Lost in rotation..

Mourning in the Valley

2011-10-06T03:33:00.000-07:00

The news sinks in slowly. It is 2 a.m. in the morning and somehow I just cant sleep. Truly envy the billions who woke up to the news of Jobs' passing. At least they got to sleep through the night. I tell you, 2011 has been one hell of a year.

Obviously I never knew the guy, never had a story about him, never took a picture, with him in the corner of the frame. I never attended any of his presentations, have managed to stay away from the lure of Cupertino even avoiding I280 at all costs during my trips down south. The closest I ever got to the aura were the two miserable years I had an Iphone ( more so because of AT&T though)

And yet I'm awake.

Says a lot about the guy I guess, but it got me running a root cause analysis in the middle of the night. I didnt stay awake during 9/11, I slept during the 11/27 attacks in Mumbai. What's the deal here?

Well, to be honest, I think its partly because of the things he said in that 2005 Stanford commencement speech. The made-for-hollywood tearjerker of a speech. Stuff about living upto your ideals and following your heart, and everything else. But I've seen a good deal of speeches. Something in this speech though truly resonated with the way he lived his life. and the way he saw death. All the failures, all the regrets he had. I think the honesty is jarring. Jarring enough to keep me awake tonight.

When I think of him, I see all those nameless faces I ride the train with every day into Palo Alto. All those technology workers in their 20s coding away oblivious to the chatter on board. All wired in. Some a product of the ecosystem like he was, some maybe visionaries in their own right, like he obviously was. Some in it just for the money, some in it for the fame. Its like everyone aspires to be the next Jobs, whether or not thats what fate has in store for them.

I sense that spirit when a coworker sends an email at midnight about a small breakthrough he's achieved and someone else lauds that effort. To me, thats weird, but hey whatever works. I begin to wonder, when was I that passionate about anything? There were moments but not many. Maybe the goal's to live those moments many times over. Or be critical of the few that remain.

I would really love to read Jobs' authorized biography when it comes out in November. I'm sure he would have painted a very colorful picture of his life given how secretive he was while living it. The guy loved to put on a show, a true entertainer. Will truly miss all of that.

And maybe someday we'll even see a movie about his life, or a TV series. There's a lot of content to fill in there with some free meals from the local ISKCON chapter.

But I think the thing I fear and will miss the most is the void he leaves behind, the uncertainty in not knowing who the next great erratic innovator would be or if he were the last. In not knowing whether he or she would be right here in the Valley ( the news hasnt been that good of late). I'm an optimist though, so I'll count on it to be local, and more so a realist when I pass by all the small incubator shops.

Someone's got to be hungry there, and more so foolish.

Thanks Jobs. Thanks for everything. The drama, the innovations, the turtleneck, the simplicity and the erratic craziness. And thanks for living your life by following your heart. I know most of us wont.

But then thats why you're Jobs. Thats why the billions of messages. and not to overlook the fact, thats why I'm awake at 2 in the night.

May your soul rest in peace.

Still night, still light

2010-09-23T00:28:00.001-07:00

the moments seem endless. as the night finally comes to an end, i can hardly sleep. flashes of quick images pass my mind like trucks on a freeway. each with its own sound and conversation. the things that draw my attention at this forlorn hour are hardly stuff of any consequence.

there are pictures of people i once knew, but no longer could hear; of people who were once near but no longer here; there are sounds of the things people said this morning that i chose to ignore and the chatter on the pipes that i couldnt because they were directed right at me. and then there were the words i said back all day.

and then there are the videos of the people i care deeply about who sleep peacefully on this wednesday night, while there are those who struggle in silence through the pain that has captured their souls, for whom i wish they find their peace. and then there are those i wish i had never met, but now that i have, i still dont know what to do with these videos.

somewhere down the line the traffic would reduce to a trickle. because there ended the seemingly endless supply of multimedia snippets. thats when i fall back into a deep peaceful state of sleep. but that was back then. now that traffic seems to have increased. lot more pictures to weed through, new people, newer conversations, newer meanings. all to make sense of.

and then you have the news. of falling ceilings and failing quarterbacks. of political drama and business sitcoms. things that you make sense of when you've finished making sense of the stuff that really affects you. till then you just dump all these files in a big brown box labelled 'TO DO'.

maybe you'll get to this box some day. or maybe you'll just get a second box. and then a third. i still have the box from 1989 that i havent weeded out yet.

i once read that the dying moments of the night are when you stand alone, and finally get to think clearly of all that transpired during the day in perfect solitude. feels quite the opposite. mine seem more crowded than my days.

and before you know it, i can see the faint blue hours of a new day arriving at a distance. more people, more conversations, more pictures, all approaching you at the speed of time.

its time to get new boxes or outsource the processing to India; but I'm not sure that's a good idea. they must have nights there too.

Righteous kill

2010-08-15T23:28:00.001-07:00

He lit up to clear his head. Another week had passed since that day but he kept up the tradition to hold onto the things that no longer exist. Each drag brought him closer to the illusion of the fog that covered up the starry sky, of the mist that would hit his face, of her through the smoke that burnt his throat. The smell killed the perfume on her skin, elevated him to the reclusive tower of the feeble before plummeting to the dark depths of the stony ground. His eyes wandered to spot the moon through the last rings of whatever smoke that remained, the heat made his heart warm to feel as he had once felt before.

It turned him into the cold blooded warrior he once was before he had met her, and hardened him up like the cold wax of the candle burning inside. “Never melt” he remembered, as the flame almost reached the end of what seemed like an eternal collection of empty peaceful moments. The silence of the past few minutes were his own, something no one could steal from him. Nothing anyone could tell him mattered, even the “You disgust me” he had heard those years ago. This was his territory, this was his country. These were his times. Times where he burnt away the righteous part of his soul and killed those pandering thoughts of appeasement. He made no eye contact with the few who passed his way, he just stared into the nothingness that ensued.

These were after all, his solitude smokes.

The bookmarks of our lives.

2010-08-08T13:44:00.001-07:00

It has been an easy few months since I wrote anything. Not that I had nothing to write about, but more because I couldn’t write. The words were sucked out of my head for lack of a better phrase. Maybe that’s what happens when you get kicked in the gut for being honest. Another lesson learnt in life. Phew, thankfully that’s over.

This note on the other hand was in the works for a long time. You see, the idea of having memories brought back into the forefront of your imagination from whatever corner they resided in needs more than a thought (Promise you, this has nothing to do with Inception). It has to be a combination of an entire tapestry of words, images and sounds. An index or a bookmark for the memories to be fetched. Why I have no idea, maybe the value of the threads currently being processed in your head isn’t close to watching Sepia colored frames from the past. Or maybe its just an escape route from whatever keeps you occupied for now.

For me it happens every evening at work. While I am furiously typing out emails or plans at the end of the day, the door behind me opens. I hear the wheels roll on the carpet and an old man push the trash can across the hall. The custodian is probably the only guy who’s on time in my office, so goes the joke. I for one have to agree, I’m usually never on time, and have been close to being reprimanded for that. But then why go to work on time, isn’t there plenty in the world to admire before being stuck in an office for the next 8 hours? Obviously my boss has other plans.

He walks by my cube and empties the trash can. Wishes me, “ Hey Amigo, how you doing?” I usually never turn back while working, but something in this guy makes me turn back and wish him with a smile. Its not that I don’t want to be condescending but more because, well, I don’t know, seeing an old man clear trash at the end of the day seems like an unfair task in life. The least I could do to mitigate that feeling in my head is to turn back and smile. Not that he cares for it, I’m sure, but these are precisely the things that run in my head soon after. I stop working and start dreaming.

Why is this guy at his age clearing trash? He is Mexican, but where is his family? He wears the same hat every day, maybe the wind messes with his ears. Maybe he is the only provider for his family. Damn, lets not go there. But then I already have.

Mumbai,1991: It was the monsoon of 1991, clearly remember the rains in Mumbai, but that’s all I'm going to talk about that. ( the idea of the monsoons have been beaten to death a million times). It was my first year in India back as a kid from an overseas jaunt. My Pati’s* house was where I was staying, a comfortable little apartment in the middle of suburban Mumbai, overfilled with Gujaratis with a sprinkling of Tams ( both very annoying groups, to say the least, but again this isn’t about that). I don’t remember the days as much, but the evenings were fun with the classic Doordarshan serials, cricket outside and the occasional pepsi-cola we as kids were allowed to afford at the time. And the bhel puri stand outside, right next to what seemed like an uncovered sewage ( Americans, you may want to use your sanitizers at precisely this minute) were always the treat my mom very reluctantly allowed us to enjoy every once in a while. But of all the things in those days, what seemed mysterious to me was this Gurkha who looked after the security of the building. Now for all of you who just checked Wikipedia, the Gurkha race was supposed to be one of the warrior races from Nepal, the types who would keep their word or kill. Always with a dagger in their belts, they needed to see blood if at all the dagger was removed. Which was why many apartment buildings in Mumbai would have a Gurkha as their security guard. Loyalty, that’s the word, Gurkhas were always Loyal to their masters. Why, I have no idea, but they were.

But this was an old guy, with teeth missing. He would just sit there every day looking at the people passing by, smoke a beedi, yell at us kids for shouting too loudly when someone got out in cricket, and clean the cars parked in the building. He lived in a shack at the corner of the building, not even a permanent structure. There were just some sheets of plastic between the two water tanks and his clothes were hung out to dry. He cooked in what seemed like a small wooden stove, never saw him cook though, but could always smell the wood burning. Now the reason I remember this guy was also because, it seemed a very odd life to lead. I always used to wonder, what is this guy doing here, where is his family and why is he living in a makeshift shack when he could live in at the worst case a shack in Nepal among his own. Did the Mumbai dreams drag him down here, after all everyone wanted to make it big in the city of gold. Maybe that’s what he tells his family, that he’s the chief security guard in Bombay. The money must be a big reason, plus with the Diwali baksheesh, must be good to help out a large family back home. I never asked anyone these questions though, but it just registered a blip. If I were to be a security guard, I wondered, what would I do. Maybe start with that annoying pest of a kid, Manish and have him kicked out of the building for violating shouting rules. Nah, that was easy, anyone could do that. Maybe I could get a uniform and a long stick and a cap that said security guard. But that’s easy too. I could probably get a bicycle and deliver newspapers. Yes, that would be cool, a security guard who delivered newspapers.

Each night after dinner, my Pati would ask me to go call the Gurkha. At first I was surprised, why should he come here, or even worse, why cant she call him herself. I would reluctantly pace myself to the shack and could see a kerosene lamp flicker in sheer darkness. “Gurkha-ji, aapko bulaya hai” (Gurkha, you have been called) I couldn’t see what he was doing, but he would cough and reply,”Haan, aa raha hain” (Yes, coming) I would rush back to my apartment and see my Pati give him the leftovers from dinner. That was a daily ritual in my Pati’s life, serve God before we ate, serve the Gurkha after. I admired her a lot for the sense of discipline in her life and still do. I could never do it the way she did, so although I might bring in clauses of discrimination against her method of allocating food, I saw the sense of it all. Rules in society existed because of people like her, if it were left to me, we would all be having a huge party.

I don’t know whether he ate the food or just threw it away though. The vessels would be brought back washed in less than 30 minutes which my Pati asked me to place in the sink again. His washing isn’t good enough? Anyway I didn’t argue and did as told. But it was raining outside. How did he just sleep in that shack when the cloudbursts were as heavy, I thought. But the questions as kids were only good as questions, you didn’t demand answers, you never faced the truth.

And that memory would end up right there, nothing came out of it, and I have no idea why I remembered it. I visited the apartment building last year, the guy had been replaced, I was told and some other young Gurkha took his place. I don’t know if he died or he went back or what happened to him. But every evening when I saw this old guy walk by my cube, I always get transported back to 1991, for no reason whatsoever. Reach the dead end of the memory and come back.

One evening the custodian pointed to the coat I had on the hanger and asked me how much it was for. That was probably the first time we had a conversation, I in my broken Spanish/English combo, said it was around 40 dollars, he said its very “Bueno”, I agreed, it was my coat (plus not a lot of people comment positively about the clothes I wear). And he was about to move on, when I jumped up and asked him, do you want one? He looked surprised and said,” Yes please, I like it”.

I told him I’ll get him one.

The next day I was out in JC Penney looking for a coat that resembled mine. I had bought this coat before my last trip to New York, a winter sojourn many years ago. It was summer now. JCP doesn’t keep winter coats in summer. I looked surprised, almost about to ask the attendant, why not?, but then held back. I never shop for clothes unless I have absolutely nothing to wear, so my ignorance could be excused.

I went back home and started thinking, how the hell do I get a coat like mine? And then it struck me, I had a similar coat that I wore during my winters in Denver that I had buried deep somewhere into clothes oblivion. I searched all evening and finally found the coat. The next day when he came, I gave him the coat. He looked surprised, and said, “This is mucho bueno coat than that, how much is it”. I said, “just keep it”. He just stood there staring at the coat and smiled, I could see he had a few missing teeth as well.

Maybe you always find the answers to the questions you ask.

*Pati: Grandmother (Tamil)

treasures

2010-05-25T07:01:00.000-07:00

those black pearly eyes

said a million words

even when all she could speak were a hundred

i asked myself,

what was i doing here

a place removed from my reality

a place of which i knew very little

a place that made me feel like the desert sands

in the piercing summer sizzle

maybe it wasnt about me i told myself

maybe there are things in the world hidden in shrouds

of mysteries and riddles

in tangled minds and hearts and some that made

our lives worth every minute of our existence even when

all we did was gaze into the unknown

and gaze she did.

sorry correction, gaze we did.

for every unspoken gaze i saw stories

some that made us laugh,

some that made us wrench

at the possibilities of a future

that couldn't possibly be any different

from ones that would have happened

if we didn't gaze that hard to begin with

but as is the problem with everything

once you look,

you begin to stare

once you stare

you begin to gaze

and once you gaze

it never ends there

because what you see

is a million bucks

worth what you get.

and maybe the heat did us in

when our words started getting lighter and our minds

began traveling through the phases

of what seemingly our lives could be like

and through lives we had already lived.

they say food makes for excellent company

to conversations and beyond

in my mind it doesnt end there

because it also engages us

to break down the walls of limited world views

forcing us

to open our mouths,

at least to eat,

even if we have nothing to say.

her silence said it all

and then she smiled

which made everywhere

seem like a better place

than the cards it deals us

but hey, who cares about the cards

when that smile was all i could feel tonight.

i tried to prick it though,

to see what lay behind it

you see, the chances that we find hidden treasures lay reassured

but would it be worth its weight in gold

or do we drown because it would be a burden too heavy to shoulder thru

i couldnt find much

although she kept saying

look all you want

i was surprised i couldnt find anything at all

but then realized

i didnt have to look behind anything

what i wanted to find

lay right there in front of my eyes.

sometimes there are stones hidden in gold

sometimes there is gold hidden in coal

sometimes there is coal in between diamonds

and sometimes there are diamonds hidden in gold.

but what if you had gold hidden in gold

would you call that a treasure waiting to be found

or would that just be your folly, to question what you didnt find,

but was there waiting to be found.

oh, the sheer arrogance of a twisted mind

when the questions outnumber the doubts

and there are answers everywhere to be found

except for the questions you pose.

i will say this though

maybe with a meandering logic of my own

i found her and more

between the blow hot blow cold winds of my heart

a round of roulette we play

waiting for the ball to drop

maybe today

maybe tomorrow

maybe some day

maybe never

they say im an optimist

you can see that in the lines above

the chances to win are three is to one

i pick some day.

wait though, id rather let you choose.

its easier when treasures pick themselves

they have nothing to lose.

Trust

2010-03-27T14:07:00.000-07:00

I entered the house around five, a little earlier than usual. It was after all the most brutal winter we had seen in the last ten years and today was no different. Luckily for me, I work only a few minutes from here, so it wasn’t bad. Malathi was not that lucky though, a forty mile commute in this weather would be mind numbingly horrible. Though I don’t know if it could feel any worse after the fight we had last night.

I saw Dr Quinn struggle to start his car on the street across the house. I waved and asked him to come inside, it was after all really starting to get bad out there. Now this is a guy I could talk to, and the weather made sure we would be spending some time sharing what drove us nuts. We met at an NGO conference a few years ago, I was trying to contribute in my own way to spread the awareness about a group I worked for, and he was the key note speaker at the conference. The guy had given his whole life to something he believed in, working in camps in Africa and a degree on theology. But what made me interested in his life was his stint in Kolkata with the Missionaries of Charity. He managed a few orphanages run by the group for some years before returning to the US and opening his own shop in what he called the “shrink” line of business.

I had known him for a few years, a very good ‘fella’, always listened, never got mad, in fact there were days he was the only person I could turn to for advice and for that proverbial “shoulder to cry on”. How he managed to listen to every annoying detail of my relationship with Malathi , I never knew. But things were never this bad. Of course, she was everything I knew I wanted from someone I wanted to be with, independent, passionate and beautiful. But of late, I started doubting everything about her. She had become her own worst nightmare, things never were black and white with her and it almost ended up being miserably grey for me.

“A Grey day turning black, huh?” said Dr Q, “I was over at the Winghams, trying to set something up for their kid, really autistic, poor guy. This looks like its going to get worse, you do have shovel right?”

I nodded looking outside, where could she be now? I saw her car on the driveway, but when I entered, there was no one home. Why the hell could I not have kept my mouth shut last night? It really didn’t have to get that nasty….

“A drink Doc?”

“Sure”

As I took out the glasses, the lights went off. The outages usually lasted a few minutes, but something in me sensed that this was going to be one long night. I lit up the fireplace and settled into my seat. I was getting worried about her now, I tried calling her with the one bar on my cell phone, but went straight to voicemail. “You’ve reached the voicemail of Malathi, please leave your message after the beep.” That was the last call I could make before it died on me. I switched the phone off and turned to Dr. Q.

“ I assume Malathi’s not here”, he said staring into the fire. “What happened?, Where’s the little one?”

Shubha, my three year old, was her mom’s daughter, same eyes, same smile. And weirdly, she always clung to her mom, weren’t daughter supposed to be closer to their dads?

He smiled, “Well it depends on the relationship at the end of the day, maybe your wife created that force field of emotional intensity you didn’t. She is one intense woman, after all.”

True, maybe Malathi took her along. But where was she? Our fights never prompted her to leave the house before, not with Shubha at least. But maybe I outdid myself last night, but it wasn’t that bad, I know she could put up with worse. What was wrong with her, I never was able to understand. I tried asking her, talking to her, but her eyes just kept getting distant. Maybe this was the end.

“I am thinking of a separation, Doc, this is just not working for me.”

A long silence ensued, after which he said, “How long have you been thinking about it?”

“Quite some time now, in fact last week after you visited, she almost threatened to get one herself, she says there are things I don’t see and will never. That I should be ashamed of myself.”

“Maybe she has a point, empathize with her.”

“She hates it when anyone does that with her, I think that would only make all this end much quicker.” I had an angry smile on my face as I stared at the orange glow.

He didn’t say anything. I looked at the guy, old wrinkled skin, almost no hair. The things he must have seen in Africa and Kolkata, I’m sure were crazier than my stories. And yet he never spoke about himself. Maybe that’s how shrinks operate, a shrink secret.

It was almost past midnight, the power was still out, and I was really worried now. My cell phone finally died, and this was as isolated two of us could get on a snowy night. She must have left me a note, I thought to myself and got up to check the office space.

“Checking under the phone?”, he asked with a smile

‘Checking under the phone’, that was a game Malathi and I played in Grad school. We left each other notes under our advisor’s phone so that no one else found them. Sweet memories from much simpler times. Dr Q thought it was a brilliant idea until of course the advisor found them. Our plan was to graduate before he did.

I walked upstairs and lifted the phone. There were some old notes, but there was one new one.

Finally! I thought to myself.

This one was in Tamil…weird, she hadn’t left me one in years.

“We are at home, I can’t tell where right now, make sure the guy goes…but be careful, he has a gun…J”

I felt a pain shoot up my spine, and a sense of deep freeze. I quickly wrote,” Seri, I’ll try keep him at bay, are you and Shubha safe? I will leave some coffee here in 10 minutes, its freezing here. I assume by man, you mean Dr Q., I wont ask you what happened, but let me know if its him. You can leave it in English, no one’s going to read the notes except me”

I could hear footsteps on the stairs so I quickly put away all the notes and turned around. I didn’t know what to expect but I had to outshrink a shrink here. Not an easy task.

He walked up and had a smile, so did you find what you were looking for?

I took a deep breath, laughed and said, Na, just some old mushy stuff from her. I wish she could always be that way.

“People change, that’s the way it always was and is, man is it freezing in here, why don’t we go downstairs?”

I nodded and followed him, the train of thoughts in my head that I just couldn’t keep track of. “ Why would she say that, is it Q she was talking about?? what did Dr. Q do?, This guy??. ..the same guy, I trusted with the innermost secrets of my life….and my Malathi, how could I doubt her….what is happening over here??....why the smiley face??”

“Would you like some coffee Doc?” I asked,

He said, “Sure,

As I prepared coffee, I started going back to the time I started doubting her for what I would call random behavior. Skipping dinners at home, going straight to bed, out for work the first thing in the morning. All along, I kept noticing small things that I never questioned because when you generally trust people with your lives, you do that unconditionally. I then switched my attention to Dr. Q. Here is a guy who had nothing to lose to begin with, who learnt everything about me, my fears and hopes, because he listened. But the big question in my mind, could it be unconditional ? What was in it for him, that he never stopped my incessant rambling.

It was a bit shameful that of late, he knew more about how my life went than her. Was that what she referred to that Wednesday evening when she wanted a separation?

“Among most things out there that smell better than they taste, I think coffee takes the cake..” he said. That was true, coffee did smell a lot better than it could taste, so are we more forgiving of the taste because the smell already did its job?

I said, hold onto that thought, I’ll be back in a bit; forgot something at the office.

I rushed upstairs, and looked for the note.

“Yes, its him”

My heart sank when I read that.

“I cant say more for now, but please be careful, he has a gun. He was leaving the house when you arrived, I couldn’t believe you called him back in.

My phone is dead, I cannot call the cops.

The coffee will last Shubha and me for the next few hours.

She is in pain, more in shock than anything else. I stopped him before he did anything.

More when this pedophilic bastard is gone.

Love you.

M”

My eyes filled up with tears as I read that.

I wanted to pin the guy down and choke him right there. But she said he has a gun. I am not sure what had happened but I think it made sense to behave like nothing happened and let him leave when the storm had passed.

But what about the storm that had just begun to brew.

I would have to find out more about this guy. Why would Shubha be in pain, did he hurt her? Man, if he even said anything to her, I would punch the living daylights out of him. Ok, I think I need to get him out of the house first. A lot can be done later.

“Looks like I’m stuck here for the rest of the night, I cant even see my car out there. You do have a shovel right?” He said

I just nodded.

Where could that gun be? How do I act normal when all this is happening?

I had asked him the same exact question a month ago. “How do you act so calm when you know so many of your patients are messed up, Doc?”

“So, you think its an act?”

“No, Im sure any human being would be affected by what they find out through psycho-analysis of another person, disturbed or not. You really don’t want to get into the head of anyone else.”

“Maybe that’s what calms me, knowing that no one is perfect. In any case the best way to act calm is to stop focusing on the immediate surroundings of a situation and zoom out to a larger view of the world.”

“So, Doc, tell me more about your life in Kolkata. What was it like being around those kids in the orphanages?”

This was the first time I had ever asked him a question about his life.

“ It was very schizophrenic.”

“ You would have these beautiful moments with kids who looked upto you when they were young, and then they would walk out on you when they realized all this was not real.”

“ Drugs, skipping school, poverty, the entire kitchen sink of issues as they grow older.”

“ And you, doc, I mean what made you want to be there? Not ever get married, have kids of your own, I’m sure religion and service only went so far, what about your personal choice?”

He smiled and looked at me.

“Quite interested in my life now, eh?”

I felt a shiver when he said that, his piercing glance made it tough to look away.

“Just as interested as you were with mine, doc” I said with a smile.

“Well, lets just say things didn’t happen, and I made a choice for them not happening. We cant run away from the outcomes of the choices we make right?”

“ You could make new choices though.”

“ True, but look at me, I’m old, Ive spent my whole life thinking about an ideal, never quite got close to achieving it. I doubt making new choices is going to help me now.”

“So are you suffering? Did you hurt anyone in Kolkata? ”

I had to throw that one out, had to be brave that he wouldn’t pull out his gun and shoot me.

He looked at me straight in the eyes. I didn’t flinch after asking that question.

I knew evil resided in all of us, heck, it had made me doubt Malathi of all people in the world, it made me trust this guy, it also probably made him hurt those who had looked upto him for safety.

“So are you?” I asked him again.

“ Arent we all?”

“ Yes, But are you?”

He looked at the fire as the last piece of wood was burning,

The silence said it all. He had tears in his eyes, but wiped them off before he asked his next question.

“Trust, how do you decide who deserves it?” he asked me.

“ I don’t have an idea, doc. But I can say this, the ones you can trust, probably are the ones who trust you too. Détente at a more human level.”

He smiled.

We looked outside, it had stopped snowing, though I thought he could still not leave.

“Can I get that shovel, I think I should leave now.”

I knew he wouldn’t get far in this weather, but I had Shubha and Malathi to think about. If only there were three clones of me out there, I could probably request one clone to help him.

He needed help.

But I couldn’t be the one to help him.

His car pulled away from the street as I watched him wave back for the final time. I knew I would never see him again, and I really prayed that he got some help. Endings aren’t easy. Especially with strangers.

I ran upstairs to my office, there was one new note.

“ Is he gone for sure?”

Where was she watching all this from? Man, she was smart, I don’t think I would have managed all these hours without landing a few punches at someone.

“Yes, he left. Btw a fun fact, our advisor did find all our notes a week before we graduated. I never told you that before.”

I heard the footsteps walk down the stairs as Malathi and Shubha emerged from the shadows. We spent the rest of the night near the fireplace in silence as Shubha slept, just gazing at the fire. I never felt so peaceful ever in my life.

A few days later, we heard that Dr. Q gave up his practice and joined rehab.

Good riddance, said Malathi.

I prayed that he recover. Noone deserves a life like that.

Not even someone who played with all of our trust.

three words

2009-12-16T08:22:00.000-08:00

Trapped in my body

as I reached for the stars

did I want this that bad

or had I gone too far in a bid

to reclaim a lost dream

from savages and screams

over the rooftops and cities

my mind could only feel

the pungent air of loss and disbelief

"where to, oh stranger", asked

the limbless figure on the platform.

"are you leaving the city

or visiting the hall of

seemingly endless possibilities,"

"One of fame and fortune

and of gold and diamonds,

is that the journey you wish

to take,

or is it something else that brings you here."

i stared in silence, i couldnt speak,

i saw the

hundred images that brought me here

but didnt see the one

that would make me leave.

i tried so hard, with tears and without

but the only image i kept seeing was one of doubt,

one with the

dark oily corners of the world,

where the kings roamed in

fire and ash only to be burnt.

i saw them go, but never return

wasnt this the sort

of victory i despised?

as i turned towards her to reply

there dropped in front of me

two visions, both in the east.

In one i saw peace, of bliss and no disease,

the other though was grey, of equal black

and white, where the sun and the moon both

had their share of day and night.

i had both in my hands, though only

one i could carry with me, she said.

which would it be, or would you

burn before you knew how it ends.

i closed my eyes

and swam the million miles

to reach the shores and feel wet

in the colors of my dreams

as i stood, there came a smile,

i finally knew

the choice i wanted to make,

how did you, she asked

give up the bliss

and go for the grey.

i said three words that

made me swear, never to take

a perilous journey like this again.

she was there.

Relationships and Twitter

2009-10-18T22:55:00.000-07:00

An imaginary twitter feed and some people at the end of it....and yes for the uninitiated

@ID is usually a reply to the person with the ID

Happy tweeting..:)

***********************************

Cosmicnonsense: I dont have da hat I wore yday, dunno where i left it.

Prudentchild: She says I have no sense of humor, what a shame, I thought i was funny.

Idioticmaze: @Cosmicnonsense da hat is in da house

Sportsbugger: Saints rule!! Yippee

Anywherebuthere: I wore too much cologne, I'm scaring people off now

Indianrider: Maybe it wasnt meant to be, is there such a thing as fate?

Weirdnwired: @Prudentchild I thought you were funny..LOL

NiceHair: @Sportsbugger How could you? You told me you wouldnt bring religion into our relationship.

Cosmicnonsense: @Idioticmaze You trying to be funny, I should have never taken you home. Now gimme my hat

Prudentchild: @Weirdnwired U heard my jokes? and thought they were funny? I'm dating the wrong chick.

kwalityicecream: @Indianrider yes fate is awesome, I saw mine change in a minute, u should give http://enlargeurepenis.com a shot

Nightnday: @Anywherebuthere Its not the cologne. Its just you.

Idioticmaze: @Cosmicnonsense you get ure hat when u tell the world what a real a$$hole u really r...tweet that

Niceguy: Hello everyone, I am a nice guy, is there a place for me here?

Sportsbugger: @Nicehair da Saints did win today!...which religion are you talking about? NFL? LOL

Anywherebuthere: @Nightnday Ya ure the one to talk, btw ure not even in the room, idiot

Indianrider: @kwalityicecream is that you Charlie?

Weirdnwired: @Prudentchild I'm a guy here, sorry

Niceguy: Anyone help a nice guy in relationship advice please?

Cosmicnonsense: @Idioticmaze keep the hat u dumb whatever, lets see u make a buck on that

Prudentchild: @Weirdnwired Ah, that explains why u get my jokes. u watching da game now?

kwalityicecream: @Indianrider who's charlie, this is cheryl

Nightnday: @Anywherebuthere I dont need to be there..LOLOLOL

Niceguy: What are these people talking about, how come noone helps niceguys in all this

Cosmicnonsense: @Niceguy dude prob ure in the wrong place, noones nice, change ure nick to Blingbling, ull get ure response...:)

Niceguy: @Cosmicnonsense that makes sense. I will do that, danke

Idioticmaze: @Cosmicnonsense I have ure wallet too, moron

Nicehair: @Sportsbugger Dont make fun of my religion, btw the NFL is just stupid and degrading to women

Cosmicnonsense: @Idioticmaze now thats a new low even for u, but as it happens to be, i usually have nothing in my wallet..:P

Blingbling: wassup y'all

girl1girl2: @Blingbling hey there

Blingbling: @Cosmicnonsense it works THANKS!!

Cosmicnonsense: @Blingbling NP...but remember..never hand over the wallet or ure hat

Idioticmaze: @Blingbling and if u do, pls keep ACTUAL money in it

Blingbling: @Idioticmaze uh...I'll try..btw ...How U doin?

Cosmicnonsense: @Blingbling dude, she aint worth the trouble

Idioticmaze: @Blingbling I'm doin fine..:)

********************************************************************

and thats how it goes....

The Starbucks syndrome

2009-07-27T23:40:00.000-07:00

I once read in a magazine article that there were 20,000 ways of ordering beverages in a starbucks. And this was in 2006. I didn’t roll my eyes on that one, neither did I think that the article was being dishonest. Well, the world does have a lot of weird stuff happening, I just added this to that list. But you know that corner of your mind where the most useless of information resides, this factoid found its way there. So, ever since then, each time I visit a Starbucks I somehow keep track of an imaginary number of how many different types of drinks I’ve had there, with the hope that some day Ill be able to verify the validity of that factoid. (If there was a show on the Travel channel called “The ultimate useless pursuits”, I’m sure this would be one.)

Which brings me to the real question of the day, how bad a starbucks fan do you have to be to get close to that number? But to answer that would be to accept that there does exist this group of people (and some dogs) who like being called the ultimate Starbucks “fan”.

Now you see them all over the place (an easier group to spot as compared to Smokers, Boy Band fans, Scientologists and probably all three combined) From my empirical calculations they usually fall in 3 categories (for lack of a better grouping system),

1. Tall (includes short people)

2. Grande (no, doesn’t come with a blowhorn)

3. Venti (the people I’d bank on for the magic 20K number)

So lets start with the “Tall” ones. Most of them confess to liking the place but not being overly obsessed with brand loyalty, give them a “Peet’s” and they’ll do just fine. Many in this group would just wander into a Starbucks, know the three types of coffee--usually a Tall Cappucino, Tall Café Latte ( not just latte) and a Venti Regular coffee with room for cream and sugar (never quite knew the point of this, its like making your own pizza) and maybe every once in a while a Chai Latte. (They at times order a tea and are left wide-eyed when handed a cup of hot water and a bag) Take them to Pete’s and they will need sometime to recalibrate to the sizes but usually manage to get the drink of their choice without a lot of fuss. I don’t think I’d bet on them to get anywhere near 20 different types of drinks, forget 20,000.

The “Grande” ones, well, a little more well versed with the beverages they know would turn some heads. More open to experimenting with the sizes of their lattes, might order a coffee cake once in a while and will reluctantly enter a “Pete’s” if they cant find a Starbucks in the mall (really?) A few of them would graduate to the ultimate “Venti” club provided they already spend more on coffee and the likes than say bread and milk at home. (Usually people with no kids, or if they do have kids, love their coffee more than their kids)

And then we finally have the Ultimate group, the “Venti”s . These brave warriors swear by the brand like the three 50 yr olds I saw dancing at a Floyd cover concert ( that’s a separate discussion) They own paraphernalia of all sorts from mugs to the grinder, have visited the first Starbucks store in Seattle like it was a holy shrine, have a Starbucks Duetto credit card and think they belong to an entitled club when they buy free coffee using starbucks points ( only to later realize the APR rates on those cards are twice as high as the rest of the cards and that they could have bought four additional drinks if they just paid with cash; American dream?) They would also have a flavor combination list, their drinks would have more than 3 requirements (skim milk, extra hot, vanilla flavored….) and they would prefer to study, hold business meetings, lunches, dates (and even some weddings) at their local Starbucks rather than any other place that would be more appropriate. They know that Tuesdays offer a wonderful free download of “1” song ( that noone has heard of) on Itunes, heck they even buy water there. Now that’s the group I bank on to get to that magic number.

The problem with this final group (like any other fan club) is that they graduate in search of more authentic coffee places either because they have to wait in line while the Talls and the Grandes figure out what they want ( they should have a separate line for frequent drinkers) or they go all crazy in the head ( maybe from all the caffeine they’ve been drinking) and join the Anti-Corporate America club and start hating anything that’s “Too Big” (Microsoft anyone?)

Supernovas do tend to burn out, but the big question here is, do they burn out after 20,000.

That’s what I’d like to know.

P.S. Isnt that a lot of drinks to consume over a lifetime? Is anyone keeping count of how many café drinks a normal coffee drinker (No Venti/Grande) has over a lifetime? I’d like to read that in an article someday.

The Paanwala point of life

2009-07-19T10:28:00.000-07:00

Well, this isnt a post about paanwalas ( betel leaf sellers for the uninitiated, read more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paan for your choice of Paan), neither am I trying to make it impossible for them to live their lives in peace ( don’t want a mob of them attacking me, the next time I’m in India, for ruining their reputations). If I have to take one more step, I would go on the record and say that they have always been an integral part of my life when I was in India, the ever present human GPS (on-star ? Garmin? who needs that when you have “Lucky” paanwala at the intersection of main roads 1 and 2), and if I have to take the word of my college buddy Kunal, they even provide notary services ( well Kunal also said many other things that later were verified not to be true). They were always there when you needed them, if I was a TV serial producer in India, I would obv target them for a series like NYPD Blue (Paanwala red?)

But this isnt a post about them.

Its just about that point in life when you realize that where you are is probably what you’ll achieve in life, a realization that sinks in and you make a choice either to feel happy about how far ( or not) you’ve come or feel sad about how far you actually wanted to go. My guess is given a choice of lifelong happiness versus the other thing, most people would choose this, without a doubt.

But why the Paanwala.

Well, its just that in essence I don’t think Paanwalas come to different cities as career choices by themselves. They all start young with visions in their eyes, some to make it big in the movies, some to probably open a different sort of “dhandha”, they all start with a small paan store, and 10 years down the line, find themselves exactly at the same point, probably a bigger store and more customers. By then those movie or the “dhandha” dreams seem less as visions and more as the “dreams” they started out to be. But not that anyone of them is really miserable about how life turned out to be, they just feel comfortable in their places, probably some of them happy too.

And that my friends is what I mean by the Paanwala point of life.

But why this now?

If I were to tell you I’ve actually reached that point in my life, I would have to be lying not because I don’t envision that happening to me, I think even by Paanwala standards I’m just “chotu” for now. What fun is it when you cant even have the entire store for yourself?

Well, I saw this post forwarded to me by my friend Shilpa, which rambled on and on about how we should feel happy about what we have ( though was quite inspirational and I'm not being held at gunpoint to say that, check it out for yourselves, http://www.psidea.org/fuel/TheAwakening.htm ), and the one thing that struck me at the end of it is, Paanwala.

So have you reached the Paanwala point in your lives?

Forgotten voices...

2009-04-19T18:53:00.000-07:00

In the immediate aftermath of the events of 26/11 in Mumbai, we all heard a million voices, an outpour of grief, rage and shock through many different sources. For its part Technology and the media stepped in as well. This was the age of twittering or tweeting, they said, and we all were amazed at how easily we knew so much without having to look too far. News had reached a new frontier, one that we had never seen before. It was as momentous as CNN's coverage of Iraqi Scuds hitting Kuwait in August of 1990, as fleeting as the concrete rubble through the streets of NY that fateful day of 9/11.

You would think something had changed right? I mean, with all this immediacy we should be in a position to do more to make people's lives better, to help our friends in distress. And we have. I think the world is more cohesive now than ever before, though the dark spots still remain. But the human condition is still the same right? Pain always is pain, and so is grief.Some voices are almost always forgotten. Except when people really want to make the change.

I know many people who said a lot of different things, the weeks after 26/11. From boycotting things to actual picking up a fight with some of them, from going out raising funds for the families of those affected to providing more information on the missing, I came across this wide spectrum of initiatives from people, some which fizzled out within a week, some that made their actions count.

One such effort came from a friend of mine, he wanted to raise funds for the families of the Police constables and Armymen who lost their lives or were incapacitated after the attacks, because usually the lower you are on the rungs of Indian bureaucracy, the chances are, you are usually forgotten. I just contributed to his effort but was really interested in knowing how he was going to do this and what the feedback would be. It took Krishna three months but surprisingly enough I received an email from him with the details of his endeavour. Most of the stories are personal, touching and show you that probably time is the only healer in all this.

These are some of the stories,

1. Shri Sudhir Marolia, fire fighter (Fractured his leg): Sudhir is a fire fighter attached to Bandra Fire brigade.On 28th Nov,in the Taj Mahal hotel, when the encounter was on, a hand grenade was thrown on the fire men while trying to save people from Taj. While trying to save himself from the grenade, he twisted his ankle. He was immediately taken to a hospital where an X-ray report seemed to be normal. He was told, it was just a sprain. This incident happened at around 6.30PM. He was then taken to his office (Bandra fire brigade) where he was still crying with pain, but his seniors ignored saying it was just a sprain. Later when he complained of persisting pain to his immediate senior and requested for an ambulance, he was denied stating that all vehicles are in operational in Taj and that he will need to wait. He had to wait till 2.30Am (29th Nov) till his reliever had come . Then he took rest till 5.00 Am and then he finally had to take a rickshaw back home.

Please note he earns only 8000 rupees (160 dollars) a month and has a wife and 2 children to support.

The Fire men in India aren’t provided a mediclaim insurance policy. They get a risk allowance of Rs.50 per month which has now been increased to Rs.500 after 26/11 attacks. The family was extremely in need of money and when a cheque was given to them (through the iniative) they were very happy and said they felt happy about the fact that even a common man thinks about them.

2. Shri ML Choudhari, Police Head constable attached to Railway police in CST station (He died in the CST firing):

The team met Smt Snehalata Murlidhar Choudhari' wife of 'Shri ML Choudhari' at their Ambarnath residence. They have a daughter 'Ms Priyanka' who is a B.com graduate and wants to do her MBA now. She has now been offered a job at Saraswat Co-op bank. They have a son, Devesh who is in 9th std. The team spoke to 'Smt Snehalata Murlidhar Choudhari' almost for 1/2 hr. She was saying about how they came to know about this.

Normally Shri ML Choudhari would come home by 1.15 AM when he is on 2nd shift. On 26th Nov also, he was on 2nd shift and his duty was about to end in 1 hr when the firing took place and he had to stay back. When it was around 1.30 she got tensed and called up on his mobile. She was not aware of the firing at CST station. Her husband's colleague picked up the phone and informed her about the incident. She initially thought that it could have been a prank and thought she might have probably dialed a wrong number. Again she called up on her husband's mobile and then she was asked to come to CST station immediately. She still could not believe it and she thought that it could have been a prank by one of the robbers who might have caught her husband for few bucks at Ambernath station since it was late in the night . She informed the person to please take the mobile and money and whatever he wants and leave her husband. The colleague replied he wasn’t playing any prank and asked her to switch on the TV. That was when she came to know of the whole incident.

On the fateful night , he died along with his Senior Shri.Shashank Shinde after Kasab and Ismail Khan fired indiscriminately at CST station.

3. Gajendra Singh, NSG Commando (Died Smt Vineeta Devi, wife of martyr 'Shri Gajendra Singh' . The cheque has been sent through registered post to Army headquarters , South block, Delhi. I was liaising with Col Rawat who gave me all details of the family. He suggested that if I send a crossed cheque in favour his wife is sent to them, they will arrange to send it to his wife. Accordingly this has been done. Col Rawat also said, they are trying for a job for Smt Vineeta Devi in the Uttarakhand government. He also said , Shri Gajendra Singh's brother who is a driver with Police dept, is also having some dispute with the money. Hence Col Rawat has taken this responsibility of sending this cheque.

A little background about Gajendra Singh’s family :

It’s sad to say that, the last time Shri Gajendra Singh went home was on 15th Aug 2008, when his father died. And then it was on 26/11 when his dead body reached home. It seems Smt Vineeta Devi didn’t know about the operation as Gajendra Singh told her that he was in Delhi. But he was actually sent to Mumbai for this deadly operation.

Since childhood , he always had a dream to join to the army and he himself opted to join the NSG. He has 2 kids: Daughter, Preeti who is 10 years old and son, Gaurav who is 11 years old.

6. Arun Chitte : A cheque was Rs.25,000/- was issued to his wife 'Manisha Chitte' who has 3 daughters : Komal, studying in 3rd Std., Snehal, studying in 3rd Std and Kushi, who is in Nursery. The family lives in Mhada colony in Dharavi and owns 2 houses in that same building. She was offered a job in Police but she refused. Now that job has been given to Arun's brother. Also Manisha's brother has also been offered a job at Saraswat Co-Op bank. Arun had been working as driver for encounter specialist Mr. Vijay Salaskar for almost 10 years. He had been with him for almost all the encounters. Like his boss, he also never had any bad habits like smoking or drinking.

After our conversation with Manisha and her brother, we saw that she was confident of bringing up her kids.

7. Balasaheb Bhosale: : Rs.10,000/- .Asst Sub Inpector Balasaheb Bhosale was also killed in the 26 / 11 attacks. He is survived by his wife 'Sharda Bhosale' to whom we gave a cheque of Rs.10,000/- at their Naigaon police quarters residence and 2 sons ,Deepak, who is attached to Naigaon police station and another son, Sachin who has been offered a job in Mantralaya .

8. Vijay Khandekar : Constable Vijay Khandekar was attached to Azad Maidan police station. We managed to meet his wife 'Shradha Khandekar' at her Nagpada residence in police quarters. She refused to take donations since she said she was financially stable and wanted us to help others who are in need of it. So no donations were made to his family. Last week also 'Vijay's' name had hit the headlines. The Indian government had forgotten his sacrifice to our country and his name was listed in the Police routine transfer list.

Rahul Shinde: Rs. 25,000/-.Rahul Shinde is a constable attached to SRPF division in Solapur. Rahul was single and youngest in his family. His elder brother has been offered a job in Taj Hotel in Mumbai but his mom doesn’t want him go to Mumbai because she is extremely scared and doesn’t want to come to Mumbai. So he has refused this job. Rahul’s family lives in a small village in Sultanpur district in Solapur. Their source of income is farming. The team sent a cheque of Rs.25,000/- to his father registered post .

Shri Prakash More: Rs.10,000/- .The cheque was issued in name of his wife Mrs. Madhavi Prakash More. Shri Prakash More's eldest son 'Pratik' is studying FY Engineering from a college in Dombivali and his daughter, Anushka is studying in 8th std. Mrs. Madhavi Prakash More is working with a bank. She was away at work when the team had gone to their house. The cheque was handed over to Pratik in front of their neighbour as a witness at their Mulund residence.

Shri Tukaram Ombale: : Rs.10,000/- . The cheque was handed over to his wife 'Tarabai Tukaram Omble' . When the team went to his house, they got a chance to speak to his wife and his family friend . He has 4 daughters. 2 of them are married. The other 2 daughters are Vaishali, studying BA B 'ED and Bharati, studying TYBA. As they entered his house, next to his photo they saw the Ashok Chakra' which was given to him on 26th Jan 2009. It was because of Shri Omble that the cops were able to nab Kasab alive.

12. Jaywant Patil : Rs. 100,000/- .He studied till 12th Std. He then joined police force and had served for 17 years. While in the police force, he did his graduation by joining a night college in Bhandup. He was the trusted body guard of Shri Ashok Kamte (Asst Commissioner of Police, Chembur Zone) who also lost his life on the fateful night.

The terrorists had pumped 18 bullets into his body. He is survived by his wife 'Pratibha Jaywant Patil' and 2 cute kids, Esha, who is studying in 1st std in St Xaviers school in Bhandup and a 4 month old baby named 'Shaurya'. His naming ceremony took place just few days before this attack. Since now she is alone with her kids, her parents have come from Satara to stay with her. They will be moving back to Satara very soon.

13. Ambadas Pawar : Rs. 25,000/- . He is survived by his wife 'Kalpana Pawar' and 1 1/2 yr old kid named Vivek. They have been given a 2 BHK flat in Mhada colony in Sion - Koliwada where they have already shifted.

Spoke to Ambadas Pawar’s brother, father and mother. They are also currently staying with her in the new flat. They said they have also been allotted a petrol pump and Shri Ambadas's wife has been given a job in Saraswat Co Op bank .

Shri Ambadas Pawar was also in the same jeep in which Ashok Kamte, Hemant Karkare, Jaywant Patil were killed.

14. Mukesh Jhadav : Rs. 25,000/- . He is survived by 4 brothers, father and mother. He was the 3rd son. The 2nd son has been offered a job in Railways at Kalyan station. They have also been allotted a 2 BHK Mhada flat in Sion Koliwada.

15. Shri Bapurao Dhurdagde: Rs. 50,000/- given to the Shri Bapurao Dhurdagde's family at their Sewri residence. They live in a chawl-type constable level police quarters above Sewri Police station in Reay Road. Krishna personally met his wife and handed over the cheque to her. He has 2 daughters & 1 son. Eldest daughter is doing Computer Science from BVP college, Nerul and other daughter in engineering. Son is doing chemical engineering. I spoke to their eldest daughter. She appreciated our gesture to help the family. Mom didn’t speak much. She was still in a state of shock. She just came out to sign the acknowledgement and was silent.

the human paradox: revisited

2009-01-26T21:12:00.000-08:00

And then there are stories and there are voices. Each story with different voices and each voice with stories. These stories have many words and when you read each word and close your eyes, each word creates a character. Soon, through your inner eye you see all these different characters each with a story to tell, finally converging in an orgy, not just any orgy, but one of syllables.

It is in this orgy that the syllables shine like monochromatic crystals viewed through a multicolored kaleidoscope, and no matter the distortion always finds its way into exact beautiful patterns. Each one of those crystals is chosen from amongst many grains washed ashore by random waves, the same waves that have been resonating through the ages with the frequency of the cosmic 'aum' and the 'amen'. The sounds from these waves find their way into notes which when heard together fill the mind with peace and the heart with passion and awakens the dreamy eyed demagogue that hides deep within our mortal dermi. a soul awakened by visions of its own voice and story.

this is the human paradox.

where is that line?

2008-12-14T17:31:00.000-08:00

ok, let me rephrase. Is there even a line. How should you react to these ghastly incidents that scar not only your pysche but also drive down that a deep hatred which seems to erupt in anonymity? What happened in Mumbai not only leaves us with questions about the relevance of Pakistan in our lives (as Indians) but also the relevance of the normal day Pakistani that you might bump into on the street. Why is there a shadow version of ourselves that tends to bring out the worst in us when hidden in a mob or a group, but as individuals we tend to think differently. I'm sure there must have been a million social experiements done to study this, but why is there no perfect solution to deal with this problem?

I've read and reread many articles on how to hurt Pakistan into waking up to reality without actually firing a single shot, the sort of Cold-War tactics used by the US to hurt a country where it really matters, economically, culturally or even pyschologically. But the thing thats different with the Pakis is this deep rooted feeling of brotherhood some of us Indians feel in times of relative peace with our neighbor. I dont think its a religion thing, its more to do with us wanting to take a higher moral stand, of always wanting to be in peace even during times of pain, of utmost restraint, the same restraint that our Government keeps reminding us, the same restraint the Western World urges us to show. But is the price of restraint worth it?

These questions are meant to be asked because for some of us who arent in the crowd, the anger or restraint we show happens more at a personal level. I've had all these questions running through my mind, because as an Indian in the US, I feel the anger and yet I feel anonymous to the cause. How should I react? Should I even react? The day after the happenings in Mumbai, I was in a cab driven by yes, a Paki. I was with my colleagues, each one with their own immigrant stories but I couldnt expect them to understand how it made me feel sitting in that cab. I sat next to the driver, while he started talking to me about Bollywood and how Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai were in his cab when they visited the city. I just smiled and said nothing, when inside me, all I could feel was the rage of being there. I knew my anger had nothing to do with him as a person, he was just a guy like me, trying to find his way through life. But all I could think of were the dollars I was going to pay him, which would in turn find its way to Pakistan maybe as a family remittance, and who knows might end up in the hands of the same group that sent people to destroy my brethren. After all they are all charities right? Maybe I was being simplistic about the whole thing, or maybe I wasnt. These thoughts made my head spin that I had to ask my colleague for an aspirin in the car. She didnt have one, and so what happens next, yes you must have guessed it, Mr. Cabi hands over a couple of aspirins and asks me to have it. I didnt know whether to feel relieved or even angrier. I just took the escapist route and fell asleep. The next day I left the hotel room, prepared for my presentation and guess what, my client was a Pakistani. I again, didnt know what to do. I had to be professional obviously, so I just kept it that way. No small talk, but we could feel the tension. What made the equation a bit skewed was us being three Indians to him being one. I wouldnt find that surprising though, there are after all a billion of us in this world. Though I always wonder what goes on inside the head of a Pakistani soon after these incidents ( they do happen pretty often) There is one thing I have realized though with my countless experiences with my neighbors. One-on-One they are probably the nicest people in the world. Its when they become bigger than a group of 20, that you start hearing the commentary. In any case we went out for lunch which was more or less in silence except for one colleague of mine who was Chinese and couldnt help himself from talking. Though at some point, my Paki client did mention that his wife was from India. I again didnt know what to say. I just said, Great.

Great? Who says that.

Some of these questions do have answers. Like the way my friends decided not to go to a Pakistani owned theatre or a restaurant. Maybe it doesnt matter to the business, but it did matter as a set of principles for them. Like the way, my friend decided againt buying a pair of gloves though they were perfect, just because they were made in Pakistan. Would it ever add up, I asked them. They said, they didnt care. Its the same petro-dollar argument new energy advocates use here. Less money for the Saudis, less money to blow us up.

They say you cant generalize. Not everyone belongs to the same mob. But isnt the reason we got to this point because we never had a coherent policy on what we should do. We need not hate, but do we need to love? Why shoot ourselves in the foot when almost 100,000 Indian soldiers have died in the Kashmir conflict and yet Atif Aslam signs record deals with Indian music companies. Yes, he didnt kill anyone and yes the soldiers may not have been killed by Pakistanis ( Afghans and Kashmiris also fought in that insurgency) but isnt it better to solve the leakage through one hole before opening up more taps? And note that I havent even started talking about the religion aspect of this entire conflict.

In the end, I think, all of us are just trying to find our way out for ourselves. So that we need not be the ones making that crucial decision whether to cut the umbilical cord or not. In essence though, I think Pakistan has already done so, a long time ago.

That Saturday night, I ended up thinking what my friends said, on my long drive home through the rainy streets of San Jose. Each one made a passionate argument, not on how to deal with this situation, but how they would deal with a normal day Pakistani. To me, it sounded idealistic, because of my own recent interactions. But they made their case and said they would stand by it. I though could only see two sets of images in front of my eyes. One of the chaos on the streets of the city I would swear by anyday and the other of me walking away from the cab, the minute I found out. The problem though, was, one happened and the other didnt.

the gamut

2008-12-07T18:23:00.000-08:00

every time you run through a maze of colors, every time you immerse yourself into a range of notes, every time you skim through the pages in a book, its the gamut that strikes you every time, of colors, of music, of words.

but have you ever had a range of illusions run through your head, the ones that take you from one extreme to the other, of immense hope, of hopeless solitude, of aching pain, to the light that leads you to the next path? the same range of illusions that conjure emotions that mean one thing but result in another, and how this concoction of minutes, time weighted by how you feel, pass by in a split second one day and drag through an entire afternoon the other with you feeling hopelessly out of control only to show up the next day with that perfect smile that could take you through the rest of your life?

ive had these weeks recently where ive been dragged through dirt, through muck and ive flown over mountains and yet i feel completely at home with that cuppa mocha being still and watching these moments pass me by, each minute filled with experiences that i know i can take with me wherever life leads me to, though with the added satisfaction of knowing it cant get better than this.

then,so be it.

let the games begin. bring me the gamut.

the long goodbye...III

2008-09-22T06:10:00.000-07:00

...brings the short hello.

**************************************************************************************

this was always going to be the end as i saw it, which actually makes me happier than ever. Knowing that something doesn't necessarily have to end, but just morph into something new is any believer's dream, we do say right, the ultimate butterfly-caterpillar truth.

" tu jayega toh phir aayega na?"..asked N the night before my flight..the others started laughing immediately. " yeh kya kargil mein ladne ja raha hai kya?" said S. True, it wasnt as dramatic as that, but there was a hidden element of truth in what N has asked me. Does it have to be the end? I mean, could I choose one over the other? or are these not even choices for me to be made.

It surprises me that Ive met people who are sure of where they want to be. Some say this is it, some say, nopes thats my only destiny. I for one, have no idea where a new day would take me. And maybe this trip opened up the frontiers of the future for me. The energy in India is tremendous, I must admit reluctantly, it is where the action is slowly moving to. A kind of lawless wild west...or just in this case the emerging east, still lawless mind you. People are in it to make their bucks, and when they are done, yes the country will be developed, we will have our new leaders and the structured economy will make it tougher to bend the rules. But thats quite a distance away, I dont think I'll be alive to see that happen in any case.

Will the country we once knew as kids change? It already has, only some places still remain the same. There is edginess to things, to break free of a billion people only to miss them later on. To come back with the bucks only to see them corrode in value. The normal westside story for all us Indians who live abroad.

the manzilein-rastein conundrum.

between getting stuck at saki naka twice for an hour each and travelling from dadar aboard a fast local, my mind began to wander, albeit more in irritation than out of choice. the humidity started piercing my soul and then it started raining.

ah, the rains.

if anything hadnt changed in bby...it was the rains...now they had too much water. i just stepped out and got drenched because id rather be drenched with water than with sweat...things move slowly here, some things dont move at all. two steps forward, three steps back...that should be the official motto of india ( and my life as well which speaks for the special bond) and then there are days where its three steps forward and one step backward. whatever be the case, its still pathetic, but what do you expect with a billion people all moving in a billion directions. yes, there is a choice of not having to be part of it or staying above the fray as some would see it.

for me its still a pending decision. im not yet ready to shut the door. there is always this small ray of hope piercing through the tiniest of spaces. maybe thats just what i need.

i heard out all my peers for the last four weeks. on how some say, if they were to leave the place they will never ever come back for sure, and how some said, if we all planned to escape then what would happen to the place?...some had issues with the fact that everyone they knew seemingly lived better lives abroad ( not knowing that the same better life actually takes its own pound of flesh from these people)...in all it was about the future. noone i knew talked about the past. it was all forgotten.

which is what i could see...everyone drawing their raasteins...some set in the concrete walls of their new homes, some in that far off opportunity in edmonton, alberta. the pace had quickened for sure, like time's slowly running out to make these choices and soon everyone's going to be in cruise mode, not veering right or left but just straight ahead.

what i never understood though was, what about the manzileins? Was anyone even aware of futures each of these choices hold, or was this the way life had to be lead. You make choices, and you live with the consequences.

unlike my fear of the consequences that lets me draw only one path.

which do you think makes more sense?

the long goodbye....wanderlust

2008-08-25T22:21:00.000-07:00

"u might have a case of the wanderlust..did that ever strike you?"...she said over lunch in a cuban restaurant in the middle of midtown manhattan that sunday afternoon.

i just smiled and thought to myself that it was pretty interesting, because we all travel, some more than others, but soon the conversation lead somewhere else and this topic was soon forgotten.

all until this morning.

its amazing how many dots you can connect at any single moment and how you connect them as well. For example, the minute you see something uve seen in the past makes you connect the dots from there to here and somewhere in that process, things start looking well pretty random.

that was what i was doing at 4 am this morning. with the jetlag kicking in on day 2, i found myself rolling on my bed in this hotel in the heart of pune, feeling hungry, tired and irritable.

indian tv is pure nonsense, thats for sure. between the never ending cricket matches played by god knows which team, the scantily clad women in the music videos, and the looping sights of people rioting, you would have a tough time believing that india is a pretty safe, conservative and not as big on sports as the tv channels want you to believe. and add to that the really annoying tv news anchors who keep nodding their heads with their make believe british accents.

ok thats how critical you can get at 4 am in the morning...and when there is absolutely nothing to watch on tv...

except it was the democratic national convention night live from...yes u guessed it, denver, colorado.

so im stuck in a room in some random place in pune watching kennedy give his last ever convention speech from the pepsi centre, a place where i once saw eric clapton play layla and watched kobe bryant get booed...

those were the dots i connected this morning. How it all added up, i have no idea and what it added up to is again a big question mark.

But this trip kinda looks surreal, on how you could bridge so many different worlds and yet be all alone as i was..in that room.

or it might be just be a case of wanderlust.

the long goodbye...II

2008-08-25T21:43:00.000-07:00

india these days seems to be on the brink of self-destruction...only because it seems to be so much in love with itself. ok, i actually thought that was a bit funny, because any channel on tv you switch to, any billboard you see, there is this annoying sense that everyone believed india was truly the greatest country on earth. ( now where have i heard that before?...)

you can do anything, impossible is achievable, do your thing....and the list goes on. this additional emphasis of the individual in a society which still feeds off the collective efforts of the many, only seems counter productive. everyone wants to be the MAN ( or the woman) and yet everyone seeks affirmation from the society....its all very confusing.

to me personally, it seemed like the country was on steroids...or like barry bonds giant head, very surreal. inflation maybe a better term, but to me its just a rip off.

ill give you an example why. a bottle of water in my hotel costs 35 rupees. one roti costs 20 rupees, and a plate of hakka noodles cost me a whopping 135 rupees. this seems more ridiculous than the nuts they charge you at vegas ( the real nuts)...i did hear a lot of these stories from my friends who visit india but this time i actually saw it with my own eyes...

and yet there r things which have just not changed, and its at a point where noone cares anymore. Electricity is in short supply, and yet IT enclaves want to rule the world, the roads are great for most of the way and just when you start getting happy that things have changed you'll find yourself facing an annoying stretch of mud with a board hanging next to it "this stretch of road is not managed by the MCGM"

basically its a message that says, hey we dont give a shit what happens to u here, so drive on and have a nice journey.

but even through all the noise, i can still see glimpses of the old order, the way we all were and maybe that is still the silent majority and all i notice is the chaotic minority...and that chaos is probably the way the majority dreams of its escape.

just like i planned mine.

the long goodbye....I

2008-08-25T21:29:00.000-07:00

the questions i had meant to ask were all out there, and this time i just wanted to get over the fear. ive been on a roll over the past few weeks, trying to escape the few things that bothered me anymore, and four weeks in a country once home seemed to be a welcome break.

and the day i get here, after enduring the infamous chinese hospitality at shanghai ( and yes, i was in china during the olympics...just like i saw shooting stars in seattle...all a matter of interpretation)...the only question i have left is...

was this home? i mean...was this ever..home?

ok, so we all go thru the motions, the past never seems good enough, no matter how good it actually was. there is nothing that lasts forever, from november rain to shoes worn in school. stuff the nostalgia industry wants u to consistently think of at all times. photographs, albums, videos in technicolor, all add to the misery.

but i had to see this additional dimension of things seeming..whats the word...in tatters?...the playgrounds i used to play seem empty and forlorn...so the question i had was..where r the kids who play now?..its not sad if i see kids play there now, its sad when its empty and broken down...

thats the part i still havent gotten used to.

the fact that all my memories of this country are exactly just that...memories, anything that i and my friends used to do, are just not done anymore.

in any case, im not getting all teary-eyed here...this is really an amazing opportunity...imagine being able to recreate new memories of the exact same place...just new paint, same walls.

and thats what i intend to do.

it happened one night...

2008-08-15T19:38:00.000-07:00

...it was a dark 10:15 that night when i drove back on 101...and as the voices in my head quietened out after an intense recap of what had just happened, i couldnt help feel more alive than ever in a very long time. i could feel the rage drippin through my pores but it seemed a futile waste of anger which could have been better used in a more real environment somewhere im sure. and it wasnt just rage that i could feel, it was also a cold feeling somewhere deep of peace..of being relieved...

and it was all bcos i now know what i didnt before.

...could i sleep? did i sleep?...i really dont know, but the exhaustion left me with no options. i think those are really the best times, when you have no options. you just do one thing because thats all you can. what had happened had been brewing for a while now, and as ever, i always miss the signs. The good part though, contrast helps decisions. Something is good because something else is bad. In the end, both pass you by. A big relief.

and it was all bcos i now know what i didnt before.

...it was 930 and i was still in bed...a wreck from what had happened the night before. i wanted to talk to someone but i couldnt call anyone because i was sure noone would have anything new to say. Reassurance is probably the worst pep talk when you've been zapped, saying something in chinese would probably be better. i should have been in china. So, i mopped up and reached work...the one special place in my life that was completely insulated from the burning city on the other...and thank god for that.

i reached for the coffee machine and in came all the actors, the old, the young, the funny, the serene, it was almost like a play was enacted in front of my eyes. we spoke about things that didnt matter, on how wikipedia was more accurate than encyclopedia britanica (read the long tail: thanks to prashant), on how russia had all the right to be in georgia and then we went to work...it almost felt like someone had just removed this huge weight off my shoulders...of me meandering into the whys and the hows and whys again....

actually now it didnt even matter whether i knew anything or not...

i returned home and biked my way to the twilight sky by the bay...and suddenly couldnt help being raptured by the sight in front of my eyes...now i know we've all been near amazing sights ( some captured on film, all others just a bad attempt at blaming the camera when its pretty evident u can never capture them (ok kartik u can on a d40))...but this was just magnificent...the colors, the wind, the saline (ok marginally polluted) smell of the bay...it all just came together. for a minute, i just thought to myself...huh..and this roller coaster ride of emotions was for what exactly?...

maybe just for the contrast...to explain what matters and what doesnt.

i stayed there for a while till the moonlight hit the waters and counted 27 aircrafts make their way to the runway at sfo...soon ill be on one of them, on a totally new adventure, and this time im done being skeptical. its just full swing from now on, and maybe nothing may work, but at least its not an option anymore.

if they dont go, u leave.

and so it happened one night.

lights will guide u home....

2008-07-19T21:12:00.000-07:00

...yes welcome to the therapy music of coldplay....therapy because all their songs deal with some sort of human condition...a sequence of melodrama and eventually all ends good....shouldnt life be that way too?

for that i have no answers, but yes their music is still phenomenal....yes they're some sort of a soft rock group that have ballads sticking out like a sore thumb, but hey...its the music that counts....

i finally saw them perform live....yes...thats an achievement id like to paste even in my resume...and were they awesome or what....

i think the video below speaks for itself....

and lights will guide u home,
and ignite ure bones,
and i will try to fix you...

the chump

2008-07-16T19:42:00.000-07:00

" So, you really are a chump", she said as we sat on the beach that Friday afternoon. I just smiled back looking at the water. A surfer was trying to catch the wind and surf ashore, but in reality there was no wind so I had no idea what he was doing out in the waters....it felt a very pleasant 78, could have been a bit lower. " Yes maybe I am, or maybe I'm just nothing. Isnt the point of it all to see everyone be happy in the end? No bitterness, no slippery slopes into despair or anguish. So how does the action of just one individual make any difference? and maybe my inaction stems from a complete paralysis of analysis, like those ESPN commentators who dont know who's side they're on"

" So do you know what you're going to do next?" she asked for the hundredth time.

" Yes, I am going to just lie here on the sand, close my eyes and dream about the ice-cream I am going to have in an hour. And if you are planning to ask me what I am going to do next, please make sure to note down my responses, some day I promise, we will have a laugh, all at my expense. For now though I have decided, inaction's the best course of action. You see, this is exactly what you would call a Prisoner's dilemma in Game theory. I know I have to make a decision that helps my situation, but if I make a wrong one, I get penalized not because I was wrong, but because I chose the exact opposite as fate would have desired. Now thats a slippery slope. I'll avoid that for now"

" And maybe the point of it all is to be inactive and focus on the little things that help me get off a slippery slope. See more, know more, learn more. Ask questions, try answering some, drive people insane, drive myself insane. Try filling the void with sand, stone, pearls, coffee, chocolates and everything else the world has to offer. Drive north, bike south, sail east, fly west. Expand the horizons till everything makes sense. Do you even sense the opportunity in all this? And yes at some point things will be clearer or maybe I will convince myself that I'm done or she may convince me that we're done. The strings that bind us to our choices must have a manual, and I'm just reading it out to see if it makes sense. Does that make me a sinner, no, does that make me less capable of holding onto the strings, obviously not. Its a manual, its not dummies guide to break free. And I'm not on a path to moksha or nirvana or anything of that other-life crisis points. I'm still dealing with my QLC, OLC is way out of my league. Its like the last two men sitting on the world series of poker, when both dont know what cards they hold, but still hope they have better cards till one realizes, hey I forgot my sandwich and he folds.

In the end it should all make sense. and when it does, I will fold. like i never had a choice.

and yes as I hear myself talk, I am a chump."

the citadel of expectations...

2008-05-22T18:17:00.000-07:00

the beginning...

hyderabad house has become standard fare these days....and with every spoon of biryani and every piece of Nan...the stories we talk about become more and more familiar to everyone around us....being right next to the stanford campus, you would imagine us to talk about things we would want all of mankind to move towards...the latest position paper on foreign policy, the latest technology for a facebook app.....but for every 10 geeks in the room the only thing i think the four of us ever talk about are non-issues in the eyes of others....issues more mortal and benign yet which tend to boil over because the solutions arent anywhere in sight....

now most ppl reading this blog ( if there are any left) would jump to conclusions ( or even hump to it)...but sorry boss, this place no longer resembles stories from real life. the only thing that ever gets written here are either as old as McCain or as irrelevant as him...( go obama! )

so what about the expectations or the lack of it?....its more like the rhyme we used to listen to when we were kids ...somethin to do with a mulberry bush ( whatever the hell that is)...and we all fall down....oh ya...here we go around the mulberry bush....and we all fall down....

honestly i dont remember anythin to be half as lame as that but then most things we do as kids are lame....parents have to call them cute...i prefer to call them retarded....

have u ever realized how parents get so riled up about their kids and how the most annoying kids in a restaurant are Desi kids?.....In the entire restaurant u would see 10 kids...8 american kids who mind their business....and 2 desi kids who mind everyones else's.....

thats why american kids are more prone to ADD i think...bcos desi kids are beyond all that by the time their parents grow up....if their parents are around i must mention....

coming back to the expectations gig....ppl always mention how we should manage expectations...whether its about work or life or anythin remotely connected to charles dickens...on how u dont raise the stakes before u know it can be achieved...but in an age where everythin runs on spin...how do u not open ure mouth before u know what ure talkin about?

i call that word vomit, most ppl call that talking....with no end in sight. i try to keep it simple...u dont talk if u dont have anything to say. But for every 10 people i meet, its like the definition of talking is always to say something stupid...and then say something else to cover up ure earlier stupidity...and then its a slippery slope....u only stop when a stray dog passes u by and everyones interested in the dog instead of whatever it is u were talking about....but here's the catch....if u were even the tiniest bit smart...u would just shut the f$k up....

But no.

As soon as the dog passes by, u start again...like u had to hit ure numbers that minute....phew...i just made my word numbers ....damn im good....

and everyone then whispers...u know he made his numbers....

which is where the entire expectations comes into play...

so if ure still reading this post, ud realize im just ranting about nothing in particular, but am having a ball in creating these heightened expectations for u....its coming folks...u will get some solid news in this post on where my life is headed next....its almost here....it is...i promise.

the bubble bursters....

have u met ppl who just claim to know it all and then under the pretext of keeping it real burst all ure bubbles? now im a solid bubble guy...i wander off in all random directions in my own bubble...not bothering anyone else mind u....but then these bubble bursters have to pin me down and burst it...like they have some sort of fetish in chasing away dreams....

why dont they sell their stock right next to the dream catchers in stores...if u like someone get them a dream catcher....( ya the round thing with feathers)...if u really like them (..wink..wink ) get them a dream chaser....

in the end i think both work the same way....fool u into believing somethings gonna happen when what happened just happened and u were too stupid to realize it just did.

process ppl...

i hate these ppl. i seriously hate these ppl.

the ones who always start a meeting showing a f@#$king presentation on how things should be done....the methodology man...process pete....but dont know what the hell they r doing.

i have one thought on all this. by the time ppl go through the meeting learning the process...most of them have already forgotten what they do for a living...and the only thing they remember is...yes... the process.

its like when the end comes ( which always does)....we're all running around like headless chicken...yelling....wheres the process?...the process!!...THE PROCESS!...

how do u think american companies have become this fat and stupid?...because u only have all these fancy mba kids running the show with words like processes and methodologies and powerpoints....none of them have a clue what they're talking about....

so much for the process.

the end

ok had to get all this off my chest....and now im a free man.....yeey....

but my biggest crib of these 5 months is yet to fill the void....

WHY THE F@#$K IS HILLARY STILL RUNNING? IS SHE CRAZY??

ok now i feel much better.

seeya all.

opinions at 27.....

2008-05-17T12:07:00.000-07:00

....is it just me who's clueless or does anyone know when we all turned into stone walls of opinion that its almost impossible to understand the other person's point of view....a punch here and a knock there would force u to understand but why has it become this tough to get thru...?

so the story goes, there were 100 ppl to begin with....all listened, all nodded...till one woke up and realized...hey this is BS....but whats worse is his own brand of BS which he believed was the solemn truth....the next guy woke up with his brand and in the end we had a 100 different brands of BS all upheld to be the truth that noone believed in.....

so if thats how the situation is...how do u get anything done?

the answer is simple....u just dont....or u form ure cliques and stick to them like the holiest truth uve ever come to know....

isnt it sad? and its just at 27....

the long goodbye...the short hello....

2008-05-15T21:15:00.000-07:00

wow, has it been 5 months...i must have been real high or deep in thought to not post anything here....it happens right...u have a million things in ure head but nothin worth writing about either because its premature BS or its just plain BS....

i didnt plan it to be that way though...but everytime i started writing somethin i just lost hope that it even made sense....but as is everythin else u find a way out of the hole...either by digging deeper to reach the other end or by getting out....the first step though is to accept ure in one.....

now before i start losing perspective and cloud ure minds with more questions, let me just say this....who cares...

a fresh start is always good.

so here comes the new lost....

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2008-05-15T21:14:00.000-07:00

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small's the new big in the new year?

2008-01-10T10:06:00.000-08:00

Tata finally revealed its Nano small car, slated for a release later this year. Although the car looks more like a golf-cart, I guess for a lakh its a steal, at least for families in India who want a car within the affordable range.

What would be more interesting is an electric version of the car, considering the fact that it doesnt really have a glaring top speed or horse power requirements that hit the roof....

could this be clean and small at the same time....

now thats a revolution...

what if this is as good as it get?...

2007-12-13T20:54:00.000-08:00

INT. PSYCHIATRIST'S OFFICE - DAY

Melvin bursts in on the psychiatrist and emits one word.

MELVIN Help!
DOCTOR If you want to see me you will not do this. You will make an appointment...
MELVIN Explain to me how you can diagnose someone as "obsessive compulsive disorder" and then act like I have any choice in barging in.
DOCTOR There's not going to be a debate. You must leave.

The Doctor moves into the hallway, forcing Melvin to follow.

MELVIN You said you could help me -- what was that -- a tease?
DOCTOR I can help you if you take the responsibility to keep regular app --

MELVIN (suddenly) You changed the room around...
DOCTOR Two years ago...

Melvin shakes his head -- as if things weren't bad enough he must go through a careful exercise noting every new element before he's at all comfortable... as he studies each object.

The Doctor is professionally intrigued despite himself.

DOCTOR I also regrew my beard...but you're not interested in changes in me... so it's like I always told you... when it comes to people you...

MELVIN Shhhhhhh. I don't have this mountain of available time... I got to get to my restaurant on time. Do you know how hard it is for me to be here?

DOCTOR Yes. (as Melvin starts for the office) No.

INT. PSYCHIATRISTS' WAITING ROOM - DAY

More PATIENTS in the almost-crowded waiting room.

Melvin passes through -- visibly drawn and upset. He stops. Eyes on them. Then:

MELVIN (to other patients) What if this is as good as it gets?

They look stricken. He exits.

************************************************************************************

This is where I was. Apparently you can say the same thing looking down as you can looking up....its just the perspective thats different.

And so I walked up and down the flight of stairs that run outside my office. Furiously repeating," What are these words in my head, how do I get caught up with some junk I see on TV that have no relevance to real life? But wait..what if it wasnt event junk. What if this IS as good as it got? "

My gtalk status now had the words that had been running riot in my head.

and then began the counselling.

I think Ive seen ppl have therapy sessions based on ideas of what somethin meant to them. You showed someone a tree and ask them, what do u see here?

Only here i didnt ask, but ppl poured me a glass of what they were thinking....

A at 10:42am: if this is as good as it gets.....quit while you are ahead...

At 11:58 pm C says : dude the possible answer to ur status is... " then this is where I want it all to end "

P at 2:48pm: then ur basically screwed...

S at 5:05pm: if this is as good as it gets, you should make the best of the opportunity...

3 positives out of four....looks like this really is the season to be jolly..

Happy holidays everyone! Wish u all a merry christmas and a happy new year....

lights...camera...freeze....

2007-10-30T22:21:00.000-07:00

Thats what we all did when the ground beneath us started shaking....my first quake in the Bay Area...( it was pretty scary in retrospect)

I was roaming around in Ikea, checkin out the furniture when the whole place started shaking...the steel roof with the grids and chains started making a weird clankety sound.....a 5.6 i find out later...

But what was weird about this was the way we all just stood there...Everyone in the store just had a blank stare maybe out of fear or confusion...

And what was funny was that there were tables all around us...Shouldnt have we all just got under one? There were enough tables for everyone in the store...it was Ikea after all...

But instead some (including my friend) went and stood near a book shelf ( yeah, like that would help..) and i stood under a steel grid...(what was i thinkin)

Just goes to show how all the knowledge in the world doesnt help when u face an emergency.

What might help is just a little bit of luck.

the phoenix

2007-10-26T19:06:00.000-07:00

...images flicker in front of my eyes, but the ideas still remain the same. The past can only do as much, in either helping you move on or in providing you with fresh incentive to breathe. but somehow, i can see the mountain i need to climb beneath me, as if my future is also beyond me.

these are just words, a sense of deja vu to silence the critics...again. if this is bliss then maybe im just an insatiable moron. if there is no bliss, then we have some liars to deal with. its a gift to feel balanced, between those moments of utter confusion we seem to delve in quite frequently.

and what remains of all of us is just a bunch of deluded psychopaths searching for answers when there r no questions at all.

ive had a tuff few months searching for questions and for answers bcos nothing seemed to manifest when i looked for them. i was finally happy, but i didnt really love it a whole lot, because not a whole lot changed around me. it seemed to me that the world was always lookin for reasons to feel morose. Countries were always at war, ppl always killed each other, and there were those who ruled over all this who kept it this way. Status quo is what they wanted, it was what they got.

It still seems to me that if everyone wanted to be happy, they could persevere to a happy place and then get there. And then for people like me, you accept that the goal maybe a few notches below what you had aimed for but it was still all good.

what you want and what you need maybe more closer than u ever thought they could be.

and fyi, its not like im all of a sudden mayor of happyville. its just that being a peon at happyville also feels like the cup half full than empty. a weird intense feeling of fulfillment.

and the only place to go from here is home.

life's a game of inches...on any given sunday...

2007-09-29T17:32:00.000-07:00

so do u fight for that inch?

they're back!!!....

2007-09-11T21:25:00.000-07:00

an unconstrained life.

2007-09-06T19:49:00.000-07:00

The sound of the waves as they hit the rocks was probably the only thing that we could hear for miles. A foggy drive along California's northern coast in the twilight zone was the closest I've been to complete peace in a long time. When you keep driving as you attempt to leave the world you know behind, its exactly those thoughts that fill your mind again.

If the absence of light is darkness, then what is the absence of darkness?

It sure isnt light.

I work with numbers, with money, with bits, with ones and zeroes. Some can be big, some as tiny as the tenth of a percent. Most people begin to wonder, so whats the big deal, you add a one and you subtract a 10, you will get an answer.

The only tricky part is to get the right answer.

I work with optimization. For people unfamiliar with how optimization works, think of it as trying to solve an equation, find that one unique combination of variables that finally gives you the right answer and also are right themselves.

Which is what you have constraints for. Value 'A' cannot be greater than 10 and Value 'B' must always be decreasing for each run. Within the space of these constraints you have to find the best possible answer for your equation.

It need not be the right one. It just has to be closest to the right one. The only one possible.

Now every once in a while, I get frustrated with the process. Why go through the whole chicanery of trying to find something better when what you have is although not the exact right answer but close to it.

Why that additional effort?

John says because nothing else is right. Except for that one solution closest to the right one.

I've been here a few months and I've seen John work harder than many people in my earlier company put together. It has to be right, he says. I try to keep pace.

The effort he puts to get the constraints working and get everything else right cannot be believed unless seen.

But over lunch when he tells me about his life, on how he worked for his Phd. or how he has four kids, one girl and three boys and how he went through his divorce six years ago and when he tells me about his ex-wife, I just cannot help wondering how someone who can be passionate about the constraints in a math problem, can't control the constraints in his own life.

Or maybe its just an American thing, where life has to be experimented with absolutely no constraints, something that surprises and scares me a bit. He is possibly 45, now has a German girl friend and goes plays the piano every Wednesday at a club. He also tells me his daughter is now in Medical School, and what inspired her was working with the peace corps in Guatemala where she met and lived in with a doctor for a year ( Indian, he notes, looking at me) and how they broke off soon after.

All constraints gone to dogs.

Which is something I dont think is worth comproming for me in real life. I dont really bother over a math problem. This is real life, not some cruel joke. The effort you put in to make things work here, within the constraints of whats possible is what gets you to that perfect solution.

and I dont think I need a Phd to understand that. All I need to be is sane.

The Kite runner....Simply Amazing....

2007-08-19T23:15:00.000-07:00

It has been over two weeks since P had told me about this book. "No words can describe how amazing this book is..."

I just nodded along, wondering if I could get that feeling once again with a book.

It had been a long while since I had read anything worthwhile, just random cribs and forced humor compounded with an abstract sense of philosophy that I just couldnt digest, thats all I had read in the past two months.

Till I read the Kite runner today, all 400 pages in one afternoon.

Because truly this book is one that you wont forget in a long time.

Its probably partly because the soul is South Asian , so fairly familiar, and maybe such stories were Indian once upon a time ( Thankfully)....the better any country or system becomes, less is the longing for the past I guess.

Or maybe Afghanistan always had that image, you dont need to go beyond Kabuliwallah by Tagore to feel for a country so lost, for a nation of confused souls and wandering lives. On how easy it is to spin out of control when so little is in your hands.

Or it could also be because the people never really understood what it meant to live a civilized life with rules ( as the author mentions, Afghans respected customs, never rules)

But even with this backdrop comes a very emotional story about normal people, bound by society, by their past, unable to comprehend why things were the way they were, but still not able to escape it.

And also because soaking in the past always makes up for a powerful read.

In all dont miss this book for anything. It'll help awaken the sleeping soul in you

maybe the answers lie in the world's favorite game...

2007-07-29T19:55:00.000-07:00

It is impressive the way a war-torn nation can find itself once again, in the actions of 20-odd guys playing futbal in a faraway land. These are more like fairytales for guys, believable because they happened, surreal because they happened against these odds.

And the best part is, they keep on happening.

When the Ivory Coast played in the world cup last year, not many knew that the country had been in the middle of a civil war for over five years and what politics couldnt achieve, sports finally did. This article gives you a picture of how powerful the sport can actually be, when it comes to dealing with crisis or when it comes to just entertaining you.

So, when Iraq won the Asian cup last night, it didnt seem too much out of the ordinary, but did feel amazingly nice to hear a good story come out of Iraq. This team had defeated three time Asian Cup champs, Saudi Arabia, with a solitary goal seperating the two teams and more importantly with a team of disaffected young war-torn guys being coached by a Brazilian with a two month contract.

When the game finished and the team ran around the whole stadium not believing what it had just achieved, the Iraqi captain came out and said something that we all hear resonate deep inside.

"I want America to go out," he said. "Today, tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, but out. I wish the American people didn't invade Iraq and hopefully it will be over soon."

Sad, but I dont think anyone in DC is going to hear him.

Maybe thats because the U.S. doesn't appreciate the world's favorite game for what it is, ultimate diplomacy in 90 minutes.

(P.S. Beckham... please change this....)

shall we tell the president?

2007-07-21T11:37:00.000-07:00

those were the days of jeffrey archer's glory...but then as we all know, he didnt get very far..in fact he did end up behind bars...and all bcos he lied when he kept a diary that said otherwise ( duh, he's a writer..)

anyway coming closer to home, so there ends the days when the president was a man of stature. Now we just elect stupid presidents. ( Not to sound too mcp-ish) ya and she's a woman too.

How on earth did Pratibha Patil get to be President? I mean even though the post is just a plastic smile, signing bills and hands shaking one, I'm sure there were millions of men and women in the country who had the dignity completely absent with this one and who could have done a much better job than this one would ever. Or maybe im just getting riled up bcos Dr. APJ set such high standards of intelligence and duty, it was always going to be a tough one to top. So, might as well slip a dud in between.

Nice thinking Sonia.

It also shows how Sonia can basically do whatever she wants and get away with it. Man, do you even imagine what that sort of power can do to your soul? A billion people in your hands. Its dizzying enough speaking about it.

Well to offer some solace is the fact that thank goodness the post is just a rubber stamp ( if you want it to be one) and the President, although Commander in Chief of the armed forces (Pratibha Patil has probably used a knife in her lifetime; im just highlighting her past experience with things closest to weapons. NOT being MCPish) is at least not the executive branch of government.

So if the US can elect someone as empty as Bush and have a tough time getting away with murder, you can understand the potential damage she could have caused to our already mixed reviews in the world.

But then words sometimes speak louder than actions ( usually its the other way around), So for all the Purdah, Baba, Bank and Murder stories about PP, one thing is for certain. We're going to have a fun ride reading about her in the days to come..

if only we could tell her, or tell the president, speak up and be heard...the people are listening.

Once...

2007-07-20T23:23:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, Fox Searchlight comes with a unique movie which though subtle in content, still makes a mark as a fulfilling venture.

and Once is one of them.

willow wok....

2007-07-19T22:18:00.000-07:00

team india gets stir fried yet again at lords, what a bummer....when will these guys ever learn.

but somehow cricket just seems like a relic from the past, not something i look forward to at the end of a day. have learnt to accept it and live with it. maybe someday ill meet tendlya and ask him," tune mere saath khilvaad kiya hai...yeh kis tarah ki insaaf hai?"

aur woh bolega, " screech...are mein toh sirf khel raha tha...tu beech mein aa gaya..."

and thats how the story ends...
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if at all u visit the bay area, do not miss the chance to go to muir woods. its one of the amazing places not seen in most ppls itineraries ( which usually includes the gg and saravana bhavan)..but gives you a sense of peace with the environment as you walk through the very subtle ecosystem the last of the redwood trees contain. I surprisingly walked more than 2 miles without complaining and actually coming out fresher than when I went in. a cheesy woods are louuuvely dark deep sort of feeling.

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talkin of cheese, dont miss ratatouille (or whatever that rat cook movie is) on dvd, its not worth spending 10 bucks to watch on the big screen, but its a nice feel good movie.

im waiting for the opportune moment to comment on AKS by HR, but will take my time....

its like the wine i never had.

Reconstructing damaged bogies...

2007-07-14T00:12:00.001-07:00

Ya, I just had to pick up a random title for this post for the lack of a better idea. Somehow, I've been caught wanting more buffer space in my mind ( now I know how my computer feels when I have a movie, Matlab scripts and a couple of songs all running at the same time)

Dont know if all the space in the world can help.

Its been a year and two days since the Bombay blasts the media so gloriously calls 7/11 ( anything to capture the imagination without the substance) I remember being in Bby last year when it happened, the blasts, the impotent response from the emergency services, the inability of the intelligence to put the pieces together and yes, the loud media.

Noise, noise, noise, COMMERICAL, Noise, noise, noise.

N....O.....I.....S.....E and then a year passed by.

Its surprising the sort of news that gathers moss nowadays.

On one hand you have the Bipasha kissing Ronaldo incident making headline, then you have the American Scientist reincarnation in a village in UP. Beckham joining the LA Galaxy made news here, and then you have Congress investigating everything Bush does, so Bush decides not to do anything. In the meanwhile, Iraq lay in an abyssmal state of affairs, and people losing interest in anything to do with the war. China has its own worries with cardboard being used to make bread buns ( wtf...) and everything it sends out being recalled. Workers mixing drugs in factories with their feet ( the medication is not for arthritis) and the Live Earth or whatever the nonsense that was over last weekend.

Forget real News, im not sure I want to hear even fake news if this is whats happening out there.

So I guess I have to turn to the next best thing out there, stand in line for the Simpsons Movie. Hey if the real world can sell all that, Homer sure has the right of way in my mind at least.

Oh, ya and this post has nothing to do with reconstructing damaged bogies. ( If thats why u were reading this, I do have to maintain the level of journalism my heroes at Faux News have reached right? )

By the by, how is MSNBC better than Faux News? Both scream their way to oblivion, till noone remembers what the freaking issue was.

Oh ya before I leave I HAVE to get this thought out there.

For the ones who havent watched Sivaji, this doesnt pertain to u...( unless obv u have half a brain) and for the ones who have watched it ( once or more than once..) the moral of the story is that,

Yes things will change in India. We will overcome all the corruption and make it a wonderful place to live.

But for that you would have to first be Rajni, and ( ya thats not enough)...you would have to die and come back to life to see the changes you so badly wished for.

and come to think of it, only Gandhi could come up with a saying,

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

Buddha sathiya gaya

Quote it

2007-07-13T14:30:00.001-07:00

not just jazz by the bay....

2007-06-30T16:04:00.000-07:00

ok i moved yet again, this time to the west coast. i think my air sign side effects include extreme makeovers every 3 months, moving supply costs, inventory listing and USPS updates.

Thank God for mail forwarding!

I've had 6 addresses in the past 8 months and all my mail still reaches me. Now either thats being lucky or the USPS expects ppl like me to exist in this country. I sent the Postmaster General an email thanking him for this service.

which made me wonder why I didnt send him a postcard.

So, im here now back near the brine and extremely nauseating odor of sea water ( though I must admit the Pacific O smells much better than any of the other Cs ive been near.) i think in some weird way, I might have been a pirate in my last birth to actually crave an existence near the sea ( i could have said sailor, but ive never been that lucky..if u know what i mean.:))

but when i mention that, its not like me and the sea party every night. I just go and stare at it, and it stares back. And then i come home, eat and sleep. and it keeps staring back.

though at some subconscious level, the bay area does seem distinctly familiar, when u match the amount of driving, public transport, the sea, the indians and the real estate prices. ( duh..i was talkin about bby obv). So while Im paying an arm and half a leg for a place to live, the other parts of my body seem to have a good time.

so yup my blogs will now show up from the bay area ( if at all i update them, which i promise to at a more regular frequency)

there is lots to write about. just dont know what to write first...:)

which is to say ill blog from my iphone when i get one ( there goes another half of my leg)

Soon ill be blogging with just my two thumbs ( which i think is how u type on an iphone.)

ill shudder to think how ill press Ctrl-Alt-Delete....

The olympics does make a difference....for the teletubbie generation....

2007-06-11T21:24:00.001-07:00

"Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy found in effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles."

Olympic Charter, Fundamental principles, paragraph 2

1937 Nazi Germany hosts the Aryan Olympics

1980 Soviet Russia hosts the Commie Olympics

1984 The USA hosts the Money Olympics

2008 China hosts the Sweatshop Olympics

Maybe the IOC forgot its charter at home.

By the way its not all grim with the IOC's choice of hosts.

2012 London hosts the Goofy Olympics?

Check out the logo which I guess was made by a looney 2-yr old....( and really had a budget of over 400,000 dollars...)

Soon you'll see the teletubbies emerge and do their routine....probably thats what the mascots r gonna be....

have fun ppl!

the unknown future...

2007-05-28T11:54:00.000-07:00

A seed in the ground. A flame in the darkness. A hand outstretched. A child in the womb. Hope starts small and overtakes us, stretching the borders of what we have known.

It beckons us to step out with the belief that the action we take will not only bear fruit but that in taking it, we have already made a difference in the world.

-Jan Richardson, Night Vision

*************************************************************************************

3.09

...3.24

......3.47

as I fill gas in my car, it strikes me that the possibilities of the future might just be linked to our way of life as a whole, not just in parts. This isn't a plugin that can just be tweaked, the n+1 th variant of the combustion engine. Its something bigger and different that what we have imagined till today. Can we live upto our own expectations before the world catches up?

************************************************************************************

The World is too much with us

-William Wordsworth.

In the beginning there was one, then a few....and then they all caught up. If you're talking about a pie or oil reserves, its always a fight to get the best piece. So, if the truth is so evident, why is the world so slow to move towards finding newer solutions. Or has science slowed down that no sustainable technology can replace the oil economy?

In any sphere of influence, the only way to stay ahead is to think and adapt to newer technologies before the others, to be an early adopter. I've had plenty of discussions with people around me about the risk of being an early adopter in any business, the investment choice might not work out well in the end, but if it did, the benefits are plenty. So how do you manage both these parameters, risk and benefits?

If you think any nation would be smart about these sort of choices, you would obviously look at India and the the telecom industry, and if we had stuck to the original path of laying land lines and cables, it would have taken us another 5 decades (5 decades and we had reached nowhere) before getting anywhere worth being. The adoption of cellular technologies meant that a landmark decision could possibly change the lives of a billion people which could change the direction in which the entire world moved. The change in inertia.

So what if India took a stance on behalf of sustainable newer energy technologies? Could it be big enough to wean us all away from our oil addition? But then I dont think India would ever be an early adopter because the risks outweight the benefits for an emerging economy. So would China do it? From the way China has moved over the past two years, its pretty evident that it has made its choice of sticking to an oil economy by courting the riskiest and slimiest of regimes all over the world. So there goes another billion and a half. So whats next?

Brazil has been working on ethanol based fuels for over two decades now, and has achieved a level of maturity with its usage, but now the question of social imbalance arises....of how much land do you use for fuels and how much land for food...

Europe has now made a paradigm shift towards bio-fuels, having had its issues with Russia and a depleted North sea oil reserve. The UK will soon start being a net importer of oil as opposed to a net exporter today. So when it finally does come to staying ahead, how do you make the first move?

The answer finally boils down to what the US does. Not because it holds any leverage on the political environments but because it consumes so much that any change could be momentous.
The debate has surely started, which is always a good sign. But any change will take time, so do we have enough of it?

As countries make tough choices; geopolitics play out scenarios; and the future is played out in the mind a thousand times over, you will find yourself holding that fuel pump in your hand wondering whether anyone out there is making the right choice or whether this is how our civilization ends.

I hope the choice is right.

mind melodies...

2007-05-27T21:03:00.000-07:00

Blog entry Monday:

Question:
" Do I have anything to say?"

Answer:
" Maybe, but I cant find the words..."

Blog entry Tuesday:

Question:
" Why havent you written anything in days?, Is this the end of your blog?"

Answers:
" Nopes, there's lots to come, just cant find the right word processor."

" Notepad is therapeutic unlike the jarring resonance of Times New Roman in Word, only if they had a new line wrap builtin....Times New Roman scares me...makes me feel dumber than I usually am, so the thoughts evaporate the moment I type anything, and I freeze when I see the reds and the greens of the spell checker..."

" Or maybe I am just looking for plain excuses over the vanilla flavored ones..."

Blog entry Wednesday:

Question:
" Why am I like this? Is this because there arent enough answers for all the questions one might ask"

Answer:
" Duh...you r this way bcos asking questions is probably the easiest way to escape answering them...So ure not unique, ure just an escape artist, a very mortal Houdini"

Blog entry Thursday:

Question:
" Why are there so many moving parts in life? The minute you track one part, something else falls off. Is it because you're incapable of handling everything or is it because your are taking on too many things"

Answer:
" Its because somethings are better in other people's hands than yours, so dropping a few 'M and Ms' doesnt make the act of eating one any less enjoyable..."

Blog entry Friday:

Question:
" Am I lonely?"

Answer:
" Nah, your standards of being un-lonely are waay too high, the purple patches of punnagai. The sooner you lower ure standards, the easier life gets. The other day you were complaining of being lonely in a party at ure own house...cant get any more ridiculous than that..."

Blog entry Saturday:
Question:
"Why do the Rockie mountains look like oreo cookie ice cream from afar, but the same cruel beast when we get close to them?"

Answer:
"Its because anything looks delicious from afar, and everything is a beast within sight, why should nature be any different?"

Blog entry Sunday:
Question:
" Why are there so many people in this world?"

Answer:
" Because we cant get to the next level, the dragon behind the rocks always spits fire towards your right hand side, you have only two lives, and saving the princess who is at the top of the tower would require cheat codes..."

" Because we have stay within range of the damn cockroaches"

embedding ads....sad state of my blogs...

2007-05-13T18:02:00.000-07:00

but i guess when i dont have time to write...at least lemme get somethin to watch!...

Run Easy...

2007-05-11T09:18:00.001-07:00

This ad is funny....check out Dravid and Dhoni....

The Topiwale series...

2007-05-11T07:23:00.000-07:00

Yup its been a while since I blogged, lots of action behind the scenes in 'real' life...

But before I digress, you have to check this video out, with the man who made the cap a trademark symbol...

Himessss Bhai...

The first time I saw it I was ROTFL^3....then i realized it had been a while since I saw this chap..with his cap...

From what Kartik tells me, the climax of his movie has him taking his cap off....or even better would be a plot to get the diamond hidden in his cap...that was my addition...

Anyway lemme know what u ppl think of this video clip...

its always half a story....

2007-04-21T22:26:00.000-07:00

...till u reach the other part of the world and hear the other half...

this particular story's about the space race between the US and the Soviets, on how the US spent millions on trying to find a way to get a pen working in zero gravity, while the Soviets used a pencil.

Somehow our stories in India always ended at that, on how Russia always had an efficient way of doing things when the US was just being err.. too complicated for itself?

So we were discussing the same story at work this past week, and I got to hear the second part of the story. Now this may again be a fabrication or just the plain truth, I dont know. But this is how the story ends...

So while the Soviets used a pencil,( and the whole world cheered their ingenuity in finding a simple solution) NASA thought that was a pretty stupid thing to do.

The reason being, the graphite or the lead from the pencils had the capacity to mess with the systems in the shuttle, which could mean end of the mission for all practical purposes, all because of a pencil. Sounds logical enough when you think about it, after all when a piece of foam can have far reaching consequences, you wouldnt know what a pencil could do.

So he laughs and says," Its ok for the Russians to lose a spacecraft or two, all they needed to say was " Hello new Comrade, we all love to die for the Motherland" and that was the end of it. Its not that easy to cover it all up here"

Now I dont know what the truth value in that story is ( or as Colbert would say, truthiness) its just that we never heard that part of the story.

I guess, there are always versions of the truth and its always a lie till you hear all of them.

Or even better the only truth is what you believe in.

The Gonzales comedy show...

2007-04-21T21:52:00.000-07:00

Funny stuff..

Guru shishyan...

2007-04-20T13:21:00.000-07:00

Two greats...One the master...the other his protege...

In 1986, Maradona scored what was unarguably the greatest goal ever...

And just yesterday..fellow Argentinian Lionel Messi scored its replica...

About Pain...and the world cup update...

2007-04-17T19:26:00.000-07:00

And a woman spoke, saying, “Tell us of Pain.”

And he said:

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And if you could keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

Much of your pain is self-chosen.

It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity:
For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.

So the question we may ask is whether avoidance of pain can prompt us to take the easier path of non confrontation with ethical dilemmas.

Can pain be treated as an instrument of learning? Is it practical? Is it an idealistic notion?

To answer this lets look at it from the opposite idea. Is Happiness eternal? Will the joyous feeling from things being perfect ever lead to questioning any of it for its true worth and will it ever lead to an effort to make things better?

In my opinion, no, being happy all the time is equally significant in retarding learning. And if being happy is at the cost of avoiding pain, the loss is only double. Pain can be treated as an instrument of learning if we can take care of the following concerns,

1. Like happiness, pain is also only momentary.
2. The discomfort from pain has to be used to better the situation or in finding solutions. Not in justifying the pain.
3. In not settling into any sort of comfort zone with pain all around.

Is it practical? Yes, it is, though only if pain is allowed in small amounts. If you get overwhelmed at the size of problem there is no point in feeling the pain.

And yes, it can sometimes spiral into being highly idealistic when you try to take on more than you can solve. Pain is just an instrument, its not an environment to exist in.

The fight should be to get out of it.

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No, am not suffering from 'pethal'osis...just helped a friend for his ethics class (come to think of it, how ethical does that sound?..:D), gave me enough material for a blog post of my own..:)

So chill if it all sounded weirdly scary, read it if you want a direction.

************************************************************************************

This World Cup has been dragging on forever now, and every morning when I watch some cricket on the TV, i only end up feeling sad for the state of the game. Yup granted we are no longer in India, but still I have seen desis here reject the game nowadays, and I end up watching the game either alone or with some guys I call 'the last of the fanatics'.

Some games have been the fun, nail biting contests we come to expect of these big encounters, some have lame-duck written all over them. England have been the most overrated team to make it to the Super 8s, Australia have been the most clinical and the most boring of them all. Imagine a bunch of droids playing the game with no emotions. Thats the ozzies for u.

Luckily I have some cross country pals foolish enough to have bought the package just like me. So the mania continues in the virtual world, with this guy who went to Vancouver on a break and is stuck in his hotel room watching England take on South Africa because its raining ( as usual) outside.

Munching on some fries, he tells me, this world cup's the worst man ( the weather must have added to the emotions), and I now know why India lost in the opening round. They would have been bored to play for this long as well!

I cant disagree.

We started off with such enthusiasm that we have an online pool for the tournament. And every night as I sit down to send in my entry, it only surprises me that I cant remember any hero, any player worth his performance in this cup. Malinga's 4 ball 4 wickets was one, but apart from that all other performances have been just plain ok. ( Even Malinga's effort was met with half empty stands)

Today they were discussing who the player of the tournament would be, McGrath was on top with 12 wickets, Styris, Kallis, Ashraful and some other guy I cant even remember.

Jeez and I almost spent 800 bucks to go to Kingston to watch the semi-finals on April 24th.

It was after all SRT's bday and imagine India making the semi-finals, I thought.

Now I can only think of sending him a tricolor cake for his birthday. Cut that u dream-buster! (ex-dream maker)

Tomorrow is SL-ireland like who cares a crap.

But still i'm third in the pool with every game getting more important than the other. So even if it sounds like a walkover, I still need to get the 4 points for the MOM.

Any suggestions anyone?

bowling for VA tech...

2007-04-16T18:26:00.000-07:00

Its been exactly eight years to the same week that the Columbine high school massacre took place...and today another 30 people were gunned down. And even though the reasons maybe unknown, whats obvious is the presence of a gun. And what keeps the gun out there are all the fervent supporters of the second amendment..."The right to bear arms" it seems.

But oddly who thinks of the bill of rights when facing the wrong end of a .38mm?

(And as my friend Rahul suggested, there is no right end of a .38mm, and I have to agree)

So why am I, a dormant desi, so bugged at this incident. Because I have had my own experiences facing a gun, and not for one second can I not imagine what would have happened if he would have pulled the trigger. Believe me its scary.

There will be the protests, the Supreme court will decide whether it wants to debate the gun ownership laws, the media will have its share of scary reports and a field day depending on which side of the aisle they own allegience to, Michael Moore will be out there making a new documentary which will win an Oscar, The NRA will issue releases that it doesnt support the illegal sale of guns, but it is still very necessary to own guns because the founding fathers had mentioned something in the constitution over 200 years ago, John Cusack will come out with another version of a sequel to Grisham's novel " The runaway jury runs again", Dick Cheney will shoot another aide while duck hunting, There will be mass mournings in every major city, People in India during their coffee breaks would opine that the US is not safe when our own horrors just begin in Nithari, There will be annual vigils held for those who died, and soon everyone will choose to forget that the ill in American society lies not with ownership of guns, but the thought that everyone who owns one is responsible enough for it.

Some things dont change.

And yes, noone really cares; or else they would have done something about it a long time ago.

I'm no superman..

2007-04-15T21:43:00.000-07:00

i was just thinkin i should make a list of things i've always wanted to do and probably will do someday if time doesnt run out...

1. tell ppl who irritate me, that they really do drive me nuts and not just nod along and wish i were somewhere else.

2. find this unending source of music and an infinite sized hard disk and just be left alone with it with some bose surround sound, peace at last.

3. go back to the well outside my school and see if the turtles in it were still alive. If im lucky and turtles do really live to be a hundred, I could at least on paper feed them again...

4. visit the southernmost tips of south america, africa and australia and say to myself, there's no further to go. (just say it, not mean it)

5. get into everyone's head once in a while and see what they were thinking.

6. prove that my 'people model' which include complex relationships between who you meet, when you meet them and the dynamics involved in how you meet them, actually works.

7. to understand that subsistence living is what most ppl aim to fulfill with their lives, and they are the right ones and I am not.

8. to understand that the twenties are really crazy times in everyone's lives and things should slow down in the next decade, which if they dont,could cause mass burn out casualties.

9. just patent some weird ideas for the heck of having them in my head.

10. learn to be happy with no strings attached.

Lets see when I get around to actually covering most things in that list.

You see I cant do this all on my own, I'm no superman.

You've been big brothered, big brother?

2007-04-14T22:10:00.000-07:00

No, this has nothing to do with obnoxious reality shows, nor is this a celebrity face off on who's the dumber of the dumbest. This is some serious shit.

Big Brother is actually watching....

...all of us...

gulp...:(

And the reason I say this is because I have solid proof that the government watches all of us bloggers, especially the ones which carry any sort of political message or posts....

So this is what happened..

Day 1:

I was browsing through this video blog on videosift called Bush's greatest moments. It had this compilation of the stupid things he's said over the past few years and obviously there have been many.

It seemed to be an interesting post to put up on my blog.

Day 2:

So I finally did manage to shake the dust off my head and post the blog.

( if this sounds like a Ram Gopal Verma potboiler, I just have to say in my defense, there isnt much you can write about Big Brother, its not like he's 19 years old or something...)

Day 3:

As most of you might know, I actually carry out some Big Brothering of my own..wink..wink...at least getting information on who visits my blog, and any information is wealth ( ask Senthil)...

So i check out that someone from the DC Area had visited my blog, and it turns out that someone at the 'Sargeant at Arms' from the US Capitol had been on my blog the day after my posting on Bush.

Now for those of you who dont know who the Sargeant at Arms is, wikipedia to the rescue...

'As chief law enforcement officer of the Senate, the Sergeant at Arms is charged with maintaining security in the Capitol and all Senate buildings, as well as protection of the members themselves.'

'The Sergeant at Arms is the largest in size of staff and budget in the Senate. It is responsible for all Senate computers and technology support services, recording and photographic services, printing and graphics services, and telecommunications services.'

and here is my evidence...

So what does this mean to the restofus?

We're all being watched.

Unless, there is some doofus sitting in the US Capitol reading my blogs ( of all the substandard blogs by posers who call themselves bloggers).

that would be the perfect kahaani mein twist.

mind stroke anyone?

2007-04-07T15:51:00.000-07:00

my colleague passed this really interesting ( or stupid, depends how u look at it) piece of information....

where: maps.google.com

what: directions from denver to london

and the result is,

now i knew google had a sense of humor...but this is taking it a bit too far..:)

When did it stop being about fun?

2007-04-05T21:12:00.000-07:00

I think I've taken my time to get over India's performance at the world cup. (A self-imposed moratorium of two weeks) Yes, it was tough, almost unbelievable to some extent but if you were to just for a second step back and think, it was just a game of cricket. I know its easier to say these things than to actually feel that way, but somehow I think its time to stop taking the game this seriously. Not just us fans, but even the players, the coaches and the board. Not that I mean we shouldnt still be passionate about it, just that a defeat shouldnt really mean a lot. ( neither should a victory) Its about trying to enjoy the game for what it is, about those incredible moments of luck where skill meets resolve and creates heroes or villains for the rest of us.

What made me get out of my denial shell had something to do with our cricketing past. To me full-fledged cricket started with the Tendulkar era,where a mediocre team with brilliant individuals somehow pulled us out of defeat and at other times made us look ordinary. So I took the time to go back to some videos from the 92 world cup ( yes the Ind-Pak game featured in that pile) That team hardly looked like it was going to win the Worldcup, but it was being held in far away Australia, in a different time when the Indian team faced almost empty grounds and all the players looked like they could only do so much. Sachin was still the unheralded genius, Kapil Dev was fading into the sunset. It looked so surreal to see all of them play with some uncorrupted passion somewhere, so the defeats didnt look that painful because we all consoled ourselves by saying they did their best. And yes we all were also young, not yet in the race towards winning the world, and where having Pepsi was a luxory, and corporate mergers were still 'not Indian'. It was about enjoying life, the game and appreciating the team.

I remember being gutted when India lost by one run to Australia in 92, but somehow the reason noone was villified was because even the Ozzies looked mortal. But then we stayed exactly in the same place while the rest of the world took off. Yes, we had our times when we looked menacing, especially in 96 on home turf, but even then we never found the right balance between youth and experience. I was at the Wankhede stadium when we faced Australia and we lost the game by some 20 runs. Our team looked and felt old.

But then we all got out of the stadium, caught our trains and went home. It was a usual Bombay evening. I dont remember anyone burning effigies.It was just a game.

I think part of the reason for our inability to comprehend the loss now is because somehow we started believing that we were better than ourselves.That somehow India had become this great economic power which must also have trickled down to our cricketing genius. I am sure all of us must have received emails about how much player A earns or how much player B pays in his taxes. Since when did economics and Indian sports ever make sense.The reason I say Indian sports is because, all over the world it does. In India however we inflate our abilities to take on the world, when in reality we will only get here in small confident steps. And in cricket especially, it somehow goes unnoticed that more than half the world doesnt even play the sport. We have to at least be good among the 10 countries that do.

But forget for a moment that we care how much anyone makes and that performance has anything to do with economics. Forget that our opinions count for anything. What we are left with are a bunch of players who still look as mortal as any Indian team in history, who have all played the same way as we have expected them to in the past. Its just the fact that the rest of the world has started playing better which hurts our egos.

And when you mix ego with defeat you get burning effigies.

I wonder whether we would ever go back to that era when cricket was just a game, because it looks highly doubtful in the current atmosphere. How much sense Sharad Powar might add to the proceedings is equally unclear ( he would somehow be rueing the fact that he's in that chair).

And with everyone publicly blowing their heads off, I wonder how the kids in India are taking this. When your heroes get dragged through all this chaos, how is that any different from real life? Dont you have heroes to escape reality?

Maybe the answer to that is no kid in India actually considers them to be heroes anymore.

They were and are OUR heroes.

And maybe its time we accepted the fact that they were real.

So lets just have some fun. Pepsi anyone?

deep...blue...clear

2007-04-01T10:12:00.000-07:00

This nirvana album cover ( and the simpsons spoof of it) kinda gets to you because you don't know what in these images takes precedence,

1. the fact that you have a kid in water alone, ( swimming or drowning is upto u)
2. the fact that you have a kid in water chasing something
3. the fact that you have a kid in water chasing a dollar bill ( gets interesting now)
4. the fact that you have a kid in water chasing a dollar bill being used as bait.

what i noticed in the images was,

that kid must be really lucky. have u seen water that clear and blue?

i havent....in a looong time!

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There are voices and there are stories...II

2007-03-17T17:57:00.000-07:00

I've been asked to explain the earlier post in plain English, so while I'd love to get into the semantics, I think every one of us has a completely different interpretation on what I had written.

So instead let me focus on an addition to the earlier post:

Ok, so what if life wasnt as cryptic as it sounds but just confusing. You zoom in and zoom out of situations so often that the focus is now weary and the motivation weak, so at times things can seem all too clear, except that you're focussed on the wrong things. It happens to all of us, when we hear stories from different people passing us by and something in their stories hits us deep, that we start feeling weird about what would happen if we were to be in those situations.

But what we miss in those stories is that these are not just stories but real people have actually lived them and have come out on the other side, scarred or otherwise, wiser for themselves. Though its only the ones who keep crawling back into those miserable situations that you end up feeling for, almost like you were watching Salaam Bombay!

Ive often wondered whether people are more prone to commit mistakes if they were placed in exactly the same situations again and again or do they have the ability to recover, recuperate and regain control over the choices that lead them there in the first place. I mean of course people are smarter and have the ability to learn, but some people I think just like the holes they get into, so in all their discomfort they find themselves comfortably numb.

Or is it that they just feel weak and realizing that strength is so far away from them, that they'd rather just enjoy their moments of weakness, because hey, you just live once. Or so they think.

The voices well, change over time, some having regained their composure, and some having lost their sense of judgement completely. But ultimately I think its the human condition of unease and discomfort that makes people act, wisely or otherwise. So while all of us crave for a sense of comfort, it is only the discomfort that makes us act.

Which is why misery is probably the greatest drama of all.

The Namesake....

2007-03-15T21:29:00.000-07:00

Just a blurb here before I post my next blog entry..

I watched The Namesake wednesday....and it was very refreshing.

Truly Mira Nair's best movie, not as heavy as the book, and some amazing performances.

Its a must watch.

there are stories and there are voices...

2007-03-12T17:59:00.000-07:00

barack watch: @ selma

2007-03-06T19:12:00.000-08:00

Check out the second part of his address. Lots to think about.

The lost realm...

2007-03-05T20:00:00.000-08:00

I was reading an article about the people on the ‘Samjhauta’ Express, and how the hopelessness of the case has more to do with being mired in political jingoism for the darkest part of society who ironically are the ones who need someone to speak for them. The people who travel by this train are the ones who cannot afford to fly, and spend months saving for this trip, weeks to get through the immigration hoops of both countries. These are people who don’t understand that each family member needs a passport, and that all they want at the end of the trip was to visit a long lost relative. And these are precisely the people who fall through the leaking system.

I would generally call myself an optimistic guy, I believe in India's sovereignty as a nation, about the steps needed to make our country safe. But somehow this case doesn’t get past me even after a couple of months of the blasts. My initial reaction to these blasts was it shouldn’t have happened, but I personally didn’t want this case to be solved before the Mumbai blasts of July. But then I realize that case shouldn’t be solved before the Mumbai blasts of 2001, which again shouldn’t be solved before the blasts in 1993.

And that’s when it hits me. No one really cares.

I don’t blame anyone for being that way, this is what you expect when you have an inadequately equipped system to take on the entire population. It was designed on purpose this way so that the ones who can help themselves move on, the ones who cant fade into oblivion. Nehru's socialistic dream gone sour. or something I had read somewhere a long time ago, an advanced stage of decay.

So for all the CBM the two countries take, there are equal number of unchecked crimes against humanity that occur with no one to answer for. How do you decide on the priority that any of these horrid crimes should get? Well, both countries take the easier way out. You don’t have a problem if you don’t talk about it, hoping it just goes away. Like an ostrich hiding its head in the sand.

There was another moment of truth that I had over the past few weeks. For over twenty years I kept hearing the term Cross-border terrorism used by all the Indian PMs. And then heard the Pakistani rebuttal that it doesn’t exist. That never made any sense to me, it was like the Indians keep saying 2+2=4, but the Pakistanis kept saying it was 3. How in the world could this be true, I used to wonder? Can't anyone see the truth? Where was the US or the EU to play the neutral referee when it mattered the most? Lives were being lost because of this equation.

But now it makes sense. The US and NATO have been accusing Pakistan of allowing Cross border terrorism to take place on its Northern borders with Afghanistan. And the Pakistanis still deny it. The same EXACT response I had heard them give the Indians for over a decade. So I started decoding their response because it just didn’t make any sense. So, when the Pakistanis deny cross border terrorism, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, it means it’s just something the Pakistanis don’t know of, have no control over, and cannot do anything about. Call it a balancing act; call it having to deal with a failed state not in control of its provinces.

A fourth realm of radicalism. And the missing '1' in the equation was always lost in this realm.

the whole deal with social security...

2007-03-04T16:07:00.000-08:00

india flirts with social security....and...

...as usual instead of dealing with it face on passes the buck...

OK, so whats the deal. The government of india passed a bill whereby it becomes mandatory for kids to take care of their parents. Fair enough. The punishment for abandoning parents ranges anywhere between being imprisoned to heavy fines. ok, Fair again. The government also plans to build another 3000 retirement homes all over the country. OK, that also sounds good. But then thats it.

My problem with this bill lies with the fact that the government chooses to wash its hands off the whole problem so easily and instead wants to play moral police punishing those who dont abide by its rules. An important fact to consider here is that subset of children who dont make enough money to feed themselves, forget providing for their parents. I dont see why the government doesnt deal with the issue in a more complete sense, on providing a framework to see to it that senior citizens dont face the problem of being financially starved which in other words means creating a social security system by which you put money in while ure working and get money when u qualify. I understand the logistic compulsions of such a system is huge, but there is always a start that needs to be made at some point, and that point could be now. Another point to be considered is that this is the first generation post independence that will be retiring, so the problems are just beginning. If we sift through the demographic changes in society in India, it is apparent that old frameworks are breaking, so isnt it important to gear up for the future?

The overhaul of this system would also normalize a lot of issues, of getting actual data reported on taxation as well as providing each citizen with an identification number that could be tied up with other facets of the system. The country also couldnt face the problem the US is facing now, because of the lopsided ratio between the working population and the senior citizen population.

In my opinion, this was a golden chance for the government to step up to prove India has changed. But all we see is old rhetoric on proving someone else wrong rather than finding the right solution.

a tale of two cities....and two ppl...

2007-02-27T22:42:00.000-08:00

a sidetrack first....

the commies rule?

this is weird, in fact very very weird. For all the talk in the world about the democracy victory lap and how communism was defeated in 1989, we find ourselves caught in a web of communist spin all over again. Wall street reported the highest drop since 9/11 and was brought to its knees by?...China! The whole issue started with China stocks falling which led to a spin off at Wall Street. As Msnbc reports, China sneezes and the US catches a cold....so does this mean the communists control our money?

Think about it, we've all gone red!

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the iyer redneck.

its been a crazy two days, has been bouncy and self defeating for most part till i called my friend up and found that she was exactly in the same boat ( weird that she was as clueless as me for exactly the same reasons.) and so we vented out, about how close u can get to the thing u wanted so bad that it hurts when u dont get it in the end.

Ya, i realize most of us have these moments, but it almost is like spotting the light from a distance, watch it move slowly towards u, u wait till it gets so close to feel the heat and then in one second it breaks into a million tiny little pieces, leaving u shattered and confused, disappointed and exhausted all at the same time.

whats important is how u spin this situation. u can mope around like everything's ended for u or even better move to nebraska or wyoming ( for the ones who wonder where that came in from, i'd recommend comparing it to devil-deep sea, rock and a hard place phrase-ology)

there is no way u can give this a positive spin in just one day. better days will come.

as a factoid, wyoming has more animals than human beings, so if i were ever to move there, id probably have to become one of them rednecks.. the first iyer redneck.

( as a family guy script:
peter: ehehehehehehee....so bryan how would u know if ure an iyer redneck....
bryan: i dont know peter...
peter: well ure an iyer redneck if you drive across town to see a car wreck in ure camry the minute after rahu kalam....)

but i know both of us will sleep well tonite because its about knowing that shit doesnt happen to u alone, it happens to others u know as well.
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The Way I see it # 320

2007-02-25T15:26:00.000-08:00

Every now and then I find the urge to get my opinion out there and this one's the 320th thought I've had today, while having my third cup of coffee, though just my first latte and its already well....3:20 pm?...

My cup says,

"Patience is a virtue, life is a waiting game. Peace must be nurtured, and all the money in the world can buy you nothing. Let me tell you that."

-Corine Bailey Rae.
Songwriter ( supposedly)

Well thats easy for a cup to say.

Now i dont know who reads these so called words of wisdom on the sides of their coffee cups anyway, when half the people dont even care to know much about their coffees or the mochas or whatever they are having.

OK, so my 320th thought has something to do with constant repetitions in life. I mean the 'deja vu' moments when things ppl say around you are EXACTLY the same words you heard from someone else. Like in the months between October and December I had at least 6 people who have NO relation to one another tell me that its impossible being all things to all people.

It used to come up at the randomest of places, where my boss tells me about an argument he had with some executive and then he mentions, "you know its just impossible to be all things to all people." Or a friend who tells me that she had trouble with people she met in school and that its just impossible to be all things to all people, or my sister during her advisory sessions, tells me that i need to take some strong stands and its not a good thing being all things to all people.

Ya, I get it, its really not a good thing.

So when such occurences happen ( ...wink wink) I take it that Paulo Coelho's " Universe" is trying to get that fact into my head, something to do with destiny and some such stuff. Just last week, my roomie mentioned the same thing that my cup tells me today, That its good to play the waiting game.

The way I see it, its just one more game to play.

I never thought id be saying this. But a cup finally got me.

samjhauta in smoke?

2007-02-20T20:34:00.000-08:00

its weird that paki terrorists would set bombs off on a train filled with pakistanis, but as this article says, it did happen.....

whats even weirder is that just this saturday while i was getting my car fixed by my paki mechanic, he very prophetically cites a surd joke about....well no prizes for guessing ....trains....

for the ones who want to know what joke that was...here's a summary....

Some surds were planning to catch a train, but after an announcement which informed them that the train was arriving not on platform 3 but platform 2, they were all found dead....

Coincidentally at the same time a surd who was trying to commit suicide by having a train run over him... survived...

On being interviewed later on, the surviving surd happened to mention the punch line of the joke....that the surds who were planning to catch the train, after the announcement, thought that the train was arriving ON the platform and so jumped on the tracks ( where the train eventually runs over them) and the surd who wanted to commit suicide got onto the platform.....

Now this is funny...but this coming from a paki....well, i dont know...i couldnt help being offended...(call me touchy)....a surd joke is a surd joke for us indians....its like having ure very own punching bag....u dont want others using it.....( just like americans get pissed off when a foreigner abuses bush.....bush maybe stupid...but its for americans to say that....)

so i just smiled...and he kinda got the message....started telling me that surds are some of the brainiest ppl around as well....but i couldnt react. ( now thinking about it, i probably over reacted) poor guy...i should have just laughed...

and then the next day....i see this news....blasts on the samjahuta express....

The totally wicked side of me, the side of pure evil....laughs ( the mogambo laugh)...

"why dont u laugh at that paki guy......" ( I feel sick writing this)

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I wonder how all of us brownies come together here in the US, the same ones fight back home...somehow i guess most of us have forgotten what the fight was in the first place....in the end what remains are just the hollow idealogies that mean nothing.

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There was this amazingly interesting article on Time magazine about whether the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine was the completely wrong fight in the first place. If the palestinians never ever fought for the two state solution of wanting a free palestine state but instead fought to become legitimate israeli citizens, eventually israel would have become a majority arab state....again just jewish in idealogy but muslim in reality.....wouldnt this be the same of never having israel in the first place?

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I guess its all about choosing ure battles. Never allow the idealogy to take precedence over reality. Solutions always exist. In the end its about achieving the ends, not worrying about the means.....

Think.

a close parallel?

2007-02-19T20:32:00.000-08:00

this article from time magazine portrays something we have known for a loong time.

that tactics for peace are only as complicated as the tactics for war.

the words and the wind....

2007-02-18T12:34:00.000-08:00

i was standing by the lights watching the snow pile up near my shoulders. the daylight gave me a chance to view the same place in completely different light, a picture perfect blue sky, the trees with no leaves and me. cars whizzed by, colleagues waving a hi and a bye, but i couldnt see.

there is a lake near my office, now all frozen to look like a ice-skater's delight, i walked past it to the coffee shop to get that chocolate raspberry latte. Well something had to be new if i had to fill this post..:)

it was very very windy that day and i almost felt like being blown away (somewhere deep inside i really wanted that to happen) but as most of my bloated ideals have eventually ended, i found myself solidly stuck to ground...

but then i hear this melody in my head and then everything is fine again. never underestimate the power of music, maybe life's deepest riddles all have their solutions in them...

"barf se...khelte...baadalon ka shauk hai...."

spike me.....

2007-02-04T12:04:00.000-08:00

I found my roomie watching TV today. Spike TV of all channels....but then...check out spike tv's sunday schedule...

1. Future weapons
2. World's scariest explosions
3. Train Wrecks
4. When Animals attack
5. When Animals attack III
6. When Animals attack IV
7. When Good pets go bad
8. When Good pets go bad II
9. Most Shocking moments
10. Most Shocking moments II

and Bharath (my roomie) suddenly looks more dangerous than Chandler's weird roommate......( ya the guy who used to dehydrate fruits)

Destruction Sunday? And Americans wonder why ppl hate them...its bcos they spew so much violence on cable TV, u dont need to look far to blow anything up!

vein on venus.....

2007-02-03T16:20:00.000-08:00

relax...its not me falling in love ( or the act of falling) or even being vain about it. the smart ones, yes they must have noticed the 'e' in vein, which makes them vowel conscious. yes u get the first biskit of the day.

the whole issue of concern here is little green vessels carrying brown blood in my palm, where apparently resides the mount of venus. suddenly its all about veins, blood and more and me being able to see all of it.

hallelujah...this must mean something rite? i mean how many of u can actually see ure veins on ure palms or anywhere else on ure body?

please keep the answers to ureselves that was meant to be rhetorical.

this afternoon i spotted one....and then there were two...and then a whole army of them...almost seemed to be like they were waging '(respect in hindi-2letters)-had' on me.

the nsa and the cia and the fbi are probably monitoring my website now, and dhs must be on its way to my house. do i need to use the word...na ill substitute it for 'Gee, Had I been a different kind of rednick...' ya that looks much better.

(btw im sorry if u dont know hindi. i meant to say 'ji' but in any case learn the freaking language u bollywood-krazy hindi illiterate junkies)

so anyway back to my story. long long time ago there was this cuzin of mine who thought he was good at palmistry. the biggest paradox of the metasciences of palmistry and astrology is that u really need no big talent to prove anything. ( the reason i meant metasciences is because there r many real sciences that need no big talent as well) so this guy went around looking at ppls hands and telling them things that made them happy. maybe it was even true, i dont know. so came up the topic of the mount of venus. sounds almost like an imaginary land like atlantis, but the truth is, we all have the mount ( im not talking to anatomical metaphors here). the big of ure palm near ure thumb, well in some ways is what ure 'loouuvvee' life looks like.

plain.

but if the planets have basically landed on ure palm and after several centuries of sectarian strife divided it in their own piece of hand, it ought to mean more than just some lines right?...well thats what he told me.

im a pretty agreeable character, i agree to anything anyone says as long as it doesnt have anything to do with me, physically, mentally and emotionally. its like having ure own 'yes' guy with half a brain. so i listen, and i nod thinkin whether anything he says would be profound enough to change my life.

but he doesnt say anything profound, just that my life would be like any other random chaman from ghatkopar ( i used to live there then) but then the usual addendum, the power to change ure life is only in ure own hands. ( that sounds real corny coming from a palmist)

so today after all these years of searching for the right answers, i stumbled back to the place it all started, my palm. looking at these green lines running like little green interstates, it made me realise ( borrowing a line from zach braff in scrubs), that if the green guys lived on mars and my mount of venus now had the greens, have i finally figured out the effects of the confluence of mars and venus?

( we all know the effects of that, after all women are from venus and men are from mars, supposedly)

ill answer that perhaps on a later day. but at least today, im just feeling green.

what if my mount of venus ends being as barren as the sea of tranquility?

p.s. space is a weird place. there is no traction.

Just like river...

2007-01-29T08:52:00.000-08:00

Check this song when you get the chance...

My roomie suggested the song...an aussie band called laliya...

The title...." Just like river " No river in the video though....

Don't you wanna be there?

O'Reilly v.s. Colbert on the Colbert Report....

2007-01-19T08:39:00.000-08:00

Man this is hillarious......

racists? who..we indians??...

2007-01-18T08:34:00.000-08:00

the whole hungama on the racism issue on the TV show "Big Brother" in the U.K. has been more hillarious than recent family guy episodes i've watched. The news apparently found its way into Time magazine with the title " UK, India Drawn into TV Racism Row"
BBC covered the news on its front page, the less said about Indian news sites the better.

This one statement really cracked me up...

"About 25 people, most of them men, marched down a street in the city of Patna in eastern India on Wednesday chanting, "Down with Big Brother." The protesters, who said they were members of the Shilpa Shetty Fans Association, burned a straw-and-paper figure representing the program's producers in effigy before being dispersed by police."

haahaa....well obviously Bihari men are the benchmarks in relating to racial abuse, and the protest on the streets of Patna by the Shilpa Shetty Fans Association ( didnt know she had one)
well...that surely must have made the producers squirm in their seats.

The Indian Government is again...preparing a report on the show. I dont think the reports gonna see the light of day for at least six years.

What I dont understand is the shallowness of the whole argument. If anyone is racist, its us Indians!! Come on, Goras, Kallus, Makkus, Chinkis., Chaptas...you think they exist for fun??
Calling names has been our core business model for centuries. So why do you think anyone actually gets offended when they are called names. I think that also delves deep into Indian hypocricy and double standards.

Reality shows are going to be about intense bickering and abuse, thats a well known fact for anyone who has watched even 2 minutes of any of the Survivors. Even Roadies, the indian model for the real world, has animosity well inscribed into it. God knows what everyone is complaining about.

The easiest way to figure out that the UK needs India more then the other way around, is when everyone from Blair to Brown is actually opining on the issue. Dont they a war to fight somewhere?

If Shilpa Shetty wanted easy fun and a sterile environment, I think she should stick to Bollywood. Even then, she is going to have a tough time staying away from the "Lambu" cat calls.....:)

Racism....it seems....gimme a break.

homeward bound...

2007-01-17T12:09:00.000-08:00

This thought just struck me while I was browsing a foto-blog on time magazine. I saw a foto of a kid strolling home from school through the newly discovered oil-fields in Azerbaijan. But his thoughts were all somewhere else...happens right?

I mean going back to my school days, I dont recollect me thinking about anything that was happening around me while I was homeward bound. I was usually mired up thinking about who said what and who did what, and my friends and I used to discuss those small insignificant happenings till we could peel the topic to its core.... Its funny how self-involved we all were as kids. Our world was important enough to ignore the real world. So while great revolutions or life-changing experiences were happening all around us, all we could think of were how the teacher mispelled some word or how that girl smiled at you.

only that some of us have grown up and some havent...:) ergo u occaissionaly bump into the completely self-involved colleague who still thinks he is in school....im sure this time ull just smile and move on..."School's out dude..."

I collected some snaps of children walking home from school in different countries...try imagining what each one of those kids was thinkin...surely it had nothing to do with the place they were in....

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Cambodia:
Ghana:
India:
Iran:
Japan 1940

the audacity of hope?

2007-01-16T21:00:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama announced his plans to form an exploratory committee today with this message...

Now it may sound completely hopeful, or a fun-ride after all these years of reducing the landscape of American leadership to a Bihari cattle-shed, to see someone talk about things intelligently even if you would assume for a moment that all this was a show. How many people in the world actively propagate belief in their dreams and have the courage to run against the odds and actually follow suit with these ideals, even when you realise that the pragmatism needed for the scope of the problems we face doesnt get discovered in dreams.

Or maybe thats exactly where its found. In dreams larger than cardboard boxes.

It sure will be interesting to follow this campaign. Its been a while since anyone who knows what they are talking has actually spoken.

the ice breaker

2007-01-09T20:27:00.000-08:00

ok so we are nine days nearer to the end of the world ( the pessimist in me goes...wow..!!) which is assumed to happen sometime in 2012 according to the Mayans as explained here,

"2012 is sometimes claimed to be a year of spiritual transformation (or apocalypse). Many esoteric sources interpret the completion of the thirteenth B'ak'tun cycle in the Long Count of the Maya calendar (which occurs on December 21 by the most widely held correlation) to mean there will be a major change in world order, although there is a distinct lack of evidence from the extant records of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization that they themselves considered this occurrence in 2012 would signify the end of the world."

Funny I just watched Apocalypto a few days ago....

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My colleague ( a self-confessed atheist) started blaming Ted Haggard for all the things going wrong in Denver over the past few weeks. It surprised me a bit to know that he believed in the word of God when things werent going right ( hey whatever makes u happy dude...)

So he starts off, Dude, God has finally spoken...bcos of the f#$%^ we've now had three blizzards, the denver broncos are out of the play offs, a bronco was shot dead, an avalanche near Winter park and we have one more storm this week. Could it get any worse?

Yes, it could, I thought...I could be watching Tendulkar get out for crappy score, again.

Lekin this was my beef...tum nahin samjhoge...kuch kuch hota hai??? ( I didnt see that one coming...for sure!)

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Circa 2006: Scrubs: My savior.
Circa 2007: Scrubs: My savior.

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So, getting back to my snow stories, here is one that will be framed in memory of a cold 2006.

I was stuck at work when the first blizzard hit. God knows what made me go to work, but when I had that steering wheel in my hand, all I could hear in my mind was "If Schumy was the rain-man, ure the snow-man" Thinking about that now, it doesnt even make any sense, but on that day when I was whizzing by cars who were less fortunate ( or more) than me to get stuck on I-25, I felt like a true champ. Then yes I felt like the truest chimp of all time.

Facing a blizzard isnt really tough. Its just wind at 40 mph with snow, reducing visibility to ure own two feet. When the icy winds hit ure face, u feel like parts of it are falling off, yup..there goes my nose...then my lips...and the mental image of that makes you feel like Mr. Potato. Now what you could add to the situation is your car not having enough clearance to get through the snow, which all of a sudden seems to be every freaking where. At the end of it I wanted to just go home, not here, but to bby.

Anyway I've seen most of these types now, from desert sand storms in Jeddah where the sand hits ure face so hard you cant even breathe, to rains in bby where Ive had to waddle in waist deep water for over 10 kms to get to the only bus that was running, to snow storms this bad. And all I can think of realistically speaking, is that none of them were actually bad if I had nothing else to do.

What I mean by that is, if you wanted to get somewhere else, or if you wanted some outdoor action, ya obv its gonna be bad, but noone really asks you to get into the misadventure in the first place.

Ok, so now we were 5 guys stuck at this swanky hotel that charged us over a 100 bucks for a room. Luckily my company picked up the tab, so I didnt mind staying there for more than that night. What do you get when five random guys start yapping away about life with their beers and my coffee. It was interesting to know these different dimensions that existed in these people, I mean ya we worked in the same place, but it wasnt often that a Senior VP would be talking to an Analyst about things he did as a kid.

Hollywood starts here. and then Bollywood copies.

Himesh Reshamaiya goes " Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo"

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The city now looks like a war zone replica in snow. The streets remind me of India.

and there NYC is an amazingly warm 70 degrees.

What sort of a freakshow country are we living in?
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I watched Children of Men last weekend. Now for all the rave reviews the movie received, I felt guilty dragging two of my friends into that theatre. It was pretty stupid, ( most futuristic movies give no hope to mankind) but the action sequences were amazing. I know one thing for sure. The next time I go to a movie, its not my suggestion.

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Happy thanksgiving!!

2006-11-22T14:14:00.000-08:00

how a day changes you....

well nothing major happened except that today was one of the most beautiful days i have ever seen in my life. Not too cold not too sunny, just perfect. Vanilla Blue skies, bright sunshine, no heat, a slight breeze. I just stood there not caring about the time or anything else. And my mind became lighter by a thousand pounds. I felt like i was floating. All in a day's work...:)

It has been a week since I added Adsense to my blog. An ad here and a click there and it sends some money straight to me which in turn goes to charity for kids in India. I thought anyway money is only worth something if you use it for a constructive purpose. Else its just green.

Will be in houston for thanksgiving, a reunion with old roomies, a chance to relive life from the past. Should be fun.

And yes, the heart warming songs from 'Guru' just the final touch needed for the holidays. Dont miss listening to 'Tere Bina' and 'Ey Hairathe' right here on my blog. You would probably have to play with the scroll bar a bit for it to start. But then ure in a peaceful zone.

Happy thanksgiving everyone!

deja vu?

2006-11-15T20:05:00.000-08:00

OJ Simpson's back!

How stupid or desperate must this guy be to actually cash in on his wife's death? Is there any level to which people wont stoop to, if they just get the hint there is some money left to be made of it? He's actually writing a book, which goes by the title, " If I did it"

What he's writing in it is if he were to have committed the murder ( which everyone believes he did do) how he would have done it. Thats worth 3.5 million dollars!

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James Baker is back in Iraq!

The former secretary of state is finding any way ,if there is one, to get out of Iraq. I wonder what must have gone through his mind when he saw Baghdad before and after Saddam's removal. now thats something you would call deja vu!

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mis-takes?

2006-11-14T17:31:00.000-08:00

the election season finally finished and we can all go back to our schedules of drooling over the next one in 2008. Funny it almost looks like the media has made these elections their staple diet, going over and over the same thing every single minute of the day. If only someone made stochastic distribution their staple diet and filled it on screen everyday. Analysis over Poisson?, The Aftermath of the Bayes, Regression 2006. My life could be so much simpler.

Probably the biggest loser in this year's campaign was Senator George Allen of Virginia, ya Mr. Macaca himself. Now we've been through this enough number of times, at water coolers, at coffee breaks, at social gatherings with desis, but something someone really forgot to tell Allen was, which freaking immigrant desi ever goes to an election campaign rally?? ( and that too an opponent's rally!)

The only way ull ever see a desi there is of course if you promised him a free buffet or a Shahrukh Khan poster. or probably if someone wandered into a rally thinking he would finally get some buffet coupons.

No other way boss.

ABCDS, or the politically correct ABdees, well they are of a different breed. Politics mean something to them because they havent been around the 'palm' and the 'lotus' for half their lives.

Imagine losing the Senate because of that? Aint it sad?
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the mahout and the mind...

2006-11-01T09:56:00.000-08:00

The Elephant trap

'From when an elephant is a baby they tie him for certain periods with a rope to a tree. The young elephant tries his hardest to escape, he pulls and wriggles and jumps and crawls yet the rope just tightens and to the tree it remains tied.

Learning that, the elephant doesn’t try to escape and accepts his confinement. A couple of years pass and the elephant is now an adult weighing several tons. Yet the trainer continues to tie the elephant to the tree with the same rope he’s always used, for the simple reason that the elephant has the concept in his mind that the rope is stronger than him. Abiding to this conditioning the elephant is trapped for life.

To break free all the elephant has to do is erase that limiting thought for in fact he is free to go. '

Now I thought that was interesting, mind games play deep...and long...

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I was out with a friend who was expressing his distaste for burritos, on how anyone could eat rice in a tortilla....but then the very next statement he said he didnt mind eating rice with rotis.

Where's the elephant trap when you need one!

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John Kerry said some stupid things on Monday and what was even more stupid was the attempted coverup. Speaking to a class full of students in Pasadena he said, "You know, education -- if you make the most of it, you study hard and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well.

"If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

when he was supposed to say, "I can't overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy?

You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq."

How anyone could fit his size 12 shoes in his even bigger mouth days before an election when sound bytes is all you need, noone will ever know.

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a coach's life...

2006-10-30T21:11:00.000-08:00

I was reading this article in the Times about Bill Parcels, the Dallas Cowboys head coach and couldnt agree more on how a person could feel this way about something he has been doing for sixteen long years. This because many ideas expressed in this piece mirror my own sentiments, in fact would mirror most of our sentiments. This is a very well written article and for the ones who have twenty minutes to spare, I would ask you to read it. Because you usually dont get words that fit into an idea so perfectly that often.

Some of the really well developed lines need to make it into this blog, at least for my own petty satisfaction..:)

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He still returns in his mind to a question his wife often asked him: why do you do what you do? Coaching football doesn’t make him obviously happy. “When my wife asked me that question,” he says, “I never had a good answer. There was no answer. There is no answer.”

It galls him that the media’s curiosity so closely echoes his inner concerns (by far the most common question is, are you thinking about benching Bledsoe?), and makes him even less inclined than usual to satisfy it.

What has him troubled — what has him waking up choking on his bile — isn’t what you might expect. It’s not concern that the Redskins’ coaching staff could spring something on the Cowboys for which they are entirely unprepared. And it’s not his team’s raw ability. It’s a thing that’s harder to put into words, and impervious to strategy. Even as he is trying to study his next opponent, he can’t shake what happened on Sunday. How his team, the moment the Jaguars pushed back, collapsed. How, the moment the players felt the pressure, they began to commit penalties and the sort of small but critical mental errors that only a coach watching video can perceive. In their performance he smells the sort of failure he defines himself against.

“It’s a laboratory,” he says. “You get a real feel for human behavior under the strongest duress — under the threat of physical harm.” In this laboratory he has identified a phenomenon he calls the game quitter. Game quitters, he says, seem “as if they are trying to win, but really they’ve given up. They’ve just chosen a way out that’s not apparent to the naked eye. They are more concerned with public opinion than the end result.”

Parcells didn’t see the Hart-Antuofermo fight (boxing) in person but was told about it, years ago, by a friend and boxing trainer, Teddy Atlas. It stuck in his mind and now strikes him as relevant. Seated, at first, he begins to read aloud from the pages: how in this fight 29 years ago Hart was a well-known big puncher heavily favored against the unknown Vito Antuofermo, how Hart knocked Antuofermo all over the ring, how Antuofermo had no apparent physical gifts except “he bled well.” “But,” Parcells reads, “he had other attributes you couldn’t see.” Antuofermo absorbed the punishment dealt out by his natural superior, and he did it so well that Hart became discouraged. In the fifth round, Hart began to tire, not physically but mentally. Seizing on the moment, Antuofermo attacked and delivered a series of quick blows that knocked Hart down, ending the fight.

“When the fighters went back to their makeshift locker rooms, only a thin curtain was between them. Hart’s room was quiet, but on the other side he could hear Antuofermo’s cornermen talking about who would take the fighter to the hospital. Finally he heard Antuofermo say, ‘Every time he hit me with that left hook to the body, I was sure I was going to quit. After the second round, I thought if he hit me there again, I’d quit. I thought the same thing after the fourth round. Then he didn’t hit me no more.’

“At that moment, Hart began to weep. It was really soft at first. Then harder. He was crying because for the first time he understood that Antuofermo had felt the same way he had and worse. The only thing that separated the guy talking from the guy crying was what they had done. The coward and the hero feel the same emotions. They’re both human.”

“Just because you can identify a problem,” he says, “doesn’t mean you are any closer to fixing it.” He’s an odd combination of fatalism and can-do spirit. He seems both to believe and yet not to believe that he can get through to his players. On the one hand, he says, “the players now have so many people telling them what they want to hear that it’s harder to get through to them with words.”

“Blame nobody, expect nothing, do something.” “Losers assemble in little groups and bitch about the coaches and the system and other players in other little groups. Winners assemble as a team.” “Losing may take a little from your credibility, but quitting will destroy it.” “There are many exit doors in pro football. Don’t take them.” “Don’t confuse routine with commitment.”

Parcells says he has no idea if his words have any effect.

It’s an elemental thing — that mysterious something in a player under pressure that either snaps or holds — and elemental things are what interest this old coach.

More than any other sport, football is meant to be viewed from a God-like angle. Pacing up and down the sidelines, the head coach has the worst view in the house — except for everyone else on the sidelines. The sidelines are an obstacle course of thick cables, Cowboys cheerleaders, flatbed trucks with TV cameras, pushy cameramen and wide people with even wider sound dishes. So the only way to tell if a play is good or bad for the Cowboys is by the crowd’s reaction and the replay on the Jumbotron, which the players themselves watch when they’re curious about what has happened. The closer you are to the action, the more desperately your eyes search for the televised image. All in all, the sidelines illustrate that physical proximity to a complicated event doesn’t necessarily help you understand it.

But if all you saw of the game was Bill Parcells’s face, you’d never know life was good. Parcells is a study in dissatisfaction, and the TV people have figured that out: they focus on him only after some Cowboy has screwed up. Disapproval to Parcells is like snow to an Eskimo: he has spent so much time living with it that he has developed an elaborate range of signals, many of them nonverbal, to express the subtle shades of dissatisfaction. One time he looks as if he has eaten a bad oyster, another as if he has just been told his car has a flat tire. In any case, NBC relies on him to convey what is wrong with his team, but not what is right.

All week long it wasn’t strategy that occupied him; it was character. There’s a tendency to believe that, to be successful, a pro football coach must have a gift for the chessboard aspect of the game. But strategy isn’t what chiefly interests Parcells. His success depends on his ability to demand, and to receive, higher levels of performance from his players. He doesn’t say so explicitly, but his actions speak for him: he spends much more time thinking about getting inside his players’ heads, and their skins, than about anything else. He tries to make them uncomfortable. On a baseball team or a golf team, this sort of pressurized approach might lead to a team-wide nervous breakdown. In football — at least for him — it works magic.

But mainly the old coach looks sick to his stomach. As the clock winds down, and the camera lingers on Parcells, lips pursed as if he has just finished sucking the world’s largest lemon, NBC’s play-by-play commentator Al Michaels laughs and says, “You’ll never see an expression indicating pleasure on Bill’s face.”

“We had 70 yards in gains negated by 60 yards in penalties,” he says. “That’s 9 points.” I ask him if there was any pattern to the penalties. “Yeah,” he says, “they were all stupid.”

He was right: there’s always something. It’s in the nature of the job. “Guys can’t take it,” he says, “that’s why they get out.” Some of the best coaches the game ever saw — Bill Walsh, John Madden — quit simply because the strain was too great. Parcells won’t quit. He now knows that about himself: he needs it more than it needs him. He just turned 65. His marriage is over, and his daughters are grown. “My whole life I’ve always had some guys,” he says. “You gotta have some guys. That’s probably one of the fears I have when I get older: that I won’t have any guys.”

But when your life has been defined by the pressure of competition and your response to it, there’s a feeling you get, and it’s hard to shake. You wake up each morning knowing the next game is all that matters. If you fail in it, nothing you’ve done with your life counts. By your very nature you always have to start all over again, fresh. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, but it’s nonetheless addictive. Even if you have millions in the bank and everyone around you tells you that you’re a success, you seek out that uncomfortable place.

“It’s a cloistered, narrow existence that I’m not proud of,” says Parcells. He sweeps his hand over his desk and points to the office that scarcely registers his presence. “Who’s got it better than me?”

the restive peace...

2006-10-27T15:00:00.000-07:00

i move again tomorrow, because as can be seen i like moving. a new address, a new place, a new something, whatever thats supposed to mean. I actually want to go on a long drive to someplace that I havent been before. Just to explore the beauty of the world that surrounds me, but my roomie's cooking wont let me go far.

Now I have seen a lot of people cook. Some good ones, some mediocre ones, and some who cut cabbages in halves and boil them. But this guy, he just seems to go into a frenzy when he cooks. He tells me he could cook for a whole day, as long as there is something to be cooked. and yes I have seen him cook like that as well. And the final meal isnt an edible dumpling of something that used to resemble a raddish. Its probably the meal that Kramer once mentioned is an orgiastic feast for the senses. and me being a self-confessed foodie, obv yes i wouldnt wander too far away from this. So have I struck gold, yup golden pakoras and masala chais yes!

i left my phone at home today bcos ive had it with technology and me being a slave of it. the laptop, the phone, the tv, the incessant need to be connected. and then i wonder connected to what?? Misery, well ya sometimes, Humor, ah not so much. Actually I really do not want to be bothered anymore. Which doesnt mean the essentials dont go into place. ( I do work in technology, so yes I cannot be disconnected completely)

I started listening to an audiobook of the Future of Freedom by Fareed Zakaria last week. its a neat compilation of how true democracies survive and how checks and balances make some of them great. But again the mismatch happened when the reader who obv sounded 40 and white, suddenly said , I knew what it means to grow up in India. For a second I wondered where that came from, and then it struck me. Ya Fareez did grow up in india and it was his book. But then the second mismatch happened when a friend of mine from Chennai in a state of either forgetfulness or questionable ignorance asked my roomie who obv was cooking at the time, whether Pongal was made from wheat flour which was on the pantry cart. Now I just smiled when I heard that, but my roomie being a kannadiga was amazed. I hope it was forgetfulness, but questionable ignorance cannot be ruled out..yet.

I watched the India-West Indies match on Thursday because of a snow storm that swept in as a blessing in disguise. Two feet of snow meant I could work from home, which meant I could actually watch the match in real time without being guilt-trapped by my sleeping patterns. My roomie was forced to stay home and he as usual fuming went into the kitchen to make the pakoras. It was a great morning as far as I was concerned.

So the snow is here, my second winter in Colorado. Do I want to go skiing, yes, but this time I want to make sure i have the right gear with me, and also include selective distortion of not watching four year old kids ski past me while I try to get up after a fall.

or even better, enjoy watching them ski while I get up. I think thats the missing peace.

the fireworks...always at the end...

2006-10-24T21:00:00.000-07:00

It was a quiet diwali weekend, my fourth away from India. Caught at the crossroads of acceptance and denial had become a usual feeling, and the never ending feeling of wanting to be home for Diwali had kind of simmered into a reluctant indifference. As I watched the England-Australia match at three in the morning, only for the sight of streets filled with color and lights, I felt a silent cloak of happiness cover my senses. And the fireworks went crackling somewhere deep inside. It is Diwali after all.

I stepped out of the theater after watching Don at 1 am, the 21st. From far away it looked as if it was raining. I was concerned because I didnt carry a coat with me. And as i moved closer I realised it was snowing. "What better way to step into year 26, completely unprepared, even for a snow storm," I thought to myself and smiled. But with every unprepared, unquarantined situation comes an experience you never would have been ready to face. Thus the term being unprepared.

As I drove through the snow storm, the reflection of the flakes almost looked like we were travelling through space and the stars were passing us by. I even went to an extent to have a small time travel from Aurora to Highlands Ranch, from Bombay to Denver. When you have twenty six years pass you by, I would imagine, it would be an achievement if you even remember twenty six things you once promised never to forget. And yes about the list I had to make, of twenty six things I wanted to do next year, I am still making it.

and what I did on Sunday is part of a completely different chapter. I still have no words to fill these blogs because these moments dont come everyday. And when they do, they leave you completely incapable of believing that somewhere in this world lies a mirror for your emotions, that everything you could think has been thought of in the same mould. I always wrote about those moments in the past, and when it actually happens I have no words.

But I will, soon.

Schumacher finished his career on Sunday, driving a magnificent race to finish fourth from last place. As I watched some news coverage and a few news articles, I couldnt help looking back at when I started following the sport, and how one individual could dominate it for an entire decade. and then I realised that even he had his detractors.

And now they shall all live in peace.

But where do I go for my anchor? They say a new yr has started. I am ready for it.

I am ready for the fireworks.

a mocha and some mojo...

2006-10-12T23:22:00.000-07:00

blaah blaah blaah blaah and more blaah.

This was all that I heard from some ppl i was meeting a few days ago. It suddenly occured to me that all i was encountering lately were complete misfits. My company VP who asked me whether I liked the cookie at the company lunch, My colleague who explained to a sales guy the reason we didnt see much spam from China of late was because they turned up their firewall (!! since when did China become one freaking box!!!)

Though it had been a while since I found these things humorous. My entire rant episode took me through extended periods of time when the only question I ever asked was why me. But I met Mojo a few days ago and realised he had come into town to meet me. and I laughed.

See the point of this whole exercise right now is about learning to deal with no expectations. I live out of a freaking suitcase, dont even know where half my clothes are ( unless I threw out the wrong box), I ran out of gas last evening and my car stopped in the middle of the road ( was trying to pull off a Kramer thing). My cell phone charger seems to have its own mood where it decides to start charging and then stop arbitrarily. I had nothing to eat the whole day and it was a freaking hike in chilly conditions to get gas. And surprisingly through all this I was in a good mood. Like I couldnt care less.

This sudden change, I attribute to Mojo who I met after a loong time. Getting back with mojo with some mocha helps relive those great moments in life when life was much simpler. Thats when you realise life today is also as simple. Just chuck expectations out the window. Thats a done deal.

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I'll be 26 in a week and a day. Wow, that was quick and I didnt expect to be here this soon. In any case, I want to list 26 things I want to do by next year so that I only do one more thing in 2008. Whatever man...I'm old.

Cough... Cough....

six degrees...

2006-10-07T13:08:00.000-07:00

Six degrees of separation is the hypothesis that anyone on Earth can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances with no more than five intermediaries.

The hypothesis was first proposed in 1929 by the Hungarian writer Karinthy Frigyes in a short story called Chains. The concept is based on the idea that the number of acquaintances grows exponentially with the number of links in the chain, and so only a small number of links is required for the set of acquaintances to become the whole human population.

By extension, the same term is often used to describe any other setting in which some form of link exists between individual entities in a large set. For example, "see also" links in a dictionary entry may point the reader to other entries in the same dictionary; after following only six such links, the reader could potentially get to any word in the dictionary that has a link to it. In this special case of a dictionary, it is sometimes called the six links rule.

---Wikipedia

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So how do you escape to an unknown place if there are these chains and links that keep joining u?

The concept is a networking soul's delight. Its bad for the ones who hate all homo sapiens.

change..

2006-10-04T20:25:00.000-07:00

its yet another fall, new shows on TV, leaves everywhere, the crisp gold after-effects of the dying sun rays. Yup not much has changed since autumn became fall.

I moved in with a friend last evening, wrapped up my whole little world in cardboard boxes and a heart ache in some corner. After all not everyone wants to leave the cozy warmth of a secure present for an unknown future. As I picked up the last pieces from my apartment, I realised how much of my naive hope had been spent in that place, how much I had thought things would just fall into place and I could live life as per schedule. Good I had spent just the naive part of the hope that resides in me, because there is still a part of me that knows its good to be optimistic about things, just not fatalistic about it. And that I had to work harder to get where I want to go.

I met the old lady who lived below me and told her I'm moving out. She wished me good luck for my future, and I dont know why but I felt sad knowing that I would probably never meet her in my life again. Its when u know its really over that u tend to feel bad. Its because u know there is no hope. And then it started raining. Just the wind and the slight drizzle. I had spent a lot of rainy nights in this place, some with utter despair, some with the smile I always seem to have when it rains. So when it did rain that day, I didnt feel anything. I just wanted to get out of there. I dropped the keys and bid farewell.

Its good to have many ends, because U know u have one more right around the corner..:)

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ubuntu...

2006-09-28T14:15:00.000-07:00

Linux users and labour party members will smile away at this. not that they have anything in common apart from social justice and weird hairdos. ubuntu also makes me smile, because it finally brings convergence to my distorted thoughts. how i got here, well ill save that for later. right now, a glimpse of how things dont work.

u know things can be pretty bad when you reach the blood donation station and find out you cant donate blood. Which actually made me laugh because it was the climax of several 'u've gotta be kidding me' experiences over the last few weeks. i move out of my apartment this week, into a friend's place, trying to be subtle about my complete inability to decide on anything. The funny part of this is I havent moved anything. I just go home and stare at all the furniture,and go to sleep. What adds to my woes is a weekend at my sister's place, which gives me a grand total of 1 evening, to move and clean the place up. ok back to the story of things going awry.

Thank you very much for your enthusiasm. That line cracked me up in an email from a potential employer who interviewed me three times, made me travel half way around the country and made me buy a sports coat for a hundred bucks. I know the reason they didnt select me. Well they didnt ask me anything about the job! Now I have been party to several such interviews where they at least are point blank on what they want out of me. These guys were talking about the weather the whole time and how the emerging economies are catching up. Which made me play along. Now before you guys think, Im desperately trying to get out of here, well dont. I just went because they called me, just to see if there were any new gigs in town. I later find out they decided not to fill the position.

With heavy heart I sent them an email back,
Thank you very much for your enthusiasm in interviewing me about nothing.

ubuntu.

I reach the toyrsus store to get two toys that I spent three weeks deciding on. Well for all you people who know about Elmo TMX, good for you. The rest please google it out ureselves. I also wanted to get the tod-rod power wheels, the red one, for my nephew whose second birthday I am attending this weekend. Now why red, because they have a red car. Now toysrus is an amazing place to chill out even if ure way out of the league. This one however didnt have the red one,just a blue version. Now this is what got to me. When I want the red one, I want the red one. Why settle for some thing less? Anyway I went right to the manager's office to find out if they had the red one. So we compared features, we compared functionalities and everything was exactly the same. But why BLUE??? Now this is where I usually go #$%@!#$, but after the dysfunctional experiences of the last week, I gave up. I didnt want to fight anything anymore. I just wanted to go home. If I knew where that was in the first place.

Elmo TMX had sold out. Now I asked the manager, who seemed to have had enough of me, why they kept listing the toy to be available if it wasnt there. His smart reply, because its in the warehouse. Now how that would affect my life, I shall never know. Anyway it was going to take a week to reach the store, which actually had me wondering whether I would have nothing for my nephew. I decided to pick up a go-kart instead, but the box was HUGE. So I left the store empty-handed, thinking of how many more things can actually go this way.

ubuntu...

by the way there was a lot going on in the world all this time, from the UN general assembly addresses by Bush, Mahmoudinejad and the devil spewing chavez. From Bill Clinton firing away on Fox news, to Musharaf being on the daily show. Wait a minute, what the hell was Musharaf doing on Jon Stewart's show?? Having some tea and twinkie apparently. Japan elected a new PM, Blair had his last major speech before stepping down next year. The world suddenly got a lot warmer with some action. And then clinton gave the ubuntu talk that kind of made some sense to me.

Ubuntu.

That was what Bill Clinton told the Labour party conference it needed to remember this week. "Society is important because of Ubuntu."

But what is it? Left-leaning sudoku? U2's latest album? Fish-friendly sushi?

No, it's a word describing an African worldview, which translates as "I am because you are," and which means that individuals need other people to be fulfilled.

-BBC

Probably that had been the core of my haphazard hits and misses. No stated relation to anything or anyone I know. Basically an unmanned aircraft flying all over the place.

But still it did make a list of funny happenings.

Though, honestly I've had enough. Hope things change.

bye bye schumy...

2006-09-11T17:15:00.000-07:00

Ok, im a day late on this. Michael Schumacher announed his retirement from the sport at the end of the year yesterday after winning the Italian Grand prix. That sent a shiver down my spine because I didnt expect him to. And also because I will never see him drive ever in my life.

I tried to evaluate how much it will cost me to get to the Brazilian GP:
Visa: $40.00
Tickets to Sao Paulo: $ 900
Tickets to the GP: $300

and for the Japanese GP:
Visa:$7.00
Tickets to Tokyo:$700
Tickets to the GP:$150

So the JGP works out cheaper but its on Oct 8 and so if at all I wanna go I have to act quick. And yes i know in the end im gonna just end up at a local sports bar and watch him on TV.

Life sucks.

But yes he always rules.

I wonder how big the hall of fame universe would be, if thats the place where we send all our fallen sports heroes to. Mine would have Becker, Sampras, Cronje, Carl Lewis, Gavaskar, Zidane, and soon Schumy. Imagine what state of mind I would be in when Tendlya is added to that club.

I dont even wanna imagine.

************************************************************************************

the labor day experience...

2006-09-05T16:57:00.000-07:00

ok, i had groped for and moped around for the past two months as if my life had ended. Does sound hillarious when i look back at it now, not that i feel any different or am any less clueless. Its just that allowing life to get to you isnt probably the best solution, even if it means having to deal with more questions than answers, more pain than real anguish. And because im just human like anyone else, escaping the questions seems easier said than done, even if it means you have to run away to the middle of nowhere.

Actually its more between nowhere and the middle of nowhere, I would tell you the direction as well, but the only compass i was ever gifted was at home, though carrying it around wouldnt really help because it was one of those things you wanted to escape. Talk about the compass showing you the right direction..:)

and so we charted out a plan, drive around till we see something worth seeing, till we feel something worth feeling. I had other happy campers with me for the journey, and throughout the three days, i kept wondering what they were escaping. They looked pretty happy to me, and i dont dig anyone's conscience to open up a can of worms. So be it, i thought, probably they knew that being happy doesn't mean everything is perfect. It just meant that they have decided to look beyond the imperfections.

we drove for 8 hours till we reached pagosa springs which was an hour from durango, our first stop. Now this place was really beautiful, just that we couldnt see anything arriving at 2 in the night. lodge bookings were at the america inn something, more a home owned B&B i guess. the morning confirmed it.

It was one of the most beautiful inns i have ever seen, with a stuffed moose, fireplace and all. Hot waffles in the morning, pinewood furniture made me happy. Probably it was perfect.

we reached durango at 8, climbed aboard a steam locomotive between durango and silverton, through the mountains and the silver mines, the streams, the lakes and the clouds. it was a very unique experience travelling through the mountains with the mocha in ure hand and the wind in ure hair. But we had to find the imperfection in something perfect. It was too long a journey.

silverton is one of the places where you will find no chains, just home owned businesses between two mountains. i never thought places like this existed in the US before, and as i have been in the past, i was wrong.

that evening we had to make the toughest decision of the trip. Do we go further south to a place that would epitomise, " NOWHERE ", in fact if there was a land, far far away, then yes this was nowhere. The four corners national monument hidden in the novajo desert.

if you're a person who got high on cheap gimmicks then ull probably hallucinate here. but there was deep hidden logic as well. this was one place, probably in the world, where you could be in four states at the same time. Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona.

hidden in the indian reservation land between large sand dunes, this place had everything you would wish for, portable toilets included. we ran into a british couple there who seemed as lost as we were staring at the flag poles. they smiled and gave us our next clue. Mesa Verde.

i didnt know before the trip that this was a huge deal. Mesa Verde sounds as hispanic as Baraja's grill. but as we drove closer and closer to the place, it did deal me my n'th mistake of the season. A UN assigned world heritage site, Mesa Verde has the ruins of the ancient Peubloans. We got to the Spruce tree hill and it just amazed me into silence to view these ruins, with the houses and the fireplaces very neatly tucked between the inconspicuous gaps of a mountain.

if we had a high point during the trip this was it.

We drove back to durango, through telluride and ouray, didnt know there was a telluride film festival going on with "Namesake" premiering there. Imagine being this close to seeing Mira Nair in the middle of nowhere. Ouray on the other hand is the switzerland of the US which explains why none of us heard about it, with the aversion to everything european.

we were back in denver that sunday night, after what i would say was a nice little trip. Did i get any solace to the simmering heat in my mind. Not really.

But i was happy that i got to do what i do best.

Drive in the dark and make it home. So i did have things in control, i did know the difference between whatever i am supposed to do and otherwise. and i didnt have to align myself because i didnt get what i wanted. I just had to stop feeling sick about not getting it..:)

weekender...

2006-08-27T13:01:00.000-07:00

i woke up feeling excited about going to the temple today. this was after all one of the few days in the year where life used to be about bliss and feeling everything you could be happy about. One glimpse at the crowd in the temple here in denver and i just didnt want anything to do with the place or the ppl.

i was at Sam's place last evening for the bbq party. the laughs were there, the comments too. poker was fun, though i didnt have the slightest clue what the hell was going on and only won the pot when i went all in. the crowd of 20 became 4 by ten and i left at 1030. i just drove and drove and drove through the empty streets with the airport lounge music playing in my car and it started raining. this was also closest to bliss ive wanted to be in a long while.

has anything changed?
have i?

i have all the questions, i have all the answers. i have everything,
except the congruence in my thoughts.

but we didnt start the fire....seriously....

2006-08-21T16:59:00.000-07:00

...anyway who cares...the world likes it hot...

and thats my reaction having just watched a bunch of penguins walk up and down antarctica in 'march of the penguins'. i just fell into a daze at some point during morgan freeman's dry narrative because i didnt understand whether the penguins were coming or going. anything obnoxious makes us appreciate it, something out of the ordinary.

We appreciate an air-plot being foiled but didnt understand why we couldnt carry a book on board an aircraft. I mentioned this to a friend and he kept asking me...what could one do with a book?...seriously what Could you do with a book?

I'm like...maybe u can hit someone with it or throw it at someone. Maybe the DHS has a better idea.

OK, the fourth test match between Pakistan and England was forfeited because of ball tampering allegations at none other than our friendly across the border morons. Never happened before in the 128 history of test matches which is a sure sign of the world coming to an end.

na that's a pretty lame reason for the world to come to an end.

Maybe the completely clueless israelis and their not so warm neighbors consisting of Lebanese ppl who dont know their falafels, some shee-ite iranians and soo-ni syrians can give us a better reason. But alas peace prevailed or so we believe. The US now needs the very same UN it called a bunch of sissies before getting into Iraq. France had to do something because it was reluctantly pulled into the spotlight. Blair had to cancel his vacation to the carribean before he found out he wasnt wanted anywhere near the crisis and went back to vacationing in the sun.

After a month of bombing the heck out of beirut, everyone seems to be claiming victory for the war. This was just getting ridiculous.

But then we had the Macaca crisis which just came out of nowhere. Come on, did he really not know what the term meant or was he just showing off his vocab? In any case, youtube has the video which could finally reveal what Americans really think of Indians....apart from being Coomar.

But I really know how the world is going to come to an end.

The day we stop believing Pluto is a planet is the day we are ....... that much closer to the end of the world. Why tamper with the navagrahas and call it dvadashigraha or something. We want Pluto to be what it has always been. No obscurely named UB313 or anything can make anything different.

At least for now things will be the same. or so we hope.

You can be as lonely in a crowd as on your own, far from one.

2006-08-17T08:42:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across this amazing piece written almost using Soccer analogies.....Read it to get a glimpse of how the world is changing right under ure feet....

**********************************************************************************

Among the mass of international soccer games played across the globe on Wednesday and Thursday, three men faced up to the reality that no one is safe and secure in a game that moves on ruthlessly.

In Dublin, despite the support of a full house of 42,000 at Lansdowne Road, Steve Staunton, the new Irish national team coach, must have felt isolated as his side was taken apart and was lucky to lose by only 4-0 against a young Dutch team being groomed for the future.

"They done to us what we intended to do to them," sighed Staunton. "We couldn't get near them, and we couldn't get out."

Zhu Guanghu knows the feeling. The coach to the People's Republic of China endured a night of embarrassment in Tianjin where his players survived a last-minute penalty to escape with a 1-0 victory over Singapore in an Asian Cup qualifier.

The home crowd of 26,000 called continuously for Zhu to be fired and, though the coach acknowledged their ire, he vowed to carry on. China, population 1.3 billion, has slumped to 103rd in the world rankings - two places beneath Cape Verde Islands, population 420,000.

But the third, and possibly the most forlorn figure in world soccer Wednesday night, was surely David Beckham.

His private jet was delayed on the runway in London as the airports struggle to cope with the backlog of flights after last week's terrorist alert.

The Beckhams had been granted two days' leave of absence after Real Madrid's tour of the United States, but he was still grounded Wednesday while his club mates were training in Madrid.

When, finally, Beckham touched down at Barajas airport, just a short hop from the Madrid training base, the session was ending. The world's most recognized player had sat, with his family and the pilot, for two hours in London awaiting permission to take off - but Fabio Capello, the new coach for Real, waits for no man, however celebrated.

Beckham did what an athlete must do: He dashed to the ground, changed, and ran, all alone, for 45 minutes.

While he was running, so was the England team he used to lead. No longer captain, no longer wanted for duty after the World Cup of faded English boasts, Beckham, at 31, is facing the afterlife of a world-famous player.

His place at Madrid, where he is renowned for selling more replica shirts than Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos, Raúl or Zinédine Zidane combined, is by no means secure.

Capello is a stickler for effort, for punctuality, for performance. Reputation will count for less than nothing. By the time Beckham had showered and left, England was already in full swing at his old field of dreams, Old Trafford, the Manchester United stadium.

England eclipsed an acquiescent Greek side, 4-0. All of the goals came before halftime, and it was probably around then that Beckham got home to his wife and sons. The "lads" of England did not appear to be missing him.

And even taking into account the evident fact that Greece came bearing gifts of porous defending and a sad lack of pride in being the champion of Europe, there was a fast tempo to England, a directness and a physical edge that had been lost under the tolerant and rather vapid years when Beckham and his mentor the coach Sven-Goran Eriksson were in charge.

Actually, Becks was not entirely alone at the Valdebebas training center of Madrid. Ruud van Nistelrooy, once his colleague at Manchester United and now re-united with Beckham since his own transfer to Real, waited behind for him.

Possibly van Nistelrooy did not want to be alone either this night.

He, too, has been cast aside by his national side. Marco van Basten dropped him during the World Cup, and left both van Nistelrooy, the nation's record goal- scorer, and Mark van Bommel, the midfield enforcer, out for the trip to Ireland.

It was, like most matches Wednesday, merely "friendly," or preparatory, action. But van Basten made it clear the old stagers should not expect a recall anytime soon; he is rebuilding Netherlands for the 2008 European Championship, and he has new blood in his planning.

"The Dutch showed their class and gave us a football lesson," conceded Staunton after Ireland received its biggest ever thrashing on home turf.

Rafael van der Vaart controlled the contest. Two goals came from Klaas Jan Huntelaar, one from Arjen Robben, and one from Robin van Persie.

Asked about calling time on van Nistelrooy, the coach replied: "Huntelaar scored two goals and he made two assists - he played very well."

Van Basten, who was his country's record scorer before ever van Nistelrooy appeared on the scene, has moved the clock on.

In Livorno, alas, a friendly encounter turned into a wretched political display.

Italy's new coach, Roberto Donadoni, had no World Cup players to call on. The club season is delayed in Italy, and the new coach decided to use his first match in charge to take a look at fresh figures.

His team lost, 2-0, at home to Croatia, also under new management, with Slaven Bilic as coach.

"I can't blame the players," Donadoni said. "They did what they could, but we knew the Croats would be in a lot better shape than us at this stage of the season."

Victory for Bilic, however, was demeaned by the sight of Croatian fans lining themselves up to form a human swastika in the stands. In the complex politics of Italian soccer, Livorno's "Ultra" fans see themselves as leftist. They responded with choruses about Italians being massacred by Tito's Yugoslavs during World War II.

Sport is deformed by such utterly outmoded fanaticism.

-Rob Hughes International Herald Tribune

************************************************************************************

and so is life...

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2006-08-16T15:30:00.000-07:00

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My thoughts on KANK...

2006-08-12T11:59:00.000-07:00

ok, so i watched the movie inspite of all the rip apart reviews. Rediff was really sharp, but then rediff doesnt know how to enjoy movies for what they r, just movies. Watch, laugh, feel the frenzy, have the chai-samosa and walk out. Yes you need relevance and u have tons of it around. But everytime a critic rips a movie apart because it didnt match his real life expectations, u end up feeling skeptical, but nevertheless go for it because those were HIS expectations and not ures.

Its just like because Air travel has become so messed up would u stop flying?

Ok, so the movie.

1. I would deem it the best of the stuff Karan Johar has so far thrown at us. ( That doesnt make it excellent cinema, but a good movie)

2.The saving grace(s) of the movie, Amitabh, Abhishek, Rani and Preity. in that order.

3. SRK still hams his way through every scene, and I never quite understood what made him so mad at life. I mean ya, bad things happen to everyone everyday.. just makes him a sore loser. So if thats what he wanted to portray, he's done an excellent job. But it doesnt fit in the movie, because u dont sympathise with him.

4. Many people said the movie drags on, but I was ok with the timing. Its just that you see ppl making a mess of things on screen without even an attempt to control the swirl, that it becomes sadistically interesting at some point. You want to see vengeful characters say their lines, the so called moments of truth where they make hard decisions. Its funny at some points and at others u dont feel a thing. But considering the melodrama in Indian movies, this is really good. Nothing really over the top. SRK gets fewer and fewer lines as the movie progresses which is a VERY good thing.

4. That one scene where all of them are at the dining table shows why Amitabh and SRK r the powerhouses they r. Because everyone had their lines and they just went thru the motions, just when these two said it, it just froze in time. That to me was the best scene of the movie.

5. Apart from that u never knew why really anyone was doing whatever it is they were doing. SRK was cribbing throughout when frankly speaking there was nothing wrong with him or his life. Rani seemed sad when again nothing really seemed wrong with her or her life. Abhishek was a normal guy and so was Preity being a normal gal. So u would have a difficult time sympathizing with anyone because well this is how life is, never perfect! That doesnt certainly mean junk everything you have and try your luck with someone else. It just seemed very superficial.

6. I am no Guru on marriages but every marriage around me, well to be frank, seems like a match of inequalities somehow managing to balance the equation. So why even bother adding more variables to the equation when u cant balance one? So nothing to learn in real life from the movie except that Grand Central Station is empty at midnight. ( I think its Grand Central)

So just watch the movie and enjoy it. Its not too sweet, neither is it too teary-eyed. Its just a bunch of blah and a few songs with beautiful people who somehow manage to screw things up very well. But then as in any Hindi movie, they all end up happily ever after, albeit with other people...:) except the ones who started the mess in the first place!

scribbles from july...

2006-08-03T12:53:00.000-07:00

Being Loud is not the same as being important.

I am almost asleep when the captain uses the speakers to say we are at 34,000 feet and on our way to denver. i didnt know what to feel then. In some ways I was relieved that I was going back to a world I created for myself however small or insignificant it may be. But I was also sad that things have degenerated back in India and none of the people I knew could do anything about it. The voice became louder and louder as if the captain wanted to wake up every sleeping passenger and drum it into our heads that we were flying. and then there was the feedback of the mike.

Aaj sabhi yaatriyon ka Air Deccan ki is udaan mein swagat hai. I was flying from Mumbai to Chennai for the first time on a low cost airline in India. Was I happy about it? Of course yes. No more travelling for days on the train and spending every minute of your time debating issues that dont matter.No more hogging yourself with stuff you bring from home, the weirdest but completely normal location for a family picnic in India. Partly the reason for that being no open spaces. The Women had their gossip to keep them happy, the Men spoke sternly about politics and how the government almost always screws them. Kids, we had our fun climbing on the berths and swinging off them, a mission to get the rusty fans to work and inevitably waking the anonymous ticketless person sleeping on ure berth to begin with. Those were different times I guess, not that I miss any of that. I just wanted to spend more time being places, getting more experiences. Not stopping the middle of nowhere because someone forgot to turn the signal on.

And thats when you meet the types you despise from the bottom of your heart. They keep standing when the seat belt signs are switched on, they scream their arguments like they were the only ones on the plane. But what could you do? You can stare at them all you want you can ask them to quieten down, they ask you to lighten up as if it was your mistake in the first place. And then you realise ure in India. You CANNOT do anything about this.

I can only stare in wonder on how every rule and every law gets broken every minute of every day here. Why is it so hard to follow a rule? Why is it so tough to do things the way its supposed to be done. Its not that Im complaining because I cant survive in a lawless society. I can weave through the system the way I did before. But then ure so busy weaving through the system that u completely forget what it is to live ure life the way u want to, doing the things u want to, when u want to and not leave a million other factors decide them. Probably the lack of faith in anything mortal is directly proportional to the number of temples in the country. I saw many people who solely rely on prayers to get anywhere because everything else has failed them. But even prayers arent just prayers. The ones who chant them the loudest are deemed to be the most important members. aka Loud=Important. and then u have this huge ambiguous region which allow for a million interpretations and a billion arguments. If there is one thing people fear it is clarity. Bring the issues face on and learn to deal with them. Talk about stuff. But in the process you would probably rob a million interpreters of their livelihoods. Its an economy of
sizes here.

Koi dikkat nahin ...

...said my driver as we swirled and sped through the tiny mountain roads of Himachal Pradesh. His estimation of time and space was as baffling to me as any equation in quantum mechanics. He first estimates the time between Chandigarh and dharamshala: 8 hours. We travel for 4 hours and then I ask him how much longer. Bas saab yehi kuch 7-8 ghante. I just stare at him like he's lost it completely. Distances arent any sweeter. His initial guesstimation was that we were some 100-200 kms from the place. Uh...which one exactly...100 or 200? we shall never know.

The thing here is that you cannot blame anyone for anything. If you got somewhere late, ya you got there late. Everyone just shrugs it away and moves on or rather they shrug and sit put wherever they r.

Am I the one being paranoid?

I am taking my own sweet time to put this piece together. The reason, I dont want to overheat thinking about the futility of any situation when in reality things r perfectly fine. India is a marvellous place if you just want to let go. Its like sitting on a roller coaster ride, you know its going to be bumpy, the turns are going to be unexpected, the drops will make you blame yourself for getting on the ride in the first place. But in the end you walk out laughing and feeling good about the choice you made. The same goes for a visit to the place. An insider will never complain about the obvious things, on how the cyclist drives on the middle of the road or how the trash accumulates everywhere except the trash can. He will instead complain on things he just doesnt need to be bothered about, on how Bush is doing a bad job, on how Manchester United shouldnt have let Nistelrooy go or how Bill Gates should just leave. I feel this sort of thinking helps the place survive the complete anarchy any outsider would have run away from.

The traffic lights at an 8 way intersection are turned off at 7 in the evening in the middle of the rush hour. I dont know why, but well it makes things easy for all of us who know that the only way anyone gets anywhere is to keep driving till someone blinks first. Its all about rudimentary, granular judgement here and the best part is that the playing field is levelled when you have a truck take on a cyclist and the cyclist wins. They both abuse each other and then laugh about it to their cronies and move on. and ure left stranded wondering what just went on.

Connections and Purchasing parity.

One thing I found out on this trip is that a dollar is actually only worth 20 rupees when you measure the purchasing parity. Which means you can buy something worth a dollar for 20 rupees in india. It works well in numbers when you can mope your way to a CCD ( cafe coffee day for the uninitiaed), an economy version of Starbucks even in a place called Dharampur on the Haryana, Himachal Pradesh border. The same tasteless mocha for 40 rupees and you feel happy you've managed to spend your moolah on something completely useless once again. I ducked at the opportunity to visit these coffee shops when I was alone, visiting them only when I had company. You still get the cutting though now for 5 rupees instead of the 2 we used to spend in college. And thats when it hits you, that all along you have been living completely inflated lives. Big, Huge things we just dont need. A clash of standards perhaps but its really important for you to understand what makes you happy. I am happy having the cutting. I guess the closest you can get over here is the 99 cent coffee at a gas station.

And while we are at talking about how people concern themselves with things they just cant do anything about, I have to add how the connections dont change, just the people connected do. I met up with a few friends who somehow used to scare me with their connections talk when I was in college. On how the only way you could get anything done was if you knew that guy. It has been almost four years now and they still give me their factoids on whom to know. And thats when it strikes you, you never knew any of the morons these guys talk about all along and you did do pretty ok. But thats for inside thinking. Outside I just nod along, wondering whether anything will ever change here. Its just that the ppl who talk keep talking, the ppl who do do.

Degenerate slide to conveyor belts.

I visited my college to see what was left of my alma mater. To the ones who dont know my academic past, I was probably one of the bolts in the nut squad of engineers Bombay University churns out every year. My batch of college mates were the most random bunch of intellectuals you could ever put together. We were much smarter than the place made us feel, which kind of resulted why most of us arent really complaining right now. But the place where we spent four years has degenerated into a nothingness because of the agrarian policies the government seems to whip up every year. The quota regime has somehow found its way back into the happenings from Economy to Education. ( Alphabetically descending EC to ED) Vacancies in teaching because of such rotten policies have left students fend for themselves. But here's the trick. You somehow manage to get through those four years and life IS good now for the ones who want to make it. Thank the IT sector in the country for establishing these conveyor belts for engineers. Which is why I also believe as far as India goes, there is a very deep checks and balances system in place. You dont go up. You dont go down. You just stay in the same place.

More to follow.....

the pic of my trip...

2006-07-27T06:55:00.000-07:00

for other snaps from my trip check out this link

a trip to Dev Bhoomi

2006-07-25T00:23:00.000-07:00

On ure list of todo things in India, if u really r looking for a getaway dont miss Himachal. Man, the place is so beautiful that ud often wonder whether ure really in India.

Dharamshala is a quiet little town with more tourists than locals and more Tibetans than Indians. I ran into so many Israeli tourists ( the place has quite adapted with Hebrew keyboards in Cyber Cafes to Falafel Sandiwiches in restaurants) that I sense a Jewish conspiracy. and then u have the Dalai Lama and his monasteries. Mcleodganj has that small market town feel to it, and though u would think ure in a wholly different world, u get everything from Reliance SIM cards to Aspirins.

Shimla looks like the Monaco of India with buildings at the edge of cliffs and small roads winding in and out of the city. To think that the whole of the subcontinent was administered from this small town, aden in the west to burma in the east for most part of the year during the British times gives u a perspective of what we are looking at.

Get a book or ure ipod or even better go to sleep while travelling or else get ready for Vertigo 2. The roads criss-cross the hills and mountains at angles you would never imagine, and with the way vehicles are driven in India, I think ive said more than enough. But then u get ure moments of complete bliss when you view the mountains far and beyond and when you drive through a cloud. Its a risk worth taking.

The Food is authentic Punjabi stuff so dont go and ask for a dosa.

My route: Mumbai-Chandigarh by flight and Chandigarh onwards by car.

I will post snaps of the place thats called 'Dev-Bhoomi' ( I thought God's own country was Kerala)
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analytics and the power to know...

2006-07-08T01:04:00.000-07:00

im in india now...and does it feel good!

three mantras for anyone travelling to india after a while...

1. never try to understand why anyone does anything. if they do something let them, if they dont, good for u. the more u try to understand the less u will like or as bono says in the city of blinding lights, the more u see the less u know, unless u find out as u go.

2. never question the weirdness around u and in order to do that keep ure calender busy. fill it out with things to do even if u dont get around to do them.

3. never be fatalistic, believe in murphy and enjoy life.

then india seems like the perfect vacation destination! ( pls dont accuse me of being an outsider looking at india. i am just pointing out the obvious)

i have added the google analytics code to my blog for over 5 months now. pretty interesting stuff when u consider you get everything you would want to know about the visitors to ure site. Location, networks, names, frequencies, histograms and pie charts. (plus how to earn some extra money)

Bombay is just great....its just a feeling you get when u can possibly absorb the sights and the sounds the place has to offer. But a minute of ecstacy is followed by questions that noone seems to have answers for.

I though have felt old in this trip. Like ive been in a time warp since i left the last time. Everyone and Everything i associated with has changed, but its nice to finally get to meet everyone being all responsible and stuff. For more on my ramblings about the trip visit http://800-sojourn.blogspot.com

Still searching for closure and convergence. No sight of the gruesome twosome.

A third search for perspective has been easy, its everywhere u look. The faces, the people, the journeys made by everyone to get where they r. How many of them move on, how many r happy. All these questions just overwhelm u so badly that ure contribution seems tiny and worth no mention. Its easier to move on as an individual, all our successes and failures directly attributed to us. But what if you were to carry with u the hopes and aspirations of many, and what if u fail?

Ramya calls them 'shackles of the past'. and she also tells me its not easy to shake that off.

Is it really that tough?

the solitary post

2006-06-20T08:22:00.000-07:00

this could very well be my only post for the month of June.

There is an inverse proportion relationship between the happenings in ure life and the number of posts that can be put up.

This is my sole conclusion from June.

And watching dumbs finally wrap up, I begin to wonder whether all this blogging is actually worth it.

And I think it is and it does make sense. This isnt a blog about great achievements or any personal triumphs. Its just an outlet for these words that get stuck in my head. The din becomes so loud sometimes that I have to get them out of there. and then I am at peace.

I will be blogging throughout my India trip which starts in 9 days.

The journey to the opposite end of the world, a place that was once home, and could also be home again.

Let the show begin...:)

the last day of may.

2006-05-31T17:34:00.000-07:00

today is the last day of may.

tomorrow is the first day of june.

enuf time to clean the cobwebs in my head.

yes now i am ready.

bring it on.

CTRL-ALT-DEL

No use

ALT-F11..F11..F11..F11..F11..F11..F11..F11..F11..F11.F11.F11.F11.

10%.......25%.......50%......70%......100%

system restored.

huh? who? what? when? really?

and thats that.

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im going to india in 29 days!

yipeee....

and even better it has started raining in bby!!

I am pretty sure, im gonna have a messed up trip, but im game. I am waiting for interesting stories that I can think about and probably laugh over in my own spare time with people around me wondering whatever's wrong with him.

Fun Fun Fun.

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it happened one day...and four...

2006-05-24T16:37:00.000-07:00

how do u go from earth to heaven to hell and back to earth in 4 days?

easy, you do what i did this week.

i would love to get into specifics but in all probability its not gonna help.

Call me up, I could give you some tips on the route, the best gigs in hell, the places to visit in heaven, and how to avoid the road signs all together.

The Signs never help.

Believe me.

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