,430. Now comes the funniest part. 60% are single, non-divorced, widowed. A necessary prerequisite pushes down the number to 617,058 . I want my wife to earn good, because I also take a handsome salary, if not now then the time I would get married. Nevertheless, I would prefer my wife to earn but not more than me. If not then it leads to a bit of insecurity in lives of couples, the feeling of one-upmanship; I've seen a lot many couples end their relationship. Numbers reduced by 60% (a conservative percentage) to 370,235

I've always(??) dreamt my wife having long hairs. Census surely doesn't say anything about it, but I can fairly assume an average 50%. 185,117 females.

Of all, whatever is left. Since, I live in a far city my wife would have to relocate to this city. Some probable might not want to.30% (a conservative assumption) striked off. Left: 129,582. Oh! one more necessary condition 10% would be in my blood relation. So only 116,624 can be found suitable.

No one would like to marry a gril from a family whose lineage is bit ... Good family, I'd prefer saying. At least I think this matters. 40% of them preferred. 46,649 left.

Of all those remaining a very extravagant assumption, after all it's me who's going to be married and if I don't make those lavish assumptions I wouldn't get married; 20% of them would have a horoscope which will match my horoscope. Horoscopes are a big thing in Hindu marriages. So 9329 females are left. Now I'm getting bit jittery.

Being the kind of asshole I've been in framing all those necessary requirements and those filters to screw my married life even before I have started one, I'm no one to deny the females to have their own pre-requisites for their grooms. Being overconfident I assume I'd pass the entry-level test in 60% of cases. So that makes the number of probables 5597.

But this world is full of competition. I'm not the only guy who's going to get married. There are plenty of males on look out. Many of those would be of my state, would be working in the city where I work, would be of my religion and cast. Some might even have the same filters, which I have. Furthermore, for men, they might be divorced, widowed or whatever this is not a critical filter. Also there are many more males than females. I make a very conservative assumption of these stags who are on lookout and assume their number to be anywhere near or equal to 6000.

So my probability of getting married is 0.93 or 93%. Even though that's a very good probability figure or say chances of getting married, but my soul sinks when I consider all that conservative assumptions to prevent the number of ‘eligibles’ from falling below any "noticeable" levels, or those liberal assumptions to bring more into the figures. Those were all assumptions to increase the number and the actual number could be much less. The probability, chances of me getting married are abysmally low.

If you understand what havoc misleading statistics and using percentages without knowing what actually they do or mean and using them wherever you want, can create then you know this thing is all stupid.

If not then this is a nightmare from which someone shouldn’t ever ever wake up!

Amnesia or what?

Ok, so this is about my friend up till now but from 1st July my colleague. We both are joining the same MNC. Don’t ask me what they saw in me, leave about him. I guess they didn’t see anything so they thought everything is so deep that retrieving anything in the small time, the time for interview, is not possible.

Anywayz back to our friend. So this guy shifted to a place nearby, some place, which is close to office; only 4 kms away. Earlier he used to live very far, around 15 kms or so. Being the lazy guy he is he actually took one complete month, not a day less not a day more to go to the market to buy a mobile phone handset! Amazing. Plenty of options to decide from or the lack of interest, energy to decide. If you are guessing why this, this is an example. So this guy made his family postpone the shifting process by couple of weeks, two and half actually. Why? He didn’t pack his goods.

His family must have done a lot of visits to the temple that this guy finally packed his goods and the family moved to new house.

The next day we were inundated by praises about the neighbourhood.

Man, there are so many trees. And those parrots. My God! (actually his), I follow Goddess ;) those parrots started screaming at the top of their voices since daybreak. I couldn’t sleep after that and the worse part that’s the best time to sleep. I just wanted to slide into my cozy bed. But since I couldn’t damn those parrots, I thought I would go jogging (I don’t think he would have ever gone jogging in his life before this day). I was back in an hour. Wonderful. That’s all I could say. Cool breeze, fresh air, it was a different feeling. Good. Can we leave? Then I had breakfast, took an auto rickshaw (a scaled down taxi of sorts) and came to office. A perfect start for the day.

Snoring. Zzzzzz.
Guys get up Ok. that was an exaggeration. We did not sleep through out the bed time story like narration. Thank God, Goddess I mean, that was brief.

The whole day passed he was drowned in work, I as usual busy blogging all day.

8.00 pm. “Hey!” “What! You haven’t left, I thought you had left for the day”

“Was busy, by the way do you know how to reach my house?”

“Who me?”

():-$)

I’m not advocating smoking, drinking ...

Recently I was accused of using cheap measures to attract people to visit my blog. Yellow Blogging I was told.

Hmmm…

Great isn’t it. Accusation. Simple. Effortless.

Why cheap because of the smoke and booze post and the recent one on Ding Dong. Ever since I posted that post people near me have more Ding Dong in their utterances than they would usually have. It seems that somehow I’ve struck resonance with their unconscious, which they consciously smother . Why? To be a nice guy to everybody. Don’t do this what would people think? Don’t say that what would people say?

Why was it cheap to others, because they consider it as taboo, to talk about these in open, something which is not allowed by society. Things which were over and again told to them to be not good and everything except good. Maybe, but that T-shirt he wore, it had “If you didn’t have oral sex keep you mouth shut.” It was kewl, but how can they wear it. They wear it because people like you can admire it for a second and then be amazed at their boldness to flaunt it in public.

Isn’t it strange that people who visited, read the post and some agreed with a sigh that things are changing, this is how it happens, you can read all of them; but nobody said it’s cheap! Because all agreed, to some extent, to what was said.

We all like to hear, talk and do things, should I say clandestinely, things which the societal conscience does not allow and be the one perfect for this societal conscience.

Agreed the society exists because of synergy between the individuals. But this society makes people loose their individuality of being the way they are.

Why don’t we live the way we are, do the things the way we want to, talk and behave the way are? If people disagree then they can part ways, anyways it wouldn’t make sense to go along when the two have major differences.

Probably that's the reason why everybody asks "How can you stand him?", but who cares. Probably that’s the reason why my group is small and closely knitted one. Being accepted at face value, no affected mannerism.

The accusation was in humor (I think so) but the recursive thought process made me write this post.

No Title

Today I’m feeling like a real animal. Raw Wild and weird.

Ever since I was able to understand and make decisions, I've found that sex is such a hush hush kind of secret thing. I do not understand the rationale behind it. Why?

The Hindu mythology is full of descriptions of sex, but alas they too are slanting in their mention. We have monuments like Kahjuraho temple built to incite that Kaam iccha in then ruling king. The great Kamsutra was written to help the people who read it; to give them the ultimate satisfaction in the thing . If you have seen the recent movie Hum Tum you'll call it Ding Dong . :). I imagine the bell. Real raw wild and wierd.

The great epic Mahabharata has Sun God coming down on earth and blessing Kunti with Karna. Bless. Oh! Common. Either it was that Ding Dong, no offence to anybody, or else it could what we are trying to do now. Artificial insemination and all that weirdo things.

And Gandhari giving birth to 101 children (100 boys and 1 girl) from that lump of flesh. This also was some kind of mitotic or meiotic generation of embryo, which developed into human life forms. These would have been the techniques used but the great writers either didn't have any clue about it, didn't understand it or else it would have been a closely guarded secret amongst the great kings and their generation. Why so? Imagine having 100s of those demons all same, exact replica of each other. This alludes to fact that if these mitotic or meiotic techniques of having baby were not there then it was sex, a hush hush and secret thing. Even in Ramayana one finds references to such instance.

Flash back over. Come to recent past; the movies of late 50s to 90s. Lead actor and actress move into a house, CUT, show two flowers meet. They are about to kiss, CUT, show two flowers meet. As if it is an offence to see what is very much a part of everybody's life.

All that censor and social policing makes me lauff. As if all this mushy stuff is not available in the market. Go to any CD shop and you'll find a good collection. Still it is that hush hush secret stuff.

After all God made two separate entities man and woman so that they could come together, Ding Dong and have children. Spread the signs of human race to distant lands. If he didn't wanted Ding Dong he would have made just one, man or woman. But he didn't, I can make a wild guess. He didn't or else there would be too many humans. At least making two separate entities makes sure that we do other stuff also rather just procreating.

Ever since I was able to understand and make decisions, I've found that sex is such a hush hush kind of secret thing. I do not understand the rationale behind it. Why is it so?

Educate my soul.
BTW chkout this link

Don't read this post. Already have. :( Forget it.

Why Smoke and Booze...

Why do people shout so much about those who somke and drink. What they don't understand is that those people have good reasons to do so. Being rejected by the nature when she was distributing that very rare intellect, they took to these to improve. Wondering how?

A famous wild life safari goer and observer, as far as I remember, once said
" A herd of buffaloes can run at maximum speed which is the maximum speed of the slowest buffalo."

Analogous to "A chain is as strong as the weakest link"

So what would you do to increase the average speed of the herd of buffaloes. Pretty straight forward, kill the slowest bufallo. So you keep on killing the slowest buffalo untill the average speed of the herd is greater than the threshold you have set.

Now, take the case of the brain. Brain has many divisions, one devoted to listening, one devoted to hearing, one devoted for balance, one for learning, one for memory, body temperature, heart rate and what not. Brain cells all work in tandem to produce whatever trace of intelligence fools have or whatever plenty of genious one genoius may have. A single brain cell is useless. It's all that they do in tandem that results in intelligence and brilliance. So, the maximum speed at the which the brain cells work would be maximum speed at which the slowest brain cell would process or carry any information.

Also, the brain cells which are weak are those which have outlived their life and are getting old. So these old brain cells pull down the efficieny and efficacy of the brain. These old brain cells are also weak. Why? Brain cells are considered old and weak when their cell composition is deteriorating when something goes wrong with cell structure either the cell body or axon or dendrites of the neurons. Neurons are brain cells. So when these brain cells weaken and get old they loose their power to fight toxins as compared to the new or young and healthy cells. So in case of any onslaught of toxins the one most susceptible to death would be the old and weak cells. The young and healthy one would survive.
The same is true for every cell in the body.

Now, coming back to smoking and drinking. Everybody agrees that smoking and drinking do nothing but inject toxins into the body. Once these toxins are inside our body they attack all the cells, weak or strong, old or young. The young ones fight tooth and nail for their right for survival while the old ones, yes yes thay too engage themselves in this fight but eventually they loose and die. This reminds me of a saying in Hindi "Vinaash hi srijan ji janni hai" (Destruction is the mother of all construction). So what we have is that toxins kill the old weak cells and pave way for new ones.

The maximum speed at which the brain functions is the maximum speed of the slowest, read old and weak, brain cell. We have killed the old and weak cells. So in effect we have increased the speed at which the brain functions. Voilla! Also we have made way for new cells to come up which will also increase the average speed by pulling up number of cells working at high speed.

Smoke and booze all day. As much as you can. Bring out the genius in you.
Spread the word.

The naïve caitiff crowd... The Lost cause...

They all were angry; they all were upset at the things taking shape the way they were. There was an air of dissent, jingoistic voices reverberating in every direction. Everyone was ready to do everything that would be needed to done to make their voices heard, their woes, their cry against dictatorship being forced on them. Their prays or preys.

They criticized in the harshest of the words available in the dictionary of any language of the world. The whole bunch felt the same and swayed in the same wave of belligerent overtones. Even the pusillanimous found new surge of that long evading power, potency to stand their cause, not matter how trivial how noteworthy it might be. It seemed as though they were bonded in a new relationship. The homogeneity would have baffled a lot many physicists and others of sorts. The undercurrent of disapproval, frustration and oppression.

All but one; the mole. The traitor of the group who made the Lord know of every thing the protesters would do to make the Lord take note of their dismal state. Everybody had stood by this man for every reason they had. Everybody saw in him their friend, their representative. The traitor made sure his life was as good as one on cloud number 9. Now the lot wished he life be as bad as one in the hell. Though not many still knew of the black sheep, but some did. And they despised him like some thing, which can be worse than the worst. The crowd didn’t know whom to believe. The naïve crowd.

The gale became a storm and transformed into a tempest. An upheaval of sorts never witnessed by anybody. One, which would engulf under its ambit everything that is mortal. One, which would burn down everything it puts its eyes upon. The traitor disappeared, transformed into a sympathizer.

The crowd shouted amongst themselves about what has happened to them, what will happen, what could be done, what could not be done and what not. Everybody took his time to say how much let down he felt, everybody took opportunity to nail the Lord.

But all was lost. None had the courage to go to the Lord and tell their woes. None had the courage to tell the Lord, his elephant is dead. None had the courage to blow the whistle. The mavericks of the crowd buckled under the pressure of the unknown future of the unknown that would unfurl their way. The cause was lost there was nobody to represent them.

They couldn’t find anybody to make bait of him, a scapegoat. One who would voluntarily come in front and say “I’m ready to get nailed, prosecuted, beheaded for you. You the dumb ones.

Dead ... Lines...!

Deadlines are dead. Real Dead. No sign of life. They never move.

Meet Mr. Y. He is a very nice and helpful person. He always wears that care-free (no that napkins); that so pleasing and comforting smile. A perfect Colgate smile. I can see Shilpa Shetty running for her money. He's always there in case you need him for any help.

Meet Mr. X, the subject of this post. An intern, not the likes of white House, but would definitely like to have one under him, in a well-known MNC.

So Mr. X is the Team Lead for Mr. Y.

One beautiful Monday morning Mr. X comes to office, yawns and looks around to see how many are still in that weekend not yet over mood; gulps down gallons of his first cup of coffee, one amongst the dozens he has in a day; switches on his comp, his pal for killing time until its time for dinner, dinner is served for free so Mr. X is in money saving mode; and then finally open up browsers to look for new posts on the blogs he frequently visits.

Knee Jerk Bloopers. No new post.
JstAThot. No new post.
WISISUG . No new post.
Some infinite loop in pensive state . No new post.

”Hey Mr. X” “Yes Mr. Y.” “I have work for you.” blah…blah…blah… That was all confidential:) Anyways that’s none of your business! ”I want a demo on Friday morning.”

”Yeah sure why not. We’ll have a demo on Friday.” Notice the team spirit!

Day One. Monday.
That’s a trivial, very mundane job. Mr. X can finish it much before the deadline. But being the prudent person he is, he starts reading the help files to enhance the almost perfect knowledge (sometimes we need to boast). Great, there’s a new post on one of the regular blogs he visit. Having satisfied his appetite for blogs he turns back to the job at hand. Nothing much to do. Improving perfection.

Day Two. Tuesday.
Merrily Mr. X walks into the strong room to the place which has all the equipment he needs to meet his deadline. Working all day long, sipping coffee after coffee; cigarettes burn as soon as one finishes; our workaholic Mr. X writes the application which controls that equipment. Didn’t I say our Mr. X was a genius fella.

Day Three. Wednesday
OMG! The device needs a device driver, which is not on the PC. No worry, ask the person who had worked on it. Simple. “Sorry Mr. X I don’t have it, but you can download it.” Sure he could and that’s what he did; 600MB of download at a snail’s pace. Took rest of the day for the download.
Mr. X goes to Mr. Y and says “Logistics problem. There’s no driver for it, it took me whole day to download it. The demo can be only on Monday”. Mr. Y is the boss; demo is on Friday. So, Mr. X stayed back this night installs the driver. ERROR. “This needs version x.2 of base driver, you have only x.1”. It’s already 7 pm. Mr. X curses everything he can think of. Another download, 700 MB of base driver version x.2. Installs everything to satisfaction. Now Mr. X needs to test whatever bullshit he has written.

Day Four. Thursday.
Great day. Mr. X will finish his job well before the dead line. Ready for final testing. Darn! Somebody took the Oscilloscope he was supposed to use. Mr. X frantically searches for a spare one. None is available. There one available only tomorrow. But tomorrow morning our Mr. X has to give a demo. Nothing can be done.
Mr. Y is informed but he is not willing to push the deadline.

“Deadlines are dead”

Tomorrow’s Friday.

Colonization of different sorts

Free INDIA!

Are we free? Do we breathe in free air? Does out action, our thoughts, our behavior reflect this ultimate feeling of a being? Did we really get freedom on 15 August 1947?

Surely we did, didn't we? Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru hoisted the tricolor. The British left our soil; we had our own government. We had our own say in every matter that concerned us, the world head us as Indians not as residents in some British colony. Everywhere we saw Indians, not a fellow slave; everywhere we saw Indian industry not a sweat factory churning money to keep the British economy going. Certainly we did.

No we didn’t get freedom on that day and even today we are not free. We got freedom in a limited way, as limited as the face value of the word freedom. We are still under foreign dominance. Though this dominance is not as obvious and conspicuous as it used to be during the days of the Britishers. It’s now subtler, unnoticed.

Do we not realize it, or have we turned a blind eye to it? In fact we have not seen it.

I call it social and economic colonization.

We all, almost all if not all (there are 65.38% of literates), know our national language, know their respective mother tongue. But even then we prefer to converse in a foreign Language. Not that I’m against conversing in this global language one which bridges the gap between linguistically distant people, but that we converse in English every now and then even when the other person knows the national language or the common mother tongue. No doubt language is just a means of communication but why can’t it be the national language or mother tongue.
A subtler sign of social serfdom. Colonization of different sorts.

We have still not come out from highs or should I say lows of seeing that white color on our skin. Don’t we see people of white skin getting a preference for something very trivial? Don’t we prefer a fairer lady for our wife? Doesn’t the fairer one walking by make more heads turn? Our color is brown, but then why aren’t we proud of the color billions of our fellow countrymen share? Those firangi apply all kinds to sun lotions and sit for days in the sun to get tanned. When those friangis do so much to get that shade of brown why are we so shy of it?
A subtler sign of social serfdom. Colonization of different sorts.

Wherever we see we find sign boards for Lee, Levis, Pepe et al.. We feel pride in wearing Loius Phillipe. We feel pride in having a Rolex on our wrist. But we feel shy of wearing khadi, we feel shy of wearing HMT watches.
A subtler sign of economical serfdom. Colonization of different sorts.

Everywhere we see Coca-Cola and Pepsi. If somebody asks us to name a company we think of GE, Microsoft and somewhere towards the end of knowledge queue we hit upon Infosys and Wipro.

Everywhere we see these modern day instruments, tools of colonization and dominance.

A subtler mode of serfdom. Colonization of different sorts.

The Animal Instinct. The Animal Me...

Haven't I.

Haven't I thought of it since the first time I saw you? Haven't I thought of nothing else for two years?... I sat motionless looking at her. I heard the words I had never allowed myself to form, the words I had felt, known, yet had not faced, had hoped to destroy by never letting them be said within my own mind. Now it was as sudden and shocking as if I was saying it to her... Since the first time I saw you... Nothing but your body, the mouth of yours, and the way your eyes looked at me, if ...

Through every sentence I ever said to you, through every conference you thought so safe, through the importance of all the issues we discussed... You trusted me didn't you? To recognize your greatness? To think of you as you deserved - as if you were a woman? ... Don't you know how much I've betrayed? The only bright encounter of my life - the only person I respected - the best being I know - my ally -my partner in desperate battle ... The lowliest of all desires - as my answer to the highest I've met.. Do you know what I am? I thought of it because it should have been unthinkable. For that degrading need, which should never touch you. I've never wanted anyone but you ... I hadn't known what it was like, to want it, until I saw you for the first time. I had thought: Not I, I wouldn't be broken by it ... Since then ... for two years ... with not a moments respite..

Do you know what it's like, to want it? Would you like to hear wha tI thought, when I looked at you... when I lay awake at night ... when I worked, but couldn't drive it away? To bring you down to things you can't conceive - and to know that it's I who have done it. To reduce you to a body, to teach you an animal's pleasure; to see you need it; to see you asking me for it, more and more; to see your wonderful spirit dependent upon the obscenity of your need. To watch you as you are, as you face the world with your clean, proud strength - then to see you in my bed, submitting to any infamous whim I may devise; to any act, which I'll perform for the sole purpose of watching you dishonor and to which you'll submit for the sake of an unspeakable sensation ...

I want you and may I be damned for it!...

Have I read this, thought about this somewhere, sometime? Was I like this and when?

A famous writing, Ayn.

When will we stop?

Today I read an article in TOI that Intel is planning shelving its Tejas project. It was attributed due to the underperformance of its high-end processors as they produced more heat and their performance deteriorated. So now they are going for multi-processor on single silicon wafer architecture, if I may say, than try to squeeze in as much single processor processing power on a single silicon wafer.

I was just wondering when this quest to fill in as much as one can on the tiny silicon wafer would end. Nobody knows, not me at least! People speculate about it.

The semi-conductor journey began in late nineteenth century when Ferdinand Braun made the first cat's whisker diode for radio receivers. The devices made were discrete: that is, they performed only one function and to get any useful thing done from then they had to be wired together to make a functional unit. The story remained the same until in 1959, Jean Hoerni and Robert Noyce(One of the founders of Intel) developed a new process called planar technology at Fairchild Semiconductors which enabled them to diffuse vaious layes onto the silicon surface to make transistors, essentially a network of interconnected discrete components.

It itches me to write here that Fairchild was _the company to have a great impact on silicon industry; which gave us the now famous companies like Intel. Actually there were 8 brilliant people in Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory who left the parent company; they said they were feeling stifled and there ideas did not find any space in the company; though there were reasons other than this. These 8 people were called The Traitorous Eight!

Back on our track. Started only in 1959, by the end of 1960 nearly 90% of all the semiconductor manufactured was Integrated Circuits Since then the semiconductor has never looked back, We had Large Scale Integration then Medium Scale Integration and now Very Large Scale
Integration. There’s no dearth of real estate. There’s plenty to be used.

But now we have probably hit the wall. The process of squeezing as much power into the silicon real estate as much as we could has now seen one a slow down. All the Integrated ICs have transistors which are more or less like toggling device; on and off. For operating any ICs these transistors have to be switched on and off, at a very high rate, for 2GHz processor it toggling almost every 2 nanosecond! This heats up the processor/IC and degrades its performance. With the scale going smaller and smaller the scenario worsens.

For the industry to follow the 5 commandments we moved on to the vertical plane . So instead of expanding in the horizontal plane we expand in the vertical plane. So it would seem that we would continue to grow on the vertical plane as we grew on the horizontal plane and some years down the lane we would face the same problem. Well no for the simple reason that all the discrete entities in either of the plane have to be connected with wires, as small as 90 nanometers wide! So this poses problems as to how to route these wires from one plane to another. It may sound easy but believe me it isn’t so.

So the obvious is to move to something, which does not need wires for transmission, does not generate as much heat! Plasma and light would be the most rewarding. In fact there are nano-transistors , which use plasma as conductor for currents. The light has also been used. They have put small lasers inside the ICs, which emit directed light to the receiver. This reduces the heat generation and also the power consumed. But my question remains the same, when are we going to hit the wall with these optics in ICs.

How long will we go on reducing the size to opto-couplers, Laser diodes and photo-receivers? Will we go on reducing the size until there’s only a photon to represent the optics and only an electron to represent the transistor? Wouldn’t the photon then disturb the electron’s motion to create havoc in our transistor? Even if it doesn’t then aren’t we converging into the realms of Quantum mechanics. Will we move on to neurons taking place of transistors or may be processors/ICs to do all the computation at the speed of light! Will there be something more fascinating than the processor on semiconductor real state, something more fascinating than the neurons, something that anticipates and does in femto-seconds?

Or will there be processors that transport all the computation and problems in the past and programs it to deliver it to the future then, which is now or a few second of past, so that as soon as we given the problem we get the solution or as soon as we think of the problem the solution is before us.

Am I dreaming?

A Wasted Weekend

Click . . .
“The Defense Secretary today said that . . .”

Click . . .
“Everything I do I do it for you. . . ”

Click . . .
“The pitch is as dead as dodo . . .”

Click . . .
“The congress party today elected . . .”

Click . . .
“Ajay, bolo ki tum mujhse pyar karte ho . . .”

Click . . .
“Take 2 teaspoonful of sugar and add it to . . .”

Click . . .
“Varooom . . . Varooom . . .”

Click . . .
“Schumacher has won the . . .”

Click . . .
“He was unstable when he entered the chicane . . .”

Click . . .
“In the evening a group of fiyadeen attacked . . .”

Click . . .
“The Indian stocks crashed like . . .”

Click . . .
“The Japanese Prime Minister . . .”

Click . . .
“Beyonce, in an exclusive interview . . ."

Click . . .
“When the wildest meet, see only at 8 pm on . . ."

Click . . .
“The World Bank today announced . . .”

Click . . .
“The lions hunt in the night . . .”

Click . . .
“The second most voracious predator is the giant ORCA . . .”

Click . . .
Click . . .
Click . . .
Click . . .

Yawn . . .
Another day mercilessly slaughtered . . .
Hungry I slept!

The friends who still are ... friends!

Life is the best teacher. Life also plays you for a fool.

Many a times you find yourself at a cross-road. Doumbfounded you stand and wait. You can't move ahead, the failures of love and life dissuade you. The inertia of past and horrors of future deter you. You can't go back, someone else is in you shoes and there's no room for you. You can't move ahead, the burden of past is too heavy to carry. And this strange cross-road has no other ways except the two!

You wait. Wait for courage to move. Help from self. But it's the life which has closed all doors. You want to move but you are petrified; legs glued. But you have to go on, the clock's ticking. Stagnant you are. People think you are a fool, an idiot wasting your time. It could be that you were and are?

Waiting for that opport-unity, that which never knocked you door. Maybe the unity stood as an insurmountable barrier before you, with your opportunity on the other side. Maybe the unity was and is binding you. No thoughts. No expressions. Blank.

It's like choosing between the life and the air that makes you live that life. You do not want to die but neither can you live! Maybe the unity struck before the opportunity. You lie all alone in the bed thinkin over things you'll say. But that say never came your way. You waited for time to come; the time that ran ahead of you. Like morons you followed. You waited and that wait became eternal. The oppotyunity knocked at the man beside you when you were all geared up for the lovely rendezvous. The man went away with the gift and you were left empty handed. Empty indeed but for the odour of the perfume of the gift and wrapper in rags.

The sweet memories, now sour, make you cynical. You feel like wielding a scimitar and slaying everyone near you, be it friend or foe. Your eyes turn red, the heart burns seeing the man play with the gift. And you stand as a dumb-witted rascal. Every laughter, every word said, every whisper seems to take away a bit of your life.

Suddenly you find that you have no air for life and life to live.

Never have desires. It's the desires that set you on fire. Fire not to reach out for the coveted gift but to burn your own self bit by bit, part by part, slowly very slowly.

Camatose.